Archive for the 'blogging' Category

I’m moving back to Brazil and making some moves digitally. All to make my motto work, simplicity.

You can read more about the changes I’m going through at http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com/2008/12/moving-physically-and-digitally.html
Please, add this feed to your reader for us to keep talking and interacting and I hope to meet you at

Just came back from Martha’s Vineyard and was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of using a mobile, taking photos and posting them straight to Posterous. It was simply incredible, mobile, capturing the exact moment and thought. I could post as I had fun. I didn’t postpone it from when I got back from the trip or didn’t have to write anything to remember. Just flashes from my mind and camera.
Here are the posts that make my first travel log in Posterous. Promising. I can think of many possibilities for a conference, the classroom and personal endeavors.

Travel Log

In Cape Cod
On a Bike Bus Heading to the Ferry
On the Ferry At Oak Bluffs Vineyard Haven At South Beach – Martha’s Vineyard Gingerbread Houses Leaving Martha’s Vineyard
Of course, Posterous lacks tags. I wonder if it is tracked in Technorati, for example. I’ll investigate that. Even so, it has RSS feeds and it’s a simple way to engage educators who have no clue where to get started and need something simple, efficient, and fast to be encouraged to take blogging seriously.

Now that BrazTESOL is about to start, and I won’t be there physically to attend presentations, I thought it would be appropriate to share with you what I just read. Interesting way to take notes during a presentation and share it with the world using Google Docs and live blogging.
I’d love to hear from you if you test it.

Official Google Docs Blog via kwout

I’ve been mulling over for some days now what I read @Injenuity. Jennifer Jones wrote a compelling post about “Being Trapped in a Ning”
She mentions:

I have found that my most rewarding online connections are with people I know where to find when I need them. The tool doesn’t even matter. I’ve learned their habits and can locate them in a space where they are most comfortable interacting. There are people I’m connected with through gmail chat, skype, twitter, blogs, email and other networks, but I’ve learned which arena works best for communicating with each of them. For my Twitter contacts, I can quickly check their status on Twitter, and if they’re around, I’ll contact them through the method that works best. My colleagues all have preferred contact methods. I have some instructors who only use the phone, others email.

At the end of the year, I created the Ning group for my online students and blogged about it saying that Ning was the place where learning happened. http://explorations.bloxi.jp/a/ning-wher…
However, I must agree with Jennifer. Learning is not in Ning. It’s everywhere. When people already have their own spaces of self-expression, if they started blogging somewhere else, it’s like as if they’re dispersing their thoughts instead of aggregating them. For example, I love the fact that in the blogging4educators Ning, whenever we want we can start a forum discussion, or share something there. However, people already have their preferred way of sharing and collaborating. So, aren’t we forcing them into a relationship that existed before? Do we need to be in the “same room” to be tied and dialogging? Of course not. That’s why I feel now that I was pushing the members there, but, in fact, our bonds were already strong in other online spaces. I still like the idea of having everybody there and knowing that whenever needed we can just send a message to the network with something interesting. But, yes, Jen, what really matters is aggregating conversations and building up knowledge using each one’s favorite means and not forcing people into a digital trap. I do hope that the members in the blogging4educators don’t feel this way. I do hope that if they decided to join the group is because they saw value in it. However, it is worth speaking up our minds and questioning our practices. As for my students, it’s a different case in the sense that most of them don’t have an online presence in their learning process. They have their favorite social networks, but they consider it a different domain of socialization, not for learning, though they might be learning valuable skills. So, Ning, can focus their attention to the learning process. But, again, I have had such amazing interactions through emails, skype chats, Orkut messages with them that we might be trapped in some way. They might feel I don’t want to communicate in another digital medium, which is certainly not true. They are mostly busy adults who prefer to receive an email. Some will give me feedback and keep conversations. Others read my personal blog.
Ning is still an appealing place for learning and sharing, and I’ve had invaluable interactions there. For example, Celso, a former student, has been reporting his learning journey abroad in a forum, Marcelo talks about his news professional challenges in a blog.However, it only works if it’s the group willingness to interact there, and not us trapping a group of brilliant minds in a space that they don’t feel as theirs. It shouldn’t be unilateral where one person is trying to feed the group with information, resources, ideas, but an interactive space. If it’s not, maybe we’re using the wrong tool for the right purpose. Then, we’re missing the wonderful input each one can contribute in a network.
In the case of my online students, I know that some of them have fully profited from it and I have, as well. But, now, I think, couldn’t we keep having enriching connectivity where we started, on our class blog? A lot of food for thought there. I still believe in the power of Ning, but with more critical eyes, pondering its true value for networking. I’ll keep exploring it to have a clearer view how it’s useful in my professional development and in my students’ learning path.
Michele Martin discusses the issue in the Bamboo Project Blog. She sees the value of Ning for new users of social media, the ones who still don’t have their own blogs, or don’t use RSS to keep connected to others in their network. As I mentioned above, this is exactly the case when some of my students profit from Ning. Their shared space become a sandbox for their self-expression. It can be the spark they need to speak up their minds and find the tone of their potent voices. .

We all wish we had more time to explore, comment, post. Not perfect worlds, but this month was filled of ideas on how we can keep the flow of conversations into a deeper, more meaningful level in our blogs. My participation was imperfect, but this doesn’t mean I haven’t gone far. The comment challenge girls, Sue Waters, Kim Cofino, Michele Martin, and Silvia Tosano were just everywhere showing by skillful commenting strategies how to keep distributed conversations aggregated in clusters of meaning. Participants had a variety of levels of engagement, but each learned what he/she needed to apprehend at the time of the challenge.
For me, the challenge was just the spark for further explorations. No, it’s not over! Finding ways and time to connect is a multi-faceted process. You go far, there’s even more to discover. Ideally, it’s time now for us to keep using the skills, strategies, ideas we’ve been exploring in the blogosphere. However, I feel we should go on exploring possibilities as a group as we’ve done so far. I don’t know how, but maybe still using the tag and the cocomment sharing system to highlight new blogs, interesting posts, comments worth reading? Well, I’m speaking up my mind…
My top 5 lessons from this wonderful commenting experience?

• Connections keep coming in different ways
• A simple idea can take a bunch of very busy educators to go beyond, always beyond
• Keep commenting. New nodes of learning are formed by the connections generated in the comment area.
• There are people interested in what you have to say. Keep blogging.
• I’m thinking of a totally new approach to next year’s blogging4educators Electronic Village workshop due to the input I’ve gotten from the challenge.

I’d like to thank everybody who enriched my professional development, my days, my life with such meaningful comment connections!
The challenge has just begun.