Archive for the 'blogging4educators' Category
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Here’s our message to all of you who inspire us to go beyond, to try out, to dare, to dream.
Here’s some advice:
Be aware of the world around you
Scan, collect, organize the information you see, perceive and receive
Look for patterns
Understand values
Have a view, but don’t make it an ideology
Keep your eyes open
Do you think this piece of advice could apply to your classroom? Certainly. In fact, they have to do what we’ve been exploring in this edublogtalk. As we’ve been discussing, blogging is an eye opener, an exploration of our peripheral views of what surrounds us. Through blogging, we can tap our external world to our inner voices. And that’s exactly the point of Scott Smith’s presentation in lift08. No, he was not talking specifically to educators, but surely to teacherpreneurs, those who are ready for change, subverting old-fashioned practices and trying to see the future the already involves us. Scott was talking about foresight, perceiving the future. He asks what motivates people, what the trends are, what the driving forces are to give us a picture of what surrounds us. Then, he explores the need for a human-based insight, to get on the street and “see” what is out there. Blending external factors to internal is key to understanding the directions we’re taking. Isn’t that what we should question and look for as educators?
What are our students’ driving forces? What touches them? What motivates them? What switches on their creativity, their passion? What are we doing to encourage that?
There’s still a lot to explore from Scott’s talk, but my message here is to look around and find the future around us and explore it with our learners to the benefit of each individual that we encounter and touch. What a better way than to start by blogging and encouraging students to see, reflect, express themselves, and engage in discussions?
Do you think this piece of advice could apply to your classroom? Certainly. In fact, they have to do what we’ve been exploring in this edublogtalk. As we’ve been discussing, blogging is an eye opener, an exploration of our peripheral views of what surrounds us. Through blogging, we can tap our external world to our inner voices. And that’s exactly the point of Scott Smith’s presentation in lift08. No, he was not talking specifically to educators, but surely to teacherpreneurs, those who are ready for change, subverting old-fashioned practices and trying to see the future the already involves us. Scott was talking about foresight, perceiving the future. He asks what motivates people, what the trends are, what the driving forces are to give us a picture of what surrounds us. Then, he explores the need for a human-based insight, to get on the street and “see” what is out there. Blending external factors to internal is key to understanding the directions we’re taking. Isn’t that what we should question and look for as educators?
What are our students’ driving forces? What touches them? What motivates them? What switches on their creativity, their passion? What are we doing to encourage that?
There’s still a lot to explore from Scott’s talk, but my message here is to look around and find the future around us and explore it with our learners to the benefit of each individual that we encounter and touch. What a better way than to start by blogging and encouraging students to see, reflect, express themselves, and engage in discussions?
2008. Not long ago I started blogging. It was 2005 just as I was taking my TESOL Principles and Practices of Online Teaching Certificate Program. That’s when I decide it was high time I started giving it a try. I first heard of blogging in 1999 in a workshop at my workplace. I was fascinated by the possibilities, but, at that time, blogging was still just a distant concept to grasp with a need for a bit of HTML knowledge that I had no idea where to start learning…Well, I did! I knew I could learn a bit online, but was it fear, time excuse, or just keeping myself in the comfort zone of known things? Why would I need to go even further? I was already doing too much in terms of technology compared to my colleagues. No need for comparisons. Otherwise, I’d still be sticking tons of flashcards on the blackboard and cutting hundreds of magazine photos as class realia. Comparing myself to the others was not what kept me going. So, in 2005 I was ready to give blogging a try, but I wanted to do something special. I started big. If I really had given it some thought, I think I wouldn’t have taken that huge step, but I decided to invite an online friend, Dennis Oliver, for an international exchange. If it were now, I’d start the other way around, from blogging for professional development, connecting to others, listening to other bloggers, to stepping into the classroom sphere. I guess I was just too anxious of a learner and felt blogging was an interesting addition to what I was already doing in the classroom (connecting with students through yahoogroups, for example). When we headed for our international interaction, I had been already blogging not with my students, but for my students. It was still a unidirectional informational space. I was replicating what I did in the classroom, except that I was using another medium. My intention was certainly good, as I knew my students were all into techie things and social network spaces. I realized there were just sporadic comments and I had so much work preparing posts for our class blog (in fact, my blog!). After giving it some thought, and by listening to other online edubloggers’ voices, it dawned on me that I was missing the great chance of having the blog as conversational, reflective, engaging spaces for my students. Why would they reply or say something if I was just posting homework and class grammar content?!
That’s when my International Exchange blog with Dennis was conceived. Dennis and I were just starting, testing, sharing, learning. I didn’t have easy access to computers in the classroom. Many times I had to print Dennis’ students messages and take them to the classroom to work there. At that time, my best option was to have teams of students working together. We had to manage classroom schedules with the great addition of the blogging conversations. We juggled, came up with different solutions to keep the conversation among our students flowing. Some of my students would even “risk” replying from home. They loved the experienced, we exchanged postcards and mementos from our countries. Yes, I started to understand what blogging was about, taking language learning, communication, and connections to another dimension. We kept experimenting with our new classes, Dennis’ colleagues joined us, we moved forward, innovated in tasks, looked for creative ways to engage our students.
http://internationalexchange.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.htmlAt that time, I didn’t know much about syndication, nor did I pay attention to the power of tagging. Still, nothing hindered us from developing communication channels within our classes.
We started to fearlessly explore the possibilities. I remember when I first tested with my students recording audio. After some class discussion, my adult students recorded and asked questions to Dennis. They were thrilled, I was exhilirating! Podcasts also became part of our blogging world. My shy, quiet students blossomed in the blogging classroom. I’ll never forget the kinds of conversations Emerson, a quiet student in class, engaged in our class blog: Emerson’s interactions with Dennis, and long after Emerson still participated in international conversations.
From the international exchanged, I expanded my blogging horizons indefatigably looking for options and possibilities that would fit my teaching principles and beliefs, my learner’s goals and needs, as well as balance with institutional curricular requirements. I went from Brazil and Brazilians connected, CTJ Online, Top 21, SambaEFL, to elearningCTJ. Even with some blogging road, there’s still a long way to go.
Now, I also keep this blog for personal reflections on teaching and learning, and my personal blog to write about my experience in Key West.
My 2.0 blogging concept is maturing. The conversations we’ve been keeping in the blogging4educators session, how we’re connecting, using syndication, exploring the power of tagging to aggregate online artifact as proposed by Vance Stevens and team, the chat with special guests like the Women of the Web2.0, Konrad Glogoswksy and Paul Allison, the open ears to online voices in the blogosphere are really shaping up my new perceptions of blogging as a dialogic tool. Carla Raguseo’s post on our distributed conversations summarizes the essence of our enriching blogging experience for the past weeks. 
Carla Raguseo via kwout
The possibilities are limitless. I simply need to keep exploring how to balance them in a way that I focus on my learners’ drives, my main teaching and learning goals and my institutional settings.
The big question: Which blogging practice would be a good balance for the different forces involved in the blogging classroom? I’m on the road to find the answers, but certainly agree with Konrad that “…good teaching is a subversive activity. We’ve been using external pressures as an excuse to do nothing for too long.” (Towards Reflective Blog Talk 02-04-2008). I’m exploring and sharing. No excuses for not moving towards some paradigm shifts that are essential for educators tuned in to a multiliterate flat world.
Through Barbara Ganley’s blog I got to this video that reflects upon our educational system as a whole with just some little oasis of true innovative, 21st century teaching and learning.
In fact, since yesterday I’ve been thinking of the best way to reply to Lilian’s Human Factor post about her Egyptian context of teachers not feeling the need or not willing to incorporate technology into the classroom, which is pretty similar to different corners of the world. Much has been said that it’s not about technology (which I read an interesting post of the need for it to be “invisible”). It’s about opening the doors and putting down the classroom walls. It’s about letting blind minds see light, with different tones of colors and cultures, adding different voices and perspectives. It’s reflecting on your own views and learning there are other opinions around. Not your teacher’s opinions or your classmates’ only, but totally different pictures of the world. These are the reasons for connecting. On the educators’ side, being connected to others lets us explore, develop, discover, play with our own teaching practices and become better souls and open-minded educators who are not in the classroom to control, but to facilitate change within one’s world, help eyes to spark, facilitate meaningful conversations.
That’s why I do my little part for the other educators trying to take the plunge into this brave new online world. I truly believe in the power of networking, connecting, exchanging, blogging.
There are simply no excuses to keep our students bored in a meaningless educational context. Fear can always be overcome with persistence, dedication and willingness to try.
Barbara Ganley, Barbara Sawhill, Leslie Madsen-Brooks, Martha Burtis, & Laura Blankenship's collection of videos on the Fear2.0 topicHow do you overcome the initial fear of starting?
Laura Blankneship’s
list gives us some interesting insights.
I am next, Carla and Mary! After reading your inspiring posts about Mary’s “5 things you don’t know about me” and Carla’s, I decided not to postpone my own post for one single minute!
So, here are some curious, peculiar things about myself. This is a fun reflective activity that made me travel back in time and space:
My Italian family and roots.
I was a rebellious teen and young adult. So, after living in the US for a year in Washington State when I was 16, at 19 I headed to Italy. I lived there for some months at my cousin’s house, became fluent in Italian, and wanted to study Hotel Management there. Also, it was a search for my own roots as my whole father’s family is Italian, including my dad. However, there was a problem with my High School diploma. As I graduated as a Senior in an American high school and being a foreigner, they didn’t give me a real diploma, but a Certificate of Conclusion. When I got back to Brazil, I went through a process of equivalence of what I had studied in the US so that I didn’t have to take again the senior year in Brazil. In Italy, they wanted just the high school diploma, though I was about to conclude my University studies in Brazil. Well, I decided to go back to Brazil to finish my course. The Italian University wanted me to take two more years to finish high school there and start my course! No way. I headed back to Brazil after driving my mom crazy for some months! Then, I decided to stop studying for 6 months in Brazil and worked as a shoe seller!
Although I’m a passionate educator, I graduated in International Affairs at University of Brasilia. I wanted to be a diplomat, but after being an intern at the Ministry of International Affairs, I gave up. It was really not for me! Besides, my profile didn’t fit what they would expect from a diplomat. Sometimes I’m not very well-behaved, I tell people what I think, and can be even indiscreet with my big mouth(poor husband!), and my laugh is way too loud! I’m trying to behave myself better now!
I passed two public entrance exams and I worked for the government, but just as Carla, my clone, I hated it! People didn’t want to work. They just pretended they did, there was always politics, and I could never see the result of what I was doing. So, I quit and decided to become an English teacher. I’m happier than ever before! Some people in my family still think I’m crazy…
Every vacation, I try to do something unusual not related to teaching or computers. My husband always sighs in anticipation wondering what I will be “creating” for the summer!One of those years I decided to learn how to make tile mosaics. I must say it’s just a wonderful therapy. My mom says she can’t believe it I could be so minimalist!
When I was 9, I was crazy about Frank Sinatra and his song “New York, New York”. So, I took a cruise to Argentina and would walk at “Calle Florida” looking for his CD everywhere. I would make little performances to my family singing it!
I danced ballet for 10 years. I was really passionate about it, but could see I wouldn’t really succeed as I was too “voluptuous” for a ballerina! My thighs were not the thinly ones expected for a professional dancer, I was taller than my friends (at that time! Now, I’m exactly the height I was when I was 13. 1,63m). Every year, our performance was assessed by a British teacher who would come straight from the “Royal Academy of London”. I decided to quit when I was 13 and to start playing volleyball. Again, my mom went crazy, but, you know, my rebellious side…I had much fun playing the volleyball season and we won the Championship in Brasilia! I’m still passionate for ballet, I still have my classical music collection of vinyls, and I’m an old fan of Baryshnikov and Nureyev. Two years ago, my husband gave me a wonderful present, going with me to watch The National Ballet of Cuba in Brasília. An amazing presentation.
Well, Carla and Mary, as always you take me to wonderful journeys with amazing challenges.
Thanks for sharing your bits of personal lives.
So, here are some curious, peculiar things about myself. This is a fun reflective activity that made me travel back in time and space:
My Italian family and roots.Well, Carla and Mary, as always you take me to wonderful journeys with amazing challenges.
Thanks for sharing your bits of personal lives.
I was just going through some tweets, when I came across this message by Barbara Ganley,
Though overwhelmed with little things to do for the blogging4educators sessions, I decided to take a look to see what kinds of connections where happening through blogging as this is the main aspect we’ve been discussing and participants are eagerly asking questions about how to foster conversations. What a surprise to find such a deep conversation between the student and the author of a video he was reviewing.
Though overwhelmed with little things to do for the blogging4educators sessions, I decided to take a look to see what kinds of connections where happening through blogging as this is the main aspect we’ve been discussing and participants are eagerly asking questions about how to foster conversations. What a surprise to find such a deep conversation between the student and the author of a video he was reviewing.
There’s not much time to say here everything I’d like to. Too much going on in our session blogging4educators since today we dropped the curtains and our avid participants were already there chatting, interacting and finding themselves around or getting a little lost.
However, I just wanted to keep it registered here something that I find quite amazing and it’s even more clear to me now. For the past year, I’ve been twittering, not so frequently as I wished, but I’m always there through Skype (I get my twitter updates through my skype account) and learning from others. There’s always a resource, a podcast, a blog mentioned by someone in my network that takes me deeper into subjects that I feel like exploring. No, twittering is not shallow. It establishes human contact with powerful mind connections. I guess nobody has the real notion of how it is impacting other people’s lives. Interesting enough that people that I’ve never seen f2f have been giving so many invaluable insights from this brave new online world. Microblogging has proliferated as microspheres of our daily lives in the personal spectrum, as well as professional. It is faster, dynamic, a living thing. I started with Twitter, signed up for pownce, though never used. And just today I checked Gladys Baya’s Tumblr to realize she’s been posting wonderful things there, little treasures of her own. All of a sudden I get to her own world in a different perspective. I’ve been interacting with her so intensely for the past months in preparation to the blogging4educators, but then I stumble into her Tumblr. Suprise. A chest of Gladys’ bits, different from the ones I’m used to, even more complete. Microblogging is another sphere of one’s many facets.
After the pleasant moment of satisfaction to “see” Gladys through different lens, I came across one of her bits that called my attention, kwout. A very cool application and as user-friendly as any web2.0 should be. Thanks, Gladys, for sharing your Tumblr and your other micro-side! Here’s the result of my test with kwout. Just loved it! Microblogging. Connectivity power in a few sentences, fragments of oneself.
Related post: Twitter Strikes me Again
However, I just wanted to keep it registered here something that I find quite amazing and it’s even more clear to me now. For the past year, I’ve been twittering, not so frequently as I wished, but I’m always there through Skype (I get my twitter updates through my skype account) and learning from others. There’s always a resource, a podcast, a blog mentioned by someone in my network that takes me deeper into subjects that I feel like exploring. No, twittering is not shallow. It establishes human contact with powerful mind connections. I guess nobody has the real notion of how it is impacting other people’s lives. Interesting enough that people that I’ve never seen f2f have been giving so many invaluable insights from this brave new online world. Microblogging has proliferated as microspheres of our daily lives in the personal spectrum, as well as professional. It is faster, dynamic, a living thing. I started with Twitter, signed up for pownce, though never used. And just today I checked Gladys Baya’s Tumblr to realize she’s been posting wonderful things there, little treasures of her own. All of a sudden I get to her own world in a different perspective. I’ve been interacting with her so intensely for the past months in preparation to the blogging4educators, but then I stumble into her Tumblr. Suprise. A chest of Gladys’ bits, different from the ones I’m used to, even more complete. Microblogging is another sphere of one’s many facets.
After the pleasant moment of satisfaction to “see” Gladys through different lens, I came across one of her bits that called my attention, kwout. A very cool application and as user-friendly as any web2.0 should be. Thanks, Gladys, for sharing your Tumblr and your other micro-side! Here’s the result of my test with kwout. Just loved it! Microblogging. Connectivity power in a few sentences, fragments of oneself.
Related post: Twitter Strikes me Again
The edublogging adventure is about to start! Well, in fact, participants seem so eager to begin sharing and collaborating that we’ve had a great number of exchanges among them, even though our blogging session hasn’t started yet.
I’ve been working non-stop to give the final touches to our session open spaces together with a very special group of educators. They’re scattered all over the world. The fun thing is that it seems that we never sleep. When it is night for me, Mary Hillis in Japan is there working, then there’s also Nina in Ukraine with a different time zone. So, it’s a 24/7 Blogging Team eager to share what we’ve been experiencing for the past few years individually and with our groups.
The session spaces are shaping up, full of interesting content and resources. Certainly too much to be explored, but the great thing of the Web2.0 is that all the online spaces will be kept open for further explorations when the session is over. Learning never ends. The connections are always beginning with different nodes that will enhance our teaching and will make us better people, more socially engaged and culturally aware.
I’ve been working non-stop to give the final touches to our session open spaces together with a very special group of educators. They’re scattered all over the world. The fun thing is that it seems that we never sleep. When it is night for me, Mary Hillis in Japan is there working, then there’s also Nina in Ukraine with a different time zone. So, it’s a 24/7 Blogging Team eager to share what we’ve been experiencing for the past few years individually and with our groups. The session spaces are shaping up, full of interesting content and resources. Certainly too much to be explored, but the great thing of the Web2.0 is that all the online spaces will be kept open for further explorations when the session is over. Learning never ends. The connections are always beginning with different nodes that will enhance our teaching and will make us better people, more socially engaged and culturally aware.
A group of fantastic Webheads is getting ready to submit the proposal for next year’s Electronic Village Online Session. It’s just amazing to have 9 amazing ladies collaborating on a Wiki to draft our proposal, review what was done, add new features, suggest new ways of doing old stuff, interacting, sharing personal matters, discussing about the e-tools to be used, making sense out of knowledge to be shared with other educators around the globe eager to learn as much as we are! It’s uplifting, it activates my brain, it excites me, it makes me want to go way beyond, take the plunge into unknown cyberspaces. This it true networking, knowledge co-creation, friendship. I feel so close to all of them, although I only know Erika face-to-face.
We’ve been using a PBwiki and a Yahoogroups to collaborate, I’ve just build a Pagecast in Pageflakes to show the girls its potential and to try something new for the next session (Inspired by Vance’s own Pageflakes), we’ve created a Wiki, a Blog, a Yahoogroups for next session. We subscribed for a bookmarks account, but we’re yet to decide if it’s going to be a delicious account or blinklist. Negotiation is a key element in the team. Nothing is imposed. It is all discussed and the group looks for a solution that will make everybody comfortable in the learning process. We’re getting there even with everybody’s busy schedule. Everyone, in its own special way, contributes to the whole.
What could be more rewarding than being among friends, have great fun, learn and share with others what you’ve learned? What is the name people tag it? Web2.0, School2.0, Learning2.0? Well, I guess it’s a mix of all we’ve been experiencing online, so let’s just call it Life2.0! Thanks, girls, for giving me this opportunity!
We’ve been using a PBwiki and a Yahoogroups to collaborate, I’ve just build a Pagecast in Pageflakes to show the girls its potential and to try something new for the next session (Inspired by Vance’s own Pageflakes), we’ve created a Wiki, a Blog, a Yahoogroups for next session. We subscribed for a bookmarks account, but we’re yet to decide if it’s going to be a delicious account or blinklist. Negotiation is a key element in the team. Nothing is imposed. It is all discussed and the group looks for a solution that will make everybody comfortable in the learning process. We’re getting there even with everybody’s busy schedule. Everyone, in its own special way, contributes to the whole.
What could be more rewarding than being among friends, have great fun, learn and share with others what you’ve learned? What is the name people tag it? Web2.0, School2.0, Learning2.0? Well, I guess it’s a mix of all we’ve been experiencing online, so let’s just call it Life2.0! Thanks, girls, for giving me this opportunity!
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