The Journey » CrisCosta

Pushing the Share Button

carlaarena — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:31:46 +0000

I don’t know how this happens, but it’s more than just commenting. It’s a deeper connection which is not limited by geographical distance or the fact that we’ve never met f2f. The fact is that because of blogging and the conversations going on more intensely for the past months, Cris Costa and I have been sharing and blogging more than ever. I care for all who’s out there, my readers, but sometimes I feel I HAVE to blog because of Cris, and she always mentions something I’ve shared with her. Deeper conversations, stronger connections.
Well, in one of our conversations I mentioned we should have a selective “share button” in our minds for everything we felt like blogging, be it personal or professional. It’s not an ideal world, but Cris compelled me to share here after her wonderful post about teaching, teaching practices and memories. I guess this is also part of our comment challenge challenge! I’ve been making new connections, strengthening old ones as a group of highly excited, passionate bloggers are willing to take their time to keep hitting the share button every single second and it’s been a huge collective knowledge builder. I’ve been learning in every possible way from this journey.
Well, going back to Cris and teaching and me. Cris talked about her own experience, how she’s changed as an educator, how she understood that the human touch and connecting to students was what really mattered. I, too, learned that books don’t teach or enhance learning. We, educators, together with learners, do! I remember how I’d rely in tons of papers, activities, games to have the feeling that I was teaching, that I was being approved by my students. Then, I realized that what really made a difference was the human touch, the personalization, the intimacy a classroom with so many brilliant souls provides.
I realized that what really made a difference was harnessing individual talents, encouraging students to be and do their best, tapping into their interests, passions. I learned that we didn’t need tons of papers, resources, activities…We needed to connect, to be good listeners, guiders and followers.
My teaching changed and I changed along the way.
I’ll never forget, for example, a conversation class on teens we had.
I showed my teens this video. Then, we talked about it, they taught me some teen slangs in Portuguese and they produced cooperatively wonderful poems on our class wiki. These are the connections I look for and I miss now that I’m not currently teaching f2f, though I’m having a wonderful time with my online students and connecting in unexpected ways, but this is another story, blog post…

Their poems:

Teenagers want to discover things, Passing through unbelievable experiences With their body and their spirit Meet every kind of people, culture.
And more than this. They want to enjoy their lifetime To know themselves, To know what they like And expect about them and the world.
by Andréa and Joanna
_____________________________________
Teenagers
Some teenagers are okay And others are wicked insane Even if some people say they are always the same They can´t understand that this is part of their games! Yo, man.. fo sho..
Some like soccer Others prefer the Net They can be rockers and bum a cigarette
Probably lives with passion Maybe in need of an exercise set Or don´t live without fashion They are different, I bet.
by Joseane, Felipe and Leonardo
____________________________________________ Teenagers want to be more informed Know about what the world can offer, New cultures and different people Teens want to enjoy their lives They want to have as much as possible Teens are always under pressure But they were made to be freeThey are always trying to find the real liberty Without getting out of reality They want to find new feelings New love and new experiences
Matheus and Breno
_______________________________ Living in a Dream
Every teenager has a dream It can be like Martin Luther King. They want to make the difference Also looking for love and peace.
If you do have a dream, Make it real. It can be just like having an ice cream or as hard as living in Rio.
Never give up. Keep on going. So start cheering up ‘Cause the world is rolling.
Patrícia, André and Gabriela
_____________________________
What do Teenagers want?
They want parties They want to go out They want to enjoy their life They want to know about everything They don´t have feelings In reality, they have nothing That´s what they say about who is never working…
Is that a real conclusion we can take about them?! I will tell you what A teenager is more than a friend…
Teenagers dream Teenagers sleep Teenagers cry Teenagers think Teenagers die Teenagers drink Teenagers dance Teenagers decide
They come to the conclusion By heart or outside They are just younger But they are people, anyway
People that are always learning And that can teach too.. You should dream as a teenager And think about what is true…
Roberto
_______________________________________
No. I’ll never forget those teens and many students who changed me, who taught me, who are my inspiration and my optimistic view of education.

So, What are YOU Blogging for?

carlaarena — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:53:17 +0000

I couldn’t resist this one!
I’ve been an admirer and reader of Chris Sessums for a while. But this post has really touched in what I’ve been trying to share for some time now with educators all over when we have the Electronic Village blogging4educators sessions.
It’s all about a purpose.
So, how’s my blogging related to my business?
As an educator, my blog reflects who I am, my interests, my passions, my drives, so then it’s an open space for sharing and learning. By blogging and reflecting, I can improve who I am, try to think outside the box, get other’s input, establish new connections. It makes me move forward and it directly influences my teaching and my approaches to learning and teaching. Since I started blogging, I have certainly become an educator who truly believes in the power of collective learning and building of knowledge.
Blogging is transformative and makes me change every day, and I hope it reflects on the new learning opportunities I’m providing my learners with.
Thanks, Chris, for starting this!
I’d love to hear from my friends Cris Costa, Mary Hillis, Gladys Baya, Vance Stevens , Ronaldo Jr., Bee Dieu .
So, guys, how does your blogging relate to your business?
As Chris suggested, pass this question on to people around you…An interesting, basic question that should guide us in our blogging world.
Here’s a video Chris shared with some fresh perspective of some educators about why they’re blogging and how:
[youtube width="425" height="355" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PIiizu4y...[/youtube]

Meme: Passion Quilt

carlaarena — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:20:50 +0000

I’ve seen this chain on Graham Atwell’s blog which is going on in the blogosphere, and decided to give my little contribution even not being invited by anyone. The idea is

to add to a collection of photos that represent our passion in teaching/learning. I have to tag it ‘Meme: Passion Quilt’ and post it on a blog, Flickr, FaceBook or some other social networking tool with a brief commentary of why it is a passion for me.

In my case, I chose this photo of my boys running and playing around because I truly believe that teaching/learning is about helping others to find their own ways and giving them freedom to make their options. Also, learning is about being engaged and, in having fun, doing something pleasant, the process is much smoother and meaningful. My passion is teaching and learning every day and seeing the ones around me taking off to new challenges.

Open Networked Learning – Architectures of Participation

carlaarena — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 04:08:55 +0000

August 10th is history for the Webheads, for Worlbridges and the Webcastacademy. Bee Dieu was the architect. She was there in New Orleans in Merlot Conference orchestrating participation from her audience, the physical one and the online group divided into two. One group was in Alado, the others in Second Life by the campfire. Jeff LeBow was there bridging audio from Second Life and Alado to the audience who was there with Bee. Just fantastic! People in Alado could hear Second Lifers and the Jazz in New Orleans. I was there, thrilled to be hearing fantastic ideas about our networked learning, appreciating impressive photos as Bee spoke and streaming in the Webcastacademy in Sandbox A.
Bee was the architect, Jeff the bridge, and I was just an intern learning from every single word spoken, text typed and waves in Audacity, Simplecast. I was so excited with the whole audio-visual experience that I forgot to turn on my audio repeater! What happened? I was able to record everybody, but me!
Lesson learned: don’t get so excited that you forget the basics of testing everything before starting streaming.
Lesson learned 2: as Jeff pointed out, there’s not much you can do with the recording if there’s static going on during the presentation. What I did with the recording here, I took off the background noise just in the first part of the presentation before Bee starts to speak so that I could play around with the differences. Otherwise, I’d have to listen to it all over again and just edit the background noise when she was speaking. When the other participants were talking, the sound quality is much better, so If I just selected everything, there would be a distortion. Jeff’s solution, try to solve it before the presentation starts! In this case, it was not possible and I’d have to edit every bit of it…
What Bee was talking about, open participatory environments, was being demonstrated live by the human presence in the online setting sharing with her audience and the Internet listeners. It was history and, as an intern and speaker, it was just an amazing experience to be part of that story to be told. The Webheads, WorldBridges and Merlot were connected through the human presence around the globe led by Bee.
The multicultural gathering ended with Lee Baber playing the Banjo in SL and the globe listening in awe in different time zones.
Architectures of Participation at http://merlot.wikispaces.com/communities
Jeff LeBow’s Streaming Recording Leigh Blackall’s Description of the Event
Cris Costa’s Account
My own recording with audacity and some edits in the beginning of the keynote to remove background knowledge, turning down everyone’s voices and without my part of the presentation (audio repeater off!) is at Webcastacademy
Name of the show on
Listened to the Stream
OK AudioCables Audio repeater
Wave in AK5370
Wave out Soundmax
Total Buffer 100 Start
Start Recording in Audacity
Skype Conference
Create Conference
Choose Contacts (Cris Costa and Illya)
Add Screenshot of Settings

Magic! We got it. We were planning to stream Cris Costa’s talk on her Master’s Dissertation, but I didn’t make it. The fact is that I could succesfully stream having these two wonderful partners as witnesses and having great fun with them. We realized that Webcasting is great because nobody will see our voices blushing! Thanks, girls, for taking your time to be there with me. Here’s the screenshot of the moment. We DO love the big waves in Audacity even if every time I have to amplify, but to a lower volume. What loud, excited Webcasters-to-Be we are!

Can’t wait for more!
Carla

How To Webcast – Lesson 2

carlaarena — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:13:17 +0000

Yesterday, Cris Costa posted her Webcasting reflections on her blog. She thoroughly describes how she managed to record both ends of a telephony call using Audacity. It was one of those WooHoo moments for all of us, Cris, Dennis Oliver, and me. Working together with them has certainly given me more motivation and self-confidence to go till the end with the webcasting project this time.
To read Cris’ reflections, access http://eduspaces.net/cristinacost/weblog/185600.html
To listen to the Magic of Collaboration, http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/1085

Webcasters-to-Be Adventures

carlaarena — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:52:10 +0000

A year ago I was invited by Jeff LeBow to be an intern at the Webcast Academy. It was a pleasure to have such an invitation. I felt I had to move on, learn new skills that could give me another perspective in this edtech world. I invited my friend Erika to be there with me. She had no option. She became an intern, too. We listened to Jeff’s screencasts, tried to record with Audacity, and failed! I was there every Sunday, at my in-laws house, inhaling that smoked barbecue smell, longing for some caipirinhas, but was there with Jeff’s gang of interns. I had lots of fun connecting to them, learning from them with their successes and failures.

At that time, I was trying to put the pieces of the puzzle of Webcasting together. I could connect some pieces, but others were just loose in my mind. Erika was pulling her blond hair out! We thought we’d never manage. It was not for us. However, we acquired many new skills then that we were not even aware of. We learned how to play around with audio/sound, we felt more confident about speaking out, speaking our minds, we used our knowledge (or lack of!) to take our students to a next level in the classroom through podcasts. I didn’t graduate at the Webcast Academy. I just received my USB Microphone when it was too late, for I didn’t feel like enduring. Or, at least, I thought so. I disconnected for a while. But, Worldbridges has always been in mind. Erika and I even started a Wiki page called BrazilBridges. The future in streaming was part of our plans!

After some period of other projects and webcasting disconnection, I started bumping into Jeff LeBow again in different venues. And I always reminded myself and him that I hadn’t discarded Webcasting. It was just a dormant project. Jeff was always there, a great listener, encouraging us to take the plunge. During the Webheads Convergence this year, I was listening to the streaming and participating in a skypecast. I connected to Cheryl Oakes (Women of Web 2.0), whom I had met in our fantastic EVO session – BaW – in 2006, and Doug Symington, who became a successful Webcaster. I started blabbing, talking about drinks, Key West, then into more serious stuff. I didn’t know we were LIVE! I thought the webcasting was over. Mistake! I was saying all those trivial things for who knows who? At the same night, I had an interesting talk about education and web 2.0 tools with Jeff and Doug. I couldn’t sleep! My mind kept processing what I heard and said. I reconnected! Yes, Webcasting!

I needed a project for the Webcasting venue, and partners, too! Webcasting is a team process, not an individual achievement. During the Webheads Convergence, I was in the WIA chatroom with some friends. The chat started, and all of a sudden it ended up with our idea to do something fun, informal, informative, organic together. The Teachers4TELL (Technology-Enhanced Language Learning) idea evolved. We planned things, created a Wiki, a Yahoogroups, but still we needed to learn how to Webcast!!! We had a tentative date for our first get-together. It didn’t happen. We were not prepared for Webcasting. Jeff was there, communicating with us, giving me a streaming crash course using Yugma, but still we were not ready, I was not ready.

Some time passed by…In between emails, chats, ideas, Cris Costa, Dennis Oliver and I decided to become interns at the Webcast Academy. Our ideas were not enough to Webcast. We needed technical skills. Cris, just like me, was also a frustrated streamer. Yesterday, was our day! We had previously gone through all of the Book of Webcasting Screencasts and decided to meet to see if we could get something out of our headphones! I tried first, before connecting to Cristina. Speechless when I heard my voice in the Webcast Academy Sandbox! I was streaming, my heart thumping! WoW moment. Then, Cris and I went step-by-step with all the windows, softwares, input, output, and she was also able to stream. How cool is that?! We were overexcited with our accomplishments of the day. The adventure and challenge have just begun. The Revolution has started!

We had some technical problems because of lack of knowledge or forgetfulness (too many details to handle!) in our collaborative venture, but we are sure we’ll solve them together and with the intrepid (in Cheryl’s words) Webcast Academy gang. Jeff, thanks for bearing with us and never giving up on these Portuguese-speaking girls! Webcasting is all about connecting and believing you can.

Learning How to Webcast

cristinacost — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:35:15 +0000

This time if for real. Things have been set. Commitments have been made. There’s no way back now. No one is going to stop us either! We are going to make the best of it.My first attempt to learn how to Webcast dates back to the beginning of this year, when I naïvely thought I could handle the co-moderation of a 6-week e-workshop and the active participation in webcastacademy, which was running at the same time. Jeff Lebow makes it all seem so easy that I thought I could do it too, in spite of all the changes that were going on in my life at that time. Ah ah ah! What a joke! Anyway, the intention was genuinely good, but as you can imagine, I didn’t even make it to the end of the first session. The road to hell is also paved with loads of good intentions, so they say!!
Six months later a new opportunity to learn how to stream emerges from two groups of people that are now coming together.
After the WiAOC 2007, which offered several opportunities for people to be part of webcasts, a group of friends, motivated by the dynamics that such events offer, decided they should start some events of their own… just for fun! …Just to give back a little bit of what they have gained from being part of the process, too!
So far, a group of people willing to become webcasters has been formed. A name and a generic purpose for the project have also been defined. I won’t be giving further detail about it, because it is still in the very beginning, but be ready to start taking part in some webcasts in the following academic year, where diversity of perspectives and futuristic approaches are the epithet of this project.
And so it’s started. In the beginning of this week Carla Arena and I met online, after having downloaded the webcast Kit. We went through all the steps together. I must say that I got a lot from that skype – peer to peer – meeting. Carla was really patient, and if it hadn’t been for my lousy wireless connection I could have been able to sustain the streaming for longer. But the important thing is that we made it! Our first attempt was really positive.
Working together is always much more motivating and everything seems also to become much clearer, when you get people on the side – even if it is on the other side of the screen, which in this case, was also on the other side of the ocean!
I had a lot of fun, and as Carla said, we were, and are, engaging in true collaboration. I can’t think in a best way of learning, can you?
This is a golden chance, and I am surely not going to miss it this time!