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
Archive for the 'education' 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
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
A friend of mine in Italy, Seth Dickens, has kindly asked me to talk a bit about edublogging. We had planned for an interview, but due to technical issues, we went for a recording.
Edublogging… How many times have I written about it, gave tips, presented, and tried to inspire others? Fact is the ones who endure the first stages of discoveries and experiments are the passionate educators, those who teach with heart and soul, who truly believe in their transformative potential as an educator. These are the ones who, later on, become passionate edubloggers.
The point of my talk was what I’ve been saying from the beginning and what I wrote about in the article “Blogging in the Classroom: It Doesn’t ‘Simply Happen‘ “. Persistence, fearlessness, being passionate and knowing that you have something that will add value to someone are key to make it a successful endeavor.
We make lists of how to be a successful blogger, but formulas are not in the core of Edublogging, conversations are. Conversations don’t mean that you need to get tons of comments. They mean a talk to yourself, commenting on other people’s blogs, and yes, getting comments when your readers feel the urge to interact with you. I sin as a blogger, for I am not consistent as I should be or as would be willing to. However, I’ve decided to let it go, for I have little ones and a husband to care for. I have professional projects and other ways to connect. Nowadays, Twitter is my means of quickly connecting to others, though it’s not a substitute to blogging. Twitter is connection, blogging is reflection + connection. One complementing each other in my circle of learning.
Through blogging, edublogging my mind pours out, I learn, share, re-shape who I am and how I see things. But, my ultimate question is how could I show that to other educators? Maybe I can’t. Just through their own blogging journey they will learn what passionate blogging is all about, some will just find the excuse for not even giving a try. Blogging is a transformational act one should be willing to undergo. It won’t work if it’s just mechanic, technical. No. It’s humanistic, contextualized, personalized, collective, cultural, intense.
I’ll never forget some memorable posts that show the power of blogging:
Marina’s post - A psychologist talking about her experience about being a clown.
Having Dennis Newson as our class mystery guest
Motivating my adult students to predict a short story by Edgar Allan Poe we read in parts in class.
The rich cultural exchanges my group had with Dennis Oliver’s group in the US due to our International Exchange blog.
Emerson, a quiet adult student in class, surfacing as a wonderful blogger and commenter.
Discussion with Russian students and readers about the Brazilian movie “The City of God”.
Sharing Love Stories
Wow! Just so nice to travel back in the past through blogging. It’s a record of a moment, a state of mind, it shows us and our learners in ways we’d never share in the old brick and mortar classroom in such intense exchange and connection. These are just some of the examples mainly with students in it, but there is the other side of edublogging as a professional and personal development. This is another story and certainly deserves another blog post!
Edublogging… How many times have I written about it, gave tips, presented, and tried to inspire others? Fact is the ones who endure the first stages of discoveries and experiments are the passionate educators, those who teach with heart and soul, who truly believe in their transformative potential as an educator. These are the ones who, later on, become passionate edubloggers.
The point of my talk was what I’ve been saying from the beginning and what I wrote about in the article “Blogging in the Classroom: It Doesn’t ‘Simply Happen‘ “. Persistence, fearlessness, being passionate and knowing that you have something that will add value to someone are key to make it a successful endeavor.
We make lists of how to be a successful blogger, but formulas are not in the core of Edublogging, conversations are. Conversations don’t mean that you need to get tons of comments. They mean a talk to yourself, commenting on other people’s blogs, and yes, getting comments when your readers feel the urge to interact with you. I sin as a blogger, for I am not consistent as I should be or as would be willing to. However, I’ve decided to let it go, for I have little ones and a husband to care for. I have professional projects and other ways to connect. Nowadays, Twitter is my means of quickly connecting to others, though it’s not a substitute to blogging. Twitter is connection, blogging is reflection + connection. One complementing each other in my circle of learning.
Through blogging, edublogging my mind pours out, I learn, share, re-shape who I am and how I see things. But, my ultimate question is how could I show that to other educators? Maybe I can’t. Just through their own blogging journey they will learn what passionate blogging is all about, some will just find the excuse for not even giving a try. Blogging is a transformational act one should be willing to undergo. It won’t work if it’s just mechanic, technical. No. It’s humanistic, contextualized, personalized, collective, cultural, intense.
I’ll never forget some memorable posts that show the power of blogging:
Marina’s post - A psychologist talking about her experience about being a clown.
Having Dennis Newson as our class mystery guest
Motivating my adult students to predict a short story by Edgar Allan Poe we read in parts in class.
The rich cultural exchanges my group had with Dennis Oliver’s group in the US due to our International Exchange blog.
Emerson, a quiet adult student in class, surfacing as a wonderful blogger and commenter.
Discussion with Russian students and readers about the Brazilian movie “The City of God”.
Sharing Love Stories
Wow! Just so nice to travel back in the past through blogging. It’s a record of a moment, a state of mind, it shows us and our learners in ways we’d never share in the old brick and mortar classroom in such intense exchange and connection. These are just some of the examples mainly with students in it, but there is the other side of edublogging as a professional and personal development. This is another story and certainly deserves another blog post!
Jane Hart has released the list of 100 learning tools in 2008 based on the contribution of 223 educators.
How about focusing on learning about, at least, one of these tools and trying it out to make your classroom even more engaging?
3 educators.
How about focusing on learning about, at least, one of these tools and trying it out to make your classroom even more engaging?
3 educators.
I just got this video via Twitter (a microblogging site) from a dear friend, Ana Maria Menezes, a mineirinha, who has a bag full of tricks to share.
The story is simple, but then, I just realized that it is a wonderful springboard to explore language. Imagine a group activity, or even a collaborative project with sister classes in which they have the same claymation and learners are responsible for creating the stories to go with the animation. They could even record the stories.
How motivating would that be? Is it the kind of experiential learning we could add more frequently to our lesson plans? Do you have any other ideas to go with this video? Or do you have any other video that could be used for the same idea?
Originally posted at http://webtools4educators.blogspot.com/2008/10/telling-story.html
The story is simple, but then, I just realized that it is a wonderful springboard to explore language. Imagine a group activity, or even a collaborative project with sister classes in which they have the same claymation and learners are responsible for creating the stories to go with the animation. They could even record the stories.
How motivating would that be? Is it the kind of experiential learning we could add more frequently to our lesson plans? Do you have any other ideas to go with this video? Or do you have any other video that could be used for the same idea?
Originally posted at http://webtools4educators.blogspot.com/2008/10/telling-story.html
The Webheads are celebrating 10.
A decade, not a year
Mature we connect online and in person
Every day is celebrated
Every important day is remembered
We follow one, and tons
We care and share
A decade, more mature, more robust
Flowing where the Web and its nodes take us
Let us celebrate 10 Webheady Years!
More of the party at http://webheads10years.wikispaces.com
A decade, not a year
Mature we connect online and in person
Every day is celebrated
Every important day is remembered
We follow one, and tons
We care and share
A decade, more mature, more robust
Flowing where the Web and its nodes take us
Let us celebrate 10 Webheady Years!
More of the party at http://webheads10years.wikispaces.com
Time, overwhelmed, overloaded, chaotic are some of the frequently used words in the Connectivism online session that has just started with Stephen Downes and George Siemens.
Due to hurricane Ike and the need to evacuate from Key West, I was disconnected at first and enjoyed some quality time with my family. Then, I started connecting, reading things here and there. Now, I’m in full swing, interacting with some in the MOODLE forums, Facebook group and reading some interesting blog posts. Still a lot is needed for my synapses to make sense. So, here’s my take. I won’t complain about being overwhelmed, overloaded, time-constrained, I will take another direction. I’ll set two goals that I want to achieve during these weeks of Connectivism even with limited hours on my day.
My two main goals will be:
Get out of the comfort zone of my circles of friends and network, and connect to other participants’ ideas, reflections. I tend to stick to the Webheads, my dear ones, and I still can do it, but I’ll try to fit in other circles of like-minded educators.
Learn about learning and find ways to effectively apply what I apprehend from the Connectionist principles into my e-moderating practices. If possible, trying to adapt some of it to the Web Tools 4 Educators session which is just beginning.
With almost 2,000 participants in this open course, only by having an individual focus with attainable goals, will we have real chances of thriving and making the best out of this networked experience.
PS: I love to observe how the connections are being made and the roles people take in such an open-ended approach of a course. Interesting to say the least.
Due to hurricane Ike and the need to evacuate from Key West, I was disconnected at first and enjoyed some quality time with my family. Then, I started connecting, reading things here and there. Now, I’m in full swing, interacting with some in the MOODLE forums, Facebook group and reading some interesting blog posts. Still a lot is needed for my synapses to make sense. So, here’s my take. I won’t complain about being overwhelmed, overloaded, time-constrained, I will take another direction. I’ll set two goals that I want to achieve during these weeks of Connectivism even with limited hours on my day.My two main goals will be:
With almost 2,000 participants in this open course, only by having an individual focus with attainable goals, will we have real chances of thriving and making the best out of this networked experience.
PS: I love to observe how the connections are being made and the roles people take in such an open-ended approach of a course. Interesting to say the least.
I just prepared this slideshow and would love some feedback. Did I miss something something essential to add to it? I’d love some feedback as to make it a nice one that can be shared with learners and educators, as well. There are some wonderful resources on social bookmarking. However, most of the time they are related to one service or the other. I wanted to give a broader view of the concept and why it can be so powerful in knowledge construction.
Inês brought up an interesting issue on my last post, the fact that my ideas for icebreakers might not apply for a kids’ classroom because of online accounts restraints. True that I had adult students in mind, but she got me thinking. Inês is a Portuguese educator and was mainly concerned about signing up for accounts for kids under 13.
Some solutions that might apply: instead of having kids create signing up in sites, the teacher could have one class account and invite students to be editors (generally kids have their parents’ or personal emails that could be used for the invitation), whenever this is possible. Also, in the case of Flickr, for example, the photo activity could still work if the teacher had an account, for the students could send their photos to the Flickr email connected to that specific account. Besides, I would adapt it and ask students to do the following:
One thing that is interesting for the little ones is the fact that once they have their online production, it could be a bridge between home and school. In my school, whenever I have a project, I send an email to parents to tell them about their kids’ projects.
Just make sure you have parents’ authorization and that they understand your approach to online use.
Transparency leads to understanding and appreciation of our collective work.
Some solutions that might apply: instead of having kids create signing up in sites, the teacher could have one class account and invite students to be editors (generally kids have their parents’ or personal emails that could be used for the invitation), whenever this is possible. Also, in the case of Flickr, for example, the photo activity could still work if the teacher had an account, for the students could send their photos to the Flickr email connected to that specific account. Besides, I would adapt it and ask students to do the following:
- Draw their avatar and upload them to Flickr by taking a photo of each avatar, or just scanning the drawings.
- Take a photo of something in their class that called their attention on the first day of class.
- Students could create a comic strip with Go Animate (I checked the terms of use and didn’t find age restriction), or a film with fictional characters at Dvolver
- They could create an online scrapbook page with scrapblog or glogster. Yes, I know. You need to register, but maybe you could work on teams and the teacher could set up 3 or 4 accounts in advance for the class. I have some email options to create different accounts for my groups. The teacher could have different topics for the students and they could change one of them to create a scrapbook page.
- Students could send e-cards to their parents and friends. Only rule I have: I should check the card before they hit the submit button to make sure the language used is appropriate. Or you could ask them to send an e-card to you telling you about what they wish the schools were like. I’m sure you’d get many insights from the little ones.
- You could have groups make up stories and create images for an online book at Mixbook.
- With Picwing, photo tool that I mentioned before, the teacher only needs to create an album for the class, and the students could send drawings and photos to the email provided by picwing for each album you create. Here’s one example of mine I created for my hometown, Brasilia. Anybody can send a picture of Brasilia to my album using the email address brasilia@picwing.com . So, you could have something like classxxx@picwing.com as well.
- Students could record their introductions in Audacity and the teacher could upload students’ introductions to a podcast site like Podomatic or Odeo.
One thing that is interesting for the little ones is the fact that once they have their online production, it could be a bridge between home and school. In my school, whenever I have a project, I send an email to parents to tell them about their kids’ projects.
Just make sure you have parents’ authorization and that they understand your approach to online use.
Transparency leads to understanding and appreciation of our collective work.
I just tested Picwing to make a photo album.
Interesting tool for collaboration. Once you start the album, others can join you and send photos to it via email. For example, I created this album with Brasilia photos. If others have photos of Brasilia to share, they can just attach their photos in an email post and send them to brasilia at picwing.com . The photos will be posted to the album.
Possibilities: imagine a collaborative effort in a class on a specific theme? You can start the album and have students add photos to it. If they have a mobile with email, they can send it straight from their mobiles. How fun would it be to have something like that with photos of the “First Day of class”?
Interesting tool for collaboration. Once you start the album, others can join you and send photos to it via email. For example, I created this album with Brasilia photos. If others have photos of Brasilia to share, they can just attach their photos in an email post and send them to brasilia at picwing.com . The photos will be posted to the album.
Possibilities: imagine a collaborative effort in a class on a specific theme? You can start the album and have students add photos to it. If they have a mobile with email, they can send it straight from their mobiles. How fun would it be to have something like that with photos of the “First Day of class”?
Vacation, trips. Maps are part of our reference, our guide.
Just found out about UMapper and couldn’t resist testing it. I had fun playing with it, getting different perspectives from the city I love. It’s easy to use and has great potential for the classroom, as students can collaborate to create a roadmap for others to learn more about their countries, hometown, or neighborhood.
Here’s my first example, but I plan to explore more and add photos and more information about the city of my heart, Brasilia!
Just found out about UMapper and couldn’t resist testing it. I had fun playing with it, getting different perspectives from the city I love. It’s easy to use and has great potential for the classroom, as students can collaborate to create a roadmap for others to learn more about their countries, hometown, or neighborhood.
Here’s my first example, but I plan to explore more and add photos and more information about the city of my heart, Brasilia!
