Archive for the 'worldbridges' Category

April 22nd, 2008. Earth Day, though Earth Day should be every day! Well, we need some reminders, an awakening for the importance of doing something about our surroundings.
As I listened to the EarthCast08 promoted by Worldbridges, I realized that it was a great and meaningful way to practice your listening skills, so I recorded and divided the listening into parts.
Here are students of Rye Jr. Middle School saying what they do to help our planet. http://elearningctj.bloxi.jp/a/earth-day-2008/
Robin Ellwood gave a very interesting and passionate account of her Antarctica explorations. Middle school students asked her questions and she talked about her fascinating experience on the waters of Antarctica.
To know more about Robin Ellwood’s trips to Antarctica with Peter Doran’s research team from the University of Illinois, access http://ryejrhigh.org/ellwood/
Part 1 highlights: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2018
* Robin Ellwood’s introduction * Being part of Peter Doran’s research team from University of Illinois * Research on the lake environment in Antarctica * Ice-covered lakes * New task this year besides the regular ones * Launch of automatic submersible * Automatic collected samples.

Part 2 highlights: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2017
* Difference between lake ice x ocean ice * Robin talks about the dramatic differences

Part 3 highlights: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2015
* Robin Ellwood talks about the weather in Antarctica * Dramatic weather changes * Changes due to climatic change or seasonal variability? * Field season because of “the mote”

Part 4 highlights: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2014
* Temperature x oxygen need in diving * swimming x stationary collecting of samples * rate of oxygen consumption of a diver
Part 5 highlights: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2011
* How many times in Antarctica * First season – non-diving
Part 6 highlights: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2010
* Question about favorite thing in Antarctica * Scuba diving with a waddle seal * pleasure diving in “the wall”, glacial wall * sea life in the wall * what it’s like under the water * diving in the lake x diving in the ocean * different patterns of algae * sea life in the ocean
Part 7 highlight: Listen to it at http://www.webcastacademy.net/node/2009
* Robin Ellwood encouraging others to join programs like the one she’s part of.

Happy Earth Day from idyllic Key West, but certainly with some conservation issues!
Check. Learn. Act.

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.html
At 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.

I’ve been part of some networks at Ning for some time. I check it once in a while. There are just fantastic networks there in which learning happens in a blog post, a photo, a reference in a forum, a connection to someone in your area, an exchange of comments. However, I’ve never really considered the power it holds. Ning is a platform that aggregates many of the tools every educator dreamed of in the past to keep communication flowing among participants of a group. And I’m not mentioning only in terms of classroom. I mean educators as learners need to have their sharing space for professional development. So, Ning is empowering. An educator can be part of a variety of networks according to his professional and personal interests and might create a network to connect to his students, as well.In my case, I had been part of other communities, but then it dawned on me that I could create a network to keep the students of an online course I was teaching connected. It was their wish. So, as a surprise of end of term, Ning became the beginning of another stage of our interaction. Plus, I realized that it was an open learning space in which I could invite friends and even former students to be there as they shared their interest in language learning. Another great aspect was that Ning was visually appealing and had features of a social networking that my younger students just love, infinite possibilities to add photos, videos, music, whatever they feel like sharing.
Well, not to mention the fact that I requested an ad-free space. I got a first prompt reply saying that my students were adults. I told them that I had also invited teens for the space, and another quick reply: the ads had been removed! How cool is it to have a learning space with collaborative features which are just an educator’s dream plus the attention and support that every human being wish for in any service?
Thanks Ning Team! Part of my education and my learner’s success will certainly be due to your never-ending support to the educational community. View my page on ListeningPlus and join us!