Meme: Passion Quilt

This is the answer to this meme -thanks for your invitation SabrinaHere are the rules:
1) Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2) Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3)Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4)Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

OK- This is my pic :

My students’ reactions to something they really enjoyed doing is what moves my passion towards my profession.

When I see them like the girls on the pic after completing an activity on the PCs I feel awesome! Is there anything more rewarding than their own feeling of satisfaction after havingworked on sth that you -as their teacher- have especially prepared for them?

OK- Memes imply tagging people and I need to tag 5 (sorry for any possible crossposts):

Nancy

Edita

Barbara

Illya

Charles

Rounding off

I guess that’s it from me.

I’ve really learnt a lot from all SMiELT 08 participants . I look forward to keeping in touch and going on interacting / networking.

The following are just some of the phrases I loved reading while doing this research:

“Don’t we need to teach kids how to use technology safely as well as more efficiently?”

Illya

 

“How can teachers appreciate the magnitude, the networking, the collegiality of the teachers already online, the sharing and the whole deal if some schmuck does the hard yards for them? How can they be totally committed to creating a unique learning opportunity for their students if they themselves haven’t invested some virtual blood, sweat and tears?”

Graham Wegner

 

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. “

Charles Mingus (from Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, ready or not?)

 

“If we want to see kids embrace the power of communication technologies like blogs and wikis and podcasts, we need to be good teacher-planners “

Chris Lehmann (from Getting students to blog by Nancy McKeand)

 

“To teachers who are starting:

* learn how to use the tools quickly, learn on your own, new tools are developed constantly, you cannot have someone tutoring you all the time.

* use those tools to learn. Think of yourself as a learner, not a teacher; because if you cannot forget you are teacher, your students run a serious risk”

Gabriela Sellart (from Reveal Ties)

 

Wikis-what are they? But…the simple way

Despite having been a Web 2.0 active participant for a long time I feel I hadn’t got the main idea of what wikis are until I found this lovely video which offers a clear description of how they can be used for the benefit of many:

Perhaps because I have never used wikis before I confess I find it hard to think of potential uses of Wikis with my students, but what I guess makes it even more difficult is the fact that, as far as I can see, the flow of a wiki depends a great deal on an active participation from everybody in the wiki community, and to participate you need to have a very good command of the language. Wikis allow images though, and you may use voice if you provide links to sound files, but my feeling that little could be accomplished with a low command of English , the language my students are learning.
Perhaps with more advanced students it turns out an invaluable tool for the group. One of the aspects I’ve noticed is that in wikis content is above everything (layout , format, etc) – I can figure out a writing lesson with great editing possibilities in a group (and me as the coach monitoring and checking if structures and appropriacy of vocab are ok). And just thinking while typing, I wonder if –in a more teacher centred way-students may be asked to write on a wiki what they understood from a given lesson. With this the teacher will be checking understanding and the excerpts will be available to everybody for future access – interesting for those students who were absent as they will be able to catch up easily (kind of lesson “recorded” if we may call it like that).

Wikis are for the Web 2.0 world class

what a frameless board is for an ordinary classroom.

 

:-0

For teachers working together, however, it is a wonderful tool for consulting /sharing / brainstorming ideas .

Sources:

*The WikiEducator

*Wide Open Spaces –Wikis, ready or not?

Conclusions so far…

Link to another SMiELT08 blog : “Getting students to blog”

Brainstorming Flickr uses

A )

The pic above belongs to the Flickr images that I decided to use to try ideas with this tool.
This is how I used it to enhance interaction with colleagues/contacts from the EVO 2008

B)

Another idea could be the teaching of some grammar points: Let’s consider, for instance, the “Present Perfect”:

1st Look at this image:

2nd And now look at this pic:

Lastly, present this sentence:

Somebody has organized the bookshelf. It’s neat now.

C)

It could serve as an excellent springboard for oral debates.

Imagine a conversation class starting with teacher asking students on first things coming to their minds at seeing this image

D)

Good chance to show some bits of culture and traditions. It is always important to provide the cultural/social contexts of the native speakers of the language students are learning. It’s another way of opening up their minds I think.
Will they get surprised at knowing that “cream tea” is typical in the English Summer especially?

Nice opportunity to teach “clotted cream”, “scones”, “jam” , “teapot”, etc.

(Click on those objects here)

SMiELT participants needed in Flickr project

Please look at the pic below and speculate using modal verbs:

1. Is the girl alone?
2. Who do you think is she talking to?
3. Could she be talking to a flower / person /an animal?
4. Are there more kids / adults/ flowers / animals around?

Please leave your answers / speculations on the comment box from Flickr linked here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/englishstudio/2233441360/

If you have some comments related to the activity write your views on the comment box from this post.

The task needs interaction and, I will show the original pic in about 2 days. That will give plenty of time for some SMiELT participants to “play” and help me experiment a little bit to draw conclusions afterwards.

Many thanks in advance for your help. I will be looking forward to your writing bits.

————————————————————————–

Updated on 2/2

This is the original pic ( Great guessing Nancy !;)

 ————————————————————————–

Exploiting Flickr in ELT and Del.icio.us in my SMiELT network

How can Flickr be used in the ELT context?

My brand new Del.icio.us tags show some of the links about that -I found them yesterday and I’d like to share them with you. – Mind you- I learnt quite sth about del.icio.us at trying its various features, I used to “save bookmarks” on it before but everything was disorganised as I was completely unaware of categorising possibilities offered by the “bundle” feature, for example. Now I’m really proud to share my bookmarks

Another idea that came to my mind about the use of Flickr has to do with the sharing of experiences/feelings/anecdotes with members of your network.
One of the contacts I gained through SMiELT 2008 is Joaoa . I really enjoyed looking at his pics but what I lliked most was realizing that we might have lots of views to share about a city we’ve both been to and not together!!!! This could very well be a starting point for interesting conversation threads and this is how I wanted to begin:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joaoa/1297329362/

?addedcomment=1#comment72157603824642450

It would be great to read some more ideas on the different ways to use this content network with EFL students.

“You are what you….do in your Network”

Based on the idea that we are nobody if we don’t belong to a community, something which is implied directly by Social Media, some experienced bloggers have already affirmed that your contexts are relevant in your work. If you are part of a Network you must show it. Visualization of your context is really practical because that also shows part of what you are, i.e when you share your Network you tell more about you.

There are some who are already saying that the Web 2.0 process is about to be taken over by Web 2.1. They explain that whereas the Web 2.0 was based on tools to produce content to share online , the Web 2.1 is based on people / users who will use those (or similar) tools not only to share knowledge but to produce content together, build up intelligence and enhance creativity. (*)
One of the great tools launched about a year ago was FEEVY , which allows you to create custom widgets out of the content of your favorite blogs, and gives you a simple tag you can use to embed the widget into your own blog. Unfortunately WordPress apparently doesn’t allow this widget but Blogger does. So I posted my current EVO 2008 Network onto my regular / institutional blog

The pic below shows how the feevy widget is shown onto your blogger sidebar, presenting the automatic updated posts of your favourite bloggers.

Up to the moment I only have the blogs of all those colleagues with whom I have already interacted (Nancy, Gabriela, Illya, Berta – all of them on the “Recent Comments List” on this worpress sidebar)

I will be very happy to add more blogs from people interacting in this EVO event so please , if you let me know , I will add your details on the list . I only need your blog address.

(*) Idea extracted from Argentinian experienced blogger Pablo Mancini (in Spanish)

Social Media in ELT reminds me of Don Quixote and his windmills

Under the post “Can we change education?”on her blog, Nancy A. McKeand wrote this :

Computers don’t and won’t automatically change education. It will take teachers who are able to open up the world to their students through using them to make a real difference.

So one of the questions that came up to my mind was : Why do teachers lack training in online resources? Are they afraid of online tools? How far has proper training gone into their professional consciousnes / responsibility? Are they really interested in what the new types of media have to offer for educational context?
I guess we are all (or almost all of us) interested, not exactly as David Warlick exclaims at the end of this blog post:

Teachers & Technology — a rant! | 2¢ Worth via kwout

What we lack is both time and support. Time to sit down in front of the PC and try new tools to see what happens and support from the “big heads” from Educational Areas of different governments (in the world, because that lack of support is not exclusive from one country) to accept that to enhance education means to enhance teacher quality, quite neglected in my country -a shame really-

Perhaps the fact that Web 2.0 tools haven’t been designed just for educational purposes -but to meet different needs – is another key factor that, along with the lack of time and work load teachers in general undergo, contribute to struggling for or against the use of Social Media in ELT. Enthusiactic open minded Teachers eager to use all sort of online resurces without serious training and planning may terribly afect desired changes in education

In addition to the message behind the pic above I invite you to read an excerpt from a 25-year experienced teacher who says “NO” to computers in class.

Sad…but true.

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.

“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.”

“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.”

I sometimes think teachers in this century are too much like the protagonist of the novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Then I go back onto my thoughts and remeber that “Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and perhaps the entire Spanish literary canon.”, as the Wikipedia explains.

That is the exact moment when the facts presented on the paragraphs above do not look so sad to me.

Related post : How to set up a new Internet Lab at School

Social Networks starting point- Blog Comments

Blog comments are the key for interacting, therefore NETWORKING.

There are good reasons for supporting guest participation within blogs as the link on strategic commenting provided by the SMiELT program presented. However my personal feeling in favour of leaving comments on blog posts have to do with all the learning that takes place while interacting. On doing so, the most important Web 2.0 mechanism gets activated: reading – reaction – feedback – sharing -data transfer / flowing. This implies learning at different levels within a brand new educational environment.

“When one teaches, two learn “– a real and simple truth. Imagine the outcomes on a Social Network ! Awesome if done properly.

Blog comments need commitment. I still remember those times when trolls were constant blog visitors. It is not that they have disappeared. I guess they will always be around. However what has changed is the attitude of both blog authors and readers. They have become better citizens of online nations. One of our aims as educators should be to enhance good online participatory habits. There is nothing better than democracy. And this applies beyond Politics.

_______________________

NB coComment

Using coComment, you can now keep track of all the comments and discussions your are participating in or observing on the web. When someone adds something to the comment stream or discussion, you’ll be notified. And, if you’re a blogger, you can display the comments you make elsewhere back on your own blog.

Source : CoComment site

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