coComments related to carlaarena

Great list of blogging practic

2008-11-11T19:50:58.218+01:00

Great list of blogging practices!I would like to suggest Illya’s blog, The MI’s in online learning http://mi-onlinestudy.blogspot.com/ for more on incorporating different learning styles.Another thing to keep in mind is that even after making a blogging plan, leave room for surprises and connections to unfold! Last year, my students happened to blog movie reviews at the same time as Nelba’s class in Argentina, and we had a wonderful time interacting. Although we didn’t plan it, we just happened to be working on similar assignments in our classes!

Consuelo, you're right, involv

2008-02-18T17:14:14.513+01:00

Consuelo, you're right, involving all senses means that we're tapping into students' diverse learning styles. I'd like to point out to the wonderful post Sibel wrote, a "Roadmap for teachers". It's for teaching in general, but all her tips are easily applicable to the blogging classroom.

HelloThis one comes to my mind

2008-02-18T17:13:54.513+01:00

HelloThis one comes to my mind from one of the readings in week 5 “involve all senses” That would provide for every kind of learner we might have in class.

Interesting, Natasa, and so tr

2008-02-18T17:13:44.513+01:00

Interesting, Natasa, and so true. Yes. show who you are, show that you are a human being just like your students. Great addition to the list.One that just occurred to me that we haven’t added to the list: tag your posts.

When we teach, we present our

2008-02-18T17:13:34.513+01:00

When we teach, we present our public persona to our students. It is the policy of many schools, including mine, that students and teachers shouldn’t socialise too much between classes. Even if you wanted to, there is often no time. The students never really find out what we are really like in private. And sometimes the teachers themselves are afraid of showing their vulnerable side to the students Anyone who has ever tried blogging knows it is impossible to keep this attitude when you blog, and I think it is great. I am not sure I can put this into a single line. Perhaps: Use the blog to really get to know your students and to let them know you. Don’t be afraid to show your vulnerable side. I am not too happy with this. Feel free to change it any way you like. Natasa

Oh, dear! I was among those “e

2008-02-18T17:13:24.513+01:00

Oh, dear! I was among those “enlightened minds” who drafted this great list… Now the question is “to blog up to it”! Let’s see…. I think I excel at “keeping conversations going” (ie, asking questions of readers in my posts, replying to comments left in my blogs, and keeping track of responses to my comments in other blogs)… What I’d like to improve first, on the other hand, is… to post regularly! (I’ve just noticed that’s not on our list, ) Love,

Great list of blogging practic

2008-11-11T19:50:58.218+01:00

Consuelo, you're right, involv

2008-02-18T17:14:14.513+01:00

HelloThis one comes to my mind

2008-02-18T17:13:54.513+01:00

HelloThis one comes to my mind from one of the readings in week 5 “involve all senses” That would provide for every kind of learner we might have in class.

Interesting, Natasa, and so tr

2008-02-18T17:13:44.513+01:00

When we teach, we present our

2008-02-18T17:13:34.513+01:00

Oh, dear! I was among those “e

2008-02-18T17:13:24.513+01:00

It's true, Dave. And that's wh

2008-12-01T19:42:08.532+01:00

It's true, Dave. And that's what I'm trying to do! Slowly it's happening at my language school in Brazil. Five years ago, I was alone echoing what our learners could already do online, now they I'm connected, and more educators at my school are engaged. Ideally, it's still not enough, but we're changing and moving forward, so WE ARE Doing it. With a change in the administration, changes have even been faster, and in one year, we've gone farther than we could even imagine. So, you're right! And I do hope my boys still have the chance to experience these transformed classrooms. You gave me an idea that I could maybe talk to their school administration when I go back to Brazil and volunteer to train some teachers there. Who knows? Change starts with an idea, someone, and willingness, right?

Sue, Does it mean you're plan

2008-10-28T22:18:59.769+01:00

Sue, Does it mean you're planning for a session every Friday?

Ken, That's exactly why I thi

2008-09-01T17:16:45.729+02:00

Ken, That's exactly why I think Ken Robinson mentions the importance of arts in any classroom. Art always challenges us. There's always something to be improved, you have a final product after having explored possibilities, tried different angles, failed and started over. You're not a mere recipient, you are an active participant of your own learning. In the creative classroom, I think the teacher would be exploring any subject and embedding some kind of artistic practice to it. For example, if it's a language arts class, why not let the kids create comic books, drawings related to the content? I'm terrible drawing, so whenever I can, I try to explore students' different talents in class. I can ask for the help of a good drawer to draw on the board, somebody to recite, groups creating rap songs...The possibilities are simply limitless, aren't they?

Dear Cris, What a great accou

2008-09-01T17:06:41.235+02:00

Dear Cris, What a great account of what connection means. I'm connected to you in very special ways! Connections imply being in constant change by the input you get from the ones around you. That's how I feel with my online and f2f connections. Thanks to the Net I meet people and am transformed every single day in ways that wouldn't be possible, otherwise.

Ines, These are great activi

2008-08-31T20:00:43.659+02:00

Ines, These are great activities for kids that put them exactly on the position of producers of their learning, active participants of the learning process. Thanks for sharing them! We're safe! Gustav has passed by with a lot of wind and rain, but everything is alright. http://flickr.com/photos/carlaarena/2812429848/

testing

2008-08-27T22:43:41.629+02:00

testing

Hi, Joaquin, We are all there

2008-06-02T18:12:39.209+02:00

Hi, Joaquin, We are all there at the Comment Challenge in cocomment. I guess that now we're just trying to figure out how to keep those meaningful conversations we've had for the past month and not let this wonderful group disperse due to our hectic lives.

You're right, Bill, about the

2008-06-01T21:03:49.871+02:00

You're right, Bill, about the on-going connections and exchanges. In my educator sphere, I've been connecting more and more with like-minded professionals and learning in ways never imagined before. It's just like an octopus with many tentacles reaching different spaces. I have a group of very close friends in which we keep sharing, expanding, remixing ideas that eventually become great collaborative projects. Just amazing blogosphere...

Bill, Connective writing thro

2008-06-01T19:32:19.748+02:00

Bill, Connective writing through blogging has certainly taken me to another level of professional development. I've been experience what you mentioned in your post of unleashing our own thoughts and ideas, as well as others'. Blogging has changed my teaching practices and has directly reflected on the way my students learn. Now, I'm able to tap into their interests more easily, we can personalize learning, we can have our own class online space for sharing and going way beyond the classroom walls. I connect to each one of them in totally unexpected and meaningful ways. As I'm currently teaching online, I'm geographically distant from my students, but never felt so close to them. Blogging is transformative and a powerful learning/teaching tool. Thanks for the great post!

Dear Seth, You said "In your

2008-05-30T16:47:24.967+02:00

Dear Seth, You said "In your case and Jonathan’s case you are not asking your students to do anything that they can’t currently do, after all, they are all fairly ICT competent seeing as they are online students!" It's quite the opposite! They are generally first-time explorers of e-learning, so they have very basic ICT skills. In fact, that's exactly my point, I concentrate on communication within the group and in the outer world of walled LMS. However, tech tools have proven to have great value in their learning process, mainly when our time together is over. For example, I created a ning group for the ones who wanted to keep practicing their English and sharing their findings. Some of them have been great contributors and keep exploring possibilities. No, I didn't teach them any tech thing there. I just let them discover by themselves how to use Ning and they ask me stuff when they don't know. The C is still the focus. As you mentioned the Animoto video should be a springboard for exploration in the L2. There are so many possibilities there...The video just for the sake of it doesn't have any relevance for us. However, if it's explored through a pedagogical sound approach, it can impact on learning. I think we agree here that it all depends on our pedagogical purposes and students' needs and interests. My setting is EFL, so I know what you mean by the constraints we face. In my case, there are two big ones, time and syllabus. That's why I guess blogging and podcasting hold so many possibilities as we can use them complementing what is being explored in the classroom and expanding communication to an international audience. And, no, when I'm in my EFL context, I don't waste precious time teaching technology. I spend it using the tools for connection. That's why even loving to have individual blogs for my students, most of my blogs are class blogs to make students' lives easier and to profit the most out of our language learning experience. And, if you consider, for example, an educator with many classes, there's no way he could manage to keep track of tons of individual blogs. It's a matter of being effective and productive in your teaching practices. There needs to be room for flexibility and adaptation. As for the writingmatrix, I love its concept and have been applying it in other areas of my own learning and connecting with others. I think it's strong in terms of finding others to connect, though we still need to work on ways to keep the conversations flowing through comments. A challenge!

Dear Seth, I totally agree wi

2008-05-22T02:36:53.550+02:00

Dear Seth, I totally agree with you that we should be focusing on communication, meaningful interactions, contextualizing with our learners. And I've always tried to use technology with them with this perspective in mind. However, I'm teaching now an online listening course for adult students, and in some ways, yes, I'm talking about technology. In two different occasions, I've led them to the plain technological world, but showing them how they could profit from the tools I introduced them to. In one case, I introduced them to the concept of bookmarking and showed its importance in their learning process. Even if they were not ready to use all the resources in our delicious account, at least they knew where to go to further their studies once our course was over. The second main occasion was podcasting, and this is the feedback I got from one student http://elearningctj.bloxi.jp/week-5/ Here it was more than communication, it was enabling them to pursue their own learning towards mastery of the language. Different learners will profit from it in different ways, but I felt that if I could make a difference for even a few, it was worth it! Also, we talked about the concept of podcasting, but the main goal of the week was for them to listen to news podcasts and share, discuss their news with their classmates. So, still I didn't miss the C in the ICT! Oh, and as for the idea behind tagging, technorati search and the writingmatrix project in which Nelba is involved, I'm a fan though I had the same questioning you had in your post in the beginning! Then, I realized it was not about the T, but how to connect.

I understand what you are sayi

2008-05-22T02:19:21.864+02:00

I understand what you are saying about being at the place, the f2f experience, Kevin. Now, for example, I'm living in Key West with my family, and we came mainly because of the kids. We wanted them to experience another culture, to be tolerant, to widen their views of the world. I believe that by giving that chance to them, we are providing them with this cultural awareness that can impact their futures. They've learned a lot, seen a lot. We were lucky because we moved because of my husband's job, and I feel so blessed for being able to give this chance to the family. However, this is not reality for most, and that's why this digital world makes distance shorter in some ways and we can connect and learn with people in a way that would never be possible if it weren't for the Net. I have dear friends online whom I never met f2f. Others, I was able to meet in the TESOL conferences. http://explorations.bloxi.jp/a/post-tesol-convention-reflection-the-ginga-movement/ As you mentioned, we do what we can. That's where holds the power of our Online Communities of Practice, the multicultural exchanges. Who knows if in the future your kids will be able to travel the world and invite you along? That's what happened to my mom! We are three daughters and each one is in a different corner of the world!

Dear Cris, I tried to post an

2008-05-22T01:52:01.640+02:00

Dear Cris, I tried to post an audio message here, but I can see it didn't work. I'll try it later on.

Ronaldo, You are a romantic!

2008-05-21T21:32:35.249+02:00

Ronaldo, You are a romantic! I loved your love story. Thanks for sharing it. I was impressed to hear that your wife was only 13 and you met and your love has been enduring ever since.

Dear Berta, I loved to listen

2008-05-21T21:28:46.239+02:00

Dear Berta, I loved to listen to your love story. And you're right, the magnetism that makes us be with out twin souls is just mysterious! Thanks for sharing your love story here.

Denise, If you are planning t

2008-05-21T21:25:29.801+02:00

Denise, If you are planning to get married is because you believe this is the man of your life! So, get prepared for the big date.

Dear Lorena, I just loved you

2008-05-21T21:24:33.665+02:00

Dear Lorena, I just loved your sleep walking story! Thanks for sharing it with us straight from Argentina!

Let's see if this works!

2008-05-21T20:36:58.476+02:00

Let's see if this works!

Kevin, It has certainly impac

2008-05-21T20:28:50.503+02:00

Kevin, It has certainly impacted on who I am today, and I am positive it influences my teaching practice. However, nowadays we can travel without living home, and I doubt you have an insular view as you've been blogging and connecting to others. The most important thing is to keep our minds open and invite friends all over the world to show a bit of their own world to our students. That's what I try to do and they just love it. A month ago, for example, I invited a friend to talk his place as I thought it would be kind of exotic for my adult students. They loved to learn about Abu Dhabi and I had a very positive feedback about the whole cultural activity. I also learned tons from it! http://elearningctj.bloxi.jp/a/week-3-abu-dhabi/

Dear Valquíria, This is a lo

2008-05-13T15:54:17.440+02:00

Dear Valquíria, This is a lovely love story! Well, with my husband it was like that, too! We would go out together a lot with our group, we were friends, we'd study together during the period we were training after having passed in a public entrance exam. We fell in love and here we are, happy and together with two lovely kids! Thanks for sharing your story. So, was Silvio the one who started flirting with you?

Dear Sue and Kevin. You're r

2008-05-12T19:56:37.933+02:00

Dear Sue and Kevin. You're right, Twitter is somewhat chaotic, disjointed, but conversations happen there all the time, and we're even invited to eavesdrop! It is certainly another means of establishing conversations, but in a very specific mode. I don't think we could compare it to a blog post in which we're really reflecting, discussing, analyzing, speaking up our minds, but it's certainly another means by which we're connecting. Many times, we reply immediately back to a tweet, we talk to others, we reply to queries in that fraction of time constrained by 140 words. Sometimes we get comments on out blog post because someone twitted about it, so if it's not possible to really expand our ideas there, it can be, at least, where they start! I'm really enjoying the conversation here. By the way, Kevin, very interesting Twitter poem! Thanks for sharing. I'm part of an online group of educators, and one way we found to keep the conversations and ideas being twitted in the group is by using crowdstatus. Have you two heard of it? At least, it makes the group tweets more visual. Interesting. The group has been discussed that it's a great tool to use with a group of students. http://crowdstatus.com/webheadsinactioncrowd.aspx

Wow, Amanda and Eber, What wo

2008-05-12T14:39:43.984+02:00

Wow, Amanda and Eber, What wonderful love stories! Amanda, I'm glad at last everything was alright to your mom and your family, and now you have a nice life all together. Did you know that my story with Rodrigo was similar to your mom's in the part of the bill? I wanted to split it, but Rodrigo insisted in paying it and he said I owed him one! And that was when all started! Eber, I loved to know how you met Cecy and very appropriate use of the expression "I hit the nail on the head"! Way to go. So, Eber, I'm curious about your romantic song? What was it that changed your life forever?

Hi, kevin, The interesting th

2008-05-10T16:58:31.638+02:00

Hi, kevin, The interesting thing about it? I was skeptical at first when Vance Stevens told me about the writingmatrix concept, but once you start using it, it's just so much fun! The good thing is that it's really simple for students, for example, as they just need to learn how to tag properly. The only trick thing in the technorati search is to use the search "with any authority" because then technorati will not look only for the popular blogs with lots of traffic. If you have any questions about it, we can keep sharing on it, but I've been thoroughly enjoying the concept of distributed conversations. I've been really expanding my views on commenting lately. We can't be restricted to the comment box. Otherwise, we might become frustrated as there are so many other ways to enhance conversations. Twitter, for example, is another space for comments and feedback, isn't it?

Hi, Kevin, In the past I'd to

2008-05-10T16:26:01.495+02:00

Hi, Kevin, In the past I'd totally agree with you that keeping comments on one's blog was the way to go, but as I started to experiment with different ways to bring conversations together, I've been a fan of the writingmatrix concept of distributed conversations which we successfully tested on a workshop on blogging 4 educators. In this post by one of our co-moderators, you'll see her account of keeping track of these distributed conversations via technorati tags. The idea is that you create a unique tag for a specific conversation you want to see develop and others joining the conversations would just tag it with this unique tag and every blog post would be aggregated in technorati. Fun! We had one of the activities in the group called "5 things you don't know about me", and the conversations developed from it were just great. Trackback is also interesting because you can develop your idea better in a blog post, but still dialoguing with the person that sparked the interest to write the blog post. Consider how we're aggregating conversations using the Cocomment feature, as well. So, I guess conversations on a blog simply don't take one path, they can take as many as bloggers creativity. And that's the beauty of it! If you think of memes being created all the time, they encourage conversations and the creation of just incredible online posts, artifacts, for example.

Tod, I thoroughly enjoyed watc

2008-05-01T14:36:54.376+02:00

Tod, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the video. Its quality shows the effort the students put into it. Also, the fact that they are talking about something that affects them personally and locally makes it meaningful. I guess that their sense of accomplishment through their awareness video will make a difference in the way they face their local communities and the power of their voices. Fantastic! Congratulations to them and to you. Interesting question Brian raised. This could be a challenge, like getting the same idea and remixing it for a 30-minute video! It would be interesting to see the results!