I am very happy with the success of this Conference. Not only we were very delighted to have our guest speakers who made this Virtual Event a special and unique one, but we also had forum sessions that were quite attractive and lively on very interesting topics. I hope you leave this Virtual Conference with the idea that we are connected to the world and that we want to maintain the channel open to learn together how to integrate technology into our language classrooms.
We are delighted that there have been 672 participants from all continents registered in the Social Networking: Thriving as a community of practice Virtual Conference forums in moodle. During the numerous online presentations several key concepts have been shared and conversations are still carrying on in our Forums.
I would especially thank all our guest speakers and everybody who gave so much of their time and their capabilities to organize the conference: AVEALMEC and ARCALL members, moderators and the technical supporting team.
Among the key concepts, Etienne challenged us by introducing a key concept that will certainly help us understand how technology needs to meet the communities of practice needs and his members would need to become “Technology stewards in order to have enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with or interest in technology to take leadership in addressing those needs. Stewarding typically includes selecting and configuring technology, as well as supporting its use in the practice of the community.” We also need to remember Siemens´words “the limits we´ve known in the past are no longer limits” and Vance`s ones “Knowledge dissimenates through communities and networks”.
I would like to finish with a combination of Nik and Nicky Hockly`s talk “Teachers are like sharks. If they don´t move forward, they die.” Let`s keep moving in this wired and socially connected world.
I cannot close without thanking all of you again who have participated in this conference. We hope you have enjoyed this conference as much as we did. Looking forward to continue learning and sharing together in several social networks.
Today I got the invitation to join Google Wave. In order to understand the Wave concept I googled it and found this clear explanation: “Google Wave integrates services such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google IM and more into a single tool. Creating a Wave enables you to collaborate with your peers on documents in real time, watching them type and edit and allowing you to step in and make your own changes.”
As soon as I signed in to Google wave I got an invitation to join inspiring Webhead group. It was amazing to see how the Webhead Wave grew so quickly. Together we discovered several interesting features. My first reaction was to look for my email box!! You have chats and email conversations at the same time.
Seth has just created a wiki to help webhead join us in this new WAVE experience. If you still don´t have a google wave account please add you name and we will send you the invites.
This second half of the year we will start working with Collaborative Projects. Take a look at IEARN a non-profit organization that fosters the use of new technologies in the classroom.
What is a Learning Circle?
It is team of 6-8 teachers and their classes joined in the virtual space of an electronic classroom. The groups remains together over a 3-4 month period working on projects drawn from the curriculum of each of the classrooms organized around a selected theme. At the end of the term the group collects and publishes its work. Then, just as any class of students does, the Learning Circle comes to an end. Each session begins with new groupings of classes into Learning.
My class has been assigned to Places and Perspectives Learning Circle. We will be working with students from:
Komi Republic, Russia
Constanta, Romania
Mississaga, Ontario, Canada
Brooklyn, New York, United States
Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
Novosibirsk, Russia
Ljubljana, Slovenia
We will start this collaborative project in September and will finish it in December. You can take a look at the Glogster created by my students to share our community with the rest of the schools.
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices. For more information take a look at http://www.blogactionday.org/
The course can be very overwhelming as there are so many different tools you have to be acquainted with. First you have to understand that this course is whatever you want it to be. My first glance at the syllabus make me remember the EVO session we gave with Vance Stevens last summer on Multiliteracies.
Participants can use: Diigo, Delicious, Twitter, blogs, wikis, Ning,RSS, moodle and different aggregators plus all the different weekly readings. I love technology therefore none of these tools are unfamiliar but I truly understand the feeling of a teacher that just starts to integrate technology…it can be really disappointing and discouraging. But I have good news for all of you. If I was able to implement technology and learn about all these tools you can also do it!!! This is why connections are so important and sharing is the main ingredient for your Personal Learning Environment. Once you start connecting you don´t feel alone anymore. How do you start these connections? Just by contributing to each others work and in this course we will using our blogs as our main platform.
I was wondering that there are many teachers who don´t have the possibility to follow this course because they don´t know English. Therefore I started a wiki to share with other native Spanish speakers. Thank you Eduardo for your great contribution!!
We welcome you to join us
Please take a look at the following video to understand what is a Networked “Connected teacher”.
Do you feel identified with this video? Would you like to become this kind of teacher?
Last month I was hired by a school to start creating a new online communication channel between the parents and the school.
Together with the kindergarten Head and one of the owners we started brainstorming how could Parents communication be improved by using technology.
We reached the conclusion that having individual blogs for kindergarten would generate a space where parents and their children can learn and have fun at the same time.
-Do parents need clear instructions on how to use a blog?
-Will they be able to navigate by themselves?
-Will this type of learning interfere with the traditional classroom?
Last week I was teaching English to my digital native daughter. It took me 1 hour to teach her the animals. She had obviously seen it in class but she had to reinforce some concepts. It was a nightmare…I was tired after a long working day…
The following day homeword was a real pleasure because I thought of motivating her to learn animals in a different way. I uploaded content in her blog and she kept asking for more activities at 1o:30 pm.
What is happening in the traditional classroom? We are not engaging students with new tools and many times this is due to lack of resources and knowledge.
Is it good to show her a different way of learning and how will this impact in her traditional classroom approach?
Sometimes as a mother I think that I should follow the school pedagogical approach….other times I know there is something much better for my children.
We are delighted to inform you that from November 5-8, 2009, we will be running the Social Networking 2009 Conference. This open-knowledge event will be completely online and free and it is aimed at elluminating ELT practitioners to grow in the use of social networks as learning development tools.
This event is being jointly organized by AVEALMEC and ARCALL, two Latin-American associations, one based in Venezuela and the other in Argentina, interested in promoting the use of ICT in the language classroom.
For this event, we invited conference speakers from different parts of the world:
George Siemens -Canada
Etienne Wenger -US
Vance Stevens -UAE
Nik Peachey -UK
Charalambos Vrasidas and Maria Solomou -Cyprus
Nicky Hockly -Spain
Erika Cruvinel and Ronaldo Lima –Brazil
Rita Zeinstejerand Paula Ledesma -Argentina
Nellie Müller Deustch –Israel
Carla Arena –Brazil
Graham Stanley –Spain
Jennifer Verschoor, Evelyn Izquierdo and Erika Cruvinel –Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil
During four days, our guest speakers will be sharing their experiences and expertise with participants and will help us grasp a better picture of how social networks can be used in the language teaching and learning field. We will be discussing about the concepts and theories around social networks, communities of practice and the Web 2.0, as well as about the use, advantages and drawbacks of social networking tools.
Join us and participate in this amazing learning experience!
We will start a new project on “Schools around the world“. Students through exchanges and discussions will learn about different schools worldwide.
The idea is to create a visual school network in order to sustain an on-going dialogue about how schools differ worldwide. Students must prepare a voicethread adding all the information they require relevant for other students to know about their school. The rest of the participants can ask questions about their school.
This year in February I moderated week 5 of Becoming a Webhead 2009. As a natural researcher I had to investigate these tools and their educational potential. Below you will find a list of the different tools that can make our teaching excel and our imagination grow. Be ready to create quizzes, online sheets, interactive exercises and online surveys.
Teachers can create online quizzes, tests, and activities. Each response can have a specific score value, and immediate feedback and custom explanations can be provided. Teachers can access results online as individual scores or in an Excel sheet format.
This second half of the year we will start working with Collaborative Projects. Take a look at 
Last week I enrolled in the following course 
Last month I was hired by a school to start creating a new online communication channel between the parents and the school.
This year in February I moderated week 5 of 
