Am I back?
After 2 years of silence and no professional blogging, a seminar is slowly bringing me back on track :) ... It seems I'll start posting again... But who knows on which blog is this going to be... :)
An EFL teacher discovering the whole new universe :)
After 2 years of silence and no professional blogging, a seminar is slowly bringing me back on track :) ... It seems I'll start posting again... But who knows on which blog is this going to be... :)
Another great tool found on Web! Joe Dale published the link to a free learning platform for language students, called The Mixxer (designed by Todd Bryant). With the help of their database anybody can find a language partner for a language exchange. If you're a native speaker of English, for example, and you want to learn Slovenian :), you can find a Slovenian learner of English and than the two of you can have (Skype) conversations and improve your language in cosy, informal environment. Teachers can also find other classes interested in doing language exchanges with their students.
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.
The question is: What are we busy about?Henry David Thoreau
Via Education Guardian I came across this video podcast from teachers' tv. It is about newly qualified primary school teachers Tara and Rosie as they embark on the first week of their induction year. Video does take some time to download but it is well-worth watching.
I've just come across a nice song again (by Dave Holmes). I used it last year with my young learners when practising names of animals and names of rooms in a house. It can be found on one of the British Council pages, together with words, a game and a short, simple video. My pupils loved it.
I've just found my blog in a list of "dead blogs".
I am apologising for my long absence. I have been completely absorbed in the school work and in finishing my studies. I still am, but, here comes a five minute break ;)
Undivided attention
By Taylor Mali
A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,
tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's
birthday gift to the insane -
is gently nudged without its legs
out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street.
It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane,
Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares
and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last
note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,
the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and
I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street.
Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?
All the greatest common factors are delivered by
long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks
or come through everything, even air.
Like snow.
See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year
my students rush to the window
as if snow were more interesting than math,
which, of course, it is.
So please.
Let me teach like a Steinway,
spinning slowly in April air,
so almost-falling, so hinderingly
dangling from the neck of the movers' crane.
So on the edge of losing everything.
Let me teach like the first snow, falling.
In Slovenian primary schools (pupils aged 6-15) we have individualised programmes for learners with special needs. Pupils that need such additional teacher help attend individual English (or maths, Slovenian, chemistry, etc.) lessons where one teacher works intensively with them, one-to-one, instead of them being in their classroom for that particular lesson.
I'm writing a paper on blogging as a language learning tool and would really appreciate your help. If you teach learners a foreign language and you use blogs for doing it, please, answer my ten-question-long survey. It won't take a lot of your time, but your answers will be highly valuable to me.
This school year is my last year at university and a first year of teaching. I must admit that I do feel something really important happening in my life, while I'm leaving the student years behind and entering the world of Miss Bezic :)
I've always felt -- once I got my feet under myself after that first teaching year -- that the absolute 'survival' experience of a first year teacher is what becomes the DNA for all the years that follow. In other words, the survival skills one learns to make it through those scary and paradoxical first 9 months become the ground you stand on in the next few years, and then when the fear goes away, the same skills become a world view and a rationalization and a way of drawing lines in the sand. So, even the most experienced educator on the planet is still in some way re-copying (or mimeo-graphing) those early skills that so often become unconscious, and they simply get better and better at explaining the continued use over time.
"Kids don't care how much we know, until they know how much we care."
But when in doubt, when confused or angry, when lost, simply love the kids. And remember you made an informed decision to teach. And stop trying to figure it all out the first day. Love will take you where you're capable of going. When you're ready. And truth of truths, if your ultimate goal is to see your kids learn and grow and achieve great things, this is where you'll find them doing it, when you love them enough to believe they can accomplish anything no matter how hard the challenge.
Will Richardson discusses Kevin Clark's article (not) about the technology and adds his thought, worth citing:
It's getting to be less and less about the tool and more and more about the opportunities the tools create, the "why", not the "how." And the "why we should use any of these tools" question is all about their capacity to build connections and community.
Yesterday I attended an interesting and much needed seminar on teaching very young learners, aged 5 to 8. The speakers, workshop leaders, were Irena Rozman, OUP ELT Representative for Slovenia and Clare Matthews, a teacher and teacher-trainer from England, who came to Slovenia four years ago.
Red, pink, yellow, purple, green or blue,
red, pink, yellow, purple, green or blue.
What's your favourite colour?
Please tell me do!
Is it red, pink, yellow, purple green or blue?
Letter A, letter A!
Where are you? Where are you?
Here in 'apple', 'ant', and 'Anna',
'alphabet' too, 'alphabet' too.
Letter B, letter B!
where are you? Where are you?
Here in 'bat', 'big' and 'bad',
'banana' too, 'banana' too.
...
look
say
cover
write
check
Through Anne Davis, who is celebrating International Edublogging Women's Day 2006 by publishing articles about inspiring women edubloggers, I came to another interesting post.
1. If you mention it, hyperlink it!
She clearly explains how to manually hyperlink:
2. Get a good title.
3. Write and then cut in half.
4. Write and then format.
5. Draw a picture.
6. Before you bag it, tag it.
7. After you post it, ping it.
8. Make sure you set your pages to archive.
9. Comment on articles you quote and hyperlink to your article.
10.Get the statistics back.
Is it inappropriate to comment on older posts in my blog? I'm new to blogosphere and there is so much to read, fresh stuff as well as some great old articles. I cannot help myself from sharing some of the blog jewels with you.
"The students are shy, self-conscious, some of them still figuring out how to write in English. They have been conditioned to succeed, to achieve, to excel, and they feel that showing their work like this exposes a weakness, a flaw, a secret. They don't altogether buy it that they are here in college to learn, (I'm not sure they've really thought about what that word means except in the most literal sense of acquiring a body of knowledge to be tested on) not to produce shiny objects, one after another that demonstrate their worthiness according to some unfathomable scale."
"Without those first few novice pieces I would never have gained the confidence to continue writing, searching and discovering the orbit of a blog. It is inspiring and encouraging for me to have such work to read and look back on, it is a personal log of improvement. As I continue to blog I am feeling the benefits of having such a raw experience.
We all have to start somewhere and for a student to aim for perfection with every post defeats the purpose of a blog. We are in a discussion, gradually improving our speech, learning from each other and learning from ourselves."
I came across Marc Prensky's article, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. This text was written five years ago, but still, very interesting assumptions.
"They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age... It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors... Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet."
"The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it... There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you – an even “thicker” accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). I’m sure you can think of one or two examples of your own without much effort. My own favorite example is the “Did you get my email?” phone call."
"Smart adult immigrants accept that they don’t know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants spend most of their time grousing about how good things were in the “old country.”"
I know I'm almost two months behind, but today I found this video on Ewan McIntosh's blog. It's his talk at Jordanhill College, University of Strathclyde, that took place in January. He was talking about the web 2.0 and its implications for teaching. It lasts almost an hour but I believe the presentation is really interesting, useful and creative. Enjoy his Scottish accent :)
My Slovenian friend Sarolta gave me a useful link to the textbook on blogging, from Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection. If you are a newbie and want to find your way in the blogosphere, do check it out.
I have found another interesting feature while reading sb's blog (and I'm really sorry I cannot find that blog anymore). These tiny flags bellow my posts mean that one-click translating is enabled. That simply means that by pressing one single button you get my blog in the language you choose. How cool is that, ha? :) If anyone is interested in adding it to his/her blog- this is the link.
Claudia has posted this in our YG, as a response to Susan's praise of her blog:
My blog is almost one month old and for his birthday I arranged a visitors counter for him :) . Bad luck that the counter missed all those numerous visits to my newborn page :( . Can you please visit it about 10 times per day to make statistics look better, haha ;) ;) ;)
I simply had to try the tool BubbleShare that Graham Stanley recommended. It is another great web feature. So much new to learn! :)
When reading about the Creative Commons License I spotted this short documentary on teachers and teaching. I believe it is worth seeing.
This EVO workshop on blogging is simply great! As you can see, I learnt how to create my own blog, how to add photos, how to add a picture and links to your profile... even add sounds!
Hello my friends-to-be!
Let that be all for today. I must admit I feel tired after my first blogging experience! :) But I enjoyed it very much. It's a good start, the start of something bigger. I know it is.
Hugs all around the world
sends
Anita