Nina Liakos's Blog

Artifacts, please! and thanks for completing the Striking a Balance survey

If you have any evomlit artifacts (blogs, ePortfolios, &c) to share, please let me know so I can show them off at the upcoming TESOL Convention in Boston!

Thanks to all who completed the Striking a Balance survey. Although I originally said I would keep it open until Wednesday, I closed it when it hit 80 responses since that seemed like a nice round number. Thanks to you I collected almost as many responses this time around as I did in the original posting in May 2009.…

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Added by Nina Liakos on March 14, 2010 at 1:30pm — 2 Comments

EVO Ending... Multiliteracies Continuing

Another EVO (my fifth) comes to a close today. As a co-moderator in this session, I've had to wrestle with guilt over not only which tasks I have not completed, but also for not staying on top of my moderator responsibilities (following what everyone else was contributing and responding in a timely manner, maintaining the YG calendar, and so on). But I don't want to wallow in guilt today! I would prefer to thank Vance and Jennifer for their forbearance and for helping me to learn so many… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on February 21, 2010 at 1:21pm — 5 Comments

Notes on listening to the recording of Mike Coghlan's synchronous session on Changing Literacies

I really meant to attend this session, which was at noon GMT today. I haven't been to work since last Thursday because of snow; we are experiencing our second major storm of the week as I write this. But I forgot that I had to subtract five hours and get up at 7 am, so I missed it. Darn!!!

Anyway, now I am listening to the recording and wishing I were participating in the chat along with Vance, Joel, and Berta, so I decided to make my comments here as I…

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Added by Nina Liakos on February 10, 2010 at 7:53pm — 9 Comments

Beginning Week 5

Week 4 got away from me. I don't think I read/watched/did anything on the syllabus! I am twittering more regularly than before and I have installed TweetDeck on all the computers I use, including my brand-new laptop (which I am using now--my very first laptop). I am home today for a snow day (the Washington DC area is buried under over 2 feet of snow which feel Friday and Saturday, and we are bracing for more snow tomorrow) and after baking bread, having lunch with friends, and doing some… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on February 9, 2010 at 12:00am — 2 Comments

Notes on watching Michael Wesch's "Portal to Media Literacy" 7/10/08

The video is here.

Michael Wesch, an ANTH prof at Kansas Stat U, is the creator, with his students, of The Machine is Us/ing Us and A Vision of Students Today.

Students say they like learning, but they don't like school. (Not a surprise.) They… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 31, 2010 at 2:30am — No Comments

Notes on Beginning Week 3

I'm standing at the teacher's desk in my smart classroom at the University of Maryland, and my students are writing about "one or two cultural differences [they]'ve noticed while living in a foreign country...." I was looking at the tasks for Week 3, which begins today, and decided to have a look at Zaid Alkagoff's slideshare presentation "Twenty-Five Edublogs You Simply Don't Want… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 25, 2010 at 3:30pm — 2 Comments

Notes on listening to Mark Pegrum's second video

http://goodbyegutenberg.pbworks.com/2010_Week3 (scroll down to video)

Digital Literacies:a good focus point for education, a way to teach students key skills and make them aware of how technology will influence their future

Groups: from traditional/simple to complex/new

1. literacies bound up with language: We must not neglect traditional print literacy, but we also need to realize that… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 21, 2010 at 4:36pm — 1 Comment

I Have a Dream

I am listening to the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm) and remembering how before the web, how I had to find a video or audio of the speech and transcript in the library if I wanted to have my students hear it (I even remember transcribing the speech myself in my 2nd year of teaching, France 1973). And now it is available at the click of… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 19, 2010 at 1:13am — 1 Comment

Notes on Week 2 Tasks

I am looking at the tasks and objectives for Week 2. Set up a ProtoPage, Netvibes, PageFlakes, or iGoogle? I already use iGoogle as my homepage, but I don't think that is what Vance means. Other than my email, my Google Reader feeds and my to-do list, there isn't much that is me on that page. I think he is referring to the elusive "ePortfolio" we are supposed to create. I envision that as a space on the web where I can collect links to blogs and wikis I've created and am proud of, maybe post my… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 18, 2010 at 6:19pm — 2 Comments

Looking back on Week 1

The university semester and EVO both began this week. I met eight new students and 59 participants in our session (there are more registered, but 59 people introduced themselves on the Yahoo!Group, and I assume most of the others are just lurking or have reconsidered). I actually completed most of the tasks for Week 1! I read, listened, and blogged; tweeted and twibed (?); tagged, read what others have tagged, and commented. I re-read the introduction to From Blogs to Bombs. I attended a few… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 18, 2010 at 3:30am — 1 Comment

Notes on reading Vance's article "Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities, and Networks"

This article can be found at http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/past-issues/volume13/ej51/ej51int/

Vance begins his article on modeling social media with three examples of how the world has changed (paradigm shift): how we look for information differently and have different expectations of it; how for more and more people, open-source is the way to go; and his love-hate relationship with his Kindle.… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 16, 2010 at 2:30am — No Comments

Notes on listening to Kim Cofino's Fireside Chat

Personal Learning Network = a group of people you collaborate with regularly

Tools to grow your PLN (firsthand experience helps you do this with your class): blogs, wikis, podcasts, Skype, Twitter, &c

Kim Cofino's six steps to building your PLN:

1. use an RSS reader - a great foundation (learning by lurking/no pressure to interact)

2. join social networks with like-minded educators (a virtual teacher's lounge)

3. express yourself: start a blog, develop your… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 15, 2010 at 2:54am — 4 Comments

Week 1: Almost done...

...and I am seriously behind. I've managed to keep up pretty well with the pleasant task of reading participants' introductions and welcoming them to the session, but I have not done well with reading/viewing the materials for the week. I started, but did not finish, rereading the introduction to From Blogs to Bombs. And I listened to the video Mark Pegrum made for us which Vance embedded in the wiki and took some notes on that. But I had intended to do much more. And I still do, but… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 15, 2010 at 2:22am — No Comments

Notes on listening to Mark's first video

Digital literacies - to be addressed in a second video

The book - originally inspired by a conference in Chennai in 2007 organized by the Learning Technology SIG of IATEFL (technology in the teaching of English), where MP attended sessions on using wikis, audio recording software &c in ELT, different pedagogical approaches, e.g., social constructivist.... and social issues, e.g,. dangers of social networking sites.

He thought: different conversations were going on but they… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 15, 2010 at 2:10am — No Comments

...Go!

Got up at 6:30 this morning to attend the EVO Kick-Off hosted by Worldbridges' Jeff Lebow at http://webheadsinaction.org. I couldn't help remembering how it felt four years ago, the first time I attended a similar synchronous session. (I probably missed the Kick-Off in 2006 because I would not have been aware it was happening!) At that time, everything was so new and strange. This time I knew at least half of the people in the chatroom and in the Skype… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 11, 2010 at 1:33am — No Comments

Ready, set...

EVO 2010 kicks off tomorrow at 7 a.m. here in Maryland. I have set my alarm for 6L:30, ugh! The Yahoo Group has 48 members, l6 of whom have posted introductions, and the Ning has 74 members! I'm not sure if they are all new members, but I think Jennifer said she had reset it. I am not experienced with Nings (yet). The first time I really used one was at WiAOC 2009, but I liked it.

I keep forgetting that I have to save my blog post before I go to another page. Have lost what I wrote… Continue

Added by Nina Liakos on January 10, 2010 at 3:34am — No Comments

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