My apologies for being away

[Luciana Caldeira]

This week, Feb 07 to 11 has been very hard because teachers are back to school from vacations and there's lots of work taking care of everything to have the school ready to receive the students next Monday and start the school year.

But I'm very proud and happy.

I've created a wiki for the communications among teachers, secretaries, administrative supervisors, coordinators and directors and have already had a positive response from some of them. Of course, some are a little resistant, I was expecting that too, but I think in a little time the wiki will be a very effective tool in our school. Some teachers are already thinking of using with their classes, too.

 

I presented a workshop about technology in which I introduced the school wiki, talked about Twitter as a great source of information related to teaching, showed them a technology tool: VOKI with some suggestions on how to use it to improve students oral expression and I'm sure they got really interested in the work I intend to do to train them to use technology for teaching and build their PLE.

As one of the managers I'm now responsible for this technology and have to make it work, some teachers have also given me great ideas to include in the wiki. I'm not posting the link to it because we agreed that it would be better to keep it private.

The first very positive result of these  EVO sessions.

Thanks Jennifer, Nelba and Vance.

 

Last Monday I could take part in the live sessions with Hope and Vance and loved it. The organization Learning Times is very interesting and I think their work is impressive. They  really allow teachers to use technology effectively. I hope to be able to use some of their work soon.

 

The only thing I have had some time to do this week was to check " Horizons Project". I read a little about the reports and researches they make about technologies and tools that will be changing the way we teach in a near future. Again, very interesting, but I didn't have time to read everything. 

 

I'm just bookmarking the sites and saving the files to read later, when school gets into its routine again, then I'll get home with energy enough to study.

[Jennifer Verschoor]

Dear Luciana,

 

I am so glad to know that you are already applying some of the things your learned on this session. Wikis have been my favourite tool for a very long time. Last year I started using a wiki http://web204digitalnatives.pbworks.com with young learners. The results are amazing!! They keep using this online space not only to learn English but also to have fun at the same time.

 

Keep inspiring teachers to integrate technology :-)

A big cyber clap for your hard work.

Warm regards

Jennifer

[Vance Stevens]

I'd like to add my apologies for being away (and also my appreciation to Jennifer for filling in).  This last week I managed to get rather sick, which made teaching challenging and tiring and limited my energy after work. Twice last week that energy was channeled into online events, the first with Hope Kandel Gershik, which I thought radiated the spirit of our sharing community (recording link at http://learning2gether.pbworks.com.  The second was an interesting conversation in Second Life with Dennis Newson and Heike Phelp and others.  I hope we'll have a recording soon because it will be an interesting one.

But now it's the weekend, I'm recovering health and energy, and preparing to jump back into Multiliteracies with both feet running and help participants consolidate what they've done into their eportolios, even beyond the EVO wrapup this sunday at noon GMT http://webheadsinaction.org/live 

Remember, when you publish or post your eportfolio, in whatever form it takes, tag it for us (or just tell us about it and we'll tag it) so it will appear in this list:

http://www.delicious.com/tag/evomlit+eportfolio

All the best,

Vance