Dear everyone,

I have been reading a recent publication, which I have found very interesting and would therefore like to share with you:

Paolo Ferri, 2008, La scuola digitale, Milano: Bruno Mondatori Ed.

The first part of the book deals with Web.2 tools, and it is in my opinion very clear and well-structured. The second reports data and reflections about the way in which the digital generation (‘digital natives’ opposed to the ‘Gutemberg natives’), and relates to the web and to new technologies with specific reference to the possible impact and changes it can have on schools and education.

Last week I bought a new mobile phone and… I have to confess that the feeling is that of being a ‘Gutenberg native’ without any hope, if not that of being an” immigrant” in the best of cases, into a new world - the new millennium world of digital generations: the ones who were born with a remote control in their hands.

I am trying. I have been trying both within this community of practice and in other on line courses, not merely to “keep up to date” with the resources offered by new technologies, but out of a real sense of curiosity and need to learn and understand. I am grateful to this community of practice to have given me the opportunity to arouse curiosity even further. I do believe, and more and more so as I go on reading about the topic, that they (and Web.2 in particular) can offer great potentialities to transform learning. To connect classrooms with real life. To speak the language of our students. To put collaborative and cooperative learning in practice. To move from a teacher-centred to a student-centred way of operating and thinking in designing and realising didactic activities.

Nevertheless, the feeling is that of an immigrant in a world I did nor grow up in and with. Of all the wonderful things my new mobile phone can do, including podcasting, creating/sharing/using and what else God knows with multimedia files, I find it difficult to find my way and use them all. While I am sure my 15-year-old son, or even his younger mates, would just plunge into it and do it. It is not only that I do not have a try-and-error approach – it’s just that my mind very likely works in a gutembergian linear way, and “advanced” hypertextual ones feel at times more like a labyrinth than an opportunity. With a consequent feeling of frustration – because I want to learn and to do/use all those wonderful things. Probably the same feeling of frustration some of our students go through using “our” linear books and ways of dealing with knowledge. Once more, it’s probably good to be “on the other side of the desk” from time to time, but… but: so many question marks. And once you seem to be able to cope with one tool, it’s out of date already, and there are so many new other ones to learn about…

Will I ever be able to manage in a sufficiently self-confident way these tools in order to use them with my students? And together with me how many educators? Is this feeling of frustration and insecurity what keeps technology out of real school projects and practices (data in Ferri seem quite dramatic in this respect).

Help from a Gutenberg native! ;-(

Paola

HAPPY EASTER!

So nice to be on holiday....
Happy Easter to everybody!
Luv,
Dani

Let's design the questionnaire

Ok Dani!
Let's go back to the issue of designing a questionnaire.
Let's first ask ourselves some questions:
1. what is the aim of the questionnaire?
2. what are we going to ask SS?
3. what format (open/closed), length and arrangement should the questionnaire have?
4. what format should responses have?
5. how should it be administered and evaluated?

Some helpful ideas are available at:

http://student.bmj.com/back_issues/0601/education/187.html

Be careful ! It's addictive....

Dear Anna Franca,
I tried... 'n' did it...
Now I have this 'button' in my blog - something like 'share'(very coloured and appealing...)
If you click on it, you open a window...: and there you find de.li.cious, technorati, read me and a number of other...I don't understand exactly WHAT...
I haven't actually understood what a feed is yet - except at a very superficila level.
Yet, I realised that the bookmarks I have on my pc are all there - which means I can get and use them even when I'm using a different pc - any pc worldwide -(just need a internet connection), and this is ...useful. Indeed.
I signed in for Technorati, too - and it seemed to me it's a way to open your blog, and your favourite other blogs to a larger 'audience', which might decide to contact you on the basis of the tags you chose, or the content of your posts - or while they're just looking for something through some kw which have some kind of link to your tags or what you wrote in the posts...

Very...fascinating.
Yet, A bit ...overwhelming, too.
For me, at least.

I like working on my blog, participating to other blogs -chatting on skype or msn - thinking about using a blog and other e-tools either for educational aims or just to improve communication...
I'm also really enjoying Paola's wiki experiment: the idea of co-writing a story is great!
And I appreciate all your suggestions and hints leading to a further immersion into the incredible potential of the web - yet, I'd rather...slow down?
Scrolling through the posts and comments I realise we didn't fully developed some good ideas - eg, the questionnaire/survey to present and promote the use of a blog with our EFL students - or/and the designing of a 'blog-project', with some specific detailed EFL aim...

You see, I definitely Love challenges - the new, the unknown - I feel 'alive', when I don't understand, when I have to make a genuine effort to understand -and I'm sure this can only bring along positive attitudes and new opportunities as regards our learners.
Yet, this is not my blog...
I somehow feel we might have 'scared' a number of possible participants 'coze we were going on too fast...Only a couple of us actually tried and created a blog - or already had one.
Don't know exactly what I mean....Just a 'feeling'.
Thx for anything and everything: I learnt a lot...
:-))))
Dani

RSS feeds

Watch the video RSS in Plain English, by Common Craft.
1. Register at My Yahoo or Google Reader
2. Subscribe to the RSS feed of our blog, and then add it to your RSS feeds reader
3. Go to http://www.addthis.com/
4. Click on the "AddThis Button"
5. Get your free "Feed Widget" (Remember you must have created your own blog first) and subscribe to the RRS feed of your own blog.
When you are finished with the above tasks, please go to our blog to post an entry about what you learned.

Excellent 6 step on how to subscribe to RSS feeds using Google Reader
http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml#

Dear Bloggers ….

Hello everyone,

wow! I’m overwhelmed with all the postings and the interesting material to read or view. I teach English at the Science Faculty at Unical. I was unable to log on earlier, but just a note about blogs. I’ve used blogs with university students and they really enjoy it. I had my group write short articles and then post them on the class blog. The only drawback I found with University courses is that they are so short that by the time the students actually post their work and then get a dialogue going with comments the course is over. The other difficulty of course is getting a computer room so the work can actually be done in class as not everyone has a computer at home.

Wikis on the other hand, sound like a fascinating tool to try but I have never used them. I really liked the video on wikis. I will continue to view all the other videos posted.

I came across a short article on the Wired Campus on a professor experimenting with blogs as a formative peer review process. Here's the link--you might want to read it

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2817/blog-vs-peer-review-update-interactivity-brings-some-surprises


How long will this CoP last, by the way?

Sara

wiki created...

hi tesolcop mates :-)

still in progress... but fun to experiment!

http://learnteachexperiment.pbwiki.com/

there's a story to create, if you feel like to have a creative collaborative break ;-)

Paola

Wikis + Weblogs

Hi!
- What are the advantages of combining wikis and weblogs?
http://bolka.at/pubs/2005/snips.pdf


- Set up your own wiki using http://www.pbwiki.com/
The initial phase is just like setting up an email account. Remember to sign up as an educator so that you have an advertisement-free site. Practice adding photos, audio, and video to the wiki pages.

- Share your wiki via the TESOL CoP blog.

Wikis in Plain English

Cooperative Learning

WIKIS...

Nice, clear... and simple....

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf

Other blogging ideas!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/communicate/blog/

This could be a possible way to show our students how a blog in English can work - what they can do in a blog, using English to communicate with other people from all over the world...

Luv, D
Dani

Blogs and Wikis...

I largely agree with Paola's analysis as regards the differences between blogs and wikis - but I must confess I have very little knowlege of wikis : the only one I could mention is Wikipedia - all the others I saw were mere attempts, experimentiments in their initial phase, sort of "let's try and do it..."I'm going to have a more thorough look at the world of wikis...I promise. Yet, on the whole, my impression is that wikis are more concerned with 'writing' rather than with other different expressive codes (photos, videos) - even though, you can upload images and create links to videos in a wiki...- they are used for more 'serious' tasks and have often a sort of 'revision group' who monitors what's being unploaded (content, form etc.). Blogs seem to offer a freer way to e-working but if we want to use a blog for educational teaching aims, we need to include some 'usage' and behaviour rules - and also make sure they are respected...
Difficult task, Anna Franca: maybe we shoud try and use both tools to understand differences more clearly...
Have a nice day,
Dani

web.2, blogs, wikis, second life

Hi Annafranca and everybody

I have found a video at the following link

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=F1IRkqbUoXY

that briefly explains the difference between blogs and wikis, introducing also possible uses of "Second life" in education. Hope it can be useful.

Love

Paola

Web 2.0 technologies: blogs & wikis

Here are 2 points worth reflecting on:

1.What's the difference between a blog and a wiki?
2. What ethics would you expect from bloggers?

technorati resources

Hello everybody :-)

Sorry I have been absent for a while, but have been completely absorbed by work. I have kept on reading you, however, and it is always so stimulating to read comments and reflections from you all. Thanks, Tesol Cop blog-mates! :-))

I have browsed through technorati, as Annafranca suggested, with different words: EIL/ELF, cooperative learning, learning styles, and found different materials, blogs, videos, though not all particularly useful in my opinion.

Two have attracted my attention:

one on cooperative learning, as it has been produced by students after a research of CL
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=HEh8Z0sbiRE

and this could be an idea of how to exploit this resource in the classroom, with CL work or with project work, as a final product

the other is about learning styles, and I have found it interesting as it is addressed to parents in order to create awareness about differences in the ways of learning
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp6IADRDf2A

I have tried to insert the video directly, as skillful Dani has done, but has not managed it: how do you do it?

As concerning the question on how students see it, I agree that a survey would be a very good idea - it could also perhaps be attached to a project using blogs for didactic activities, so learners would have an idea of what it is like: what do you think?

All the best

Paola

FURTHER HINTS...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cncW5tzMvP0
Students talking about using blogs as a learning tool...

http://www.apogeonline.com/webzine/2007/02/21/23/200702212301

An article about Technocrati - and some suggestions on how to use it....

How To Maintain Classroom Discipline - Good And Bad Methods

TECHNORATI...that is 'technological litterati....

I vaguely remembered I had already visited Technocrati in the past - almost by chance, as it sometimes happens when you 'surf' with no very specific aim, following a sort of thought chain, starting from a point and getting to something different, only slightly related to your starting quest, yet related to some different interest of yours...
Yet, what Anna Franca asked us to do was quite specific, thus I focused on her suggestions.
Tried to do so... Yess.
Search box, key words. I tried with EFL, ESL, teaching/learning ESL/EFL, using blogs/web0.2 for learning/Teaching, educational technology etc. - differently combined and mixed - and I found lots of useful and useless 'stuff' (single posts, blogs, videos): 'tags' might be misleading, they don't always bring you exactly to what you're looking for...Example: 'teaching' might appear in a blog just 'coze the guy is a teacher...but is blog is utterly devoted to photography...and you find absolutely nothing about 'teaching'...You see the point?
What I liked best were the videos - and I finally chose to watch a number o f them related to teaching and teachers, rather than learning through web0.2 - and somewhat completely forgot about Anna Franca's task.... Sorry... Have a look at the one I posted here.

ps. I know this is not what Anna Franca's task required...just liked to share it with you all!

Let's try it...

1. Which Web 2.0 tools are we familiar with? Why should we use them in EFL/ESL classrooms? What are their pedagogical value? How can we integrate them into our ELT?

2. Go to Technorati.com and look for the search box there, ( usually on the right top corner of Technorati site). Enter key words relevant to your ELT area, and then see what results you get.

3. Post your feedback on this experience with ideas or ways you may integrate this technology in your classes.

Reading resource:An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Tagging in Blogs , by Christopher H. Brooks and Nancy Montanez