One Teacher's Journey

Online Circles of Learning

2008-11-07T06:32:00.003+09:00

Carla Arena and I gave a presentation called Online Circles of Learning: Your Micro-revolution for the Network of Trainers in Europe Conference. Our abstract: New and emergent technologies enable trainers all over the globe to pursue professional development out of their institutional settings. Connections are now possible in new dimensions of the online world. In this session, presenters will show some possibilities of informal learning through the participation in Communities of Practice, online sessions and spaces that can impact positively on the way trainers learn and enhance their professional development.

We had a fabulous time presenting, although the time went too fast- we had 15 minutes to present! During the 20 minute discussion that followed, we had some great questions and discussed the concept of "amplified worker" in more detail. According to The Future of Work, the amplified worker is someone who is social, improvisational, collective, and augmented - the worker for the future who uses social media for his or her own professional development. Check out our slides below and if you'd like more information, and see what online spaces and communities of practice Carla and I use during a day in our amplified lives! We also invite you to go to our wiki page where you can also join in the conversation on our Voicethread.

Informal Circles Of Learning

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: training learning)

Poverty: Blog Action Day 2008

2008-10-16T00:05:00.004+09:00

Poverty.

80 Ways to do something about poverty #14: "Share your skill or knowledge, so they can improve their knowledge to increase their life/prosperity."

ESL/EFL teachers can do something about poverty. for instance, i will never forget volunteering as a teacher in a rural area, teaching ESL classes for migrant farm workers. some students had very bad experiences with formal schooling and were hesitant to try. some students couldn't read or write, yet they were there. some students didn't have a babysitter, let alone extra money or reliable transportation, yet they were there. students. workers. families. they came to class each week, hoping to learn English. my mentor told me that teaching students English meant not only that they could seek better opportunities for themselves, but also that they could reach out to their community and become a part of something bigger. education truly empowers people and can lift people from extreme circumstances. it helps people not only to help themselves, but to help others.

Getting students involved in an EFL Class blog

2008-10-05T09:18:00.005+09:00

Participants in WebTools4Educators are really moving forward on the tasks this week about blogging. In the forum and on their blogs, participants have asked for some ideas on how to get students more involved in their class blogs.

I wanted to share some ideas that have worked in my classes. First, the blog should be an integral part of the course. Also, the posts should be interesting and use a variety of media (photos, audio, text, etc.). If possible, use the class blog as a place to make connections and start conversations with people outside of the classroom. In this flowgram, I've narrated a few examples from my class' blogs. I know that other teachers have other ideas and other examples, so please share them! Looking forward to sharing more ideas on how to get students more involved in the class blog!Update: Unfortunately, Flowgram is no longer online and I lost the data for this presentation.)

WebTools4Educators: Blogging

2008-10-02T15:00:00.004+09:00

This week I am a guest in Carla Arena's WebTools4Educators online course. This week the group is exploring educational blogging, and I'm thrilled at the chance to interact with everyone.

One of the assignments for this week is for the participants to create a class blog on Blogger and to write their first post. Carla has asked everyone to make a good first impression by including a picture or embedding a video.

In fact, I am setting up a new blog titled English I Computer Lab Blog for my first year writing class that meets in the computer lab every other week for 90 minutes. Since I've been thinking a lot about the 2007 LwC Cartoon Festival, I was inspired to use the topic of friendship again and to ask students to use the dVolver movie maker. My first two posts are related to this idea.

English I Computer Lab Blog via kwout

In the Friendship post, I wanted students to discuss their definition of friendship and also to explore the ups and downs of friendship. In order to catch their interest, I included a picture of one of my best friends and me. The blog is a perfect place for me to share a more personal side of myself and to encourage students to do the same. This post not only opens up the channels of communication, but also engages learners with the material we are working on in class which just happens to be writing definitions!

In the Review a Cartoon post (inspired by Carla R) I wanted students to look at some cartoons that previous students made about friendship using dVolver movie maker. I embedded these into the post and asked students to make a comment. In the future, they will be making their own cartoon, so this preview may get them excited about the project, and will give them a chance to develop multiliteracies.

Updates on summer learning!

2008-10-02T14:28:00.012+09:00

It is hard to believe that so much time has passed since my last post. I have been on summer vacation since the end of July, but that doesn't mean that I stopped learning! I had three main goals for this summer vacation: to study Japanese, to write an article for publication, and to continue connecting with online colleagues. Here are a few of the things that I was up to during this long summer holiday!

Back in the classroom!
I took a three week summer intensive Japanese course. I decided to go on a new blogging adventure, and I started a Posterous blog, Mary's Posterous, in Japanese! I was in the beginner part 2 course, and was lucky enough to study with students from Canada, U.S., Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Spain. Even though we only had 9 members in our class, we were a diverse group, with people from many countries who were all different ages and had different reasons for learning Japanese. It was a great experience to be a language student again, and I've decided to continue my studies in preparation for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December of this year.

Writing an article for TESL-EJ

Cartoon Festival: An international collaborative digital storytelling project is an article published in the TESL-EJ and co-authored by Carla Raguseo, Jose Antonio da Silva, and me. In 2007, our students created comics to explore the theme of friendship and shared them with each other. This was a really fun project that helped explore topics of importance to young people around the globe. I hope to use dVolver again in my classes this fall! Here is one of my favorite examples of student work: No Eyebrow. (Update: I've removed this link.)

Reading with friends
Reading books is a favorite past time of mine, and so I am very pleased to be part of an online book club, called LivingLit. We are a group of educators from different parts of the world, and each member chooses a book that is somehow related to the place where he or she is currently living. Our first book was chosen by Carla Arena, who is living in Key West; she chose Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire. After reading the book, we are all posting our reflections on our book blog titled Living Lit: Using Social Networking to Travel the World with Literature. The next book we are going to read is 36 Views of Mt. Fuji which is about an American who teaches in Japan and then builds a Japanese style house in the U.S. The chapters of this book really resonated with me, and I'm looking forward to discussing it soon!

About the LearningwithComputers group - Shelfari via kwout

Literature and Technology
It seems that the integration of technology and literature is something really of interest to me lately. Not only the book club, but also blogging about books with my students and leading a LwC Living Lit session on Shelfari have been projects I've been working on. Last semester, my humanities students blogged as they read The Little Prince on our IES Book and Literature Circle Blog.

Guest in WebTools4Educators
In a previous post, the online tool Tagcrowd found that "blog" was one of the most frequent words here! I guess that's one of the reasons why Carla Arena invited me and Cris Costa to be special guests in her Webtools4Educators online course for teachers in Brazil. Those enrolled in the course are just setting up their blogs, learning about the technicalities, and exploring the possibilities for fostering authentic communication and conversation through blogging. I'm really honored to be a guest there.

Exploring Diigo with Learning with Computers

2008-07-02T06:05:00.002+09:00

learningwithcomputers07 wiki / online_bookmarking3

We're exploring Diigo this month at Learning with Computers! This week we're in week three and I'm just exploring creating a blog post through Diigo. If you have the Diigo toolbar installed, you can click on the Send button to send your links elsewhere on the web, like to a blog, Twitter, or Facebook. I thought I would share this link to our Diigo week three tasks. Please join us and check out my Diigo profile to see what I've been up to!

TagCrowd Cloud for One Teacher's Journey

2008-06-28T07:57:00.004+09:00

After seeing TagCrowd on The Bamboo Project Blog, I just had to give it a try. All you have to do is go to TagCrowd, put in a URL, and you'll get a cloud with the words that are used most frequently. Here is the cloud for One Teacher's Journey.

created at TagCrowd.com

What can students learn from commenting?

2008-05-27T20:38:00.004+09:00

One task of the Comment Challenge was to write a blog post using comments. I would like to highlight a comment and a blog post from Charles Nelson and reflect further on the issue of student commenting.

On my last post about comments, Comments on Commenting, Charles Nelson left a comment and stated,

I concur with Kevin that it's not easy, and I agree with you that commenting is something that students need guidance on. But I would ask, Why have students commenting on each other's blog when they can post a more thoughtful response on their own blog?

I should explain a little more about the context in which I blog with students first. Of course, I would love to have students post well-thought out posts on their own blogs; however, so far I have only used class blogs with students. Last year, I wrote the posts and students and guests wrote comments; this year the students are writing all the posts and then interacting with each other and guests via comments.

This semester's blogging project is a Book and Literature Circle Blog. The students are reading The Little Prince and discussing it in literature circles. Because the students can't hear what has happened in the other groups' discussions, I ask the groups to collaboratively write a post for the blog after finishing their discussion. They usually highlight the most interesting aspect(s) of their discussion and ask other students for their opinions.

After the first week of the Book and Literature Circle Blog, I found that students wrote short comments, and there was no flow between contributions in the comment area. During the second week (this week), I specifically asked students to think about how they could connect their comments to previous ones and build up a conversation.

Thinking about participating in academic discussions, and synthesizing sources in academic writing assignments, I think that by challenging students to make connections between their comments and their classmates' comments, they are learning a valuable communication skill that they may be able to apply to other types of assignments. In his blog post, Charles Nelson made an excellent point:

"But for those of us who are educators, I would say that we need to be careful about being sidetracked by the social contagion of commenting and instead keep the goal of learning in the foreground of our blogging and of our students' blogging."

In conclusion, even though students are interacting through blog comments, I have tried to keep the focus on student learning. Your comments on other ways to keep commenting focused on learning are most welcome!

Comments on Commenting

2008-05-17T23:40:00.005+09:00

Right now the Comment Challenge is in full swing! I have to admit that although I haven't been doing the daily challenges, I have tried to be just a little more active by reading, writing, and commenting on blogs. Thank you to everyone who has commented on my blog lately, especially new commenters on my blog, Sue and Ines.

The issue of commenting came up during the SMiELT session earlier this year when the blogging group considered the value of comments. I posted a message to the forum of the group, in response to some questions. I am going to repost my answers below, adding a bit of context to each of them. If you're a member of SMiELT, you can view the entire thread here.

Do you think commenting is an important part of blogging or not?

As a co-moderator of Blogging4Educators, I was busy making comments on participants blogs. I found that this was a really meaningful way to engage in conversations with others. After I started using coComment, I noticed my comments were showing up on blogs via the coComment widgets, and this seemed to be a powerful way to make connections and to discover new blogs. As a result, I posted my opinion to the discussion forum:

Yes, commenting is an important part of blogging! Blogging is all about making connections and continuing conversations. The interaction through commenting makes blogging really fun! Recently, I started using coComment which allows you to save, track, and tag all of the conversations you are commenting on around the web. Displaying a coComment widget with your current comments may be just one of the ways we can encourage commenting.

If you do, what can we as teachers do to encourage commenting?

With one of my classes, we had one blog where students continued interacting with each other outside of class, and we were often visited by people outside of the class. Through online communities of practice, many teachers and students from around the world dropped by our blog and left comments. This really seemed to pique students' interest and to motivate them to use and to visit the blog. Therefore, I thought that one great way to encourage commenting was to invite people outside the class to get involved too, so I wrote these ideas in the SMiELT discussion forum:

I think Gabriela had a good idea when she said that teachers could ask for other teachers and students with more blogging experience to comment on the blog too. As teachers, we can encourage commenting by modeling the types of comments that we expect from students. If students have been reading blogs, then they will have a better idea about commenting too.

Also, commenting is a skill that students need some guidance on. For instance, as part of this SMiELT course, we watched the video about using comments to start conversations, and then we had a task to practice what we learned from it. Another useful resource about commenting is How to Comment Like a King or Queen by Vicki Davis. Just like anything else, we can’t expect that students already know how to do it; we should provide some information to them.

Assignment ideas:

One way to encourage commenting might be to have a mystery guest on the blog, or a guest who could be interviewed via the blog. Then, students can read the post, and add comments and questions. Here is an example of an interview with a wedding cake designer. Of course the comments could have been deeper, and we could have gotten more into the cultural differences, but we all have to start somewhere!

Thanks for reading my reflections on commenting. Even though comments are important, they aren't everything -- they are just one piece of the blogging puzzle. So, what do you think -- are comments important? If so, how can we encourage commenting? Do you have any ideas on encouraging students to comment?

I was tagged and now I'm it!!

2008-05-17T13:18:00.005+09:00

Ana Maria tagged me to answer these questions, inspired by Larry Ferlazzo.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
Since today is my birthday, that means 10 years ago I was celebrating my 22nd birthday and getting ready to graduate from college! At that time, my goal was to get a job teaching English in another country; although I took a few detours getting here, I'm happy to say that is exactly what I'm doing now.

5 Things you have to do today (for me, things I WANT to do!)...
For my birthday, I talked to my mom and my mother-in-law; I ate lunch with my family; took my daughter on campus and sat in front of the fountain; and tonight I'll go to dinner with my husband.

Snacks I enjoy...
pistachios, raisins, blueberries, apples, peanut butter, and chocolate of course!

Things I would do if I were a billionaire...
Visit my family and friends more often and travel to new places.

Three of my bad habits...
Eating too much sugar, eating too much sugar, and eating too much sugar!! Enough said!

5 Places I have lived...
I have lived in every corner of the state of Ohio; 2 cities in Japan; and the many summers spent in Quebec make it feel like home too!

5 Jobs I've had...
manager at a restaurant and retail store; periodicals assistant at a college library; volunteer teacher for Migrant Farm Workers; online English composition instructor for a community college; ESL/EFL teacher in the U.S and Japan.

5 People I want to know more about...
Patricia, Carla, Berta, Carla, and Daniela

Reflections on why I blog ... sometimes

2008-05-14T19:55:00.006+09:00

I haven't blogged lately, so when Carla Arena tagged me to answer the question, "What are YOU blogging for?" I thought it would be the perfect chance to create a post for this blog.

For me, I started this blog in the beginning to continue my learning and professional development. At the beginning, I thought learning to blog was just a set of technical skills; however, I quickly realized that blogging isn't just a technology thing, it is people thing, and it is all about learning, reflecting on learning, and connecting with others who are interested in continuing to learn as well. Especially this year, as I co-moderated Blogging4Educators, I found that commenting and sharing our learning was very powerful, indeed! I commented on participants' blogs, and they commented on mine. By working together and finding connections, we discovered the power of synthesizing our reflections through blogging, tagging, and RSS.

That's why after watching this video, I couldn't agree more with the second speaker, who stated,
"Not only did it [blogging] enable me to comment on their [the students'] learning, which they were reflecting on in their blogs, but they were commenting on my learning, and I thought that was really very powerful."

As for this blog, sometimes I blog a lot, and other times I blog little here. Unfortunately, a lot of posts I only think about, but don't carve out the time to actually write. As a teacher, during the last school year, I blogged with students for the first time, and we ended up making some amazing contacts with people from many countries through our class blog. To be honest though, I have blogged most consistently on my personal blog and this has allowed me the opportunity to deepen connections with friends and family, even though we're miles and miles apart. Blogging lessens the distance somehow. We can see and feel each other's thoughts and that's why I blog -- to feel connected -- both personally and professionally to those I care most about and those who I'm just meeting.

I would like to pass the question on to a few bloggers who I hope will share their thoughts about blogging: AnaMaria, Monica, Jen Verschoor, Illya, and Patricia.

Inspirations and Musings

2008-02-04T02:17:00.000+09:00

We've just finished Week Three at Blogging4Educators about RSS and Tagging. What an amazing week learning about how to aggregate feeds, and I finally got Google Reader set up. Then, the sharing continued as we wrote and tagged posts for the Blogging4Educators challenge. I have learned so much this week not only about technology, but also about the people behind the blogs! What struck me most as I read each post this week was the passion for teaching and learning that comes through in each and every blog.

Through the power of RSS and tagging, I found inspirational blog posts:

"RSS Reminds me of how the Brain Works" by Sibel on Unfolding the Black Box. Sibel's great post so clearly explains the concept of RSS, and likens it to the brain. Carla A shared Sibel's post with the group in our Wiziq session tonight. You've got to read it!

"Thank you, Carla" was posted on Natasa's blog. The feeling she describes of realizing her dream of writing was so inspiring. I'll never forget the feeling of "becoming a loud voice in the blogosphere" -- Thanks, Gladys!!

"Tell us your story" was posted on Teacher's Beliefs by Angela. She asked participants in Blogging4Educators to share their stories of how they became teachers. Really inspiring!

And here are three creative and inspiring blogs:
Waterblog A beautiful art blog by Vicky.
Inspirations A tribute to inspirational people by Dennis O.
Life is a Feast Ana Maria's creative use of images and widgets always inspires!

There were many wonderful blog posts this week as part of the Blogging4Educators challenge. My list includes the ones that inspired me this week, and reminded me why I am staying up until past midnight every night to read, reflect, and comment on blogs!! Comments really do make a difference, so stop by our Pageflakes for all the links to the moderators' participants' blogs, and see what they have to say as they venture into the blogging world.

Good night!

Blogging4Educators Challenge!

2008-02-01T21:16:00.000+09:00

Five things you might not know about me ... (Part of the Blogging 4 Educators challenge!)

1. I came to Japan for the first time about 5 or 6 years ago. I attended the Lions Club International convention in Osaka, and stayed in Japan only for one week. At that time, I was studying for my M.A. TESL, and knew that Japan was the place: interesting culture, people, language, food, and all! I took this picture at a temple in the city I now call home.

2. I grew up on a farm in Ohio. One of my favorite things is to eat Buckeyes; no, of course not the poisonous nut from the state tree, but the delicious dessert made of peanut butter and chocolate! (Like Carla R., I'm a chocoholic!) You can hear me talk about it on my chinswing thread, "What is your favorite sweet and what does it reflect about you?"

3. I have a B.A. in French and wrote my senior seminar paper on Albert Camus' The Fall. I studied for a summer semester in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec and for a summer semester in Nice, France.

4. I'm not good at swimming, and don't like beach vacations or being on boats.

5. I love to read! My favorite authors include Margaret Atwood, JoAnne Harris, and Albert Camus. I have just started to read The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, and I have started a list of books that I want to read. If you have any suggestions of good books to read, please leave them for me in the comments!

Looking forward to checking Technorati to see what co-mods and participants will write as part of this challenge!

Why is RSS important for the classroom?

2008-01-30T23:30:00.000+09:00

In Blogging4Educators week three, we are discussing RSS and tagging. So far, a lot of the reflections on the use of RSS have focused on using a feed reader to keep current on updates to students' blogs.

After reading "The Technology of Reading and Writing in a Digital Space: Why RSS is Crucial for a Blogging Classroom" by David Parry, I realized that using RSS in the above-mentioned way allows students to become better writers. According to Parry, when students know their work is being read by not only the teacher, but also their classmates, and when they understand that their writing is linked and connected to other articles online, a new form of "authorship" emerges. I think that when student bloggers realize that others are subscribed to their blog feeds, then they have an audience in mind when they're writing; in turn, the student bloggers realize the responsibility they have for providing links and accurate information for those readers.

However, one concept about RSS that I found even more interesting was the section of Parry's article called "Why it [RSS] Matters for Student Writing". I found myself identifying with the following quote:

The amount of information on the web is overwhelming to say the least. I could spend the rest of my life reading Wikipedia and would probably never finish. While this is also true of a large library (say here at the University at Albany) as well, the tools one uses to navigate the library, a static electronic database easily searchable by author, title, or book, is clearly inadequate for the web.

How many times have teachers assigned research projects on topics which there are plenty of print and online sources, only to hear that students are having trouble locating sources? It isn't that a lack of sources on the topic exist, but it just may be that students become overwhelmed by the volume of information available to them online, and cannot identify the most important or relevant online sources. Parry explains how RSS can come to the rescue, and help students to develop their reading skills.

For example, if you were teaching a class on the Holocaust you could require that students subscribe to feeds that related to the recent trials of Holocaust deniers in Germany, and to the situation in Darfur. In this way students would get regular updates and could read the most relevant content without getting lost in a quagmire of information.

Parry's practical suggestion would be a great way to teach students how to identify the related online resources, to subscribe to their RSS feeds, and to evaluate the selected articles for relevance to their research. In this way, I can see how RSS could be useful for the blogging classroom, and the non-blogging classroom as well!

Reader, Writer and Read-Write Web

2008-01-24T23:08:00.000+09:00

During Week Two of Blogging4Educators, participants are working on choosing a bloghost, Blogger or Edublogs, and getting their new blogs started. It is really interesting to see blogging from a fresh perspective; even though some members feel anxious about their lack of experience blogging, I think it is really interesting to see blogging from a different perspective.

One topic of discussion this week really caught my attention, and that is what kinds of topics to write about on one's blog. The title of our session is Blogging4Educators, so many participants create a blog that has something to do with education. However, there are numerous topics to blog about, including art, sports, culture, travel, family, and other hobbies. What is the important consideration when choosing a topic for a new blog?

In my opinion, blogs should be about topics that interest the blogger. No, not just something interesting to the blogger, but something the blogger is passionate about! For if a blogger blogs about a topic because he or she is "supposed to" the posts will perhaps not reflect the authentic, true voice of the blogger. I have seen this phenomenon in many cases in the classroom. A student writes a paper something like, Well-I have to write a paper about that tells my opinion about ...fill in the blank...

In the same way, when beginning a blog, bloggers should carefully consider what topics are going to inspire them to write, and in turn if that topic and the writer's passion for it will inspire others to read. Writing is two-way communication, yes, but the writer has to have something to say if others are going to be motivated to read and listen. Teachers HAVE to read students' assignments, but other audience's can give up reading and move on to something else that interests them more. Therefore, both the writer and the readers' need to be taken into consideration.

For example, a friend of mine created a blog to practice her Japanese writing. She was really dedicated to improving her language skills and passing the next level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. After she started writing, she invited her Japanese-speaking students to her blog, and they left her comments and gave her feedback on her use of certain Kanji. Although at first the blog may have seemed like it was going to be a blogger writing for herself and her own practice (similar to keeping a journal in another language), in fact, it is read by her students, and perhaps by other language learners too.

There are so many different reasons for writing a blog, so many purposes, and just about every topic has an audience. My advice for new bloggers is to write about what you're passionate about, and the readers and conversations will start to flow! In my case, this blog reflects my deep interest in online professional development and communities of practice. I began it as a place to reflect on these experiences, and I have been so thankful for the comments and conversations that have started here.

How did you choose the topic for your blog? How did the topic, audience, and/or purpose evolve over time?

Blogging4Educators: Reflections on Week One

2008-01-22T22:38:00.000+09:00

This month, the blogs created during last year's Blogging for Beginners EVO workshop turn one-year-old! After reading a Happy Birthday message to the blogs from Monika, I was really happy to think about all the blogging we've done over the past year! Now that Blogging4Educators is in full-swing, I'm just thinking how many more blogs we'll be able to fete next year at this time.

Before the Blogging4Educators session started, Ana Maria and I were working on creating the Blogging for Educators on Blogger. I was really looking forward to the interaction that would occur there, and did it ever! At the end of week one, there were 37 comments on the post asking participants to share their personal reflections on blogging, and to my surprise, 58 comments from participants explaining the differences between blogs, wikis, and web sites in their own words! Another great thing about hosting these discussions on the blog is there is no need to thread these discussions on the wiki; all the replies can easily be accessed via the blog!

I have learned so many things already through the interaction that is happening in the group. The highlight of Week One for me was attending a live session at Wiziq. Carla A gave a concise and informative presentation on the various tools we are using for the session and their purposes. Then, almost everyone had a chance to speak, although we noticed the moderator has to keep tight control of the mic; if participants in a Wiziq session forget to mute their mics when they're not speaking, there can be a lot of noise. Finally, we all started collaborating on the whiteboard: drawing, writing, and sharing pictures. The possibilities for connecting are just amazing! The live sessions are always my favorite parts of the EVO sessions; to be with people from so many countries is always thrilling.

The Blogging Team worked for 6 months to create this year's session; however, we could never have imagined what the session would become once it got into full swing! Every morning when I check my e-mail, Twitter, RSS feeds, and so on, I am in awe of all the activity. The coming weeks will certainly be a fascinating journey for all of us. Off to bed now... Bee's presentation will start at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning for me! Blog post to follow.

Blogging4Educators 2008 EVO Session

2008-01-12T07:59:00.000+09:00

It isn't that long until the kick-off event for TESOL's EVO 2008! This year, I am going to co-moderate the session Blogging4Educators with a fabulous group of bloggers: Carla A, Gladys, Erika, Ana Maria, Nina, Carla R, Claudia, Cris, Vance, and Dennis. It is so exciting to share and learn with them. Even though I have never met them face-to-face, we have been working together on a regular basis over the past six months preparing for the session. Their messages greet me every morning, and because we are all in different time zones, it seems like at least one of us is always working on the session!

We are going to explore both Blogger and Wordpress. Since I have been blogging with Blogger, Ana Maria and I have been working on our Blogging4Educators Blogger blog. It is always exciting to create a new blog, knowing that it will soon become a collaborative space for sharing personal reflections and experiences. Carla A and Carla R have been busy creating Blogging4Educators edublog. We are all eagerly awaiting the official start date of the session - January 14.

The next six weeks promise to be exciting, enriching, and undoubtedly exhausting as well. After EVO finishes, some of us will gather at TESOL's Annual Convention in New York, New York! In fact, Carla A and I will give a presentation for the Electronic Village Fair about our Blogging4Educators session.

Hope you will join us online or in New York. Here is an introduction to our session:

This six-week EVO2008 workshop (Jan 14th to Feb 24th, 2008) aims at introducing teachers with no extensive experience in blogging to different ways in which this technique can be integrated into their teaching and professional development.

By the end of the workshop, you will have experimented with creating and enhancing blogs, posting and editing entries, inviting members to your blogs and commenting on others' blogs - using either Blogger or Wordpress platforms. You will also have explored blog comment management, template personalization, tagging (labeling) and RSS (really simple syndication).

You can join us, and follow the session by visiting our Yahoo! Group.

Using FeedBlendr to keep up with everything!

2008-01-05T22:28:00.000+09:00

A Professional Development Quick Tip

When signing up for an EVO session, there are many sites to keep track of. For example, for Blogging for Educators, we have a Yahoo Group, two blogs, a wiki, bookmarks, Twitter, and so on! It seems like an impossible task to keep up with everything in one session, let alone two or more! Then, I came across FeedBlendr, which "lets you combine a bunch of feeds into one," according to their site.

I used FeedBlendr to create a feed for the online community of practice, Learning with Computers, and put it on my personal professional development Pageflakes. So far this has been a great way to keep track of "everything" related to LwC. I'm glad I perused Daf's del.icio.us bookmarks to find this great tip! Give it a try during EVO and see if it works for you too!

Related posts
Happy New Year (about joining this year's EVO sessions)
B4B Week Three Summary (a link to the live session held with Phil Hollows from Feedblitz during last year's Blogging for Beginners EVO session)

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T18:23:00.000+09:00

Happy New Year!! It is January 1, so it must be time for EVO '08!
Check out the available sessions on the call for participation site. Which one will you join?

Here is Dafne's Call for Participation message:
Dear all,

The CALL Interest Section of the international TESOL
professional association is pleased to offer the
opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village
Online (EVO) 2008 season. This is a professional
development project and virtual extension of the TESOL
2008 Convention in New York. The intended audience
for this project includes both TESOL 2008 participants
and those who can participate only virtually.

You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate in
a free , six-week , wholly online session of the EVO,
Jan 14 - Feb 24, 2008. Please visit our Announcement
Page to select one or two among the various offerings.

http://evo08sessionscfp.pbwiki.com

Feel free to distribute this annoucement.

Looking forward to having you in the EVO 2008 sessions,

Yours in TESOL ,

Dafne Gonzalez
On behalf of the EVO coordination team

Using Chinswing to create authentic listening materials

2007-12-31T06:52:00.000+09:00

What is your favorite sweet? What do you think it represents about you, your life, or your culture?

It is that time of year when I start to think about yummy holiday foods, like Buckeyes! That reminded me, earlier this year, I posed the above question in a on Chinswing. Responses ranged from my memories of Buckeyes from Ohio State, Carla's musings on Brigadeiros from Brazil, and a host of other tasty treats from all over the world!

According to their web site, Chinswing is "a global message board where anyone can add voice messages to ongoing topical discussions" and it incorporates "podcasting, text forums and live voice chat".

The goal of this project was to collect some authentic listening material on an interesting topic for a university course I teach. Students listened to the recordings (7 people in 5 different countries have recorded messages for a total of 17 minutes), and then continued the discussion on our class blog.

By the way, if you would like to record a message about your favorite sweet, go ahead! I plan to use this voice thread again in another class, and I just heard that my proposal for "Using Chinswing to create authentic listening materials" has been accepted for TESOL 2008 Electronic Village Fair!

This post was included in the Teacher Potluck Carnival: New Year's Edition! Check it out!

What I learned in 2007

2007-12-29T23:35:00.000+09:00

Since it is the end of 2007, I thought it would be fun to take a look back and see what I learned this year. There are still many things to learn in 2008!

One: Professional development is a FUN, EVERYDAY affair; and for me, is best done with an inspiring TEAM of enthusiastic educators!

It is fun to learn and grow in the company of other professionals. Whether it be online through blogging or recent Twitter connections, or communities of practice like Learning with Computers or Webheads, I am learning new things every day. For instance, I'm discovering new tools to try out, like Tumblr and YouAre. Also, through face-to-face attendance at professional organization meetings, presentations, and conferences, I revisited some classroom activities, like K-W-L, self-assessment, and vocabulary learning. Through these experiences, I found that I could learn about many new tools and activities to use in the traditional classroom setting, and on our class blog.

Two: Taking risks to grow professionally is a good thing.
Risk: And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to Blossom. Anais Nin

This year, I learned that I needed to take some more risks professionally. I developed articles, chapters, lesson plans, presentations, and workshops, and I challenged myself to take on some different learning opportunities.

One of the biggest challenges is yet to come in the new year, as I join a fabulous group of moderators to lead the Blogging for Educators EVO session. Although not all of this year's endeavors were successful (I never did come close to learning to webcast), I feel that learning to share my ideas with a wider audience was the biggest step. As a teacher, I find that I'm often coaching students to share their thoughts and that what they have to contribute is important, but I needed to take my own advice!

This post was inspired by Larry Ferlazzo's What did you learn in 2007 post, and an abbreviated version was sent to be included on his upcoming blog post. Also, I have posted a link at The Learning Circuit blog for December's Big Question.

TESOL Resource Center

2007-12-27T14:12:00.001+09:00

The TESOL Resource Center (TRC) is an online collection of lesson plans, activities, tips,papers, presentations, and other resources for the ESL/EFL professional. According to their web site, the TRC is sponsoring a contest to win two free nights hotel stay for the 2009 TESOL Convention in Denver, Colorado, or a gift certificate for TESOL publications. If you are a TESOL member, all you have to do to enter the contest is to have two of your original resources approved for inclusion in the TRC by June 2008!

This year, I participated in the TRC's New York, New York contest by submitting two lesson plans. They are titled "A Sentimental Object" and "Expressing an Opinion: Marriage or Cohabitation". I submitted the lesson plans using the template provided on the TRC web site, and after some time I received feedback on my lessons from the peer reviewers. After revising my lesson plans, I resubmitted them, and they were included on the TRC web site. The entire process took about three months. This experience was valuable not only because I was able to share my lessons and learn a bit about having my materials peer-reviewed, but also because I was lucky enough to be one of the recipients of two free nights lodging for the TESOL Convention in New York! Just give it a try and you'll never know what will happen!

More lesson plans
Reading is Interesting! (an EFL/ESL reading lesson plan using K-W-L and combining reading, surveys, and fun)
Superstitions (an EFL/ESL reading lesson plan incorporating multiple learning styles)

Week in a Sentence and Happy Holidays!

2007-12-26T08:04:00.000+09:00

This week, I participated in Day in a Sentence. Thanks to Kevin for hosting this event and for taking the time to compile and introduce each submission. I first heard about this from Larry Ferlazzo, and then again from Cheryl Oakes; I decided it was time to give it a try. In addition, boiling my week down into one sentence seemed to fit the theme of what I have been doing: being more concise! Let me explain how that all relates to professional development.

In preparation for the Blogging for Educators session I'll be co-moderating, I have been experimenting with Twitter. At first, I thought Twitter will be a great way to update my status in Facebook; however, now I realize that these 140 character posts are a great way to connect and learn with other educators too! I am following some other Twitter users and their twits encourage me to check out some new places online. For instance, Vicki Davis gave a heads up about her recent interview on NPR about blogs and Claudia Ceraso introduced me to Pownce (and while I couldn't look at the item she was referring to, I have signed up for Pownce's waiting list.)

Meanwhile in the classroom, I was looking for a new and different way for students to write about stories. The holidays are a great time for sharing stories! After reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", I asked students to share some of their favorite stories with me. Their choices ranged from Disney movie plots, to Japanese folk tales, to graded readers they had read in class. Instead of having them write detailed accounts of the story, and urging them to add *more details*, I had them write quick Story Pyramids. Although story pyramids are often used for younger learners in language arts class, I thought they would be a useful exercise for older students as well, since the word limitation puts the pressure on students to choose specific words, and to carefully consider their word choices. According to a lesson plan on Hotchalk, a story pyramid is constructed as follows:

1. name of main character
2. 2 words describing main character
3. 3 words describing setting
4. 4 words stating problem
5. 5 words describing an event
6. 6 words describing another event
7. 7 words describing another event
8. 8 words describing the solution

In short, by challenging ourselves and our students to adhere to character and/or word counts, we can make connections in new ways and add variety to every day tasks! Happy Holidays, everyone!

Happiness

2007-12-16T06:08:00.001+09:00

One of my favorite non-education blogs is The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I LOVE the topic of happiness, and think it is quite relevant to the classroom. Aside from that, her blog is professionally written and the content of her posts is so varied: personal experiences, quotations, observations, resources, and anything else related to happiness.

As an educator, I think that my personal level of happiness is related to what happens in the classroom; if the teacher isn't happy with what she is doing, then how can the students be expected to be happy, motivated, and engaged? Like Rubin, I can "test drive " different ways to increase my own happiness, but what can I do for students in this area?

I was thrilled when a colleague introduced me to Marc Helgesen's ELT and the Science of Happiness site which has a collection of short activities for the English language classroom related to happiness. For instance, material for a "Happiness Journal" and "A thank you letter to someone in your family" are just two of the short activities available on the site.

There are enough stressed and grumpy teachers; let's try something different, like expressing our sincere enthusiasm for our subject, and being grateful for the wonderful profession we've chosen!

Flock

2007-08-06T17:45:00.001+09:00

I'm writing this post from my new browser, Flock. Will it work? Let's find out!

Blogged with Flock

Get Hip to Learning English!

2007-08-04T06:53:00.000+09:00

The first semester of our school year has just ended. One of my major goals for the term was to use blogging with my students. I started a class blog at Motime called Get Hip to Learning English IES. Overall, it was a good experience, thanks mostly to the comments of great friends from online communities of practice! The students felt really encouraged to know that they were making connections with a larger audience.

There are some points that I want to improve about the blog for next semester. First, I want to make it more visually appealing and interesting, so students won't lose interest. Second, I hope to use the blog to conduct a collaborative online project with a guest or guests from another country. Finally, I hope to get students more involved in generating content for the class blog, or to have them start their own individual blogs. In addition to those items, I want to become involved in Dekita, and help students to create some relationships with student bloggers in Japan and other countries.

By the way, I chose the title "Get Hip to Learning English" because "to get hip to something" means to become more aware and appreciative of it (M-W Dictionary).

Since I'll be continuing the same blog with the same students in our next semester beginning in September, I'm looking forward to the chance to work toward the above goals. Please share your reflections or suggestions about blogging with students!

Conference Report

2007-07-07T07:12:00.000+09:00

In previous posts, I wrote about the Webheads in Action Online Convergence. I've reworked and revised my reflections and now you can read my conference report in the TESOL EFL-IS newsletter too!

Informal Writing Presentation

2007-06-26T10:57:00.000+09:00

I've uploaded my presentation from the JALT CUE Conference to Slideshare. The conference was a lot of fun, my presentation went well, I caught up with some old colleagues from Nagoya, and I learned lots of new and practical things to use in the classroom, which I hope to share in more detail in an upcoming post. In the meantime, please check out the slides from my first PowerPoint presentation! I have to thank my coworkers for their help and feedback!

Upcoming presentation in Nagoya

2007-05-27T07:07:00.000+09:00

JALT CUE Conference in Nagoya
The JALT CUE SIG Conference (Japan Association of Language Teachers, College and University Educators Special Interest Group) will be held in Nagoya on June 23 and 24. The theme is "Promoting Lifelong Learning" and it will be held at Sugiyama Jogakuen University.

I've recently learned that my presentation proposal "Beyond Journaling: Informal Writing for Critical Thinking". I'm planning to talk about informal writing assignments and how they can be used to promote critical thinking skills, to actively engage students with course material, and to offer opportunities for improvement in the four skill areas.

I think informal writing assignments are great because they allow students to focus on their ideas and connections to course material. Plus, I think as more and more students blog, they are writing "informally". If you've used informal writing assignments in the ESL/EFL class, please leave me a comment about your experience!

WiAOC 2007

2007-05-25T22:01:00.000+09:00

The Webheads in Action Online Convergence was held last weekend!

Although I wish that I could have attended many more sessions, the recordings and related resources are still available. I was so happy to hear two fabulous presentations about educational blogging by much-admired colleagues!

The first one was delivered by Vance Stevens, Nelba Quintana, Rita Zeinstejer, and Sasha Sirk; their presentation title was "Writingmatrix: CONNECTing students with blogs, tags, and social networking". These teachers had an idea to connect students to people outside the classroom using blogs, tags, and social bookmarking. It was interesting to see how the project was implemented by teachers in different parts of the world and students who are at various age and English levels.

The second one was presented by Carla Arena, Erika Cruvinel, and Ronaldo Lima; their presentation title was "Blogging with Students: Ideas to Enhance Communication". I was really impressed with this presentation because they discussed ways to maintain momentum and keep students interested in class blogging projects. Whereas the Blogging for Beginners EVO session focused mainly on developing teachers' skills to set up and manage a blog, this session focused on how to create and implement collaborative cross-cultural projects. They shared many examples including a mystery guest project, a scrapbook project, and even a blog for younger learners written by a dog!

The creativity and energy displayed through these online presentations was amazing and I'm hoping to implement some of their ideas in my class blog. More on that to come in a future update. In the meantime, check out the archives of WiAOC 2007 and leave a comment about your favorite presentations!

Listening Sites

2007-05-25T21:36:00.000+09:00

This month at Learning with Computers, we've been discussing online listening sites. A list of the sites we visited is on our del.icio.us page

Here is a link to a blog post titled "PROJECT: Listening Sites" which contains two project ideas I've shared with ELT teachers to use in the classroom.

What other suggestions do you have for teaching listening with computers?

Follow-up to B4B Session

2007-05-13T22:44:00.000+09:00

After the Blogging for Beginners session, Claudia noticed some similarities between a few of the participants and wrote about it on her blog, ELT Notes. You can read her post ELT Teachers Using Wikis

In this post, Claudia posed a few questions, including:
"How are your projects getting on? What are the difficulties you're encountering?"

My answer:
For the time being, my ESL for Migrants wiki project hasn't grown very much. The main reason I see for this is that the wiki wasn't developed for class use. Instead, I had an idea that former graduate students and current English language teachers would share materials that were successful with this specific learner population. Because of this reason, it has been difficult to motivate others to become involved and to get the project going, although I have had a couple of urgent requests for more information. There is a definite need for good material for teaching English to migrant farm workers and I will continue trying to continue this wiki project, although it could take much longer than I initially expected. Some time ago, Claudia and I discussed the phrase "under perpetual construction" and this would be a fitting phrase for ESL for Migrants!

I would be interested to find out how others have gotten collaborative projects not related to specific courses off the ground!

B4B Week Four Summary

2007-02-12T22:43:00.000+09:00

The highlight of this week at B4B was listening to Bee and Aaron's presentation at Alado. Although they shared many helpful tips and interesting anecdotes about blogging with their students, two of their key concepts, openness and interaction, made a real impression with me. By thinking about two different online learning experiences I had, I hope I can draw on these to create the type of learning environment they discussed.

One of my first experiences with online teaching and learning was in the Fall 2005 semester and I registered for a faculty development course on Teaching Online at the community college where I was teaching English Composition. In order to be able to teach online courses, teachers had to complete this professional development course which consisted of reading a textbook, participating in the course through Blackboard, and creating some elements of an online course in our discipline. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and thought it was so interesting to meet faculty members from other departments, such as foreign languages, fire science, and nursing. Even though we worked on the same campus, we would have never had such an opportunity to meet if it weren't for this course and Blackboard.

Shortly after completing this course, I decided that I wanted to continue learning online, so I enrolled in TESOL's EVO session, Becoming a Webhead 2006. Let's just say that the difference between these two systems was a big one! In BaW, I could interact with participants from around the world and through multiple the use of online tools, including Yahoo! Groups, a blog, a PB Wiki, discussion forums, voice e-mails, and the list seems to go on and on. Whenever I logged on to the course, I never knew where I would end up or what kind of connections I would make. New tools, tips, and projects were springing up all around me and it was overwhelming and hard to keep up, but really interesting!

By thinking about these two experiences with online learning, I can see the key concepts of openness and interaction. Although I did enjoy the faculty development course on Blackboard, I wonder how the experience would have been different if we had a more open environment, where we could interact with other educators. Maybe we could have found out the ins-and-outs of teaching online from a more diverse group of students, educators, and others if portions of the course would have been conducted in a more open environment. Maybe knowledge would have been more co-constructed among the participants, rather than just received from the textbook and facilitator. As the roles of teachers, students, and technology change, so must our teaching approaches.

I have a goal to use technology in my classes in the upcoming academic year. I'll try to remember the key concepts that Bee and Aaron spoke about, especially openness and interaction!

(Image from Bee's PowerPoint presentation to BaW 07)

A New Wiki is Born

2007-02-04T21:50:00.000+09:00

I'm proud to announce the birth of a new wiki named "ESL for Migrants". I've only just had the chance to develop it a little during this EVO session, so please be kind as this is just the beginning and it is my very first attempt to organize a collaborative endeavor through a wiki. This wiki is a dream come true and I hope it will be able to grow and grow!

For several years now, I've had a true desire to create an online resource for ESL teachers who work with the under-served migrant and seasonal farm worker population in the U.S., and especially in my home state of Ohio. When I was a graduate student, several members of the university's TESL program volunteered or worked with a local community-based social service agency to offer ESL classes and we noticed a need for appropriate materials and information. We worked together to create some resources, and I'm hoping to be able to share some of these via the wiki.

Right now, I've created pages on the wiki for teaching materials/resources; "Voices from the Field" (real life experiences of students, teachers, and others); and recommended print and online resources, but other related topics of interest are also welcome. If you have any information to contribute to this wiki or know of anyone who would be interested, please do get in touch. And visit ESL for Migrants soon!

B4B Week Three Summary

2007-02-04T21:18:00.000+09:00

Have I met the benchmarks for week three of Blogging for Beginners?

Blogging: I've posted entries on Bilingual Babble, One Teacher's Journey, and Puppets in Action (Thanks, Monika, for inviting me to participate in your collaborative blog about puppets!). In the posts, I've tried to experiment a little with html tags, but nothing major. I've edited my profile to include a picture and have even been able to guide a few people through this process as well. In the coming weeks, I'd like to try out more html and play around with fonts, colors, etc.

Comments: I've visited and commented on many of the blogs created for this session. I'm really amazed at the variety of topics covered and purposes for these blogs! And, some blogs include audio and video, so I'm eager to learn more about how to do these things too.

Contribute to the group blog: I left a comment on blogging safely and the advantages of RSS in the classroom. Although I haven't blogged with students yet, I think that these are two areas that are really important to think about before starting, so I'm glad to have had this opportunity. At present, I think that opening up a blog written by adult students to the public has more advantages than disadvantages; sharing can be really motivating and rewarding in a number of ways. Then, as the article points out, using RSS has numerous advantages for both students and teachers. One thing I still need to do is explore Bloglines, Netvibes, and others more.

Feedblitz session: Although I wasn't able to attend the live session with Phil Hollows from Feedblitz, I checked out his PowerPoint presentation and subscribed to the B4B blog with this service. When I received an e-mail from Feedblitz about a new post to the B4B blog, I was really impressed with the layout and both the text and images from the post were included.

I'm looking forward to week four where we'll learn more about blogging pedagogy!

Choosing an Educational Blog Host

2007-01-31T13:27:00.000+09:00

After last week's discussion at Blogging for Beginners, I'm wondering which educational blog host our members have chosen to use with their classes. Also, I'm eager to try out this new "Help Me Choose" widget from Kaboodle; its only drawback is that I can only include three choices. So, if you had to choose from Blogger, WordPress, or Free ESL Blogs, which one would you choose?

Get your own Help Me Choose widget See Comments

Reflections on B4B Weeks 1 & 2

2007-01-28T19:05:00.000+09:00

As I mentioned, this year I joined a few EVO sessions, but I've been most active in Blogging for Beginners. Here are some reflections on the first two weeks of the course.

The weekly tasks and activities have really opened my eyes to the possibilities of blogging in an educational setting. I've seen some great examples of class blogs, explored different blog hosts, and read several informative articles on blogging. The academic year has just come to an end for me, but I'm already brainstorming ways to use blogging in my classes next year (maybe for responding to literature, reviewing movies, or sharing cultural information.)

Above all, this workshop has connected teachers all over the globe, and we've been communicating asynchronously through Yahoo!Groups and e-mail and synchronously at Yahoo!Messenger and Alado. In fact, we had so much fun interacting at the last Alado session, with participants from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, U.S., Ukraine, Morocco, Japan--what an international group! Listening to the conversations, following the text messages, and trying synchronized browsing were real eye-openers! Plus, I've had the pleasure of visiting and commenting on many new and interesting blogs written by educators, students, and others. Even though sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the information and interaction on different platforms, I'm impressed at how much knowledge and experience has been shared, and how much everyone has learned through the contributions of all the group's members.

During the first week of B4B, over 700 messages were posted to the group, and I created a summary of these messages on the group wiki and bookmarked all of the links mentioned in the group's Blinklist. Although these were difficult tasks, I learned that anything can be done when you have fabulous people to help you along the way: Gladys and the moderators were there to provide instructions; Nina in Ukraine inserted all the photos on the wiki page; and all the participants shared their ideas in the messages! It was a great opportunity to get deeply involved in the workshop and to contribute to a group that I've already learned so much from!

Two of my favorite quotations are "Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm" (Emerson) and "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it (Anonymous). This enthusiastic and busy group is certainly achieving many things! I'm looking forward to the remainder of the session!

Got EVO?

2007-01-08T06:44:00.000+09:00

Only one more week until EVO 2007!

This year, I'm going to participate in Becoming a Webhead 07. Last year, I also joined BaW, and I was so amazed to learn about creative ways of using technology and developing professionally. This year, my goal is to make more progress and to actually become a webhead!
In addition, I'll also participate in Blogging for Beginners; it should motivate me to develop another blog project, Bilingual Babble, which is about raising children bilingually. I've also joined Teaching with PowerPoint.
EVO is going to be a crazy six weeks, full of learning, exploring, and sharing with like-minded colleagues around the world. I can't wait to get started and hope to see you there!

Frappr!

2007-01-05T20:04:00.000+09:00

Please add a pin to my Frappr map!

Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka

2007-01-04T14:19:00.001+09:00

Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka
Originally uploaded by maryehillis.

While reading an issue of PC World, I found out about a great site called Tabblo
According to their website, the purpose of Tabblo is to be able to tell a story with photos and words. I created my own Tabblo using some photos taken around Japan in Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka.

Online Communities of Practice Springdoo Message

2007-01-04T13:15:00.000+09:00

I would like to share a Springdoo message that I created for a fellow Learning with Computer member who was giving a presentation at "Online Teacher Communities" conference in Cyprus. She asked members of our online community of practice "...to share their experiences and encourage other teachers to join and/or create online communities..." In the recording, I reflect on why I initially joined the group and how it has affected me professionally. Message for Conference on Online Teacher Communities

Kaboodle

2007-01-04T06:58:00.000+09:00

I've been busy experimenting with Kaboodle. According to their website, Kaboodle is "the best place to organize your online shopping", but as a teacher, I'm always on the look out for creative ways to use technology for educational purposes. Here are my first attempts.

You'll see that instead of making a list of links to Learning with Computer members' blogs, I've inserted a Kaboodle slideshow of them. Because Kaboodle displays a picture from the site, it is easier to remember which site is which if you are a visual person.

Second, I created a collage of all the sites suggested during Learning with Computer's module on the Internet.

kushikatsu's Research

Wiki Wiki Wiki

2006-10-19T22:12:00.000+09:00

Last week, I attended a session at Tapped In with Adam Frey from
Wikispaces. Tapped In is a wonderful resources for educators, providing an array of opportunities to interact with other professionals online. In fact, this was the first event and I attended there, and it was a positive experience; I'm hoping to have the time to explore Tapped In more.

During the wiki presentation, we had a chance to create our own account with Wikispaces, and to begin building our wikis. It seems very user-friendly. The moderation page is easy to understand and allows you to invite people; upload text, visual effects, or sound; and to manage various aspects of your wiki. For the moment, my wiki is not ready to share, so in the meantime, I wanted to share a few of
the highlights of this wonderful session in hopes that they may be useful to you!

Wikispace's Educational Wiki

Some examples of Educational Wikis made using Wikispaces are available (Scroll down to find Westwood space and Aristotle Experiment Space)

A special offer from Wikispaces for K-12 teachers

On a related note, four teachers at our school are using a PB Wiki to collaborate on group work. Although we've just begun this, it looks like it will be a useful way to encourage everyone in our group to contribute. Wikis certainly are a fast way to publish material online!

Seal Generator

2006-10-16T21:45:00.000+09:00

Thanks to Claudia for the tip -- I created this logo for One Teacher's Journey with the Seal Generator You can choose your own text, border, font, emblem, colors, etc.
I think that students could use logo generating sites to create their own seals. This would be a great get-to-know you activity as students could explain their original logos to the class and how their choices reflect their identity.

Another Reading Lesson Plan

2006-10-15T20:10:00.000+09:00

Last Friday, I had another chance to try out more of the ideas from Dr. Shih's "Strategic Reading" presentation: motivation and EIL. Students need to develop an intrinsic motivation to read and this is often encouraged by the teacher. How can we motivate our students to read in English? After addressing this central issue, this lesson plan continues to unfold under the assumption that the students will be using English as an international language (EIL); for instance, they will use English to communicate aspects of Japanese culture to others.

In class, I wrote the following sentence on the board: In many western cultures, the number XX is considered unlucky. Most of the students knew that the number 13 is considered unlucky, and then some started to mention that the date was Friday the 13th. Of course, they wanted to know why 13 was an unlucky number and why Friday the 13th is particularly unlucky. So, there you have it--one way to motivate students to read is to choose materials which are meaningful and relevant to the students' lives. For example, the reading corresponds to an issue or event that is current. Here is how the remainder of this lesson plan transpired.

After gaining the students' interest in the topic, they answer some prereading questions. Notice the key vocabulary "origin" and "superstition" are introduced here.

What numbers are unlucky in Japan?

Do you know the origin of these beliefs?

Do you think that Japanese people are superstitious?

The students begin reading the article, again taken from Active Skills for Reading Book 2, and distinguish the main ideas from the details. A graphic organizer is given to the students for this purpose. I used the visual of an umbrella: the main idea is represented by the covering part of the umbrella and the details are represented by the supports for the covering part of the umbrella. Students fill in the graphic organizer and read the article. After reading, the article and their work is checked and discussed.

As a follow-up to this reading activity, I asked students to brainstorm a list of Japanese superstitions. Then, with a partner, they created posters explaining the superstition. The three requirements for the poster were a title, a picture, and a paragraph with a main idea and supporting details. Students were encouraged to include information about the origins of their superstitions. At the end of class, each poster was shared with the class.

From this activity, I learned a lot about Japanese superstitions! In addition, the students gained a better understanding of the concepts "main idea" and "details". By integrating writing, reading, artwork, and collaboration, multiple learning styles were used. And, I will try to post some of their work, if possible, so you can admire their creativity!!

Films for the Language Classroom

2006-10-15T12:47:00.000+09:00

I'm very excited about the possibilities offered by these online film-making tools! They can be used by teachers and students alike. I'm including a link below to a sample film I made with D-Film to introduce some English expressions for asking a favor and declining a request. Enjoy! My D-Film

Online Film Making Sites

D-Film Site

Digital Films

Zimmertwins Site

And...if you and your students are interested in making films, why not participate in our Film Festival?
Learning with Computers Film Festival

Reading Lesson Plan

2006-10-11T17:02:00.000+09:00

I had the pleasure to listen to a lecture, “Promoting Strategic Reading in College EFL”, by Dr. May Shih from San Francisco State University. She explained and demonstrated K-W-L: what I know; what I want to know; what I learned. Also, she drew my attention to post-reading activities which involve vocabulary learning and speaking. After listening to her presentation, I developed this lesson plan, based on Chapter Two of Neil J. Anderson’s Active Skills for Reading: Book 2.

In addition to the proposed activities, I think that this lesson plan could easily be modified to include online elements. For example, the students could create their surveys using Survey Monkey and post them to the class website or blog. Furthermore, the reporting of they survey results could be presented on the blog in written or spoken form. Finally, students could create graphs to depict survey results in a more visual manner.

Lesson Plan for U.S Teens: Reading is Interesting!

Know:
Students respond to the discussion questions in the textbook. These include naming recently read books and magazines, a favorite writer, and a favorite book.

Want to Know:
Ask students to predict what the article is about and ask questions to draw their attention to the key points (teens read different genres, they have other interests, etc.) and vocabulary (stimulating, fiction, give up, nonfiction, majority, etc.) that are actually contained in the article.
• What do you think the article is about?
• What kind of books do you think U.S. teens are interested in reading? Fiction or Nonfiction?
• Besides reading, what other interests do you think U.S. teens have?
• Do you think that teenage boys and girls read different types of material? What types of material do you think that boys prefer? Girls?

Read:
Read the article, “U.S. Teens: Reading is Interesting!” from Chapter Two of Active Skills for Reading.

Learned:
Check comprehension by following the T/F and Multiple Choice exercises in the textbook.

Follow up with these original questions designed by the teacher.

1. According to the survey, reading is _________________ and ____________________.

2. Fiction or Nonfiction?
Biographies
History books
Stories about young people
Mysteries
Detective stories
Japanese culture and heritage

1. The majority of students said that __________________ would be difficult to give up.

2. Preferred by boys, girls, or both?
Fashion and beauty magazines
Video games
Adventure stories
Newspapers
Celebrities
Social issues (Crime, Drugs, Poverty)
Sports

Post-reading Extending Activities (Speaking/Writing):
Each section of the article discusses the results of reading surveys. For your assigned section of the article, can you guess what two questions were on the survey? Here is an example. The article says, “Over half the teenagers interviewed said they read more than ten books a year.” The survey question probably was “How many books do you read per year?”
Reread your section of the article and write the TWO questions that the survey questions below.

Question One:

Question Two:

Ask your questions to at least 10 students!

After studying the results of your survey, complete these sentences.

According to the survey, ______________________________________

The majority of students ______________________________________

The results of the survey show that______________________________

Professional Development Survey

2006-10-09T22:11:00.000+09:00

During BaW 06, I realized the dedication to professional development and amazing productivity levels of fellow BaWers. When we were exploring online survey tools, I created this survey. Click here to take survey If you haven't already taken the survey, please give it a try!

If you wouldlike to incorporate technology into your classes, but you feel that you don’t have enough time or expertise, then online surveys might be for you! They provide a quick and easy way for teachers and students to create original online materials for the English classroom. For example, they are a convenient way for students to collect primary data; links to student surveys could be posted on blogs. They are also useful for teachers who would like to administer online tests, quizzes, and worksheets and can be used for pre or post reading activities too.

Sites where you can create surveys include
Survey Monkey
Zoomerang
Survey Builder

September Wrap-Up

2006-09-30T10:07:00.000+09:00

The past month has been a whirlwind of activity and change. The transition from teaching online community college courses in the U.S. to face-to-face university courses in Japan has gone smoothly. Even though we had been away from Japan for a couple of years, in many ways, it seemed as though we had never left. Although I must admit, there have been some suprises! During English I class last week, I asked the students to underline all the transition words in their process paragraphs and I watched as many of them reached into their pencil cases for their rulers! Then, I said to myself, "You're not in Ohio anymore!"

Anyway, here is an overview of September's professional development activities. I hope to have time to write more about each of these! After being away from Learning with Computers for about a month, I am happy to say that I'm back to doing my best at following along with the weekly tasks and helping to moderate messages. These friends continue to amaze with their creativity and friendship! Also, JACET, Japan Association of College English Teachers, held its annual conference on our campus. I attended several presentations, including those given by Donald Freeman and Jack Richards. Then, if you haven't already had a chance, please check out the podcasts produced by my colleagues, Edgycation(see previous post). Now our days are filled with teaching, office hours, meeting with students, grading papers, and the everyday work of being teachers. So, I'll do my best to keep this blog updated regularly!

Podcast

2006-09-14T13:49:00.000+09:00

As many of you know, I have recently started a new teaching position. You can hear about the transition at Edgycation where my new colleagues interviewed me for their TESL podcast. Check out show #14 and let us know what you think!

My Blog Title

2006-07-31T11:39:00.000+09:00

The name of the blog, One Teacher's Journey, reflects several paths that I'm currently following.

I am exploring new ways to use technology in the classroom. So, this blog will be a place where I can experiment with new tools.

I am moving from teaching English Composition and Public Speaking courses for American students to teaching English language courses in an EFL setting.

I am discovering how teaching intertwines with other areas of my life, such as being a mother.

What path are you currently on in your journey as an educator?

Bubbleshare

2006-05-26T22:00:00.000+09:00

During BaW06, I was introduced to Bubbleshare. I have made an album and would like to share it with you. If you scroll over the picture, you will also see a caption.

This album is powered by
BubbleShare
- Add to my blog

My First Post

2006-05-13T04:43:00.000+09:00

I've created this blog to discuss professional development. Recently I've become a member of two online communities of practice: Learning with Computers and Becoming a Webhead 2006.