Leadership - Attending a Certificate Program in TESOL 2010

Murphy's 8 roles for Intelligent Leadership:

1. Selector
2. Connector
3. Problem Solver
4. Evaluator
5. Negotiator
6. Healer
7. Protector
8. Synergizer

The first 7 roles are worked on in order to have the synergy of a group in which the parts work best together than when they do it separately.

Consider this communication ladder that we find in any organization:

• contempt
• hostility
• avoidance
• indifference
• contact
• awareness
• involvement
• empathy

Where do you think you fit? Where are most of your colleagues? How would you help your co-workers to move towards contact, awareness, involvement and empathy?

Supervision - rooted on the vision that supervisors should "examine" a teacher's classroom looking for "errors". This is historical, and that's why we still have many "snoopervisors".

Effective Supervision - helping teachers to become reflective, well-informed learners and how we communicate with teachers.

Three approaches to Supervision:

1. Directive/informational approach
2. Collaborative approach
3. The self-directed approach

Three barriers to communication with teachers:

1. Judging behavior
2. Offering unsolicited solutions
3. avoiding other's concerns

Session with MaryAnn Christison

Google Swirl

I was just playing with Google's swirl, a nice way to visualize images. It goes after the trend of more dynamic ways of visualization. Not that it is tremendously innovative, but it certainly adds a swirl fun to it.

Have you tried it? What are your impressions?

e-Learning - Don't do This to your Online Students

More and more I find myself looking for ways, activities, resources that will help me connect with my online students in meaningful ways. It's always a challenge, but when you hit it, the results are extremely rewarding. When you get your students to respond to a challenging, extra activity, heaven. Just like in any classroom, part of the job of learning is on the learner. However, there is that percentage which is teacher-driven. In any setting, students must feel they belong, imagine online!

This video which I learned about via http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/ , a blog where you certainly will spend, but not waste time, shows exactly what is disconnection, lack of a motivating environment, feeling of isolation, not a teacher presence to guide, facilitate the learning process.Don't Do This to your Students!

Teachers as Architects - Reshaping the Classroom

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Teaching in Social and Technological Networks « Connectivism via kwout

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I've been reading with interest what George Siemens (Via Joe Evans) has to say and we already know. However, it is always reinforcing to listen to what we feel is happening, but still don't grasp how to tackle with the new realities. In the binational school I work for, we've been in the process of incorporating some minimalist changes in relation to Ed Tech for the past few year mainly because of a small group of educators-believers-dreamers and because there's a crowd who wants to move along, but just don't know how. Right now, it seems that the changes are taking a new dimension, from micro to leaps. As an Ed Tech supporter, I feel that more than the technological aspects being integrated into our lesson plans we need to ask ourselves why, when and how. Most of all, we need to be aware of the new affordances change brings along. We need to question how the relationship between learning/teaching has been taking new dimensions. We need to understand what new skills we, as educators, should master and pass it on. We need to be aware of the power of online communities to help us thrive and still rely on the good old teachers' room chat.

Our reality is certainly augmented by all the tech possibilities around us and our learners, but the big question is still humming in our minds: How can we amplify our educational experience through these new means we have at the tip of our fingers? How can we give up control and still provide a learning environment in which WE feel comfortable, energized and not worn out, stressed, pressured?

If we start understanding the key new roles educators will be playing in the very near future (for a very few, not future, but present), then we might be able to meaningfully reshape our classroom to profit from the distributed construction of knowledge. George Siemens again gives us some clues in his post Teaching in Social and Technological Networks:

The following are roles teacher play in networked learning environments:

1. Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modelling
7. Persistent presence

Every educator should understand these concepts/skills and add to the list his own set of personal skills to successfully support learning outcomes that make sense to them and to their learners.

Join #edchats

There are many educators and people in general who think Twitter is just for nonsense personal types of things. However, I must say that since 2007, it has provided me with insights, connections, resources that go much beyond "in the bathroom", "at the airport", "at home" types of prepositional tweets.

If you start following the right tribe of your interest, magic is likely to occur. I'd say, professional magic. If you don't know where to start, a while ago, I invested some time to create a page with the basics of Twitter for educators that might give you a boost in this microcosmus of possibilities. Access http://twittering.wikispaces.com/

Well, all that to invite you to join twitter conversations using the hashtag #edchat. Though Twitter is meant to be an asynchronous tool, there's always a nice twist people imagine, mainly educators! A group of educators decided for a specific date and time for these educational discussions in Twitter, and now it became a live feast. For all the details on what a hashtag is, how it works, and how you can participate in the Tuesdays #edchats, take a look at: http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/2009/08/18/edchat-join-the-conversation/

Your tweetlife will never be the same...

Organizing Books

Organizing Books
Originally uploaded by carlaarena

Interesting to notice how much the books represent who we are, what our drives, interests are, and still there are empty spaces for much more, for rethinking, regearing, redisigning ourselves every single day...Which books shoul we add to our shelves that will make a difference for us and the ones surrounding us?

Happy Xmas 2009

Happy Xmas 2009
Originally uploaded by carlaarena

I hope for a Xmas with more laughs and gathering than ostentation
I hope for a true Xmas spirit with children running around the house and laughing
I hope for a Xmas that unites
I hope for Santa's generous spirit for all

I wish you all a wonderful holiday season.

Testing Scribblar

Online

This topic is certainly dear to me. Just making a retrospective of my own blogging, I can see how many times the words connections, interconnected, relationship, connectivity appear in my writing, not to mention my talk. I can see how connectivity is part of my life in every sense of the word. In the past, I used to be connected face-to-face with people and that already fascinated me. Nowadays, besides the daily encounters with family, friends, co-workers, students, I´ve added my online connections as part of my routine and just as essential to it. There´s not a single day that I don´t turn on the computer, talk to people, learn from others, interact, join different tribes, smile and get excited with the tremendous possibilities I get from these digital encounters. They are no less important and real than every person I talk to, hug, laugh and interact.

The way I´ve linked and hyperlinked in cyberspace has changed how I view my profession and my sustained development as an educator and human being. I wouldn´t be here if it weren´t for a tweet from Dave Cormier.



I could be writing about any ed tech happening, but wouldn´t know about Darcy Norman´s project. Through my online circles serendipity is learning, a tweet surprises us, blogging adds to our voices and comments become the heart of these humanly ties that we start to cherish and long for. Through Slideshare, I pass on what I´ve been up to, even Facebook has its own connective role.

However, in an interconnected digital space, I´d say that my darling is Flickr! Not that the others aren´t essential hook ups. They are, and all the apps make a difference in the way we relate to others. But Flickr has just such a powerful appeal, and that´s exactly why tomorrow I´ll be sharing some of my ideas about it to a group of educators, and I think it has a lot to do what I think about humanware and connections. Flickr is visual and vibrant. Its dashboard shows who I am, whom I connect to, what makes me tick. Flickr reminds us of the power of an image. It empowers me to communicate, share and learn from my network. Flickr is part of my interconnected learning cycles about life, people and my profession.

Flickr - Design that Connects

View more presentations from Carla Arena.

I connect online through my learning communities, I thrive because of them. Technology is just the invisible hands that make all this possible and desirable.

WooHoo! Surfing Google Wave

The wave is huge, here to stay and to change the way we communicate. I was glued from the start. when I got there, of course there was a Webhead Wave! More than expected from this wonderful group of international educators who are always taking the lead when it comes to what's emergent, new...I had a lot of fun talking to my Webhead friends and testing things around.

Google Wave's interface is clean and user-friendly. The drag and drop feature to create a wave with your contacts and to add photos is fantastic. You can see everybody typing in real time and conversations just flow as if you were chatting with friends.

I can see a big wave of change in the way we'll be creating groups, nurturing communities, interacting with our students, and even teaching online. Can't wait to find more about the WAVE.