There is a blog and blogger that keep surprising me and just bringing joy to my daily life. Mission Amy is pure inspiration that brings people together, always with a mission.
Amy published yesterday a 2011 collaborative overture. Compelling. Exhilarating.
In Brazil, before it is summer time, people start preparing for it. Gyms get packed. We try the latest diet, we go on a bikini project. Well, it is summer in the southern hemisphere and my makeover has just started!
Time to take a closer look at what has been taken for granted for a while. As the teacher challenge advances, I keep checking blogs, commenting and learning that there is always a lot to learn about blogging and the blogosphere. Here's my take on the the pages makeover, or must, I say, creation? For, when I decided to move my other blog in a wordpress platform to blogger in the direction of simplifying the blogging act, I simply ignored the pages feature in Blogger. I had a profile text that didn't tell the readers much about me, who I am, my drives, what I do. So, this was my chance, first to learn how to use the Pages feature. Then, to carefully built upon useful content for the readers. It was well-worth spend the whole morning on the summer makeover project.
Some of the highlights were:
bumping into Photovisi, shared by Kirby. Photovisi gave the looks I needed to my About Page. I could easily create a photo collage to give a better sense of who I really was. Plus, her About Page was one of a very creative touch that shows how enticing it can be.
Joe Mcleay's idea of having a lifechanging links page gave me the idea of an Inspiration Page.
There was also another blogger who totally called my attention. She confessed having a boring About page and even posted how it looked before. The new one is just an incredible lively upgrade. Now, we can really see who she is, her passion, her life. Totally exciting Page now. So many places I've been to that I can't get hold of the blog, but will!
All in all, this is a reflective process of making a visual revamp that will certainly affect content and give meaning to what I've been doing for so long. It is a call for action, movement. Plus, it is a plead to make us reflect upon our professional lives and our persona.
Kids are an endless resource of learning. They teach us every single day with their body language, words, funny sentences that make sense.
In the second activity of the Teacher Challenge, we were asked to analyze a blog post in terms of its effectiveness.If there's one blogger I don't miss, Darren Rowse from Problogger is the one. He just knows the drill.
One of his recent blog posts that grabbed my attention was
Here are some of the reasons this is a catchy effective blog post:
Darren tells a story. He is personal, he connects.
He starts by grabbing readers' attention through the title. Though it is a big one, it is totally effective into driving his audience to the text and video.
He gives choices to readers: multimedia with the video, plus the video transcript.
The video has a professional look, high-quality end.
The reader feels as if you were there with him in the room just as if we knew him face-to-face.
He has momentum in his story and he gets to his main goal stated in the post title. He doesn't disappoint the reader.
He gives his message in one sentence "Tell something important to the world". He asks for action.
The next time I or you write a post, we'd better take into consideration Darren's 4-year-old son advice of telling something important to the world. Plus, using Problogger's author strategies to masterfully deliver a message. So, I bet you have an important message to the world. We all do. What's yours?
Though I'm late, it is never too late.
As being back to consistency in my blog is a desirable and attainable goal for 2011, I'll follow the Teacher Challenge and kickstart it with the ten things I've learned and wished all bloggers knew about blogging.
1. You never know how your posts will affect readers. Even when they don't comment, you can be assured that there are people out there who care about what you are writing and saying.
2. At first, blogging can feel like a lonely endeavor, but it is not. It is a networking weaver, a reflective step towards your personal and professional life. Through blogging, you connect to yourself and to others.
3. Blogging raises awareness. It empowers. It asks for movement.
4. Through blogging you'll look into yourself and find out what your passions and drives are. Never miss the chance to do it.
5. The three main things I love to blog about is education, gastronomy and culture/people. All that using lots of images, my own images. Does that give a clue of what my passions are?
6. Blogging is not the act of writing. It is all about reading, thinking, connecting, commenting, joining in. Blogging cannot be summarized into your own blogging, but a whole networking ecology that comes with it. In fact, writing is just part of this ecosystem.
7. Blogging is addictive and transformative. That's why I have a personal mission of helping others blog as much as I can. Blogging can change the world, our world. Believe me, I've seen it.
8. There is no formula in blogging if you are passionate about it. No constraints. No right or wrong.
9. Blogging is an open-ended endeavor waiting for new possibilities, opportunities and twists.
Interesting to notice that there is still this common belief among people that if it is online and it shows in Google, you can use it! No problem with copyright, whatsoever.
I'm glad, though, that more and more, as part of a movement towards digital literacy, Creative Commons is becoming more of a common word. At least, that's what we try to do, make students and educators conscious of the importance of giving credit to the author of an artifact. Not an easy task, but each one of us who learn about it, should tell it at least to another person initiating a movement pro-Creative Commons. Is there an easy and more professional-look than Flickr Creative Commons? Flickr is, by far, my favorite place to search for Creative Commons licensed photos.
Last Friday, Erika and I had been totally taken out of our comfort zone. For the first time, we presented a Pecha Kucha. A presentation format in which we have 20 slides sliding through automatically in 20 seconds! In 6 minutes and 40 seconds, we were challenged to deliver our message. Even more demanding was the fact that once again we decided to present a Pecha Kucha together and with no slide sequence. I mean, I didn't present 10 slides, then Erika 10. We decided we would switch from one another according to the flow of ideas. Well, we did it after a lot of thought and preparation beforehand. It was fun and the adrenaline rush keeps pushing us forward!
Pluse, we learned a lot from the other Pecha Kuchas presented during the BrazTESOL Brasilia afternoon seminar. Very enriching afternoon, indeed! We are glad to be part of the revamping of our BrazTESOL regional chapter.
We are Carla and Erika from Casa Thomas Jefferson. Passionate learners. Today we want to show you that we and our learners do not to be learning inside a box. We can all reach the world, share and connect. Connect and learn, learn and share in a feeding cycle of learning.
2.
What do we want from our students? Engagement, collaboration, independence, critical thinking, active participation, production, knowledge of their surroundings to be more respectful, tolerant. We have our own dreams and ideas of what an ideal classroom is, and we are very demanding.
3.
Are you the kind of educator who looks for ways to connect to other educators? Are you an active participant of teaching communities? Or the only interaction you have is in the teachers’ room, during coffee break? Do you know the ELT surroundings?
4.
Some of us still look for institutional backup for professional development. Is it the only way to go nowadays with all the connectivity we have and digital possibilities? NO. Now, we have the chance to develop our own PLEs and PLNs - Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks through digital media that has given us inifinite possibilities of connections. You can extend your own education through a self-structured and self-organized learning environment.
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What are those possibilities? Inumerous. But we are going to focus on some simple ideas that can make a difference for you to start with and for your students as a consequence of your own development.
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How many of you are in FB? How many of you are in FB groups to enhance your professional development? How many of you are in twitter? In twitter and FB do you follow just friends or do you follow like-minded professionals who tweet and post tips for the classroom, interesting resources and educational links? In one way or the other, you are already there, but are you using them to connect and power up your classroom practice?
7.
Time to start our micro-revolution. Did you know that you have educators groups that you can follow in twitter? Did you know that you can ask a question in twitter and get many answers? I asked one simple question. Look how many answers I got from my network in just a few minutes.
8. Did you know that you could start you own network with a group of teachers or students using a safe social media tool called EDMODO, which is just like twitter but it is great for a group of like-minded people?
9.
Did you know that Facebook has just launched a new space for groups? You can have a group of students, educators, administrators. You can even take and deliver online courses using FB groups? When you create a group in FB, there is a unique email for the group, the group can add docs, photos and videos. Group members can chat and they can discuss issues there. People are there. You just invite them to be with you in a group. For example, we’re just testing a space for online interaction for our next FREE online professional development, an online session on Digital storytelling. And now we have one for the BrazTESOL Brasilia. Join our group!
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If you are still not sure how to start your PD microrevolution, if you need more guidance, if you need tutors, mentors to go beyond your comfort zone, there is one place you can get started. There, you’re going to find like-minded professionals and lots of practical ideas for your classroom.
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Every January/feb, there are totally free online professional development opportunities for educators all over the globe. This project is called Electronic Village Online, EVO. There are sessions ranging from drama in the classroom to learning how to navigate and teach in SL. They are for English teachers. We’ve been volunteer online facilitators since 2007. Next year, we’re going to facilitate a session on digital storytelling. Join us!
12.
We talked about twitter, facebook, EVO – electronic village online. These are just some ways you can connect. A fantastic and well-established community of practice you might consider joining is the webheads. They are a group of educators who share personal accomplishments but are also together to test new tools, collaborate on international exchange projects and discuss pedagogical issues.
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Take advantage of it. To do that. Take action. Don’t wait for someone or your institution to tell you what to do. You are in charge of your own life, your own professional life. Share, gather and connect to construct, to build knowledge. Amplify your educational possibilities. Dive into self-directed professional development.
14.
Why should I share, connect with others online if I have so much to do in my daily life? Why should I bother and spend my time connecting to people I don’t even know? Besides being globally networked, an engaged educators, a better person, a lifelong learner and a multiplier of good classroom practices, there’s much more to it.
15.
One great example of why we should invest in pd and bother is the following. I got a retweet from somebody in my network whom I’ve never met asking for help for another teacher. I connected to this teacher who was developing a project with her class about latin america.
16. Because of our connection, we created a voicethread, an excellent tool for the classroom, and now we simply have a mosaic of teens’ life in Brazil. Just because of my personal learning network in brazil. Just because of my online personal learning network plus my local one, the coffee break group.
Teachers get really discouraged. They say the have little time, lots to do , a family to take care of. We sympathize with that because we have kids and husbands, tests, compositions, homework to check and correct. Plus, lessons to prepare. Still, we started sharing a bit, connecting to others.
18.
We went from isolated teachers who did things just with a feeling we were doing it right to networked global educators who can rely on the network to be informed decision-makers in the classroom. We are now connected and we connect our students. We have friends and wonderful connections all over the world. We’ve tremendously improved our cultural IQ with lots of cultural awareness, tolerance and communication using English.
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How much time do we need to be considered a networked, 21st century educator? It depends on you. Start really small. Focus on one community you want to learn and explore to share and connect. From there, you’ll have lots of new possibilities. Soon, you'll become more and more ambitious!
20.
We have started our own wiki to share and connect to other educators, Brazilbridges. You can find this presentation and the ones we’ve given since 2006 there. We’ve found our way to do what we’ve been asking our students to do, being active participants of a community of learning.
This is a question that has been widely discussed. And I'm sure that better than I could be writing or saying, this blog post resonates with my own thoughts on the issue.
In the past, I've come across with classtools many resources. Isn't it neat the fact that anybody can just get there and edit it? Lots of possibilities! Ready to share your own idea for a cool use of the classtools site?
Creating comic strips in the classroom is one of the easiest ways to engage students immediately. They are glued to the comics creators because they are in charge of their creation, they have choice, and they can fully navigate through their imaginative realms.
Every teacher should try to use comics in the classroom. There are a million ways to do it. Let your students be the remixer, creators, characters, voices of their own stories.
I´ve taken many online courses, and it strikes me that it is always the same old tell-me-something-about-you kind of forum. There are so many interesting ways to get started with a group online that I couldn´t possibly list it here. There is video, voicethread, slideshare,a blog post, intriguing questions, among others.
However, I want to share one with you that I thought worked nicely and it also gives a sense of online presence. You seem to be there, a real presence to your e-learners. When we are in an online setting, that´s what matters, connecting, being there to begin with.
What do you think? Is it an effective introduction? How would you make it different? How would you introduce yourself in an online course?
