The SIG day was a success, I think everyone will agree.

Two  special highlights of the day were related to the Matopo Primary School project run by Cindy Hauert.

From Teacher training in Zimbabwe 2008

The first highlight was to hear the wondeful news that the Roger Federer Foundation has decided to support this project. This is extremely important news as it means that the support can take new dimensions. It’s the children who are the future of any country, and at the current state the future of Simbabwe looks dismal.

Then at the end  the amount of money contributed through the raffle and donations for Matopo School was announced. It was a high figure worthy of the charitable and helpful nature of ETAS and its members.

Several presenters have generously donated their payment to the school. I don’t know many names, but I do know that Peter Travis and Fiona Joseph from flo-joe and splendid speaking websites (see below) were two such people. I would gladly recognize others if I have their names.

Another such presenter was Ian McMaster, from Business Spotlight, who also blogged about the SIG day and the Matopo project. I do invite you to read what he had to say in his post “A penny for their thoughts.”

You can keep informed by reading the Matopo blog, and please do leave a comment. Comments can be very motivating, especially when the prospects seem particularly bleak and the hurdles high (such as getting materials across the border!) and why not become an official follower? This is very easy to do if you already have a google account. Just click on the follower button in the column on the right and help make the group fo supporters grow!

If you know of other such noble acts, please leave a comment so they can be recognized and thanked!

Do good things and talk about it!

FIrst of all, a big thanks to Fiona Joseph, who gave us an excellent workshop.

It was the second of two to be given through Skype and with a pre-recorded presentation.

You can find the pre-recorded part below, but you will need Flash installed to ensure it works properly. There are also all the links mentioned during the workshop.

Flo-joe for ETAS

One of the links that we looked at is LibraryThing but there is another social network for books at Shelfari.

We discused how to include literature in the classroom and agreed to share any experiences, problems and ideas as comments to this post. I am looking forward to your input!

ETAS’ very first on-line presenter gave an excellent workshop on skype. Technology went well with everything except the couple of computers that were down. Thank you, Peter Travis!

As ETAS is concerned about the environment and wants to save trees, there were no handouts. However, the presentation (not including live talks) and all the links which were mentioned are included in the website below.

Splendid speaking for ETAS

You will need Flash for the presentation to work, but all the other links should by fine.

We would love to hear from you about your experiences with teaching and learning with Skype, so please do leave a comment here if you have had any- good or bad.

Here are the surveys that were made during the workshop:

interest in swine flu vaccine

Taking additional English courses at TS

CLIL in Primary

Shopping strategies

and one more:

Working across cultures

This is a post for those taking the peanuts for monkeys survey workshop.

We are working with surveymonkey (hence the title of the workshop) and you can easily find surveymonky here.

It’s an extremely easy way of making surveys, and JoAnn and I have set one up for you to take:

Click Here to take survey

You can also feel free to leave comments at the end of this post to let us know how useful you found the workshop and how you intend to use the surveys.

Just right on time for the SIG day on the 12. September ETAS has gone a twitter!

You can follow the Twitter from the ETAStweet in the right hand bar, and if you haven’t signed up for the SIG day yet, then there’s still time, but not a lot.

Why should ETAS be on twitter? You can get up-to-the-minute information  on what is going on, changes, etc, and they can even be sent to your mobile. IF you want to send a tweet (a twitter message) to ETAStweet, simply add  @  before the name, i.e.   @ETAStweet  .

This is the last post about Twitter, but I hope it has given you some incentive to try it out, and you are always welcome to leave a comment.

I hope to see you all in Basel soon!

If you’ve been reading here, you’ll see that my tweets seem pretty disconnected,but if you begin following others, you will see conversations, information, news, music, and of course, a lot of noise mixed in.

And now, some of the experiences I’ve had with twitter:

While on a trip to the States, I was tweeting for my students. When I mentioned my visit to South Carolina, I got a tweet about the local culture of Gullah, which I naturally shared with my class.

A friend wished me a good time during my trip.

Others welcomed me back home (on twitter??)

I found a great link to a lesson plan about Susan Boyle just as I was contemplating what to do in the next lesson.

And I’ve found many a relevant link about other topics.

Graham Stanley and I negotiated his workshop at the last SIG day.

There was a discussion about the appropriacy of twitter for primary school, and a better tool for this purpose was mentioned (edmodo.com)

I have completed a survey for someone writing a paper, linked and thanked for through twitter.

Last night I went onto Twitter and learned that Farrah Fawcett had died only a couple hours before. Of course, she was an icon in my youth, not just because of Charlie’s Angles. Shortly after, it was on the news, but I’d heard it before!

and I JUST read that Micheal Jackson has also died. That makes 2 icons in 2 days. I don’t know exactly when he did, but I just saw the news on twitter.

So here are just a few ways. You have to get used to the noise, but you do get a feel for what’s going on in the world if you are prepared to listen.

New task if you are on twitter: On the right there is a box that says ‘Direct messages’. Click on it and send me a private message (illyac). Only I’ll be able to see it, so you can see there is room for privacy as well.

Oh, and here’s a song from one of my fellow twitterers – fresh off the press!

Without wanting to politicise, it seems my addressing Twitter was rather timely! Twitter is playing a large role in the political happenings of Iran at the moment. Information is being passed on and rallies organized. It’s no wonder that this internet tool is blocked in some countries as its power of mobilization is even stronger than that of facebook. The reason being that in Twitter you are accessible to everyone, not just your friends.

If you have joined Twitter, I have a task for you.
On the right hand bar of your home site you will find a search box, and under that there is a list of the trend topics. Just click in any key words related to the news, teaching, or any other topic that interests you and see what happens.

Twitter

In the months of June/July I will spend a bit of time looking at twitter, what can be done with it, and maybe even encourage a couple of you readers to join the club if you haven’t already.

There have been several articles in the newspapers recently which mention twitter and question whether it is the next big thing or just another passing hype. Reason enough to have a closer look!

First, what is it? It is a web-based tool in which you can share up to 140 characters (including spaces) with your followers. And you can follow other people and see what they write. I’ve added my own rss feed on the side and will try to be consciencious and update regularly (also known as to tweet), showing the different ways of use.

How is it used? Well, one of the reasons for all the headshaking as to why it is so popular is that many people use it simply to inform the world of what they are doing at any single moment. It seems to many that this is very voyeuristic and more like a public diary. Probably the most oftenly asked question concerning twitter is :

WHAT’S THE POINT?

I asked this myself and thought this is certainly a bandwagon I’m NOT jumping on. However, curiosity got the better of me and now I too am on twitter.

Here are some of the ways it can be used:

• to find relevant websites that others are tweeting or to share websites with others
• to give live summaries (using a cell phone) during conferences or other such events. – this is becoming more and more frequent, even among politicians in meetings or during football games!
• to get advice and information. You can send out a call for help and if there are many people following you, the chances are pretty big that someone will be able to help out.
• to share bits of information with others. You can make groups and share information within these groups, but more on how to do that later.
• to keep in touch with colleagues from all over the city/country/world, forming an occupational network. An example of what a great resource this is can be seen when Susan Boyle was in Britain’s got talent. Within a week there were lesson plans for how the youtube video and her experience could be used for language lessons!
• to share what you are doing while you are on holiday. If you have a blog or website, you can add the rss feed (see blogging 101) and your students, friends and family can be informed – a continuous postcard!
• to get your students to write. 140 characters aren’t many and a certain amount of skill is needed for language learners to be eable to express themselves clearly in so few words. It can be used for creative writing or for summaries. Obviously, they need to be on twitter too, but you can do twitter virtually (in this case, on paper )

I’m not the only one who has written about twitter. A very good article is on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. He also goes into depth, and I’m sure there will be quite a bit of overlap, but I’ll also try to give examples in the next couple of posts.

If you’ve decided to join and check it out, feel free to follow me too. I’m illyac. Let me know that you are from ETAS so I don’t end up blocking you, and I’ll gladly follow you too! If there are enough ETAS members on twitter, then I’ll set up a twitter group later on. And remember, the more people you follow, the more useful it will become to you.

Tweet tweet

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Here is another interview with Scott Thornbury, also carried out in Second Life.

Here too, feel free to comment on your own opinions