Brainstorming

Brainstorming, originally uploaded by Msbea3.

Last week was an interesting one as we worked with audio on the digital materials preparation techniques course (I recorded myself reading one of Shakespeare's sonnets -I'm awful at reading poetry...). It was fun to choose some music tracks and mix it all down and the music helped to cover my flawed performance (trimming also helped!).

I enjoyed listening to the recordings made by the other participants -quite different in tone: a nonsense poem that I loved, a poem written by the participant herself -powerful and passionately read...

I also had a go at creating digital stories and that was a lot of fun too (my first script was lousy but I liked the voices I chose for the characters). The second story didn't have voices; it was a cartoon with speech bubbles and background music. Fun to choose as well. And it was lovely to read and watch other people's stories...I especially liked the feel of those created at Mixbook, but the Flickr 4-6-frame stories with no words were also nice. Simple is good too -and they may appear simple but some (if not all) demanded quite a lot of preparation. I remember two with more than one version where family members posed specifically for the various scenes. Storytelling has that power...it brings people together at various stages and in various ways.

I'm also quite involved in a crosscultural project and thrilled at the positive feedback and interest we've been getting from the people we're inviting to join. It's very exciting.

Last but not least, I've joined the Flickr group that Plurkers have and it's a real treat to get into Flickr and see everyone's photos. I like building galleries there too.

And I love having a PLN that's not only growing but getting stronger, more fun and affectionate each day.

Online presentations

It's just after 10.30 AM and I've just attended my very first Elluminate live presentation -it was great! Michael Coghlan discussed different features of Flickr, possible uses in the classroom, what "visual literacy" means in the context of language teaching as a subterm of multiliteracy or digital literacy and why it might be a good idea to use media like these in the classroom.

The highlights for me were:

• The wonderful possibilities brought about through Tagging and Geotagging; their potential not only for searching and organizing but also for joining people up
• Annotations -beyond the cute and into a richer visual experience
• The possibilities of creating "mazes" or stories through annotating
• CC Licensing as a teaching resource
• The various possibilities all this offers to teaching and learning

Mike took us through a step-by-step journey of his experience using Flickr, which was very interesting, and made me think of something I posted a few days ago: how unplanned this experience is; you start using something without realising all of its potential at first but discover it as you use it. There lies, in my opinion, the value of experiencing things and not just being told. Something I hope to be doing in my classes.

Last week I attended another excellent Webinar, organised this time by English Central. Jeremy Harmer discussed teaching Advanced Learners. The highlights of this presentation for me had to do with putting the emphasis on the Learner and what s/he needs/wants to learn.

FOAF project: making human connections

"foaf" from Jim Ley's site Jibbering.com, originally uploaded by calmansi.

Uploaded by calmansi.
FOAF = Friend Of A Friend

Just made me thought of what we're learning on these courses -dmpt101, evomlit, images4education, participating in Nings, wikis, blogs, microblogging...

And the potential of all that.

Learning, learning everywhere

It's rather late and I wasn't going to blog today, but I've just had a look at the "practice wiki" we use on the course I'm taking (Digital Materials Preparation Techniques) and a smile flashed across my face. We started on Saturday/Sunday, and Tuesday's just gone but I've already achieved a lot! There's lots more to learn, of course, but it amazed me how different it felt to read the introductions this time. There were already a number of them the first time I saw it, when I wrote mine, and I remember feeling a bit daunted. Now I felt at ease and from the Voicethread introductions I was able to put some faces and voices to some names...

I'm also taking Images4Education, which is what I devoted the most time to today -that can be seen in the fact that I now have a Flickr account -with photos!

I still need to get to grips with the third course on Multiliteracy (I'm supposed to tag a post evomlit by the end of this week...this one would be cheating, right?). I'll tag it but not make it count.

It's all actually very exciting. And today I also had a mini exchange in Russian again! (I had to frantically look up words and go back to check which character comes first, but my interlocutors were patient. I hope to meet them again). That's another tool I found on the Web this week: Russian keyboard online . I've been searching for Cyrillic fonts on and off for years now and just this week I find a much simpler way to use the characters and people to use them with!

Let's end it with one of the photos I took today: