Life Long Learning

A nice video from Leigh Blackall on how to insert videos onto your blog. I found that my edublogs format bar has a simple and easy insert/mebed mp3/mov. or other media file button (so by simply clicking the the yellow circle with an A on the post toolbar I could paste in the YouTube video)

Check out his http://screencasting.blogspot.com blog for more “screen grabs and audio explanations – demonstrating ways of using
information and communication technologies for teaching and learning
online”

technorati tags:YouTube

Franca Plastina invitied me to hold a seminar about Blogging for TESOL Cosenza

on March 1st and I was pleased to be sponsored by TRINITY Italy. Great to travel down with Raffaele Nasti himself.

Lovely audience with a some experienced bloggers too! Thanks everyone
Here’s the link to my PPT slides

Blogged with Flock

On the Digital Gaming EVO session I am also enrolled on we are talking about online gaming and how this can increase learner interest and motivation?

One participant, Joel, metioned that his daughter plays a game that ends in “dead babies” and this reminded me of something I heard on the BBC Digital Planet Technology podcast in Dec 2006 (they seem to have removed it now so am I allowed to share the mp3 here -see podcast below ) It was about Persuasive Gaming and I was wondering if anyone has experience of these for language learning. The ones they described where about Darfur is Dying available free and how the game is based on trying to get water for your family and Peace Maker simulating the role of Palestinian and Israeli Presidents to find new solutions. (BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5153694.stm )
Interesting?

Although the argument is these games don’t change the world and they can also trivialize a serious problem, can’t they? But the question is are they maybe a little more ethical and help get away from promoting dead babies, what do you think? I thought Joel’s comment on getting learners to write about how they feel is really good system for opening debate – The debate can be serious and maybe the way to visualize even serious problems sometimes for young learners is to make them accessible to teens in “their” language, to tap into their way of thinking and then encourage discussion on world famine, or Israeli-Palestinian issues and even on how the game has simplified the problem.

Let’s take the Darfur one as an example:

Is it better for learners to be involved simply in creating conflictual environments (World of Warcrafts does have these elements, doesn’t it? ) or trying to resolve conflicts in an oversimplified environment? A difficult question to ask but often the key to making people wake up to the reality is to find a channel that they can tune into, surely?

If playing a game also allows room for discussion on how learners feel and exposes to some of the questions say for example:

• How did the conflict start?
• What is the government doing?
• What has happened to the civilians?
• How many have died?
• What happened to the peace deal?
• Is anyone trying to stop the fighting?
• What can be done?

and room to explore the answers then I would argue that an oversimplification is helpful.

Given that not all young people know what is happening in Darfur then I would argue it’s better to help them find out. We can start with a game, if that is appropriate, and then follow on with a more serious debate on the issues of “getting water for your family”. Comparing contexts, raising awareness, discussing issues and opinions can help open doors. Not all learners will immediately respond to a New York Times article or an abridged UN report or section on Famine in our coursebooks so if technology can lead us to understand that Darfur is Genocide we can stop and help us take action to stop it then yes, let’s remember Darfur is Dying – find out more and maybe also read and create blog spaces where we can express views and explore new ones? 

Illya said that Patricia had suggested she post some of the questions from her blog to the YG so everyone could join in the discussion.

Her questions are:

1. How much of the wheel will need re-inventing? Is teaching for the 21^st
   century different than teaching before? Will we need to teach different skills?
   Will the others prevail?
2. How will we overcome the great fear we encounter when we try to get others to
   see that the world and the way our kids get information is changing? (is it
   really changing?)
3. Any more questions out there? Are there any answers?

Illya says “ I perhaps focus on teaching because learning is so vague – we really don’t know how and why certain things are learned and others are not. Maybe learning will also change.”

I have to admit that I was intrigued first by the questions (but didn’t have time to answer immediately) and secondly and more importantly I was intrigued to see these questions posted on our YG discussion list (prompted by moderator). This was a clear move away from the open aggregated space we have spent a few weeks setting up and back to the
closed forum type style of a yahoo group.(the somewhat different style of this
EVO session apparent to us all)

But before I had time to write to find out why or if there was indeed a reason, Bee stepped in with “Patricia and Illya, Thanks for putting up the questions. I think they are an excellent topic for discussion. However, there are also a number of readings to do and questions we have asked you to consider and reflect on for this week before you move into podcasting next week.”

I completely agree that this and all EVO sessions have to be carefully moderated and it’s up to Bee, Patricia, Graham, Nick etc to steer the dialogue and ensure participants aren’t overwhelmed. I take this opportunity to raise my hat to you all. I know (first hand) what sort of demands it takes and you are not only extremely committed and helpful but
such rich and wonderful people.

I was just a little puzzled by this “stalling” of the flow of ideas. OK it’s week 3 and slow time, open space and food for thought.

I must admit that I am behind with reading too, too busy comparing public OPMLing features and obviously like everyone tied up with f2f work – university end of semester
exams, so maybe all will be revealed soon when I finish my “homework” but in the meantime can I ask:

• Can we reply to Illya?
• Should we record our ideas in audio format?
• Or add just add text comments to Illya’s
  blog if we feel that’s appropriate?
• or Send a message to here
• or just simply wait …..
• will everyone be able to male the synchronous session?
  

On the subject of OPEN and CLOSED from last week and moving on to teaching styles this week I thought this illustrated a point and carries on from my own notes over the past few days?

• How does the flow of information change?
• Just how much of a group is created between commenters and how much overlap is
  there of generating similar info?

I can see in these few weeks there are central strands and a lot of experiential staged
learning. But if we are coming or were sort of prompted to come together to discuss main issues on the YG instead of (or as well as) on our blogs was this to draw more participants in?

• Would Illya’s questions sparked discussions elsewhere?
  
• Would that have been more dispersive but less intrusive?
  

We are all teachers and quite involved (time permitting) but with learners this is a real big issue.

• Were we cleverly slowed by Bee in order for discussion to be deeper and
  more participative later?
  
• Will this alienate some learning styles but guarantee
  that “lurkers” and “late comers” have a chance to come forward?

My personal feeling is that the range of tools for this EVO session are well thought out. Moderation communication on chat schedules, welcome messages is well served by YG, for a bank of easily accessible and updatable resources the wiki is great and for the creation of individual but connected and developing ideas and discussions our aggregated
blogs are wonderful.

So I would suggest I feel we should psot our responses direct to our own blogs or as comments to others’, to say in this case Illya’s great set of questions direct to her blog (as some have already) and those who are not ready to take part catch up later when they are. Is that what we are “supposed” to be doing? This is what I would encourage with learners so that those personal spaces can grow with a little moderator watering but without drying out the flow of ideas because there are other tasks to be achieved, or have I missed a point here?

Valentina

technorati tags:Teaching, Blogs, Learning, styles

Blogged with Flock

An interesting question came up on the OWP Yahoo! Group.
I can see that there are still so many different ways of doing the same
thing that many are probably still confused about subscribing to RSS
feeds – I know the feeling
should it be bloglines, netvibes (or feed demon which I used and liked
for 30 trial days) I’ve worked hard on finding shortcuts that work.
Time is precious and manual smethod very laborious and boring. We want
one-click buttons and Flock offers just that!

These are the solutions I’ve found. Our expert moderators will no doubt add others…

Solution 1 – Use Flock as your browser!

If you have had a chance to download Flock and are now using it as your
browser the operation is really smooth so I would highly recommend that.

Then all you have to do is use it instead of bloglines and subscribe and organize your feeds there

1. visit the OWP blogroll http://openwebpublishing.wikispaces.com/Participants
2. open the blogs that you want to subscribe to (using Flock as your browser) and then
3. click
   on the RSS orange button or RSS entry/comments link (with Flock you
   will see an RSS icon in the URL address bar – very cute)
4. you
   will automatically get a message “You are previewing this news feed. To
   subscribe, click the button below, or drag it to a collection on the
   left.”
5. Click and drag (Now I found the drag and drop feature really helpful!!! And means you can easily sort folders)

If you want to subscribe to the feeb with blogline you will see flock has a Sub with bloglines button on the toolbar

Solution 2 – Add a sub button to your browser

If
you prefer to carry on using your other browsers you can also add a
“Sub with bloglines” button to your browser see this Easy Sub page

http://www.bloglines.com/help/easysub

What
seems to be happening is these applications we are using are indeed
getting more user-friendly and they are also more inter-related. Great
that’s helpful and social!

Here’s a screenshot of my recently created EVO feeds in my Flock sidebar

Blogged with Flock

It’s week 2 of EVO and our OWP wiki page lists a great set of tasks that are mainly focused around the open nature of blog, public feeds. We have been involved in aggregating the different blogs of participants to our bloglines account to quickly monitor updates and new entires.

This week we have also looked at Bloglines vs. Netivbes and there have been various comments on user-friendliness which I will list later but the main part of the week has been getting familiar with

Flock is Firefox-based Web browser which integrates next-generation Web technologies such as RSS content feeds, blogs and bookmark and photo sharing all in one.

Flock includes a built-in RSS reader meaning that we don’t need to sundscibe to feeds from out bloglines account we can do that from Flock. This web browser is I think what was missing – it’s really taken on board dome of the web 2.0 features and makes navigation easier.

As the advert goes “Various Web sites and software programs already provide this functionality, but Flock is one of the first to integrate it into a Web browser.” I think that is quite revolutionary, and forward looking!

The best feature of all is that direct from the browser you can “Create a blog post” by pulling down the menu or clicking on the button located in the main navigation bar. The button launches a sophisticated blogging tool that integrates on a drag-and-drop level with Flickr, a popular online photo management and sharing service recently acquired by Yahoo.

Flock integrates with a number of popular blogging services, including Wordpress, Six Apart and Blogger, according to Decrem’s own blog.

The aim of Flock is to be a dashboard-browser allowing instant collaborating,
blogging, sharing photos, enjoying what others are doing all from one easy location.
It, of course, is based on tags too and full integrates with del.icio.us

Here’s a good Business week article on it

Here are my comparative notes:

Bloglines:

• easy aggregator
• interface a little bland
• split window viewing
• can blog with it
• new folder and
  categories easily managed
• not much personalisation of “look”
• name editing restricted
• very good

Netvibes

• completely customizable
• great for mixed approach
• integrates YG!
  
• + email + News feeds
• blogroll capacity with great viewing
• clutterfree to 100% cluttered depending on how you set it up
• easy editing
• colour coding possible
• drag and drop the windows
• extend and crop the windows
• very nice feel

Flock

• all of above
• + add blog entry straight from Browser
• + drag and drop Flickr photos into blog entry
• + nice pull down menus
• excellent

Well, birds of a feather FLOCK together was the best way to describe the philosophy behind this one!

Blogged with Flock