29 Jan highlights

We are already in Week 3: Integrating Online Speaking and Listening. This has been a most fruitful week so far, with very interesting comments in the Enhancing Lessons Yahoo Group and warm friendly chats at Tapped In.
Some highlights:

• Alicia's idea for using Chinswing:

"How about this idea? Children love listening to stories and inventing stories. After teaching and practising the past tense, the teacher could start a story in CS. Sth like 'It was Sunday and Roberta was going to visit her grandparents who lived in the wood. She woke up at seven and .....'
Then the children would have to continue the story (we could even ask them to begin by repeating the last sentence in the previous post). The teacher could post again if necessary (e.g if they have lost track of the story).

• The discussion Rita started in Tapped In, which allowed me to discover this wonderful tool.

• The links to Studystack provided by Robert. Great tool for learning and practising vocabulary.
  

• The Flickr toys links provided by Analía. They are great for creating stories associated with images. Here they are: Bookr Bubblr Phrasr
  

18-22 Jan Highlights

Five days without posting... but not precisely because I've had nothing to say. Quite the opposite!
So much has been going on that I've had no time to report here. The highlights?

• Very interesting discussions in the Enhancing Lessons Yahoo! Group, mainly on the topic of lesson planning
  

• Participants have started creating their blogs. A pleasure to read their posts and learn from their comments and reflections!

• Some of them have started commenting (in their own blogs) on the scenario proposed by Robert for this week in the Enhancing Lessons Blog

• Great chats at Tapped In with some participants. The night before last I got to know a bit more about Mónica from Buenos Aires and her lovely 4-year-old son, who actually typed some messages in a language of his own.
  

• Thanks to Analía, I realised that I had to state my email in Settings>Comments here in order to receive notifications when someone commented here. Thanks Ana! And sorry dear visitors for not answering sooner. Now you know the reason :-)
  

17 Jan highlights

Definitely, meeting some participants at Elluminate for a live session. It was wonderful to put a voice - and a face, because we uploaded our photos onto the whiteboard - to the names signing the posts in the YG and in the wiki.

We discussed some features of the Elluminate environment, generally getting familiar with it, and then we went on to share the kind of tools we have been using in our lessons.

The session was so exciting that some of us decided to continue chatting at Tapped In when the Elluminate session was over.

14 Jan highlights

1. Watching the video here featuring Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University, discussing Web 2.0 in terms of social impact. Some of the points he makes:

• teaching has not changed but learning has
• students learn what they do
• to learn is to create meaningful connections, to create significance
• there's no meaning without connection and no connection without meaning
• students learn what they care about from people they care about and who, they know, care about them

Wow! And I just watched half of it (it lasts about an hour)


2. Meeting CarolinaL in Tapped In. Nice talking to you Carolina!

Co-moderating Enhancing Lessons

Here I am, starting yet another blog. But the event well deserves an exclusive venue.
Being in the moderating team of Enhancing Lessons is proving to be a wonderful experience for so many reasons.
To begin with, because of the fabulous moderators:

• Robert, the perfect gentleman, always so patient with us inexperienced members.
  
• Rita, my mentor, so generous and warm.
  
• Nina, another generous webhead.
  
• Maru, whom I've known for only one year but has already become a true friend.
  
• And then my colleagues from Rosario, Analía and Alicia whom I knew only by name or remembered vaguely and who are already becoming wonderful road companions on this journey.