Cyberkitchen

SIRikt 2011

2011-04-18T13:46:00.009+02:00

I was in Kranjska Gora again this year, but only for the last day of the SIRikt conference. Thanks to its dedicated organizers, the conference has grown into a major national educator's event with over 1200 participants this year and some truly amazing presenters. Like before, this year's events too have been recorded and are already available online.

It was wonderful to meet friends from the national Collaborative projects online community and hear examples of good practice shared by fellow teachers. Two dear colleagues of mine – Tatjana and Lorena are this year's well deserved winners of the national eTwinning Golden Cable award. Way to go!

After the early Saturday morning plenary I attended a most refreshing workshop led by Tim Rylands and an always useful one – How to make a good presentation by Dr. John Collick.
Tim and his partner-in-crime Sarah lit up our minds and hearts with their humour, passion, creativity and team spirit. They took the 20 and something lucky participants to a refreshing journey in the iPad wonderland – a most appreciated reminder of how invigorating it is to relax and let your imagination roam free and of how this can work fabulously constructively in a group context such as a class. We had a walk through a medieval town where I got a new husband and son, we created some weird sounding music, made and baked some pottery and carved a watermelon among other things.

Some presenting tips by Dr. Collick - in addition to those classical ones about not turning the ppt into a karaoke exercise by reading out loud, about theimportance of using only keywords on slides and of quality visual support and, of course, of practice, I found interesting the following exercises for voice and posture:

- 20 sec mouth stretching before giving a presentation
- A breathing exercise involving slowly inhaling and exhaling air with your hands spreading out and closing back in thus shaping an imaginary ball – from a tennis size one to a volleyball one. This should be done 3 times as slowly as possible without fainting.
- Step with your feet reflecting your shoulder length, turn your shoulders backwards and straighten up your head as if trying to touch with its top an imaginary thread hanging down the ceiling.

Another interesting piece of info new to me was the fact, that our brain reboots every 10 mins or so. That's why it makes sense to include breaks in presentations. And that we can generally only remember 3 things. So it makes sense to put no more than 3 points on our slides, if possible using no less than 6 words.

In the afternoon my 3 boys and I climbed up the way-too-many-to-count stairs to the top of the Planica jumping hill – a lovely and most useful after-conference exercise. ;-)

...which rewarded us with a spine-chilling view downwards.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

2011-01-20T10:20:00.001+01:00

Here goes my object story.

My favorite mirror. Small - but big enough to cram my face in. I got it for my 31st birthday from my husband cousin's wife Katarina, a young talented artist with millions of creative ideas.
Katarina had bought the little mirror with the simple bright orange frame and painted my family on it – the 3 stick figures are my 3 boys (my husband and the kids) and me.
I like the way there's just the 4 of us depicted against the lively orange background – blank, with no background noise or any other distraction - just us. Life sometimes runs faster than I'd like, and is often filled more with things I need to do than with things I want to do. The little painted mirror makes me feel good – its lively colors, its simplicity, the way it magically dispels everyday clutter and brings a smile to my face when I rest my eyes on it. I like it. :-)

Digistorytelling 2011

2011-01-19T09:51:00.000+01:00

Photo: Olena Crawford
A new round of EVO worshops started. :-) I'm on the Digistorytelling team and right now we are in week 2. Over 240 participants joined in from all over the world - many of us are 'old' friends from previous sessions. Like swallows, we keep coming back for more. :-)
One of the Week 2 tasks this week is a 6 word story along with a CC-licensed photo - it's amazing how much can be said in so few words.

eTwinning project idea

2010-10-18T12:57:00.003+02:00

Dehbia, Evelyn and I adapted and elaborated the Walls Talking Poster idea into what is to become a 2 month eTwinning project.

The idea is that students describe what really matters in life using a combination of images and texts and share and compare class production.

Tools to be used are:
Twinspace user walls, Twinspace and/or class blog, Twinspace forum, SP Studio, Big Huge Labs, others.

Aims:
Connect with a partner from another country and collaboratively explore each other's culture and view of life.
Reflect about things that matter and share and compare class production.

Work process:
Step 1 : Introduction (creating avatars & editing Twinspace profiles)
Step 2 : Choosing partners and connecting with them.
Step 3 : Creating an image/text combination about something that matters to you
Step 4 : Checking production, commenting and voting for the best three posters.

Expected results:
A collection of posters displayed in the schools or on the web.

eTwinning in France

2010-10-17T09:37:00.003+02:00

From the 13 to 15 October I was a lucky participant of the Hungarian-French-Slovene eTwinning PD Workshop. It took place in the lovely French town of Reims in the land of Champagne.

The workshops included:
• Getting familiar with the project work basics,
• Examples of good practice,
• Getting familiar with the eTwinning portal and Elluminate,
• Networking, creating projects and registering partnerships.
One of the examples of good practice came from Slovenia – Tatjana Gulič from the Preska primary school wowed the audience with a 'Your Tube' project idea linking music and physics classes in two Slovene schools – a primary and a secondary one. The project idea was developed in collaboration with Lorena Mihelač, a music teacher from the Metlika secondary school.
The main idea is exploration of scrap tubes from various materials – during the physics classes students study them from the point of view of physics and during the music classes they write and play music using them.
Participants tried out the 'tubes' – it was a lot of fun and sure worked!
Inspired by great examples we rolled up our sleeves, exchanged our project ideas and started connecting. We registered a number of new eTwinning projects which should connect Slovene, Hungarian and French students and teachers in the current year. 
Such eTwinning seminars are a wonderful experience – I'd say especially for teachers who already have some experience with collaborative project work and are interesting in finding an international partner.
I presented the Things that matter idea from the Walls Talking project and was then approached by two lovely teachers from Reims, Evelyne and Dehbia, with whom we developed an eTwinning project idea and registered it on site. I’ll post about our activities on the class blog.
Lots of interesting happens behind the walls of out schools – it's nice to be able to see and learn about these things – and get inspired dip our toes. All you need to do to attend such a workshop is check out the national agency’s site in your country – in Slovenia it's Cmepius.

Exploring slideshow options

2010-05-14T10:28:00.006+02:00

Many interesting photo and comment contributions have been pooled within the Walls Talking project. On the project site and in the Flickr group. The flickr group pool contains is a complete collection of photos gathered so far.

I was wondering about the simplest way of displaying thematically related photos with pertaining info and comments... The only way to do some of this in Flickr (photo + info slideshow) seems to be to tag items in the pool and then share the tag-generated slideshow. Or am I missing something?

I've gathered some of the sets here and here.

Flickr slideshows look good and have this great embed function, but to see photo related info viewer needs to watch them full page with the 'show info' option on.

So I was wondering about how to display things by showing more information about contributions more interactively and I remembered diigo slideshows I once played a bit with and liked a lot.

This is my attempt number 1 - a longer Listen to the Walls Talking diigo slideshow covering more or less the same topics as the above Flickr sets. The default transition speed is rather slow, but you can always use the buttons below to move on faster or speed it up bottom right.

I like diigo a lot. Miss an embed function but appreciate a lot the fact that the slideshow is interactive and can include any webpage.

Why do I blog?

2010-05-10T10:04:00.002+02:00

Jen asked why do we blog in the Webheads YG. This was my reply.
I don't blog much and faaar from regularly but enjoy it a lot - and also enjoy going back to what I've done.
My blogs are my online spaces where I occasionally retreat to reflect, record, share, or simply keep things I care about. I've got a cyberkitchen, a cybermill, a cybergarden and a cyberattic. Even though the first two are a bit more alive than the others I don't think I'll ever pronounce dead any of them.
I like the way conversation is kept open this way and people can get in touch with you. I am not a well organized person by nature so I also like a lot the way contents on blogs can be simply and meaningfully organized using tags. It comes handy when you need to show sbd. what you are working on, or what you've done/planned to do at some point, and to aggregate contents from various sources.
I like the way you can feel the writers behind their blogs, easy follow numerous blogs using an aggregator of some sort, and learn so much and meet so many fascinating people that it's incredible.

Online safety basics

2010-05-06T10:24:00.004+02:00

Just sharing here a presentation I created for collaborative online learning group led by Viljenka Šavli within the national project called e-Šolstvo, which promotes e-empowerment in schools across Slovenia. It's in Slovene.

Varnost na spletu

View more presentations from sasasirk.

Garbage related sites that make you think

2010-05-05T10:13:00.002+02:00

Another English version of my post from the Smeti Ning.
Plastic bags are one of the first things that comes to my mind in connection with garbage.
1. Battle of the bags is an interesting American documentary comparing the use of plastic and paper bags – which are more damaging for the environment? What has been done so far in various places to fight unnecessary pollution, what we can do ourselves... The documentary is split into short 1-2minute chapters, is partlčy interactive and I find it useful for English listening comprehension (B1+) as well as a good starting point for a simple research into our bag policy.
2. The Battle of the Bag – is about 40 minute long Canadian documantary about plastic bags.. lots of interesting facts – production, history, issues, responses, ...
3. Series of shocking photos of dead birds from a remote Pacific island away from civilization – their rottening dead bodies are full of plastic garbage from the ocean. The island is 2000 miles from the closest continent.
4. http://explorethecycle.com/ is a nice, animated visualisation of the recycling process at a materials recovery facility – an easy to follow animation consisting of short chapters

Our garbage - our concern

2010-05-04T10:43:00.005+02:00

This is an English version of a post I've written in Slovene at the Ning site called Smeti, naše skrbi (Our garbage, our concern). The site has recently been created by my friend Vili (and will, sadly, need to be relocated due to Ning's new business policy).
The idea behind the site is to promote class collaboration around the topic of garbage - within and between schools and cultures. Teachers have been encouraged to post their project ideas to the Ning and I've posted this one:

DIY sites: practice English + learn about cool recycling ideas + connect with others

At http://www.instructables.com/ one can find numerous DIY ideas concerning recycling various materials. So why not directing students over to this site – they'll easily find there interesting and feasible ideas to carry out in practice – cross-curricularly within their school or reeaching out to other national or international partners in crime.
Interesting ideas could for example be gathered together at an English class and if necessary translated. Individually or within some practically oriented courses students could then create things and maybe organize an exhibition, an auction, or find some other meaningful or useful place for them (e.g. Biotechnical school students creating a scarecrow out of old CDs and setting it up on their school field...)
Older students could perhaps gather together interesting project ideas during their English class and pass them on for younger groups to create them... (Suzana and I have been thinking along these lines during one of teacher training sessions – she teaches young learners in primary school, I teach college students).
With this idea in mind I went to the before mentioned website and checked out some possible ways of recycling paper. I was amazed by numerous ideas there and by simplicity of this one here http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Paper-Beads/ - so I emptied my paper basket bin and used the paper and wooden beads to create this:

Here's a longish list of various DIY sites ... Worth checking out, I think.
Also worth checking out is http://earthcast.posterous.com/ - a great collection of nice green project ideas for teachers and students.

Copyright and right to copy

2010-05-04T09:55:00.006+02:00

Image created using Bart Simpson Chalkboard Generator

It's been 300 years since the world’s first copyright law was passed by the English Parliament as ‘An Act for the Encouragement of Learning’. The British Council gathered ideas about copyright from renown thinkers of our time and posted them here.
I like Cory Doctorow's defense of our right to copy.

"We are that which copies. Three or four billion years ago, by some process that we don't understand, molecules began to copy themselves. We are the distant descendants of those early copyists - copying is in our genes. We have a word for things that don't copy: 'dead'."

A must see presentation on this topic from 2002 is Lawrence Lessig's free culture.

Copyright at SIRIKT2010

2010-04-22T10:19:00.004+02:00

I attended this year's Sirikt conference and participated in a round table discussion on copyright in Slovenian education together with renowned Slovene copyright lawyer experts Miha Trampuž, Mojca Pečar and Katarina Krapež.
I did a bit of thinking and reading on this topic in preparation for this event and saw that the more I read the more questions I ended up with... It's true, educators, kids and web folks in general often don't remember to credit authors, cite sources, and ask permissions for publishing things online... I think mostly unintentionally, because we tend to do things fast these days and do them the way we see others do them.
My schoolmate at secondary school had this fabulous T-shirt saying 'no school, no job, no problem' - if you can't tell right from wrong you are blissfully unaware of mistakes you make... it was sort of along these lines that my thoughts rambled as I was trying to make sense of the copyright act restrictions.
As I said, the more I read the more questions I had… Many of them were kindly answered during the round table discussion and earlier workshop given by Katarina, still many remain unclear.
There are no national borders on the web… which is just great. I understand I need to follow Slovene copyright law in Slovenia – also when I use foreign copyrighted works? E.g. I think that according to the Slovene law I could freely use copyrighted music in a non-commercial school performance as long as I credited the authors and cited my source… I’m not sure I could use e.g. American copyrighted music the same way here…
Theory and practice are a challenge to match if you are not a lawyer.
Katarina, a cc advocate, mentioned that people sometimes surprisingly know more about cc than about the copyright law. I don't find that too surprising since cc terms are written way more humanely and are a much appreciated successful attempt to reconcile the legalese with the language understood to common web folks. I'm a big fan of the 'for dummies' trend and think we should all create meaningful contents for our target users (teachers too ;-)) if we expect them to take it seriously.
Here's a lovely view I from my hotel window:

Webheads in Poreč

2009-09-20T23:22:00.007+02:00

Today was a very special day. Miha's wonderful mum took care of our two little monsters (now sound asleep in their monster beds), while Miha and I drove to Poreč, Croatia, and met up with Rita and Hector from Rosario, Argentina. My Rita the webhead, a dear dear online friend and partner! Incredible as an afternoon like this would have seemed to me less than 3 months ago, it's just happened today.
Rita is just the way I imagined her. Lively. Full of joy of life. Wonderful to talk to. With her and Hector and Miha we talked about life and work and the world. About borders and cultures and wars and politics. About friendship, curiosity, and serendipity. About the webheads. It was a beautiful waning summer day. And the world got really really small for awhile. :-)
Here are some of the photos Miha took - I only remembered to take his when we got back home (shame on me).

Morocco photos

2009-08-15T23:06:00.002+02:00

This is my Morocco Flickr set

This is Frans' Morocco Flickr set. He's a very talented photographer, he also documented many of his beautiful pics, matching names and faces. With a little help from the iearn community, most of the faces on pics could get names.

And this is the iEARN flickr group some of us flooded. :-)

Morocco reflections 3 - my pres

2009-08-15T22:53:00.013+02:00

My presentation was scheduled on the last day of the conference. A fair number of people turned up and seemed interested in a graffiti sharing idea. I talked a bit about what inspired me to start the project, a bit about my partners in crime (esp. my dear webheads and Rita's CAEB class and pm and my class and I4E folk and sdutsj and mih and iatefl slo and EFL University and ... :-)), about the project tools and about where the project has taken us so far. We've been basically collecting and sharing graffiti and stories behind them and exploring our countries and cultures, spreading over all sorts of cyberspaces.
Our society is doing very well building all sorts of walls around us - physical and mental, it is also doing very well using and abusing all those walls, and the natural walls too, for all sorts of purposes; artistic and less artistic ones. Walls protect our ideas, culture, property, they divide and separate mine from yours, right from wrong, us from them; and they reflect urban responses of people inhabiting those spaces. Their passions, frustrations,beliefs, views. By listening to the walls around us we can learn more about the world around us and also about ourselves. What do I see? What do I hear? Do I care to see at all? Or hear? Should I?
It's stories of national heroes and it's stories of everyday people. It's drugs and wine and politics and sports. It's the land and the culture. It's funny writings and those that hurt. Many can be seen or heard in different ways and can as such be used as departing points for discussions.
Do looks matter that much?
Why aren't there more women in politics?
Does violent music mean violent people?
Often it is difficult to draw the line between the right and the wrong, humour and bullying, art and vandalism... and this means - talking. And talking in an EFL class is good, isn't it? Especially talking about stories from the walls of our schools, streets, towns... because these tell stories of people from these schools, streets, towns. And because these people matter.
Funny thing I noticed as soon as I set foot on AUI campus - there were lovely murals here and there but no graffiti anywhere. It confused me. I thought there were talking walls everywhere where there are people. Thought wrong it seems. But I guess the fact that AUI is a prestigious university not open to general public has something to do with it. I found talking walls alright in other places in Morocco. It made me wonder though - are there countries or cultures where you can't find graffiti on the walls?
I have been learning a lot all the time by paying attention to graffiti around me. Perhaps I'll try to focus more on things like prejudice, nationalism, intolerance (if my next groups are interested...) Or other things, we'll see...You can find any topic on the wall.... so I
hope to continue with the project in the future too. It has been included on the iEARN site, so perhaps there will be other teachers/classes joining the ride. :-)
description: http://media.iearn.org/projects/wallstalking
forum: http://foro.iearn.org/iearnforums/wallstalking/
Flickr gallery: http://www.flickr.com/groups/wallstalking/pool/show/

Morocco reflections 2 - nice presentations

2009-08-12T07:42:00.004+02:00

Some presentations still stuck to the back of my mind are:

A day in a life project by Chris Baer

Chris will set 2 days during the coming school year, during which interested teachers with classes from all over the world are invited to document their life during that day in writing and photos (natural, ordinary photos preferred to 'pose for the camera' kind of photos) and share these stories online. Students are asked to be careful not to invade privacy of other people. This here is the iearn forum link of the project http://foro.iearn.org/webx/.ee70728/
I plan to invite my students along, it should be fun. Chris says he already has confirmations from classes from Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, Israel (Palestine), Kenya, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Ukraine, USA and Yemen.

Copy Right or copy wrong by Diane Charlton Midness and Anindita Dutta Roy

A nice overview of basic guidelines for ethical and responsible use of media - not an easy topic to be delivered in a commn-sense friendly way, but the copyright girls did it very much so by asking questions of things we/people do and whether it is right or wrong to do them that way. They then provided explanations and guidelines to what often seemed to be divided audience. There is no global copyright protection all over the world, which additionally conmplicates things. Well, one useful thing I've learned is that using copyrighted photos in acadamic presentations falls under Fair use. Diane posted her slides to the iearn forum too http://foro.iearn.org/webx?230@@.1eaee4e8

The Bridge of Generations by Manal Fitiani - Lina Daher;

The project is about connecting the youth and the old in East Jerusalem - the young generation teaches the great grands how to use computer - students and their great grands choose 1 topic and they covered it learning along computer skills (traditional food, etc.). This is a really nice way of bringing together the young spending too much time behind their computers and the old, feeling lonely and out of touch with the modern world.
I think we could use this idea at our school too - ours is a technically oriented school centre, home to computer science secondary school and informatics vocational college among numerous other schools. Instead of teaching their great grands, students could perhaps also instruct seniors in the nearby old people's home or interested people taking classes at The Third Age University (http://www.univerzazatretjeobd-drustvo.si/english.html). I can see numerous possibilities here - in addition to helping old people explore topics they are interested in, perhaps also record things people want to share with the world, help them connect with their dear ones who may not live close to them, perhaps help them find a long lost relative overseas.... who knows. I think everybody learns a great deal by teaching others. And by helping others. And technology can do so much for us these days...

There were generally 6 concurrent sessions each time - and no repeats, so I missed some things.

Morocco reflections 1 - meeting friends

2009-08-12T07:24:00.004+02:00

It's been weeks since my return from Morocco, impressions have settled down a bit so it's time to pour some of them out of my head and onto the web. :-)
It was an amazing experience - 430 people from 53 countries of the world - the north, the south, the east, the west - the young, and the young at heart. In blue jeans, in national costumes. Waving flags, playing music, singing songs, dancing, sharing experience, connecting.
And there were Webheads too! :-) Isabel, Nour Eddine, Mbarek and Claudia. We set aside a few hours for lunch one day, they flew with the speed of light. Such nice people! Such great moments! Nour Eddine is an amazing organizer - thinking of 200 things at the same time, always helpful, always with a smile on his face...

The Moroccans hospitality and thoughtfullness made sure everybody felt at home in Ifrane. They were so considerate all the time. Nour Eddine and Mbarek and Othmane and Said and Latife and Youssef and Aziz and Mohamed and... all those Morocccan boys and girls who were always there for us. I'll never forget it. I've learned so much from them. Of life in the desert. Of online learning. Of enjoying teaching. Of islam. Of diversity. Of respect. Of tolerance. Of perseverance.

It was also cool to get to know Slovene iEARN team - Alenka and Darja and Nives and Dušan and Gregor. It's funny to get to know colleagues from a town an hour away from yours.... in Africa! And learn there about what they do back home... an hour away from mine... :-).

I was really impressed by Darja's presentation - she did so many cool things with her young learners - collaborations, exchanges, performances, videos, you name it!

And Dušan's part was fun too - he uses delayed video in his physical education classes to show kids the mistakes they do when playing basketball or volleyball or performing certain moves. Image is worth a thousand words and video saves repeating Dušan all those thousands of words again and again. Judging from what I've seen on those videos Dušan showed, kids seem to really like checking a recording of themselves working on a task.

Gregor's part was interesting because it was an overview of introduction of Moodle in Slovene primary and secondary schools. I was part of an early phase of this programme too some 4 years ago. Together with a bunch of other colleagues we were walked through the Moodle basics - the technical part. I was fascinated by Moodle from the start, still use it today - partly because I have to, it's school policy, and partly because I still like it ok - in combination with other web based services it makes a cosy cyberspace. Gregor's overview of introduction of Moodle was top down, so it was nice to gain some broader insight into this national project. Being a teacher and a Moodler I find it interesting to observe mixed first responses of my colleagues - many see value in Moodle and play with it - many seem to feel the need for more pedagogy - technology is cool, but it needs to serve the purpose. Another issue is time... seems to kind of fly faster in cyberspace, and this is a problem for a busy teacher. People grab things that help them save some time... not so much things that take more of their time. ... but through this moodle project teachers are getting familiar with this cms, support communities are developing, and online learning is emerging. All in all I think this Moodle thing has been a huge project making a difference not just on paper but also in Slovene schools.

Flying to Morocco

2009-07-18T15:39:00.001+02:00

Got up at 5.30 am, kissed my boys goodbye and went to the Venice airport to catch my flight to Rome. Miha took me there and stayed with me until the check-in. Half the time I fought back tears – not used to going places without my boys.
Landed in Rome alright and after some confusion managed to find the right check-in place for Casablanca. Rome airport is funny. At lunchtime people at the ticket counter simply left for lunch for an hour...leaving noone at counter to help out passengers in need of service.
Arrived to Casablanca a few hours later and then from then on to Fez. Could not find iEARN folks at the airport, but kind people there called the emergency number I had in my pocket and some 15 minutes later Latife and another gentelman arrived to pick up me and also a nice group from Yemen.

The ride in car lasted for some 50 mins, it was nice to see so many people of all ages out in the streets - wearing traditional clotes, modern, all sorts. Chatted with Latife, Mona, Fatima and Nissmh on the way, all sorts of things –about life in Morocco, Yemen, Slovenia, islam, the projects we have been involved in... Before checking in at the University campus, we made a quick stop at the centre – all the shops were alive at 22 pm. Did not buy any food – thought there would be dinner waiting for me but thought wrong and went to bed with a rumbling stomach.
Anyway, the room is nice and has free internet access. Got connected as soon as I got in and found all the sockets and caught my Mih online. J

It's nice to get a new toy every now and then...

2009-07-18T15:38:00.000+02:00

... or even just borrow one for awhile, to t least get a taste of it.
I'm fooling around with a HP mini I borrowed from a friend. A neat little thing. It's both - big and small enough to be useful. I want one too!

TMI

2009-07-13T15:35:00.002+02:00

Checking my Google reader recently I liked these quotes concerning TMI - too much information:
'I’m proud of saying I don’t know much but I know how to get to know what I don’t know.' CogDog
I like following CogDog's posts a lot. The other quote is by Clay Shirky and was contributed by Dean in the comment area 'It’s not information overload, it’s filter failure'.
I recently read Shirky's 'The power of organizing without organizations' - liked it so much I read it twice. Yet need to watch his TED talk.
I admire people who feel comfortable keeping up with the pace of life around them. Is this something one can learn? I'm still working on figuring out a recipe for me.

Going to Ifrane

2009-07-13T15:31:00.002+02:00

I'm getting ready for a little bit more than a week in Morocco's Middle Atlas town called Ifrane. Annual iEARN conference is taking place there from 18th-25th July. I'm thrilled about meeting there Isabel, Mbarek and Nouredine - 3 webhead friends from Brazil and Morocco. I'm all excited about the trip but also not quite happy about staying away from my boys for 9 long days. There will be 4 other Slovene iEARNers in Morocco; Nives, Dušan, Darja and Gregor. I'm presenting the Walls Talking project and where it has taken us so far.

Wallstalking presentation

2009-05-12T10:20:00.004+02:00

I've been mostly busy cooking over at the wallstalking site and in our class blog recently. Here are the slides I made for the Integrating Technology for Instruction and Learning ning group.

Listen To The Walls Talking

View more presentations from sasasirk.

Starting a graffiti project

2009-03-18T13:55:00.009+01:00

Rita and I are launching a graffiti project called Listen to the Walls Talking. Anyone interested is warmly invited to join in. The project site, wiki and Flickr group have just come alive.

The idea behind the project is to collect and share graffiti. If other interested teachers, students, people spread across the cyberspace respond by posting graffiti photos and related info, this could turn into a nice project of the wall/s/talking in our schools, streets, towns, countries, world. Sketches, squiggles, doodles and other more sophisticated street art around us is the part of public spaces usually walked by, unnoticed by people.

Collecting graffiti from our walls, desks chairs and sharing them could provide us with a picturesque collection of expressions of wisdom/boredom/enthusiasm/dissatisfaction etc. from different places. This could perhaps be revealing in quite unexpected ways and could provide us with many interesting possibilities for further interpretations, explorations and manipulations.

This project is open to anyone interested, and will run for as long as there is interest. Anyone is invited to join in (individuals, teachers, classes, students...) and/or help spread the word.

There's not much to be seen yet, what is there is the result of the warm response of my friends (Rita, Kay, Vida and last but not least my Miha, who kindly created the site (said he needed an excuse for fooling around with some new toys... will need to give him more suggestions for excuses in the future ;-)).

Please have a look here and/or here, tell me what you think, and feel free to join in and help spread the word. The more, the merrier :-).

Spring is here!

2009-03-09T16:33:00.005+01:00

Just spent a lovely half an hour in my backyard - watched my Tevž fight an imaginary battle on his pile of sand, reading and basking in the afternoon sun. When the last rays of sun hid behind the block facing ours, I noticed a young blackbird perched in the still dormant branches of my wild trumpet vine.... Kind of liked the view, had my phone at hand and took this photo.

Magic Mostovna

2009-02-28T20:03:00.004+01:00

Spent a fun afternoon at Mostovna with my boys. A magician performed tricks for the local scout group - taborniki. He revealed some of his secrets and also gave away one or two of his cute rabbits to the kids. Here's another Picasa collage.

From Kolaži

Interactive whiteboard

2009-02-27T13:19:00.007+01:00

My school bought 2 (or 3, not sure) SMART boards (680V) so I am having a look at it. Teachers were invited for a 2-hour demonstration of how it works awhile ago but I was only able to be present for the first half an hour, and am exploring the basics via Google now. The SMART board is now in a conference room at school so interested teachers can try it out. Problem? There is just the whiteboard there, so if you want to fool around with it you need to bring your laptop, install the software, find the cables and projector to get the thing going.
M helped me out, we had a peek. First impressions?
- looks nice, turned it on, calibrated it and tried the basic writing tools. Felt a bit clumsy for writing - could be because I used my finger instead of the appropriate pen (need to find one).
- also noticed you need to be careful where you stand and how you move - not to come between the projector and the SMART board or trip over the USB cable.
Want to explore it more. Need to check how people use this in class, see how it could be of use to me.

E-portfolio step 2

2009-02-25T13:31:00.003+01:00

What? No name?!?
Originally uploaded by Gene Hunt

With the Digifolios evo workshop still ringing in my ears, I was thinking of my step 2 towards e-portfolio (about time after successfully completing week 1 task 4 weeks later ;-)).
I had a look at my blogging places - there are many more than I need considering I write an occasional blog post here and there. I decided to rename 2 of them. My blog has to have a name that means something to me. I happened not to think much when opening some of my blogs (did it as a workshop task, part of a project...) and it's a shame. I could forget now about these poorly named sleeping blogs, see many people do that, but I kind of like to keep my stuff, repurpose it if necessary, but not delete it or leave it forgotten out there.
When I opened my first blog, I named it cyberattic after thinking a bit - my grandma's attic was one of my childhood's favourite exploratory hideouts. It is long gone now, and I don't have a single picture of it. :-( So I like this name, makes me feel comfortable.
This blog is my number 2, obviously named similarly to number 1, but this time after a place in my home - cyberkitchen. Like it too.
I am therefore extending this kind of nomenclature to the other previously poorly named places I occupy too - my classblog and a wordpress blog opened at last year's EVO for the purposes of the SMiELT workshop. From today on Cybermill and cybergarden. Now these blogs sound more like one family and I'm happier about them.
Step 3? Rounding up all my cyberspots, like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, FB, Nings, wikis etc. trying Netvibes as my cyberhub. That's how I'm going to call it - Saša's Cyberhub. No more empty names.

My Batman

2009-02-25T09:00:00.005+01:00

Heh, heard abot BeFunky.com via joaoa and did this:

It's a photo of my Tevž dressed as Batman turned into a comic. It's literally just a few clicks... simple and fun. There are many other effects too. The original photo is in the collage below.

Carnival in Gorica

2009-02-24T21:50:00.006+01:00

Shrove Tuesday carnival came to town, yaay! Made a collage using M's photos and Picasa.

My 'Becoming a Webhead'

2009-02-22T22:01:00.000+01:00

Made my first video for my Digifolios EVO session a little bit more than a week ago. We were asked to share our stories of our first online learning experience (this was in week 1, I did it, much much later though, in week 5). I knew the topic of my story - my becoming a webhead, but was unsure how to go about it and was thinking quite a bit about it in the back of my mind.
Inspired by a lovely time lapse video I finally decided to type my story and then play it at faster speed together with some photos and music. I knew this can be done easily in Camtasia so I just started putting things together; I recorded my 'typing of the story' in MS Word, picked some photos from my photo album, bookmarked some relevant webhead websites and photos - had a look at the thing, saw it needs rethinking, was too much of everything...
So I started throwing things out, thinking about the music to go with it and remembered Michael Coghlan's wonderful A Webheads Theme Song. I got his kind permission to use it, so I went on searching for images of the internet, tools, web 2.0... When I stumbled upon images of web 2.0 logos these brought to my mind the webheads faces collage from Vance's website - I liked the tools vs. people opposition on the two images so I made it central in the video.
Needed to rerecord a shorter version of my typing (less IS more!). Grabbed more photos from Flickr group to add faces to the story and fill the whole length of Mike's song - would be a crime to cut it up. Loved the result - Mike's song and the faces were great together. Almost too good - felt like my lurking self doesn't quite belong there... Carla's collage too was perfect for conclusion. Asked my M what he thinks - helped improve transitions and photo sizes, suggested to stick to my natural snail-paced typing. Listened to him, always do. ;-)
Titled it From Learning to Teach to Learning to Learn; Becoming a Webhead.
Webheads liked it, dropped nicest comments in the world - in Slovene too! :-)
Here it is:

Week 3 Slideshows

2009-01-28T10:35:00.012+01:00

This week's task was to explore BigHugeLabs slideshow, Animoto and Slideshare. So far I've used Slideshare, Flickr and Picassa slideshows. Animoto and BigHugeLabs are new to me. Here are my examples:

1. My BigHugeLabs 'Glimpses of Slovenia' slideshow:
View slideshow
I chose the topic because I already had a set in Flickr, and I wanted to compare the Flickr slideshow and the BigHugeLabs slideshow – kind of like better the Flickr one, because it has the full-screen option ( see http://www.flickr.com/photos/7920247@N04/sets/72157603036788662/show/)

2. My Animoto 'Circus in Town' slideshow:

http://animoto.com/play/tAvqx5ugdLbmNAgG9BotJQ?autostart=true
I had some problems to make the embed code from the site work here.
I chose this topic because I thought it would go well with the music and lively Animoto transitions… Was kind of surprised to see how quickly 30 seconds end – I uploaded 15 photos, set the timing at middle pace but only the first 5 or 6 photos are shown and the rest was cut off.
Since it took me awhile to reduced the number of photos from 30 to 15 I was kind of disappointed to see only a fraction of the photos shown, so I resorted to good old Flickr and created a flash badge using my 'circus' tag - but the embed code does not work here for some reason.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing public items from SasaSi tagged with circus. Make your own badge here.

Another option is to create a Flickr slideshow using the tag, but the down side of this is you can't arrange your photos, they are shown in the order they are uploaded. Creating another set unfortunately is not an option for me, because I have a free account and I've already reached the limit of 3 free sets.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7920247@N04/tags/circus/show/

3. My Earth Day slideshare:

Earth Day

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: earthcast08 writingmatrix)

I did this slideshow to celebrate Earth Day last year and promote the Earthcast project. I used creative commons photos from Flickr together with quotes from here and there and posted it to my class blog.

My comments:
I like best Flickr slideshows. It's a pity they are limited to 3 sets. BigHugeLabs are nice and simple to create but I miss the whole screen view of photos.
Animoto is cool, but 30 seconds is very very little time. I had the feeling that the example videos shown in this group lasted longer… I guess this was a paid service. I like Animoto because it adds sound and movement, videos are dynamic and energetic… Good to use with a small number of photos.
Slideshare is nice for ppt viewed in landscape mode. When I used it for sharing photos, I hated the fact that the layout of the presentation does not follow the layout of the ppt – so if you use portrait layout a whole lot of space is wasted, which is a shame. I also like the fact that you can add audio here – haven't tried it yet, but it's cool.
For me it would be great if Flickr slideshow offered some more options for various transitions and also to upload audio. They look neat and it's cool to have everything in one place. I guess going Pro is the solution.

Where are you from?

2009-01-23T13:54:00.005+01:00

origins
Originally uploaded by SasaSi

I'm not much of a poet... but here's another week 2 task from the Images4Education EVO session :-).

I am from toy cars, lego bricks, paper, paints and brushes,
from computers, cables, gadgets,
from pots and pans and steaming stew,
from violets, pansies and mimosa.

Homework

2009-01-22T11:38:00.003+01:00

motivator1327398
Originally uploaded by SasaSi

One of my Images4Education week2 tasks. I'm very happy to have learned about so many great Flickr tools and ideas.

Electronic village online 2009 started

2009-01-12T10:32:00.004+01:00

TESOL's wonderful EVO sessions started today. They bring together language teachers from all over the world. I can't resist coming back year after year. It's the place where I'm comfortable learning about technology. I'm not an expert, just an English teacher. So it often happened when I attended such sessions at home, in real life, that I returned empty, disappointed, confused....because in my country it is mostly techies giving workshops to teachers. They concentrate on various technical details and features, leaving out the most important part - the pedagogy, hands-on experience, practical use in class...
Well, EVO is different. It's from teachers to teachers. It's hands on. It's useful. It works. It's free. I love it. I can't help coming back year after year. This one is my 4th.
Together with Monica, a wonderful English teacher from Brasil, I moderate week 1 in Becoming a Webhead (there are more than 150 participants already). I also signed up for Images for Education and Digifolios and Personal Learning Spaces. We'll see how much of this I'll be able to keep up with. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak ;-).

Moodling in Koper

2008-06-07T15:49:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I attended 'moodle.si' conference in Koper, Slovenia. The event was organized by Faculty of Management Koper, School for Headteachers, Artesia, and Open Source Center - Slovenia This was the second time this conference was held there, the previous one took place in May last year but I somehow missed it. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting other Slovene moodlers. Presenters focused on various aspects - technical requirements, settings, usage, m-learning, testing students' knowledge, apps to use for subjects such as maths or chemistry, etc. A Slovene Moodle community is slowly being built up. Great!
J. Čač from the Ministry of Education talked about what the ministry does to encourage teachers to develop and use e-materials and e-classrooms. They plan to set up exemplary e-classrooms for primary and secondary school subjects so teachers could get a better idea how to use Moodle. Good. I remember how we plunged into Moodle some 3 or 4 years ago at our school. Had a quick few hour course to walk us through the technical part and ended up with a pretty vague idea how to fill up our classrooms... Technology is good, but you also need to know how to use it, the methodology. I am greatly indebted to my Webheads here for putting my feet a bit more firmly on the cyber ground.
The international part of the conference was fun too. V. Sulčič and P. Purg talked about their experience in using Moodle for e-learning, teacher and tutor-training, etc. C. Surridge from Korea, G. Rossini from London, England, and Daniel Livingstone, also from UK, talked about Sloodle, a Moodle module for organizing and tracking Second Life interactions. They all presented in Second Life, the event was hosted by Rockcliffe University. It was possible for F2F audience to participate in the Second Life backchat through the Sloodle WebIntercom. My iPhone unfortunately refused to log me in the chatroom, complaining I've got too many windows open... Eh.

Reflecting a bit on learning, connecting...

2008-03-15T15:16:00.009+01:00

I just heard from a dear friend. She apologised for being just a lurker at BaW, feeling a bit bad about it... I was a lurker at SMiELT this year... (also feeling a bit bad about it honestly)... It just happened so that I had so many things on my mind that I simply felt too overwhelmed to get involved more actively... so I kind of helped at BaW during week 1 but didn't do much else really... I thought I had kind of internalized the webheads attitude that it's not worth taking things too seriously and ambitiously and then feeling bad about falling behind or giving up... that it's more important to have fun and enjoy doing what you do... to have fun and learn... you never really miss things this way... EVO goes on for 365 days a year in the Webheads world. ...you respond when you can, do what you want, follow what you like, help as much as you feel you can... Things run smoothly thanks to the many dedicated webheads who are always out there, keeping the ball rolling... there are never bad feelings, nagging, words of reproach... no hierarchies or internal divisions... I like it immensely how all teachers (primary, secondary, tertiary) find themselves at home here.
I started teaching in a secondary school in Slovenia and then moved to a primary school and later to college... I feel this hierarchy present here and it kind of bothers me... hope things will change in time. Thankfully our SDUTSJ group is taking the direction of bringing together Slovene teachers. There's no use in making divisions according to the level you teach - teachers can learn so much from each other if they learn to share ideas, doubts, problems, solutions... It's not so much the 'what', the contents, the curriculum connecting the teachers, it's more the 'how', your approach to learning, to teaching...
I'm starting to see thing differently as a learner and as a teacher after fooling around with the Webheads for awhile... I used to complain about the diverse level of English in my classes... Now I don't. Everyone can contribute in this multiliteracy world... even weaker students can create impressive contents...if they want to.

Foggy Tuesday

2008-02-26T15:17:00.002+01:00

Children have winter holidays this week. We are at home. Tom is sleeping, Tevž is drawing. He has drawn our family.

Heh, and this is us a year and a half ago, in my old blog:
http://sasasirk.edublogs.org/2007/01/25/my-b4b-week-2-task/
I seem to open a new blog every EVO season; here's this year's one opened within the SMiELT group (pretty empty for now).

Microsoft and Yahoo and Aesop

2008-02-06T10:01:00.000+01:00

I came across a lovely lesson plan at english360 blog, which involves exploration of parables in class and drawing parallels between 'the frog and scorpion' story and the recent Microsoft's bid for Yahoo. I like it.

Threader works with Gmail too

2008-01-23T15:05:00.000+01:00

I have just successfully tested Miha's threader using the source of a YG daily digest from Gmail.

Important: Yahoo Group mail preferences have to be set to 'fully featured' daily digest (Edit memebership> step 3>daily digest>fully featured) and the source you get should be readable by threader regardless of the client you use - all you need to figure out is how to get the source in your client).

The clients successfully tested so far have been Outlook (described in the previous post) and Gmail.

How to get xml file in gmail :
1. open the digest in your gmail inbox
2. in the top left corner of the message window there is an option 'reply', click on the arrow next to it and you will find the option 'show original' in the menu(or 'view original', something like this), click on it and voila - you've got the xml file.

Outlook is not a prerequisite for using threader. Gmail works just as good, so should others but these haven't been tested yet, any feedback is therefore warmly appreciated if you are testing this program.

Threading again

2008-01-12T13:10:00.000+01:00

I’m doing Pre-Session and Week 1 Threads this year in BaW08. I’m using the program Miha kindly created to help me out last year (see http://sasasirk.blogspot.com/2007/02/threading-week-5-in-baw.html if interested in how it started).
The program is available at http://cs.rthand.com/webheads/bawthreader/

Miha blogged about it here.

What the program does:
• extracts all the necessary information from my Outlook's digests (message No., author, contents),
• allows to easily sort and group these messages (into groups, between groups, and within the group),
• allows to easily clean the messages (automatic removal of line breaks within the selected paragraph and automatic marking of hyperlinks) ,
• allows to easily add links to photos (database of authors is generated automatically, I need to enter links to photos in this database - this info is then linked to all the posts made by the same author),
• allows to easily adapt the width of columns,
• in the end generates the code which can then be simply exported, copied and pasted into the wiki using classic editor.

How it works?
Threader works with reader's digests from MS Outlook (should also work with other email clients, but has not been tested; you basically need to use the message source i.e. unformatted message).

1. Install and run the program

2. Copy reader digest’s source
To do this in Outlook:
- double-click the digest so that it opens in a separate window
- selecting Other Actions>View Source from the message toolbar
- select all and copy the contents (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C)

3. Go to the program and click 'Parse' in the taskbar- now you should see all the digest's messages in the top window (if you don't see them, that's a problem :-( ).

4. Select a message in top window, determine its level 1 and 2 groups (in the two textboxes by writing/selecting the name there - e.g. 'Week 3 Tools' and 'Blogs' ) and click the 'add' buton; (group names can later be edited by clicking 'groups' button and editing the name; a message, which has already been sorted can also later be assigned a different group by clicking the group name at the bottom of the bottom right window),

5. Threader fills all the required cells itself – the added message is visible in the bottom left window – message #, reply to #, date, author, contents, group) (if you've added the message to the wrong group, you can remove it using 'remove' button, the delete key, or change its group as described before in pt. 4).

6. Once the message is added to a group, find it and select it in the bottom left window - it's contents should now appear in the bottom right window. Clean the text using the 'break' button for cleaning line breaks and the 'hyperlink' button for marking the hyperlinks appropriately.

7. If necessary, move the selected message (bottom left window) up or down the group using 'up' and 'down' buttons.

8. When all the messages are done this way, click 'tables' in the menu, choose 'groups' button and determine the desired order of groups/tables using 'up' and 'down' buttons. You can also edit the group names here if necessary. When happy with this, click 'close'.

9. Click again 'tables' in the menu, choose 'authors' button and add links to photos to the authors database and the correct display of names if necessary (authors might sometimes not be recognized as the same persons, which means that you will have to add the photo link more times). When happy with this, click 'close'.

10. Save the file.

11. Click export, check the results, if happy with them, click 'copy' button, go to wiki / other HTML editor and paste the code. You should get the table of contents and the tables with messages and back-to-top links. All cells should be filled in appropriately. If not happy, return to the threader and correct whatever bothers you (e.g. columns' width is adjustable after clicking 'settings' button in threader menu...) and repeat the export procedure.

12. The threading part is thus done - what is yet missing is the introductory table with info about the weekly threads – copy it from one of the previous weekly threads pages and insert the code where it fits.

That’s all folks. Let us know if you try it out. Happy threading. :-)

EVO 08 Coming

2007-12-27T15:26:00.000+01:00

I’m copying below Dafne’s invitation to join this year’s TESOL Electronic Village Online, a series of free 6-week online workshops. I first heard about EVO sessions about two, three years ago after just missing the 05 event. I joined one of the sessions despite being too late for the main action, explored resources a bit, and decided to definitely return in time for the next round. In 06 I took part in ‘Becoming a Webhead’ and this year in ‘Becoming a Webhead’, ‘Blogging for Beginners’, and ‘ESP Potpourri’. I very much enjoyed them all. Learning collaboratively with and from other educators from all over the globe is simply great (especially for couch potatoes like me ;-)). It importantly influenced my view of teaching and learning and I’m definitely coming back for more this January again. :-) Here's Dafne's invite:

Dear all,
The CALL Interest Section of the international TESOL professional association is pleased to offer the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2008 season. This is a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2008 Convention in New York. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL 2008 participants
and those who can participate only virtually.

You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate in a free , six-week , wholly online session of the EVO, Jan 14 - Feb 24, 2008. Please visit our Announcement Page to select one or two among the various offerings.

http://evo08sessionscfp.pbwiki.com/FrontPage#Sessions2008

Feel free to distribute this annoucement.

Looking forward to having you in the EVO 2008 sessions,

Yours in TESOL ,

Dafne Gonzalez
On behalf of the EVO coordination team

K12 Online

2007-10-16T15:19:00.000+02:00

It started with David Warlick’s keynote, his video started at the airport and then took us along the paths David treads upon. I liked his ‘not afraid’ example.I also watched Clarence Fisch’s video, also taking us to places he likes, and a wonderful presentation about cellphones and how these can be used in class by Liz Kolb. She presented numerous useful applications and examples how to use them - I only use my cell phone for phoning. I liked the Bubbleshare option to post photos directly by sending them via phone to address they give you - different people can thus post photos to the same account via their phones, which is neat.I also watched an inspiring travel to China - a story of physical travelling and cyber connecting. And a great presentation by Alan Levine - I knew most of the applications he talked about, liked a lot how he connected everything together by pointing out the very important features which make them so usable - interconnectedness of e.g. Flickr, Blogger, etc. , social perspective (tagging for personal organization and to learn more about the field we are interested in), the embed option letting us make mashups of different resources. I loved his commenting on the learning objects movement from awhile ago - I think I attended a seminar last year on that, where we participants were encouraged to start working on creating such contents, which could then be shared and used like lego bricks - I liked the idea, but the way to carry it out seemed very complicated … I somehow could not force myself to start working seriously on that. These embeddable options are much more user friendly, anyone can use them. I also liked Alan’s comment that we should get used to living in the construction zone - things change so quickly we cannot count on perfection, but have to get used to constant improvement instead. So true.
Tuesday was the writingmatrix day.

I was very excited about it. Wesley Fryer posted a very appreciative feedback about our presentation
Now I’m looking forward to today’s fireside chat with all week 1 presenters. Our team isn’t likely to be complete, unfortunately, with Vance and Rita in the air and on the road, and Doris behind a mercyless University firewall, but Nelba and I should make it.

Another school year begins

2007-09-27T23:07:00.000+02:00

Corridors in colleges and universities will soon be lively and crowded with students again - the buzz, the ringing of the school bell, the excitement of a new beginning... new faces trying to find their ways around the labyrinth of corridors, old students gathering together sharing their summer adventures.
I'm starting my 3-month EFL course with a new group on October the 1st. Wonder what it will be like.Wonder how big the group will be. Wonder how they will respond to our online experiments.
This will be a full-time group consisting of students of informatics engineering, mechatronics and countryside management aged 19+. Unfortunately every year there are many students who enrol just to spend another care free year or two as students, not having to work or look for a job. The reason for this phenomenon is that full time study at state universities and colleges is free of charge. The most popular programmes at state universities get the most serious students. Small, local colleges like ours, have hard time competing with them.
Most full-time students in Slovenia have occasional part-time jobs but are generally not employed. They are financially supported by their families. Few lucky ones have scolarships.
Part-time students, on the other hand, have to pay tuition fee, are usually employed, more experienced and, although they have less free time, are usually more active and motivated to complete course requirements - at least at our college I've been noticing this year after year.
My new full-time group will have 8 classes per week, 4 hours of plenary classes (up to 60 students) and 3-4 hours of smaller classes (of up to 30 students). The smaller classes will be mostly carried out in a computer lab. Instead of taking the traditional final written exam, students will be invited to:
- perform weekly tasks and keep record of their activities using a Google doc or a wiki,
- develop their blog and join the writingmatrix and dekita exchange,
- start using Google Reader or other aggregator to subscribe to blogs of interest.
I like these Google applications because they can all be accessed from a single account, which is neat, especially for students new to these tools. I know this shouldn't be too complicated for my informatics students, but feel a bit uneasy about the mechatronics and countryside management students...

A Webhead meeting in Slovenia

2007-08-28T11:44:00.000+02:00

Cris Costa and her Portuguese friends Sara, Magda, and Bruno spent part of her vacations in our neck of the woods :-). Miha and I met them in Koper and spend the evening with them in Izola, a nice old fishing town on the Slovene coast. There was a street feast going on and we had a fishy dinner by the sea, some calamari, shells, and sardines. Cris and I talked and talked and talked – the few hours we managed to steal for ourselves flew with the speed of light. It is indeed a very special experience to meet an online friend for the first time. Cris is so young, so involved, has so many wonderful ideas. For every doubt and problem I mention regarding teaching and motivationg students she has a thousand suggestions and examples to show - a webhead in the truest sense of the word :-). I wonder what I would be working on today had I not come across this community in 2005. Being part of it has changed my teaching and view of teaching. I'm learning to teach and learning to learn.
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Bee in action at Merlot Conference

2007-08-11T13:39:00.000+02:00

I've been a Webhead for about 2 years now. Webheads in Action is a CoP bringing together educators across the globe, who are interested in experimenting with various web tools, exploring their use in class, collaborating on various projects, taking part in various online events – as presenters or participants. Educators coach each other, virtually visit each other's classes, and sometimes even meet F2F. :) For newbie teachers, the community is a jump board into the world of available web tools. There is passion, enthusiasm, friendship, sense of belonging, pride. A community spirit in its truest sense. Cris Costa explores it in her dissertation. Bee showed it in practice. Yesterday, she had an inspiring keynote at Merlot conference in New Orleans 'Jazzing it up with Merlot'. Of course, many webheads were there with her. She was wonderful – she always is. And her team. The team we heard speaking and the team making sure things ran smoothly. She delivered the keynote to audience in the conference room and brought in virtual audience from Alado and Second life. All the while the session was being broadcast live via Worldbridges skypecast. She opened the door of the cyber worlds she roams and let the Merlot audience have a glimpse of the starry skies, friendly people, beautiful sunsets, and inspiring stories.
The thoughts still echoing in my mind today are: Do we push contents on our students or do we pull their creations from them? (Bee), There are no teachers, just facilitators. (Vance), Let's tear down the classroom walls. (from one of Bee's earlier presentations).
We’ve heard Vance's cat herding view of the webheads - 'cats herd themselves, they don't need a cat herder’; membership is free and open to anyone - like a virtual hippie community – you know a hippie when you see one and you are one if you feel like one. I liked this. :-) The result of this freedom is a vibrant, creative, constructive, inspirational and often chaotic atmosphere. I think Chris commented in the chat area that chaos is WiA middle name, something like that. This chaos is a nice and friendly one though - the one which lets you see the forest and help s you find trees. ;-) There is always somebody out there to show the way.‘There are two arms,' Michael said, 'the technological and the human nature’.
webheadsinaction

Trying Audacity

2007-08-03T13:20:00.000+02:00

I haven't posted again for quite a while here, because I've been involved in another blogging project called writingmatrix. This deserves a post of its own though.

I have been listening and reading about what a wonderful tool Audacity is for a long time. Now I finally took some time to download and test it. It worked.

I created a simple mp3 file with my gibberish and some background music. I tried to use a demo music file on my pc for background music but these files could not be read in Audacity. So I imported an mp3 from my husband's PC and ended up with another track next to the recording of my text. I then edited both tracks; deleted the silences, decreased the volume of the background music, moved my text a bit forward, so that the recording starts with some intro music first; and exported the file as my first mp3.

I followed these instructions to make the mp3 recording of my voice, and these for adding the background music.

Now I need to learn how to embed something like this in a blog.

Threading Week 5 in BaW

2007-02-19T11:24:00.000+01:00

This is kind of report on my BaW 07 threading experience – it might be of interest to other BaW threaders.

It is a tradition to create weekly threads in BaW EVO workshops, i.e. to sort the numerous weekly messages into groups for easier reference later, creating a valuable resource for everyone involved.

My threading voyage was pretty smooth due to info shared by my 07 threading predecessors (thank you Nina Liakos and Gladys Baya) and due to invaluable help of my private techie (thank you Miha). :-)

This is how it went.

I opened up a PB wiki on Sunday and tried playing around using Gladys and Nina's recipe, i.e. copying messages from our YG into the wiki using the new point-and-click –editor... I spent an hour or two exploring the wiki editors, tried copy pasting directly from YG, then from my Outlook's reader's digest; was not to happy with my efficiency – it took me ages for this copy-paste-edit stuff...
I started anew on Monday morning using MS Web Expression; created the threads page outline (table of contents, headings, tables, return to top links, etc.) and copy pasted day 1 messages from our YG (about 40) – took me about 4 hours (was also learning how to use the program from scratch)– a much more user friendly and efficient way for me than the previous one – but all in all, still quite time consuming ...

Meanwhile, watching me toil the whole Monday morning, my husband Miha created a 'threading' program over at his desk and talked me into trying it out, starting again.

I started anew for the 3rd time using Miha's threader – this took about an hour to re-do all the before mentioned work. It proved to be the most effective so I decided to stick to it. Using the program, it took about 15 minutes per digest (i.e. 25 messages), all in all an hour to two a day.

What does the program do?

extracts all the necessary information from my Outlook's digests (message No., author, contents),
allows to easily sort and group these messages (into groups and within the group),
allows to easily clean the messages (automatic removal of line breaks within the selected paragraph and automatic marking of hyperlinks) ,
allows to easily add links to photos (database of authors is generated automatically so I only need to add the link once per author - this is then linked to all the posts posted by the same person),
allows to easily adapt the width of columns,
and - last but not least – the program generates the code which can then be simply pasted into the wiki using classic editor.

What you see posted in the BaW wiki under week 5 threads has been generated using Miha’s program, slightly edited using MS Web Expression (I added the first table with threads related info, and corrected long links in messages which distorted tables) and then pasted into this wiki using classic editor.

Where to check the program?
http://cs.rthand.com/webheads/bawthreader/

How it works?

Threader works with reader's digests from 'sent items' folder in MS Outlook. Copying digests directly from inbox doesn't work (at least not on my computer) - it only works with copies from 'sent items' folder.

If you use MS Outlook, you can try it out.

Install and run the program
Copy the contents of reader's digest to be threaded and click 'parse' in the menu (remember to first forward the reader's digest to be threaded to an address, and copy its contents from 'sent items' folder (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C)).
Now you should see all the digest's messages in the top window ( if you don't see them, that's a problem :-( ).
Select a message in top window, determine its level 1 and 2 groups (in the two textboxes by writing/selecting the name there - e.g. 'Week 3 Tools' and 'Blogs' ) and click 'add' buton; (group names can be later edited by clicking 'groups' button and editing the name; a message, which has already been sorted can also later be assigned a different group by clicking the group name at the bottom of the bottom right window),
Threader fills all the required cells itself – the added message is visible in the bottom left window – message #, reply to #, date, author, contents, group) (if you've added the message to the wrong group, you can remove it using 'remove' button or change its group as described before in pt. 3).
Once the message is added, find it and select it in the bottom left window - it's contents should now appear in the bottom right window. Clean the text using 'break' button for cleaning line breaks and 'hyperlink' button for marking hyperlinks appropriately.
If necessary, move the selected message (bottom left window) up or down the group using 'up' and 'down' buttons.
When all the messages are done this way, click 'tables' in the menu, choose 'groups' button and determine the desired order of groups/tables using 'up' and 'down' buttons. You can also edit the group names here if necessary. When happy with this, click 'close'.
Click again 'tables' in the menu, choose 'authors' button and add links to photos to the authors database and correct display names if necessary (authors might sometimes not be recognized as the same persons, which means that you will have to add the photo link more times). When happy with this, click 'close'.
Save.
Click export, check the results, if happy with them, click 'copy' button, go to wiki / other HTML editor and paste the code. You should get the table of contents and the tables with messages and back-to-top links. All cells should be filled in appropriately. If not happy, return to threader and correct whatever bothers you (e.g. columns' width is adjustable after clicking 'settings' button in threader menu...) and repeat the export procedure.
The threading part is thus done - what is yet missing is the introductory table with info about the weekly threads – copy it from one of the previous weekly threads pages and insert the code where it fits – I did this final editing using MS Web Expression and then copy pasted the code in the wiki. I found MS WE much more user-friendly than wiki editors, plus it's more comfortable to work on such ‘big’ files locally.

Note:

threader has only been tested using reader's digests copied from MS Outlook,
if you want threader to recognize a digest, you need to copy it from 'sent items' folder; (Outlook does something to digests when forwarded , which makes them readable),
authors are sometimes not recognized as the same persons and appear mentioned more times in the database (it is not a problem - you just have to add the photo link more times).

Can I use it?

YES. I think the program is worth checking if you volunteer for threading – it has done the tedious part for me letting me concentrate on contents without worrying about the format. You need to keep in mind though that it only works with Outlook digests since it has been designed for this purpose. If it works for you – feel free to use it. If it doesn't, I would go for a good HTML editor for doing the job and then copying the code into wiki.

Conclusion

Doing week 5 threading was an interesting experience – it's nice to play with the right tool for the job (THANK YOU Miha again, I'm not sure I could do this without you) - and it is a very rewarding feeling to be able to contribute at least a little to our wonderful community from which I have received so much. Thank you BaWers and 'ancient' webheads, it feels good to be part of you. I guess it would be a good idea to upgrade this BaW Threader to extract messages directly from our YG. This should then make life for BaW 08 threaders a bit more comfortable. What do you think?

Hugs,
Sasha - the wife of the king of threads ;-)

Hugs and huggers

2007-02-06T17:33:00.000+01:00

Today I'm inserting a YouTube video for the first time. I'm trying Michael Stein's instructions as suggested by Jenny in our B4B YG.
The first video is Free Hugs Campaign. Inspiring story!; I found the link to it some months ago in Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen (a blog worth checking if you're interested in presenting) under Inspiring visual presentations.

I then saw this video mentioned again in the webheads mailing list sometimes last year, together with the Australian news report about it below.

Anyway, the hugging spirit happened to briefly touch Slovenia in December; the music from the video was rolling on Slovenian channels as part of an advertising campaign for our mobile telephony provider and there were some individual huggers in Ljubljana, Maribor and Nova Gorica (the town I live in) – reports mentioned two boys and a girl I think, most likely students. They received a little attention in the news but went pretty much unnoticed by the public.
I showed the video to my students - they (male, aged 20+) would generally not stop for such hug. They find it weird. :-(
And now let's see if this works.

Trying Blogger

2007-01-26T14:06:00.000+01:00

I've followed Erika Cruvinel's advice and opened this Cyberkitchen to be able to explore Blogger together with my EVO B4B group. I've temporarily moved here from my good old Cyberattic.