SIRikt 2011

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.

Exploring slideshow options

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?

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

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.

Copyright and right to copy

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

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

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 reflections 3 - my pres

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 1 - meeting friends

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.

Starting a graffiti project

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 :-).

Interactive whiteboard

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

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

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

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

My 'Becoming a Webhead'

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.

Here it is:


Webheads liked it, dropped nicest comments in the world - in Slovene too! :-) Even though I played with their photos and only asked if them if they minded it afterwards... Needless to say, they didn't. So, thank you, Webheads dear. Webhead Michael in particular.

Week 3 Slideshows

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.

Homework

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.

Moodling in Koper

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...

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

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).