EVO 2012: Self-Introduction for Digital Tools with Purpose in the Classroom

Greetings to the Moderators and Participants of ClassDigiTools 2012! My audio introduction is here:

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Gearing Up for EVO 2010!

It was about four years ago that someone at the Maryland English Institute, where I work, suggested that participating in a free six-week session at the Electronic Village Online would constitute a worthwhile exercise in professional development. I checked out the offerings and was pretty intimidated, but eventually chose Becoming a Webhead as the best entry point for what would become a personal and professional obsession with free web tools. Since that seminal EVO session, where I first met Dafne Gonzalez, Teresa Almeida d'Eca, Moira Hunter, Dennis Oliver, Berta Leiva, Maru del Campo, and so many others who have become my friends, I have participated in EVO each year. What an incredible opportunity it is to explore new areas in our profession!

This year, I have signed on to assist Vance Stevens with Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments, together with Jennifer Verschoor and Dennis Oliver. I had been thinking of signing up for the session, but then decided that if I was going to take it, I might as well offer to help. I will be learning along with everyone else. I have already started reading the recommended book, Mark Pegrum's From Blogs to Bombs. The author has agreed to talk to the participants during synchronous sessions about the implications for EFL and ESL teachers and students of the emerging multiliterate reality. It should be really interesting, and it will be an honor to work with Webheads in Action co-founder Vance Stevens.

We are putting the finishing touches on our wiki, ning, and Yahoo!Group. Everything needs to be in order by December 1st.

Using Bubbl.us to map a course

I am taking my third Sloan Consortium workshop, thanks to the University of Maryland's College Pass. The first two workshops were about second Life, and the third one is called "Getting Started: The First Step Toward Online Teaching." One of the "deliverables" (assignments) is a concept map of a course or part of a course. I already had an account with Bubble Us so I used that. I teach a Reading/Writing/Grammar course, and at first I tried to map out the reading part of the course, but that proved too daunting, so I did just the vocabulary part of reading. Although this is a f2f class, I tried to include online resources for each aspect of vocabulary study. Here is my concept map:



You can zoom in and out by using the scroll wheel of your mouse and click and drag to see different parts of the map. One thing I couldn't figure out is how to name the map something other than "New Sheet". I kept naming it, but the name on this map is still "New Sheet." Grrrr.

Sloan-C Second Life Workshops

In May, I signed up for "Getting Started in Second Life" with the Sloan Consortium; lucky for me, Sloan-C offerings are free to the University of Maryland community. I really enjoyed that workshop, which lasted about 8 days and which reviewed some basic skills for me and taught me some new things.

Now I am beginning "Introduction to Second Life for Educators," taught by Dr. Michael DeMers of New Mexico State University Las Cruces. Back in March, Dr. DeMers was interviewed by Scott Simon of NPR; the six-minute interview is here.

Striking a Balance

Thanks for coming to join the conversation, and welcome!

I'd like to spend the first part of the discussion letting people vent about the difficulties of including everything they want and need to do in their busy lives. Webheads don't complain much, so here's your chance! (20h00 gmt)

After we've all let off a little steam, I'd like to brainstorm some strategies for keeping our priorities straight. (20h20/25m gmt)

If you haven't yet completed the survey, please do it during or after the session! After may be better, as I'd like thoughtful responses. :-) I will share the preliminary results at the end of the session (20h45m gmt).

Nina

Learning the Ropes in Second Life

When I created my avatar, Nina Zaytsev, back in January, I visited SL a few times but rarely interacted with anyone there. I found I was even more reluctant to approach strangers in SL than in RL. Once, I attended a "coffee with Dennis Newsome" hosted by (oops--I can't remember). This was better! But I did not really get going until I took advantage of a Sloan Consortium workshop, "Getting Started in Second Life," in May. This was an excellent workshop facilitated by Bethany Bovard (Naiad Remblai), Katie Fife Shuster (Kella Fargis), and Joanna Tong (Jananajo Swindlehurst), who introduced us to some really useful video tuorials by torley.com in YouTube. There is SO much information in those tutorials! I started collecting them in a folder but I have barely scratched the surface of what there is to learn. We also had three in-world synchronous meetings: a "meet-and-greet", a basic skills practice session and an exciting tour where we visited the Magic Bakery and rode horses in Mexico! The next day, WiAOC2009 began, providing me with myriad opportunities to practice the skills I had learned in the workshop and to learn some new skills as well (and fail spectacularly at a few). I am going on learning!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

A New Blog

This semester I am teaching the Reading/Writing/Grammar component of our Intensive English Program at the beginning level. There are only six students. One began the semester almost a total beginner (she already knew the alphabet, a few numbers and some random words). Another studied English grammar but somehow managed to avoid learning much vocabulary. The other four are more typical false beginners. I wanted to blog with them but felt having them create their own blogs was unrealistic. I ended up creating a blog for them: MEI Level One.

I've tried to make the blog a mix of text and audiovisual, to appeal to different learning styles and needs (four students are Asian, and two are Middle Eastern). Most of my posts concern the grammar we are studying in the class. I started out with a short post on parts of speech, because this wasn't in their textbook, but I felt they needed to know what nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions were. Then I discovered a treasure trove of grammar lessons on YouTube! I enter the topic I am looking for, e.g., present simple negative, in the YouTube search box, and then browse through the many offerings. An American teacher named Paul has over sixty short videos consisting of himself using a whiteboard and a marker to explain grammar points. Others use pictures and videos to make their point. I've found a few professional videos, like the GrammarRock prepositions video (too advanced for my guys but fun) and have used some of Mike Marzio's Real English! videos which feature the structure we are practicing. In addition, I've posted some songs (a couple of which were suggested by the students). Altogether there are 30 posts so far (we've just passed the midterm). I sometimes have the students explore the blog during our computer lab hours, and of course it is always available to them whenever they are on the Internet. I can't say if they use it much outside of class, but in the lab when I let them access it, I have never had problems with students surfing to other sites. I think they like it.

Enhancing Lessons: Wednesday of Week 3

I never did get around to reflecting on Week 2; I guess it went by pretty quickly, and I was distracted by the startup of a new semester at the Maryland English Institute, where I teach. While I was otherwise engaged, our session grew to over 100 participants, with an active core of maybe 15-20 people who created their own blogs and posted regularly to our Yahoo Group. We had a heated discussion about the amount of detail one should include in a lesson plan, and on Saturday some of us met synchronously in a virtual classroom at Elluminate as well as in the Enhancing Lessons group room at Tapped In.

Week 3 focuses on the asynchronous voice tools Voice Thread and Chinswing, and Rita opened threads in both of these for all of us to contribute to:

Our Voice Thread

Our Chinswing discussion

P.S. On another note, I have returned to Second Life twice and have added some of the webheads as friends. I sat with Vance, in the guise of Webhead Link, in a couple of inner tubes on a lovely pond at Edunation II, surrounded by lovely flowering trees and singing birds (I like to log out leaving myself floating there, but when I log back in I find myself standing up in the pond with wet feet!). Vicki likes to take over my locomotion and has dumped me on roofs and into oceans, which she finds quite funny. I am wondering if it would be wise to create an avatar for her in the Teen section....