On Sunday, Jan 31, Vance Stevens was invited to give a presentation for the ICT4ELT EVO session. As they were focusing on contrasting blog and wiki tools that week, the talk was about how Vance sets up and manages Learning2gether using the wiki here,
The discussion was about how blogs and wikis are used in conjunction with one another to sustain Learning2gether all these years, so it was basically about the affordances of each that allow them to work in tandem.
Participants were told to make sure they had Blackboard Launcher installed and
“you can also check this great Tutorial created by Vance https://youtu.be/-Zol7rZb9uo”
Are you looking to be more innovative? Creative? Disruptive? Microsoft’s Hack the Classroom is a free digital event for educators and school leaders designed to give educators insight into the latest trends in education. Come learn from education thought leaders, innovative classroom educators, and students who are changing education by empowering their peers and students to navigate their own learning and teaching practices.
We’re bringing disrupters in education to you to spark a two-way dialogue; hear their story and ask them questions through live Q&A! Bring your questions, connect with peers, and empower your students. Take a step towards transforming your classroom and join us to hear about successful teaching practices that have disrupted the education space to improve student outcomes.
Sat Jan 30 from 9 Am to 9 Pm EST Student Technology Conference
The second annual Student Technology Conference, a free one-day online event bringing together students, educators and innovators from around the world, will be held Saturday, January 30, 2016 from 9 Am to 9 Pm EST. We invite all to attend!
The Student Technology Conference provides an international forum for the presentation, discussion and sharing of educational technology in schools and other academic settings. This conference, by students in grades 6-12 as well as colleges and universities and for all, is committed to:
Fostering a better understanding of how students use technology in education and to engage students, teachers and administrators in a conversation about technology.
Assisting teachers and administrators in understanding how students use technology both in and out of the classroom.
Strengthening the relationship between students, teachers and administrators about technology in the curriculum.
Last year’s conference featured more than twenty general sessions and four keynote addresses from all over the world with over 500 participants!
If you haven’t joined us before, this is an amazing, engaging, collaborative, worldwide event that you will want to be a part of. You can join us for just for one session, or for every session! Even if you miss a session, they are all recorded so you can watch them later!
Attending: You can join us anywhere you have an Internet connection, and theschedule of sessions is published in each of the time zones in the world. Just find your time zone, find the sessions taking place, and click right into the ones you want to join. You can also import the entire calendar (Google) into your own calendar, or add selected sessions to your personal calendar to be sure that you don’t miss them.
Presenting: For those interested in presenting (and we encourage teachers and students around the world to do so, even if for the first time), the call for proposals is now open! The final date to submit a proposal is Saturday, January 23, 2016. Click HERE for more information and to submit your proposal.
Volunteering: One of the best parts of this conference is the incredible volunteer effort to help new (and sometimes seasoned!) presenters. Volunteers gather throughout the whole conference in a special virtual lounge and work to make sure that presenters and attendees are given help whenever they need it. Our volunteers are an elite group of global helpers–come find out why they say being a volunteer moderator is the most fun you can have at the conference. More HERE.
The Community: A significant bonus to attending the Student Technology Conference is joining the conference community of students and educators from around the world.
Great Keynotes: Who better to keynote the Student Technology Conference than students. We have a great set of keynote speakers this year, including the Young Hackers of New York City and Coco Kaleel from veryhappyrobot.com. More keynotes will be announced after the holidays!
Sponsors: We’ve got a devoted and most-appreciated set of sponsors who make this conference possible (and keep it free!). Our special thanks to Marymounyt School of New York, University School of Milwaukee, Westhampton Middle School, Lauriston Girls’ School and others who support our conference. And there’s still time to join this illustrious group and help support our event! Email steve@hargadon.com.
Help Promote the Conference: We can really use your help to share the conference with your colleagues, associates, friends, family (!), and the world.. Show your pride with a presenter, volunteer, sponsor, partner, or advisory board member badge.
Send a Tweet: “#stutechconf2016 is coming! Submit to present or register to attend, all free, all online, 6th year of this great event http://www.studenttechnologyconference.com”
We sure hope you will join us! See you online,
Ana Sophia, Gaby, Eunice, Anne, and Sydney
Conference Co-Coordinators (we’re all students)
2016 Student Technology Conference
On Monday, July 13, Vance and Bobbi appeared at the British Council Amigo Center at 12:30 GMT to hear what Chris Fry had to say about Story Recording. The event was webcast live from Barcelona. Here we are setting up for it:
Chris Fry is a long-time Webhead in Action, part of the original group in 2002. We had never met f2f but he still lives in Barcelona where he and Vance met to discuss with his work with students Story Recording, a project Chris has been working on over the last few years, and posting about it on his blog here: http://onewaytotefl.blogspot.com.es/ . He is planning to present on this topic at an ELT conference at the British Council in Barcelona at the end of September and again to colleagues at the start of October. This unique Learning2gether session previews these later talks and was webcast live from the British Council, Barcelona Amigó Centre.
In this presentation, he compares his research this year with findings from the year before in an attempt to measure the effects of the small changes made based on his analysis of his first year results. which he’ll be putting on his blog http://onewaytotefl.blogspot.com.es/ and on his teachers’ portfolio at work.
Chat Logs
From the Hangout on Air text chat
To list all available commands enter “/?”.
Chris Fry joined group chat.
Vance Stevens joined group chat.
Rita Zeinstejer joined group chat.
Robert Wachman joined group chat.
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Sabrina Wilson 4:36 PM
Hi I’m here & have my mic switched off.
Robert Wachman 4:36 PM
Hi. What’s happening?
Looks like you’re in a classroom, Vance.
Sabrina Wilson 4:38 PM
Is that Bobbi moving around with the tablet?
Benjamin L. Stewart 4:41 PM
Sound is fine.
Maria Colussa joined group chat.
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Maria Colussa 4:45 PM
Hi all!
Nellie Deutsch 4:46 PM
Hi everyone
Rita Zeinstejer 4:46 PM
hi, Nellie and Maria
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Maria Colussa 4:46 PM
Hello Rita!
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Nellie Deutsch 4:49 PM
Hi Rita and Maria
zl wang 4:49 PM
HI everyone
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Rita Zeinstejer 4:53 PM
which tools did you use to do the recording, Chris?
Sabrina Wilson 4:53 PM
Hi Rita, I think the sts used their phones
Rita Zeinstejer 4:53 PM
thanks, Sabrina
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Nellie Deutsch 5:07 PM
How would you encourage students to listen to themselves?
Nellie Deutsch 5:10 PM
Have you considered using badges?
My students love badges. I use Makewaves: http://makewav.es
Maria Colussa 5:14 PM
badges awarding in Edmodo is very easy
Rita Zeinstejer 5:17 PM
thanks for the link, Nellie, will try Makewaves
Maria Colussa 5:18 PM
I have never heard of makewaves before, thanks Nellie
Nellie Deutsch 5:18 PM
What about peer review? Was it mentioned?
Maria Colussa 5:18 PM
I don´t think so N
Nellie Deutsch 5:18 PM
Make Waves is amazing.
Rita Zeinstejer 5:19 PM
how do you integrate it, Nellie?
Nellie Deutsch 5:19 PM
I try to involve students in peer evaluation.
Rita, Make Waves has a great support system. It’s K-12 now but will be for higher education in September. I suggest you
contact them for further information.
Rita Zeinstejer 5:20 PM
great, Nellie, thanks
Nellie Deutsch 5:21 PM
I can also help, Rita. Contact me and I will walk you through it.
Rita Zeinstejer 5:21 PM
thank you so much, Nellie!
Maria Colussa 5:23 PM
I´d love to explore badges too, I´ve used credly but it requires awardees to register and they are not “portable”, that
is not a good idea, I ´ve found Mozilla very difficult to grasp, my brain has not adjusted to it yet 😉
Rita Zeinstejer 5:23 PM
podcasting is great
Nellie Deutsch 5:24 PM
I used to use Podomatic
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Rita Zeinstejer 5:25 PM
me too, Nellie, it keeps being great, very user friendly
Rita Zeinstejer 5:25 PM
just a mic needed and stds’ voices are out
and having a blog format, it’s very useful for group work
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Rita Zeinstejer 5:29 PM
is it also a kind of hosting place for recordings?
Nellie Deutsch 5:30 PM
Yes, so true, Rita.
I thought Edmodo was more for kids than adults. Is that true?
I minute is long for many students.
Rita Zeinstejer 5:33 PM
I’ve used Edmodo with advanced stds, I think it’s quite adaptable
Nellie Deutsch 5:33 PM
Does pointing students to mistakes, help them improve?
Comparison might work
“Are you listening me?” is a mistake that I find hard to change in Spanish speakers.
Rita Zeinstejer 5:38 PM
YES!, Nellie, true!
Nellie Deutsch 5:38 PM
I have commented with are you listening to me as a response, but it never works. “(
Journal writing helps because you never criticize.
me 5:39 PM
🙂
Nellie Deutsch 5:40 PM
Yes, some people are stingy with compliments.
Learning a foreign language helps teachers understand language learners.
Maria Colussa 5:41 PM
Hey, Rita, are you going to FAAPI?
Nellie Deutsch 5:42 PM
some shy students open up in a foreign language
Rita Zeinstejer 5:42 PM
no, Maria, Im probably going to Dublin in October 😉
Nellie Deutsch 5:43 PM
I was in Dublin last year, Rita
Maria Colussa 5:43 PM
oh, ok enjoy your trip then and I hope to see you again soon!
Rita Zeinstejer 5:43 PM
you going to happy, Maria?
sorry, FAAPI!!!!
Sabrina Wilson 5:43 PM
Thanks Chris, Vance & Bobbie & all the rest of you. Chris see you in September at the BC conference :o)
Rita Zeinstejer 5:43 PM
lol
Nellie Deutsch 5:43 PM
Clap, clap
Rita Zeinstejer 5:43 PM
thank you, Chris and Vance
Nellie Deutsch 5:44 PM
Thank you ,Chris, Vance and Bobbie
Maria Colussa 5:44 PM
thank you!
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Nellie Deutsch 5:45 PM
I copied it, Vance3
Sabrina Wilson 5:45 PM
Bye guys Enjoy the rest of your stay in Barcelona :o)
Rita Zeinstejer 5:45 PM
bye everybody!
Rita Zeinstejer left group chat.
Yes, I agree with you Maria. I’ve been trying to keep them in a googledrive file but want something for the sts to record and keep themselves. As a backup to what I keep.
Nellie it does.. I know .. because I just tried it .. but I don’t think anyone is checking it. Thus I’m now here 🙂
Question – Are there any issues with protecting student privacy.. Do students ever have reservations about posting their recording to the general “public”? Perhaps you use this as a motivator to get them involved … authentic recordings.
I bring it up because it can be an issue. A student not wanting it to be “public” because of concerns that someone could be judging them on the quality of their learning or development.
Just think that “public” vs “private” becomes a wonderful authentic teaching / learning moment .. and authentic “discussion” point for students to be motivated to talk to.
.. so should the focus be more on communicating an idea.. rather than on exact pronunciation? The pronunciation is rated according to how much it supports the communication of an idea.
James. That’s what my summer project is about.. recorded conversations via skype but my mini mountain is to create some sort of tasks for sts to listen to the recordings and learn how to evaluate their progress. Not sure where to start but have the summer off work to get this going.
Oops, it turned out I left our much of the chat. Sorry… 😦
19 hours ago
Feedback
Further Notes
Chris did not attend the CALL research conference in Tarragona (the reason Vance is in this part of Spain) although his work was represented in one of the sessions:
Paper session 8, Room 311, William Collins
Story recording and peer feedback in an online fórum improving motivation
On Sunday May 24 at the usual time of 1400 GMT Learning2gether was pleased to meet with Mbarek Akaddar on the topic of managing the Electronic Village Onilne coordination team for the coming year with the Trello project management tool.
What’s it about?
Mbarek Akaddar is well-known in #webheadsinaction and #EVO circles for his edtech skills. He has recently taken on the task of head coordinator of EVO (Electronic Village Online) coordination team where he has introduced Trello as a coordination portal. In this meeting Mbarek will present Trello, which is a management and collaboration tool that organizes projects into boards, lists and cards. We’ll also talk about his plans and vision for EVO in 2016 and beyond. Before his talk he referred us to these links:
Fellow is managing tool, organizational tool,we can use it for collaboration,but for our personal use as well. I don’ t know if we can use it for storing images files. How much is the capacity or storage? My question for Vance, thx
ElizHS: She was asking about the email features
I think Trello is less a communication system than a way to manage projects.
I’d like to see a digest feature.
You have to go into each card when you do it only online.
Jose – I don’t see the little wheel to change the announcements to digest?
I found it —
You can have Never, every hour, or instantly. Not exactly a digest, e.g., every 24 hrs would be better.
The session will include (of course!) plenty of chances to participate in polls
Tilly Harrison is a Principal Teaching Fellow (University of Warwick
Thu May 21 1230 EST EdTechMojo hosts Cathy Cavanaugh on eLearning for Engagement
SUNY Delhi in NY is happy to host Cathy Cavanaugh, the Director of Teaching and Learning with Microsoft’s Worldwide Education Unit, for a 1-hour webinar on engaging eLearning practices. This is a free Zoom online webinar, and will interest eLearning faculty, instructional designers, and instructional technologists.
Talk information:
eLearning for Engagement: Research-based Practices for Student Success
By, Cathy Cavanaugh, PhD.
Director of Teaching and Learning
Worldwide Education, Microsoft
Description:
Keys to engaged teaching have been identified and can be enhanced in online, blended, and mobile learning environments. This session highlights teaching approaches that align to research in engagement and new learning environments, and offers practical suggestions and references for teaching and learning.
On Sun Aug 31 Learning2gether was honored to meet with Dawn Bikowski discussing gaming and language learning
Dawn discussed projects she’s working on for teacher training by putting digital gaming into her MA teacher training courses, including pedagogical grammar and teaching reading & writing. She also talked about her experiences as lead author of the teacher’s manual for the digital game Trace Effects, which she did for the U.S. Department of State.
Dawn mentioned using Aurasma with teacher trainees in her discussion with us. On YouTube you can see many examples of what Aurasma does; e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBKy-hSedg8 and she explained in greater detail in her talk at the CALL-IS and IATEFL LTSIG webinar on Gaming and Gamification on Jun 14 this year, where she spent 10 minutes talking about Aurasma and how she uses it to help teachers experience games.
TESOL CALL-IS Keynote, Dawn Bikowski
Training Teachers to Think in Games
At the Learning2gether link you can find an mp3 rendition of her talk. She starts talking about Aurasma and demonstrating its use about 20 minutes into it. I extracted audio from just that portion of her talk, here:
Tue Aug 26 1500 GMT Jason Levine with Mark Barnes -Throwing Out Grades: Revolutionizing Student Feedback for the Digital Age
Tuesday, August 26 at 11am EST (3pm GMT). Join world-renowned teacher, author, and teacher trainer, Mark Barnes, for “Throwing Out Grades: Revolutionizing Student Feedback for the Digital Age”, a free webinar on WizIQ. Here’s the link: http://goo.gl/lYy6Js
Tue Aug 26 AltEd Virtual Film Festival Interview with director Ian Reid
On Sun Apr 13 Learning2gether with arranged to meet with Robert Wachman to talk about his role in helping teachers with Shaping the Way we Teach English, and we were joined by Deborah Healey
Robert is involved in helping teachers in the Philippines with the MOOC Shaping the Way we Teach English, and he gave us a tour around the 5-week MOOC: https://www.coursera.org/course/shaping1landscape
Robert had worked out beforehand how to join the Hangout on Air in an iPad while participating on an iMac where he can screen share and walk us through the program from there while maintaining screen presence on the iPad.
Place: Google Hangout on Air (HoA), available through direct participation in the Hangout or via its live stream, URLs to appear as they come available toward the start of the event
If you have iPads, you know that teaching digital citizenship is more important than ever. With the tablet classroom in mind, Common Sense Media, well-renowned for their digital citizenship curriculum and resources, now offers resources for teaching digital citizenship in an iPad classroom. Participants will learn about two resources that teach students to be safe, responsible, and respectful in a digital world: 1) Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum in interactive eBooks, and 2) Digital Passport. Learn more here, and more information about this and other upcoming events at t http://learningrevolution.com/.
Learn about the role of libraries and librarians in a 1:1 school. Hoover High School librarians and administrator(s) will discuss the successes, pitfalls, and follies involved in launching a 1:1 iPad program for our 9-12 grade school of approximately 3000 students with an emphasis on the role of the library and librarians in this process. Join here. More information about this and other upcoming events at http://learningrevolution.com/.
Philip Rosedale (the founder of Second Life) and his keynote address is on YouTube: http://youtu.be/KyuS3jwrCu0
Sat Apr 12 last day of VWBPE Virtual Word Best Practices in Education on Avalon
Sat Apr 12 Classroom 2.0 special guest Donna Roman – Featured Teacher
Date: Sat., April 12, 2014
Time: 9:00am PT/10:00am MT/11:00am CT/12:00pm ET
Location: http://tinyurl.com/cr20live (http://tinyurl.com/cr20live)Peggy George, Lorie Moffat and Tammy Moore will be hosting another Classroom 2.0 LIVE show. As an extension to the Classroom 2.0 Ning community, Classroom 2.0 “LIVE” shows are opportunities to gather with other educators in real-time events, complete with audio, chat, desktop sharing and closed captioning. A Google calendar of upcoming shows is available at http://live.classroom20.com/calendar.html.Join us on Saturday, April 12th, when our special guest will be Donna Roman,”Featured Teacher”. Donna Adams Román is a 5th grade teacher at Mill Creek School in Illinois, blogger, trainer, and presenter committed to providing rich learning opportunities for her learners and professional learning network. She is a recent recipient of ISTE’s first place SIGOL Online Learning Award (2013) and a Microsoft Innovative Expert Educator. Donna is active in Professional Development online and in her district, CoSN, ISTE, and iEARN. Educators are pulled in so many constantly changing directions. Donna will discuss how we can address these obligations while providing deep and meaningful learning experiences, not only for our students, but for ourselves as well. Suggestions to work smarter by condensing and combining, that in turn can deepen teaching, learning, and our lives while we engage fully in the process. 21st Century Learning, Project Based Learning, and Technology will be the common languages. Donna’s Blog More information and details are at http://live.classroom20.com. If you’re new to the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! show you might want to spend a few minutes viewing the screencast on the homepage to learn how we use Blackboard Collaborate, and navigate the site. Each show begins at 12pm Eastern (GMT-5) and may be accessed in Blackboard Collaborate directly using the following Classroom 2.0 LIVE link at http://tinyurl.com/cr20live.On the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! site (http://live.classroom20.com) you’ll find the recordings from our recent ”Featured Teacher” session with our special guest Erin Klein. Click on the Archives and Resources tab.
When tweeting about Classroom 2.0 LIVE, be sure to use #liveclass20. Special thanks to our sponsors Weebly, The Learning Revolution and Blackboard Collaborate!
Classroom 2.0 LIVE Team: Peggy George, Lorie Moffat, Tammy Moore, Steve Hargadon
Sun Apr 6 – Learning2gether with RSCON5 MiniCon and preview
Learning2gether in the guise of its coordinator Vance Stevens was on holiday April 6, but followers were invited to attend the following significant event, which coincidentally took place during the time that L2g normally meets on Sundays
Sunday, April 6th RSCON5 MiniCon will feature musical guest Jason Levine, keynote speaker Steven Anderson, a technology smackdown event that anyone can sign-up for, and eight mini-presentations that highlight RSCON4 and give you a sneak peek at what to expect at our annual Reform Symposium Free Online Conference (RSCON5), that will take placeJuly 11-13th, 2014 and feature 60+presentations, 2 plenaries, 10 keynotes, student presenters, and much more. Learn more here / or at http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/rscon-2014 More information about this and other upcoming events at t http://learningrevolution.com/
and, as usual …
Earlier this week
Mon Mar 31 – Introducing Mozilla’s BadgeKit
Monday, March 31, 2-3:00 ET: Introducing Mozilla’s BadgeKit – BadgeKit is a new set of open, foundational tools that will make the badging process easy and simple. BadgeKit will be launched by Mozilla’s Open Badges team in March of 2014. This session will provide a general overview of BadgeKit, including: Why BadgeKit? What is BadgeKit? A deeper look at BadgeKit tools, and more You’ll need to enroll in the MOOC on badges: badges.coursesites.com
Thu Apr 3 – SLMOOC14: David W. Deeds – Using Second Life in the K-12 Classroom
Sat Apr 5 – Classroom 2.0 live weekly show with Erin Klein
Saturday, April 5th at 12pm CR20 LIVE Weekly Show with Erin Klein, We are so excited to have Erin Klein as our Featured Teacher! Erin is a 2nd grade teacher in the Cranbrook Educational Community, Bloomfield Hills, MI. She will be sharing some of her fantastic classroom projects and teaching ideas in this inspirational, jam-packed show. Besides her amazing student-centered classroom Erin is an education technology expert and a master of project based learning. In her blog, Kleinspiration, Erin shares strategies and tools to help educators create transformational schools of the 21st century. Classroom 2.0 LIVE is an opportunity to gather with other member of the community in regular “live” web meetings. Details to join the webinar athttp://live.classroom20.com. Follow us on Twitter: #liveclass20. More information about this and other upcoming events at t http://learningrevolution.com/.
From Apr 5 – more SLMOOC14 sessions scheduled through Apr 30, 2014
Learning2gether traveled to Portland OregonMarch 25-29 2014 and took part in the live stream of portions of the annual international TESOL conference from there in conjunction with CALL-IS (CALL Interest Section) PCI (Preconvention Institute) entitled Integrating CALL with Web 2 0 and Social Media presentation on March 25, 2014 at the TESOL Conference, Portland https://learning2gether.net/2014/03/25/mooc-and-the-flipped-classroom/
16:30 – 18:15 GMT (9:30 to 11:15 in Portland): EFL-IS InterSection (with CALL-IS) Experiences Integrating Mobile Learning in Language Classrooms Around the Globe
21:00 to 21:50 GMT (14:00 to 14:50 in Portland): EV Fair Classics (Rick Rosenberg, Nina Liakos, Elizabeth Hanson-Smith, Randall Davis, Jose Antonio da Silva, Larisa Olesova) – These simultaneous presentations are not in the Webheads BbC room, see links next to each presenter
Speaker, handout, and Powerpoint information from CALL-IS webcast portal
Trace Effects: 3D Immersive Learning through Gaming, Rick Rosenberg, U.S. Department of State. Download mp3
Beyond Googling: Online Resources for Maximizing Search Results, Randall Davis, University of Utah. To join the webcast, click here: http://tinyurl.com/tesol3-collaborate
ICT4ELT: Information and Communication Technology for English Language Teachers, Jose Antonio da Silva, Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasilia, Brazil and Larisa Olesova, President of Yakutsk TESOL, Yakutsk, Republic Sakha (Yakutia). Download mp3
16:30 – 19:15 GMT (9:30 to 12:15 in Portland): Higher Education Academic Session – Emerging Technologies: Managing a Changing Landscape with Mobile Technologies Download
17:00 to 17:50 GMT (10:00 to 10:50 in Portland): EV Fair Classics (Tom Robb, Jennifer Hodgeson, Vance Stevens) – These simultaneous presentations are not in the Webheads BbC room, see links next to each presenter
Checking What Your Students Have Read with a Free, Online Quiz Program, Thomas Robb, Kyoto Sangyo University, recording not available
Shaping the Way We Teach English Webinar Course, Jennifer Hodgson, U.S. Department of State, download mp3
We were told to “watch email” but I have not found where recordings of these plenaries are publicly available
Thu Mar 27 0030 PST Surin Pitsuwan streamed live from TESOL 2014 in Portland Opening Keynote, Surin Pitsuwan Wednesday, 26 March 2014, 5:30 pm–7 pm in Portland; 04:30 in UAE English as A Powerful Instrument of Community Building in East Asia For the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), English has been designated as an official “working language” for the regional organization. In such a diverse group of countries, one common language is not possible. And ASEAN’s success has been instrumental in bringing other larger and more powerful countries of East Asia and the Pacific together under the ASEAN-ledarchitecture of cooperation. The only language that is widely accepted as an instrument of integration for the emerging East Asian community is English. How a “foreign language” can bind and build an emerging community of nations in East Asia is another “Asian Miracle.”
Thu Mar 27 1500 GMT David Graddol streamed live from TESOL 2014 in Portland Thursday, 27 March 2014, 8 am–9 am in Portland; 7 p.m. in UAE Five Megatrends Shaping the Future of TESOL English has become a centrepiece of education reform in many countries. I show how this is often in response to developments in economics, demographics, and technology—which are reshaping the nature of teaching and learning English around the world. David Graddol is director of The English Company (UK) Ltd, which provides consultancy and publishing services in applied linguistics, with a special focus on English language and education policy. In The Future of English? (1997), David set out a new agenda for understanding the growing importance of English as an international language and its role in globalisation. English Next (2006), provided an update on English in global education. English Next India (2010) explores the changing status of English in India. Profiling English in China: The Pearl River Delta (2013) examines public discourses and the linguistic landscapes of a part of China that is experiencing rapid change. English Next Brazil will be published in March 2014.
where it says: Free Live Stream of Keynote Speakers Not able to attend the convention? The opening keynote speaker Surin Pitsuwan on Wednesday evening, and the James E. Alatis Plenary speaker David Graddol on Thursday morning will be live streamed at no charge for those not able to attend the convention. You can watch live or watch the recording later. Watch your email for information on how to connect.
Earlier this week
Thu Mar 27 2014 School Leadership Summit The 2014 School Leadership Summit is online and free. This is the second year of this global, virtual event to help school leaders gather and share thinking and best practices. Keynote speakers this year will include Scott McLeod, Pam Moran, and Ira Socol; plus we’ll have a special track of sessions from the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA). This is also a great chance for YOU to present if you are focused on institutional vision, teaching and learning from the leadership perspective, school reform, technology use issues, or more. To submit a proposal, go HERE. To become a conference partner organization, go HERE. To read the great reviews of last year’s event, go HERE. Sign up on the conference site to receive regular updates, including the final schedule.
And we unfortunately coincided with this remarkable event
A few years ago, Vance Stevens coordinated Nelba Quintana and Rita Zeinstejer in Argentina, Doris Molero in Venezuela, and Sasa Sirk in Slovenia in a global project to put student writers in touch with each other through blogging, by tagging their posts ‘writingmatrix’. At the time, the students were able to locate each other’s blogs by using Technorati. However Technorati has since tightened what its searches will return in order to reduce clutter for whom it perceives are the most important users of its services (not casual educators). Therefore Technorati no longer works well for this purpose.
Meanwhile, one of the serendipitous outcomes of conducting the recently ended EVO MultiMOOC session was a greater understanding of how Paper.li works. Accordingly we have been experimenting with Paper.li in hopes of using it to achieve connections between student writers a world apart that worked so well when we could use Technorati effectively. Some results of these experiments were reported in these webcasts URLs:
Today’s webcast seeks to bring some of the original Writingmatrix team together to talk about what made the project a success and speculate on how Paper.li might help us to revise the project.
Anyone with a Twitter or Facebook account can log-in and create a paper. We provide you with easy to use tools to select your content. You choose your content streams and can create queries and searches based on Twitter users, #tags, keywords, Facebook, your own Twitter timeline, Google+ users, RSS feeds and more.
After you have chosen your sources, we go to work. Behind the scenes, it goes something like this: we extract all tweets that include URLs based on your content selection we extract the content found on these URLs:
text, e.g. blog post, newspaper article
photo, e.g. Flickr, yfrog, Twitpic, …
video, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, …
analyze the extracted text for language ( EN, ES…) and for topic, e.g. Politics, Technology, …
surface the day’s most relevant articles (using paper.li magic)
construct a newspaper frontpage using the filtered articles, photos and videos
Please note: Currently Facebook and Twitter are seen as two separate accounts by Paper.li. This means papers created under one account will only show under paper settings for that account. If you create a Paper.li under your Facebook account, it will not be visible in your Paper Settings when you are logged in under your Twitter account. And vice versa. We are working to change this.
Paper.li selects specific types of tweet to generate content for a paper. First and foremost, it is looking for tweets with links, as the title of each “story” on the paper will link directly to the page, blog post, article, etc. If there are any images on the page, blog post, article, etc., it will sometimes pull those as a thumbnail for the news story. It also pulls tweets with links to videos from YouTube, BrightCove, and other popular video sharing sites for the media section. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a link directly to the video, however. Some videos are pulled from blog posts with an embedded video.
How Does Paper.li Choose Content?
This one is a mystery to me. I thought it *might* be based on tweet popularity until I saw that some of the tweets added to the paper had been the first tweet for a link done within an hour of the paper’s creation. It could be based on the influence of the Twitter users in the list, but I’ve seen some users with little authority get their tweets listed as well. So essentially,it’s completely random.
Getting the Right Content for Your Audience
This means that getting content on a particular topic based on a user or a Twitter list may not be as easy as you think. Not only may some members of your following or Twitter list not stick to tweeting about one topic, but some members may tweet something that gets misinterpreted by the paper, as seen below.
So how do you ensure your papers have the right content for your audience? There really is no guarantee. I would say that out of the three options for paper creation, hashtags seem the way to go, although some tags are overly abused, such as #linkbuilding gets repeated by the same users over and over and sometimes for services, not useful content. So use Paper.li at your own risk!
Paper.li allows users to create their own online newspaper through links shared on Facebook and Twitter. Once set up Paper.li automatically collects links from within Facebook or Twitter, organizes them into an easy-to-read newspaper format, complete with imagery, headlines, and article descriptions. Subscribers receive their online newspaper each day filled with top stories around the same content topic as your website. It’s a great way for you to automatically aggregate online content relevant to your website topic and push it out to your online community … If you’re on Twitter, you can configure the system to tweet your Paper.li newspaper automatically.
You can have up to 10 content streams from which to pull article links from … You can organize them in the order of importance. If you choose a Single Twitter User and a Twitter Keyword, you can rank them in order of importance of where Paper.li should pull articles from first, second, third, etc. The options include:
Single Twitter User
Your Twitter Stream and the people you follow
Twitter List
Twitter #Hashtag
Keywords on Twitter
Keywords on Facebook
RSS Feed
Single Google+ User
Keywords on Google+
Breakthrough
As a result of our session, Rita did some further investigation, and wrote us …
Hi, Vance and all,
Quite enthusiastic at “revisiting” our project, I’m now exploring a different tool –Tweeted Times (formerly known as The Twitter Times), a real-time personalized newspaper generated from your Twitter account, which I find more reliable than Paper.li.
If you compare today’s edition in both, you’ll see many more entries in TT, which are postings I made yesterday in Twitter –some of them via Scoop.It –in fact, Paper.li does not show any!!! Which means that, for some reason, Paper.li ignores some postings, even when they come via Twitter.
Tweeted Times does indeed seem to be doing a better job than paper.li. It not only gets the Scoop.its that were missing from Paper.li but it also picks up the paper.liitself.
I think you’re on to something here, Rita
Not only that, this is a great illustration of true MOOC like behavior, where the idea is to assemble 1000 participants (webheads) on the upshot that one of them might be able to stimulate one or more of the others (Rita) to come up with a breakthrough as a result of a collaboration that couldn’t have happened with such a result in a much smaller grouping, which would lack critical mass for significant probability of achieving such a breakthrough.
Elluminate has been chosen over Hangout because there is a TILL Sunday Hangout event on ePortfolios at 15:00 that some MultiMOOC participants will be attending, and it will be easier to transition there from Elluminate rather than stopping one Hangout and joining another.
Dave talks here about his ideas on learning and differentiates the nature of what needs to be learned into David Snowden’s simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic. cMOOCs he said were expecially good at promoting learning at the complex and chaotic levels. Listen here and find out why.
Hangouts are created on the fly, so their URLs are not generated until just before the event. Normally they are shared within circles.
If Benjamin Stewart and/or Vance Stevens are sharing circles with you, there are two things you can try
you can Skype vancestev for more information
Also Vance will likely still be in Elluminate http://learningtimesevents.org/webheads/ for the first 15 min of this event, with the recording off, and you can possibly find me there for text chat directions to the Hangout
If all else fails, try this next event
(looks like a GR8 DB8 but the Hangout will be interactive, whereas the following, though highly recommended, will be equally as entertaining as a recording)
Sun, Jan 20, 2013 – 1500 GMT – IATEFL Webinar: ICT debate about IWBs
IWBs: a fantastic teaching tool or non-interactive white elephant? with Pete Sharma and Gavin Dudeney
Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have been around for a long time now. Few technologies have attracted such controversy. For some, they are a powerful teaching aid, while for others they are nothing more than an expensive waste of space, hopefully soon to RIP. Join us for this fascinating debate on the merits and future of the interactive whiteboard!
Pete Sharma will be defending IWBs, and Gavin Dudeney will be opposing.
Regarding the recording, at the above link, there is the following notice
I scooped this blog post where I put the Elluminate recording link (and also the link to the BaW wiki page with the nice screen shots).
Incidentally, after the session ended, I copied and pasted all the captured web cam shots on our whiteboard to a Paint bitmap so I could tease them apart into a collage where everyone was represented, and that’s the image you see at the top of this post.
I scooped the post AFTER I had rendered the mp3 audio from the Elluminate recording (if you want to do that for your recordings, download Publish from the Elluminate site for free – only works on Apple though!!). I uploaded the mp3 to the Posterous blog (this one) on which I have installed Feedburner. That makes the podcast feed link which you can see in the sidebar.
That might sound complicated, but when you set up Feedburner and give it your blog URL it asks you if you are a podcaster, and just by ticking YES at that point, your blog becomes a podcast, where any media you upload will be included in its RSS feed.
Now an interesting affordance of Scoop.it is that if your post includes an audio file, it sometimes (not always, 90% of the time, and the other 10% drives me nuts) puts your recording up at Scoop.it in a media player so anyone hitting on the scoop can play the audio right there.
Learning2gether 