Posting compositions to blogs

 

After sometime using the internet to help my students learn English, there are some things I have noticed that make me move to the blended learning path. One of the things that I saw was that as students use computers to write classroom assignments, they enhance their skills in computer usage. Before blogging in English, they do not know much about how to write a paragraph or even what to indent a paragraph is. Besides that, I have also realized that many of them continue using small letters for some words that should be capitalized. Many would say that the latter mistake is not related to computer use but to the way feedback on written work has been given, however, I think using a word processor makes the mistakes more visible. Finally, I have also realized that having students posting compositions on blogs make them more aware of readership and, as a consequence, they make an extra effort to improve their writing.

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Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Jose Antonio da Silva requested to add you as a connection on LinkedIn: Arjun, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. - Jose Antonio Accept View invitation from Jose Antonio da Silva DID YOU KNOW you can conduct a more credible and powerful reference check using LinkedIn? Enter the company name and years of employment or the prospective employee to find their colleagues that are also in your network. This provides you with a more balanced set of feedback to evaluate that new hire. © 2009, LinkedIn Corporation

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A Simple Song

I have just found this video on You Tube. This is really a nice simple song.

Some days in the life of an educator

I just love seeing the creativity of my students at its best. I always ask them to draw to illustrate our blogs. Today my colleague Silvia Caldas showed me Vuvox. I decided to try to learn more about it and created this presentation to honor my students.

Social Networks and The Green Revolution

Iranian Election Protest
Originally uploaded by Skept

The events unfolding after the Iranian election called the world's attention to the power of social media. Everything started with an election that is said to have been rigged. The opposition to the Iranian government protested and protestants took the streets and traditional media was censored. What followed next was a flood of news from social networks. Iranians used twitter , facebook , and youtube to post videos and text updates about the protests and the violence that the government forces used to deal with it.
Some international news commentators said some Iranians did not even know that their posts or videos were being read and watched all over the word. So, for many of them it represented the discovery of a new way of voicing their protests, of informing the outside world of what is happening in their country. The power of uncensored, unfiltered information is just huge and it is sometimes difficult to understand why some educators still resist using social media to connect their students.

Where I am, where I am not

My creation
Originally uploaded by Jose Antoniobsb

This is where I am now. It is where I spent most of my time when I am at home. I have chosen the mosaic to represent the chaotic nature of online presence. I know I am here but not always here. I am here and also at many other parallel universes. I guess the missing and the visible pieces represent these many possibilities of being at many places at one time.
I live by myself, so I guess I spend a lot of time in contact with people that are physically so distant. Sometimes connected to this people online, sometimes planning lesson for people I will see only tomorrow or the day after. It is funny to think of the many ways we are connected to people.

RSS: My Customized news

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remember that a text book I used to teach English some years ago predicted the advent of customized newspapers. Thinking about RSS and how it has changed my life, I realized that RSS is just that: customized news. I am really a big fan of RSS because it allows me to visit all my favorite websites in one single page. Before using in (I use Netvibes more often than Google Reader), I remember that sometimes I forgot to visit some of my favorite websites. Now, I can always with just a click be updated on my customized news.

José Antônio

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Blogging in the classroom : A window of opportunity

As all my readers know, I have been blogging for sometime. However, I would like to point out that I really do not know everything about blogging. As my dear friend Carla Arena said "There is no recipe on how to blog."

My first impressions when I discovered blogging were as if a window, better a large door, had oppened in front of my eyes. I saw and still see blogging as a great opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations with my students. Better still, I see it as an opportunity for them to have conversations among themselves and with people outside the classroom walls.
Bloging in class has allowed me to see how gifted my students are in many areas. It opened my eyes to see and discover things about them that I would not have discovered otherwise. And I am sure it gave them opportunities to make discoveries and to get skills that are useful for them in the present and that will certainly be very helpful in their future.

The picture I chose also shows, in my opinion, that blogging is also challenging. There are lots of possibilities, but sometimes they are not so easy to visualize. We have to open the door and walk the blogging path with our students. It is a big challenge to keep the conversation going. We teachers have to teach our students how to comment, we have to talk about the importance of replying to comments, and so on.

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The energy of a good class

I was just thinking about the feelings or the sensation you have when you are giving a good class. I think the idea of flow explains this feeling. According to Csíkszentmihály “Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity” Being in class with your students is like dancing to a contagious rhythm . So connecting flow, music, the sensation I have during and after a good class, I decided to share this song that for me, at least, translates the sensation of flow.

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Social Bookmarking: Food for Thought

- How can online social bookmarking help you?
I have been using social bookmarking for some time now. It has been helping me to deal with information overload. What I cannot read at the moment, I can always save for later. It has also helped me focus and prepare presentations I have done in teaching conferences. With social bookmarking, I always have access to what other people have bookmarked on a given suject.
- What are the advantages of having bookmarking as a social activity?
The advantages are many. One of them is having your favorites accesseble anywhere, anytime. So, social bookmarking gives you mobility. Besides that, you also draw on the power of the collective to find resources, to discover new things, and to be updated on any topic you might be interested in.
- How could Diigo be used in your classroom?
In classroom, I could create a Diigo group on a subject of common interest for students and have them share there favorites. Once favorites are shared, I could ask them to review the shared websites writing comments.
- What were your main difficulties to get started with socital bookmarking?
At the beginning, I had some problems understanding how to download the bookmarking toolbar. It also took me sometime to realize that I needed to download the toolbar in other computers if I wanted to continue bookmarking from somewhere else.
- Did you find any interesting resources shared by your peers? Please, add the link to it.
I really liked the link of a blog post shared by Carla called 6 reasons why people aren't commenting on your blog I liked it because it is really instructive to all of us bloggers. I really don't think that getting comments should be the main reason for blogging, but it is always good to know what kind of tone makes a pleasant blog.
Kindest regards

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The Power of Sharing

http://kwout.com/quote/x2znpmv7

I have been using Diigo for a while. It has been helping me a lot in my attempts to discover and learn. Using social bookmarking has lots of advantages. One of the  advantages of having bookmarking as a social activity is the possibility of sharing valuable resources I find online with friends. Before Diigo, whenever I found something interesting on the web I had to keep if for myself only (first because it could only be accessible from my home PC and second because I could not tell anyone about my favorites). Besides being able to share what I discover, I have the luck of having access to what my friends bookmard as they surf the web.  Social bookmarking really draws on the powers of the collective and it is definetely fascinating.

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Changing Education

I was reading George Siemens blog comments on changes in education. He cites David Wiley that says that the changes needed for reform in education would require actions similar to the ones carried out by Luther against the Catholic Church. I like the image and I think it is great comparisom, but I think a softer approach might work or not. I guess, we educators are too idealistic and naïve sometimes. Let me share with you some ideas I had on the subject. I had a very interesting conversation with a friend yesterday [we have a face to face study group on Connectivism and the use of technology in education (yes face to face is cool too)]. We were talking about the needs of incorporating technology into teaching. We discussed where we thought resistance to do it stemmed from and how to overcome it (you know: the old beaten to death subject). She asked about the idea of the institution adopting a blogging platform to all the students like the one mentioned in a text we were discussing. First I said, it was a top down thing and I would not agree with it. Then we pondered the pros and cons and I agreed with her that it might give web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis more credibility and promote the use of tools by faculty and students. So my question is this: Is giving freedom to teachers to use web 2.0 tools enough? Shouldn’t institutions and people in position of power such as supervisors and coordinators learn about them and start using them to promote change/adoption?

The Power of Collaboration

I have been busy these days taking a course for E-tutors with the British Council. The idea of the project is to train E-tutors to teach EFL teachers from public schools in Brazil. In the beginning, I thought I would not have time to take the course because I am almost at the end of the semester and have lots to do.
I took the plunge and I am glad I did it. It has been fantastic to see the amount of experience being exchanged and the interesting converstions we are having in the course.
One thing I have noticed in the course is how collaboration can make learning effective and how it can make group work easier and fun.Collaboration made it possible for me. It was collaboration that allowed to defy the laws of physics and strecht the time line. My group is using a wiki to discuss ideas and some other groups are doing the same. Our wiki work developed in a way that I had not predicted. I suggested the wiki and we started adding our ideas. Wikis a re really good for asynchronous collaboration. I started labeling posts with group participants' names. Then someone start using the highlight feature everytime he/she posted and the rest of the group followed suit. The result is colorful and reflect the power and diversity of collaboration. I think that when you give people the power to create content, to contribute the results are always impressive.

Astronauts and Hermit Crabs

I was thinking a little about a presentation I am planning on mobile learning. Reading literature on the topic, I felt comfortable with the idea that mobility is less about tools and more about the learner. As a learner I am trying to think about how much paraphernalia I can leave behind. Long are gone the days I believed I needed to buy the latest technology to allow me to go ahead on my learning. The analogy of astronauts and hermit crabs (that I used to illustrate this post) was one I found while reading the article Nomads at Last published in The Economist. Thinking about my learning, I am more of a hermit crab now. I sill do not have a laptop and all I carry is my pen drive or my MP3 player wherever I go. I am now starting to upload some of my files to the net, so I do not have to rely so much on my home PC. Therefore the hermit crab figure fits me perfectly because although I am not carrying much, I cannot yet afford to be away from my desk top for too long. I still have to go back to the comfort of my old shell or have to stop to get connected to desk top PCs in other places. I see all this as kind of really anthropophagic in the way people adapt to their surroundings. I am lucky to have a PC available wherever I go, so being a hermit crab is not that bad and is the way I found to adapt to my ecological surroundings.I am also curious to discover what the next step to evolution beyond the hermit crab morphology should be.

The Power of Networks for Learning

I have just finished reading an article on how networking can be important for a manager´s career. This article made me think about the importance of networking for educator´s professional development as George Siemens suggested. As a teacher I have learned a great deal from my networks, from being conneted. My network keeps me current of new tools, trends, courses, and events. The list is endless if one stops to think about all the information we get through Facebbok, Yahoo groups, aggregators, blogs, wikis, and so on. As educators, we sometimes get really busy teaching and planning our classes and neglect network building and connecting to our peers in the teaching field. By doing this, we many times stop learning. This last realization made me ask myself a very relevant question: If as educators we do not continue learning, what kind of message are we sending to our students?

Why do I blog?

I started this pst inspired by Carla Arena's post with the same title. I guess I blog for conversations. First for a conversation with myself, next to promote conversation among my students. this conversation withmyself happens at the moment I am posting and then later when I look back at what I have said. I confess that after being a blogger for two and half years, I am sometimes amazed to discover how I used to think about blogging and other things just six months ago. I guess somehow, I am learning with myself, getting rid of preconceived ideas about learning and teaching. I am also learning with my students about diversity. I am always surprised to find out how creative they arel, how different from me and from one another. I would say, I really blog for conversations, for personal development, for insights.

Hello everyone

My name is José Antônio da Silva (a very common name in Brazil). I am a Brazilian EFL teacher. I have been teaching for quite some time. I love teaching and being with my students is a great pleasure for me. I guess I was born to teach. I am not a perfect teacher, though. This is the reason why I love learning. Teaching and learning are my great passions. I have others, but they are too many to enumerate here. I am passionate about life and the discoveries we make while living. One of my passions is e-learning, online learning, etc. I know there are many names for it. I love using blogs and taking part in online events, such as chats, forums, blogs, conferences.
I will try to share in this blog some of the discoveries I will make in my learning journey.