My PLN says… – I

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:29:13 +0000

In the first post of my new series “My PLN says…”, I will share some selections from the last week of January and the first week of February. I’ve realized that this series will make me keep a closer and more frequent look at the resources and ideas shared by my PLN, which is great!

-#edchats-

Attending educational chats was one my new year’s resolutions. Sometimes I have difficulty in following the calendar of educational chats. cybraryman1 who is one of the great resource sharers in my PLN tweeted a link to the list of Educational Chats and some info about how to follow them on his great web site.

-Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?-

Shaunwilden recommended a flash ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ quiz maker . I enjoyed it a lot! First you download it, then go to the web site again, make your own game and save it as a .txt file on your computer. It should be in the same folder where the .exe file is. When you run the application, you just enter the name of the file that you created and here is your game!

-iPad on Twitter-

Apple launched iPad on 27, January and the conversation started on Twitter. Here are some tweets I found interesting:

iPad Divides Twitter – via mashable

Three good articles via ianw91 :

5 ways the iPad and education could go together – Link to the article.

An iPad a Day Gives Students an A! – Link to the article.

An iPad in Every Classroom: First Impressions of Apple’s Tablet in Education – Link to the article.

Apple iPad vs Kindle DX: Which is Better for Education? – via ttom – Link to the article.

My opinion: It looks cool but I’d rather wait and hear comments from people who actually use it. The idea of using e-coursebooks in the classrooms doesn’t sound too far away and I think they will be in our lives very soon.

-Great work by a 7th grader-

I am fascinated by a tutorial video tweeted bydavidwees . He tweeted a link to a blog post about a 7th grade student called Wendy who produced a video with her teacher about how she uses the social Web 2.0 tools to organize her school work. Amazing, isn’t it?

-A Published Study on the Impact of ICT and New Media on Language Learning-

animajar tweeted a link to a study on the impact of ICT and new media on language learning. I think every language teacher should read it. Click here for the links to the study.

-How To Say That Name.com-

I am very happy to find out a web site where my name is pronounced correctly evab2001 shared this link last week. On this web site, you can hear the correct pronunciation of thousands of names. It is very useful if you’re not sure about how to pronounce a friend’s or colleague’s name.

The 30 Goals Challenge: Join the Movement

Last week my lovely Twitter friend annapires tweeted that she downloaded ShellTerrell‘s amazing e-book called ‘The 30 Goals Challenge‘. Words are not enough to describe the value of Shelly’s contributions to her PLN. She is a great source of inspiration! I’m very happy that she will be at the ISTEK conference in March!

Two Great Guest Posts on ‘Teaching Village‘

barbsaka who is one of the greatest resource sharers of my PLN and a person who I really want to meet f2f one day has three great on-going series on her blog. One of them is called ‘Stuff All EFL Teachers Should Know‘. Recently, I’ve read two blog posts in this series from two inspiring members of my PLN: tamaslorincz and evab2001.

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Tamas articulates my thoughts perfectly in his article called ’Things I’m happy to know‘ so I want to quote a paragraph here:

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“The last 10 months has been an amazing journey into thinking about and understanding what I stand for as a teacher, as a learner – as a person. This time has given me strength and determination to stir waters, start new frontiers, try new tools and methods, share ideas feelings and frustrations. I’ve met people who taught me more than university courses, heard about things that changed my life and opened up possibilities I had never even contemplated.”

In her wonderful post called ‘Being an EFL teacher’ , Eva lists ten facts about being an EFL teacher and reminds me how lucky I am to be an English teacher.

You can visit Teaching Village to read these great articles.

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Well…There are many many links and resources to share here but I don’t want to make it a very long post.

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One last selection from Twitter. Yesterday Marisa_C shared a colourful and fun way of organizing bookmarks. Take a look at Symbaloo. I loved its highly visual style.

She also tweeted a video called Human Tetris which I really enjoyed. I haven’t seen this video before although Tetris is one of my most favourite games.

5 ways the iPad and education could go together | Stratepedia Blog http://ow.ly/123Gs #ipad

By the way I am really looking forward to meeting Marisa f2f at the ISTEK conference in Istanbul!

That is all for the first post of ‘My PLN Says…’. Stay tuned for the next:-)

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A New Series: My PLN says…

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:52:25 +0000

I am starting a new series called “My PLN says…” . The readers will find a selection of ideas and resources which are shared on Twitter, Facebook and other online networks and communities. I am planning to post my selections twice a month but sometimes it can be less or more frequent depending on my workload.

I decided to start this series to be able to….

Keep a better track of the shared resources

Everyday I retweet, forward or bookmark a lot of great resources. If I feel that I have another responsibility which is sharing these resources on my blog as well, I think I will keep a better track of all these great stuff.

Store my favourites on my blog

By publishing selections regularly on my blog, I will be able to create an online archive for my readers and myself.

Encourage teachers to build their PLNs

I hope that the teachers who haven’t met the incredible power of PLNs will be inspired by the selections I post and decide to build their PLNs.

Share worth spreading ideas and resources

As well as helping me build a strong personal learning network, writing a blog raised my awareness of the importance of sharing knowledge and ideas. For this reason, I try to take every chance to share worth spreading ideas and resources on my blog. I believe this series will be another great opportunity for that.

“My PLN says…” is very excited to meet its readers next week!