Nina's First Blog

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

2012-01-09T22:51:00.001-05:00

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

Gearing Up for EVO 2010!

2009-11-24T10:41:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-19T17:43:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-03T16:37:00.002-04:00

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

2009-05-24T15:54:00.004-04:00

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

2009-05-24T07:50:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-13T09:14:00.002-04:00

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

2009-01-28T14:21:00.005-05:00

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....

Finally! Second Life

2009-01-19T12:12:00.004-05:00

After about 2 years of hesitating, hemming and hawing, I finally signed up for Second Life yesterday. One of the problems I had with it was that when you register you can choose any first name you like for your avatar, but you have to select a last name from a list, and I didn't like any of the last names offered, so I tried a couple of times but never got past that stage! (I was also concerned about using up too much computer memory and the apparently steep learning curve, and I wondered just what application this might have in teaching, since it would take a long time to teach students how to do it as well.)

Anyway, yesterday I was chatting with the webheads at Tapped In as usual, and several of them were simultaneously at SL. I just did it. I found a last name that appealed to me (Zaytsev, which comes from the Russian word for rabbit) and took the plunge. I chose an avatar, a woman in a pantsuit, and adjusted her (my?) appearance a little (made her/me a little fatter), although I couldn't change the hair from straight blonde to dark curly.... I was trying to make her more like me. (Maybe that isn't the point, though; maybe the point is to create somebody that doesn't look like me at all.) When I arrived at the "welcome area" I was met by a volunteer mentor who offered some help and answered some questions for me. Then I explored a little. I learned to walk, fly, hover, jump, shrug and a bunch more things. I found Education II, where the webheads have a headquarters, but it was deserted. And I was approached by an avatar who invited me to have sex (actually he said sez). Yuck! I immediately flew away. Later I encountered him again; he had shed his clothes somewhere. I told him I had not come to SL to be harassed by naked men, and left again. (I hadn't learned yet to say "eeuuww!")

This is one of the reasons why I would be hesitant to take a class to SL.

Here's a snapshot of me at Edunation:

Week One reflection

2009-01-19T12:05:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Sunday, marked the end of the first week of Enhancing Lessons with Web 2.0. Everything has gone very well! We have 100 people signed up but of course many of them are not active; either they are lurking, or they just signed up and changed their minds; it's hard to tell. Many people overestimate their ability to follow an EVO session and sign up for several. Unless you have nothing else to do in your life, this is inadvisable! Anyway, I have really enjoyed the interactions I have had so far with our participants on the Yahoo Group,at Tapped In, in our live session at Elluminate on Saturday, on our blog and on our wiki. Robert also created a page at Netvibes where all of these things come conveniently together. This is my first exposure to Netvibes and it seems worthy of investigation.

Today we begin Week 2, Blogs: A Home Base for Web 2.0 Lessons.

EVO2009: A New Adventure

2009-01-10T22:39:00.003-05:00

EVO2009 begins on Monday, and this is my first time co-moderating an entire session (you may remember that in 2007, I co-moderated one week of Becoming a Webhead). Our session, Enhancing Lessons with Web 2.0, was conceived of by Robert Squires, whom I met for the first time in New York at TESOL in April. In addition to Robert and me, our team consists of Rita Zeinstejer, my dear friend from Rosario, Argentina; three other Argentine ladies, Mary Di Monaco, Analia Dobboletta, and Alicia Zuliani; and Maru del Campo from Mexico. We have been working for a few months to pull together a great session, and we have about sixty participants signed up from Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Iran, the U.S., Indonesia, Russia, the U.A.E., Spain, Chile, Portugal, Germany, Israel, Peru, Mexico and Romania (plus several who have not yet shared their locations with us). The focus of our session is how to incorporate web 2.0 tools into solid lesson plans aimed at achieving specific learning outcomes. I am a very bad lesson planner, so I am not an obvious choice for moderating the session, but I expect that I will learn a lot by doing it!

Happy birthday, webheads!

2008-09-14T16:47:00.005-04:00

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of this Community of Practice, counting from the first webheads chat at Tapped In, September 13, 1998. I decided to try to connect (voice or text) with as many webheads as I could to wish them a happy tenth. I didn't actually succeed in chatting with very many, but it was fun talking with those I did find. I had a little conference call with Vance, Daf, and Carla, which was fun. We had a pretty large group of celebrants at Tapped In this morning, and afterwards we all went to WiZiQ and played around there. Vance created a wiki to which many of us have contributed. You can visit it at http://webheads10years.wikispaces.com.

TED.com: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight

2008-06-28T11:12:00.002-04:00

TED.com is a wonderful compendium of short talks on all subjects by the most innovative thinkers and doers available. The first one I listened to, and perhaps still my favorite, is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist, describing her own stroke, which led to her great insight that we are all part of the energy flow in the world, and we can choose to be a part of everything (right brain) or to be a self-contained individual (left brain):

This and other wonderful talks are all freely available to the TED community and others, and joining the online community is free, although actually attending a TED conference is very expensive.

Scattergories

2008-06-06T12:29:00.006-04:00

My oldest friend (in the sense that we met when we were 2 years old, not in the other sense) posted this in her blog, The Upper Storey.

Use the first letter of your name to come up with an item in each of the following categories. They have to be real places, names, and things. You can't make anything up. Try to use different answers is the person ahead of you has the same first initial. You can't use your own name for the boy/girl name question. Lois/Maggie (my friend) suggested everyone add one category.

Here goes:

What is your name?...............Nina
Four letter word.....................note
Vehicle.....................................Nissan
City..........................................New York
Boy name................................Neal
Girl name................................Natalie
Drink.......................................Nescafe
Occupation.............................novelist
Something to wear................necklace
Celebrity.................................Nick Nolte
Food........................................noodles
Something found in a bathroom........Nivea lotion
Reason for being late............no watch
Cartoon character.................Nancy
Something you shout...........No way!
Animal...................................nutria
Word to describe you..........nice
Disease..................................nephritis
Herb or spice........................nutmeg

Tagged in the "Meme Game"

2008-05-19T22:37:00.005-04:00

I don't know why it's called the Meme Game, but if you're "tagged", you're supposed to answer some questions and tag some other people. Did I get that right? Berta Leiva tagged me, so here goes:

Berta tagged me, so it’s my turn to answer the questions in the “meme game.”

1. What was I doing ten years ago?
In May 1998 I was working, as I am now, teaching ESL at the Maryland English Institute, University of Maryland, College Park; my husband was working as maitre d’ at a country club in Bethesda, Maryland; my mother-in-law had been living with us for about six months and was recovering from a broken hip; and my daughter Vicki was in kindergarten.

2. Five things I have to do tomorrow (the question says today, but it’s bedtime so I will change it to tomorrow):
a. Attend a meeting from 9-12 to discuss our curriculum
b. Complete a faculty Survey and a Lab use survey
c. Draft a response to Mission Standard 1 for our self-study
d. That’s about all I will have time for!

3. Snacks I enjoy: dark chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, coffee chip ice cream (do you perceive a trend here?)

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: support lots of charities (medical, environmental, arts-related, animal rights, women’s rights…), redo my kitchen, maybe buy a horse

5. Three of my bad habits:
a. eating too much
b. getting stuck at the computer
c. complaining

6. Five places I have lived:
a. Jackson Heights, Borough of Queens, New York (when I was too little to remember)
b. Hackensack, New Jersey (where I grew up)
c. Rochester, New York (where I went to college)
d. In and around Paris, France (1970 – 1973)
e. In and around Washington, D.C. (1973 – present)

7. Five jobs I have had:
a. Care for and exercise Sonny Boy, a beautiful palomino horse (part-time after-school job in high school)
b. Teacher at the Ecole Active Bilingue, Paris
c. Teacher at the Club International Audiovisuel, Paris
d. Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and Assistant Director at the American Language Academy, Washington, DC
e. Teacher at the Maryland English Institute, U. of Maryland

8. People I want to know more about: Rita, Robert, Teresa, Dafne and Erika. If Erika and Robert will send me urls for their websites I will put up the links!

Nina's newest blog venture

2008-05-18T10:31:00.003-04:00

When I posted about TweetWheel I realized that I had never posted about the leanrers' blog I created back in November 2007, English Power. It is meant to be a repository of ideas for students (mine at the University of Maryland, College Park and English House, as well as for English language learners anywhere) who wish to improve their English language skills outside of class or independent of a class. The ideas I've posted about so far are mostly using free websites such as TED.com and Free Rice, but some posts offer low-tech ideas like reading for pleasure and keeping a double-entry journal.

While the blog has not garnered much notice thus far, I hope it will gradually build an audience and that teachers who find it will direct their students to it.

TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!

2008-05-18T10:28:00.001-04:00

I've been quiet for a long time. Having a web presence sometimes means being too invested in certain sites to the detriment of others. I want to keep my first blog as a place I can record some of the nifty new tools I've been introduced to. TweetWheel was mentioned on the webheads Yahoo Group, so I tried it out, and this is the result:

TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!

I was hoping the whole graphic would show up on the post, but it's just a link. It's cool, though! I wonder if it will update itself as my Twitter community grows. Maybe if refreshed?

Graduation Day #3

2008-02-24T08:04:00.006-05:00

This is graduation day for BaW08, which I have been participating in, in a limited way; being busy at work, I kept up with the digests, participated in several of the synchronous sessions and have plans to listen to the recordings of the others if I haven't already, explored a few new tools, have tried out Chinswing with students, and of course met many lovely new webheads.

Webhead Ibrahimjon Rustamov in Tajikistan created a badge in honor of the graduating webheads.

It's now time to look forward to TESOL in New York and reunions with friends I met last year in Seattle (Tere, Daf, Moira, Rita--who's to be my roommate!--Vance, Aiden, and others) as well as first f2f encounters with Mike Coughlan and Ronaldo Lima, who are attending from Australia and Brazil! We'll be blogging together at WiA in New York.

BaW08

2008-01-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

It's January, so it's time for EV Online. I should be focusing all my attention on the self-study we are engaged in at my institute, but I found myself unable to stay away from Becoming a Webhead. This is partly because the camaraderie is unmatched after the session concludes, and partly because although I have been a participant for two years, I have never felt like I learned everything there was to learn. Last year, as a co-moderator and a "thread lady", I actually devoted very little time to exploring new tools. Just keeping up with the Yahoo Group is overwhelming as the number of participants soars (it's already about 200, counting the mods, co-mods and others) and the daily digests of up to 25 posts each begin to pour in. So I have set my goals for the session:
1. Read the YG posts, but don't post often,
2. Focus on trying out the tools I haven't used yet,
3. Try to attend the synchronous sessions, but
4. Don't try to complete the readings (most of which I have already read in 06 or 07) or participate in the Forum.

And here I am, posting to my blog, which is not a new tool. I've also been adding lots of contacts on YM and Skype, and have already chatted with a few of the new members.

I guess the upshot is that I will do what I will do!
Me with my students from last semester

Less Tech Savvy Than I Supposed

2007-08-01T22:02:00.001-04:00

We've just bought a new computer: a Dell Inspiron Desktop! I am really pleased, yet I feel as though I have regressed somewhat. When I bought my first Dell about 4-5 years ago, I think I remember setting it up myself. I couldn't set up this one, though. I needed to buy a router because the old computer is still here, and I didn't know anything about routers. In fact, I assumed that a router would network the 2 computers together, and I could use the same printer with both. Imagine my chagrin when I was told that all the router does is share the internet connection between the 2 computers! If I want to use the same printer for both I need to spend more money to buy a printer server! To network the computers requires something else again! And I found the set up more confusing than before--less color coding, few instructions. I needed the help of a kind neighbor to get the thing set up. And some things are still not right! The sound isn't working properly and I can't remember how to install buttons for Bloglines, MyBookmarks, del.icio.us, and gmail on the toolbar.

On top of all that, of course I need to accustom myself to Windows Vista, the new, as yet unproven operating system....

Venturing into Podcasting with Odeo

2007-06-19T11:09:00.001-04:00

One of my goals is to learn podcasting. My f2f webhead buddy, Maryanne Burgos, has the same ambition, so this morning we are sitting in Maryanne's kitchen in Germantown MD, experimenting. Here's the result:

powered by ODEO

WiAOC

2007-05-19T14:50:00.000-04:00

I am multi-tasking. While listening to the Q&A following Teemu Leinonen's keynote address at the Webheads in Action Online Convergence (WiAOC) 2007 and volunteering at the Tapped In helpdesk (where it's very quiet), here I am updating my blog. I am not particularly skilled at multi-tasking. I am afraid it is Teemu's interesting observations that are getting short shrift here.

This is the webheads' second convergence; the first was in 2005 and is still available on the web. It's my first experience with an online conference. I was on the planning committee, although I did very little, and I presented yesterday on Engrade, the online gradebook I use to record my students' grades, attendance, and homework assignments. With Moira's able help, I presented at DiscoverE's Interwise virtual classroom. I think it went pretty well, although I haven't tried listening to the recording yet. This is how it showed up on the schedule:

The Convergence schedule, so empty a month ago, has filled to the point where there is a presentation, keynote speaker, or "unconference" (at Knowplace) at almost every hour of the three days. Vance Stevens, webhead extraordinaire, seems to be everywhere all the time. How does he do it? It's only halfway through and I am already losing focus. Starting Friday evening at 6:30, I have attended all or part of 4 keynote addresses and 11 presentations! And it's only 3:00 Saturday afternoon.

Digital Discipline

2007-05-01T12:51:00.000-04:00

Wesley Fryer writes about "digital discipline"--the act of limiting the time one spends in the virtual world (he is specifically writing about Second Life but generally applying his idea to all computer and television use) in this post to his blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity.

Fryer concludes that we need to consider how the time we spend in front of our computer screens is affecting our f2f relationships with family and friends. I constantly complain about how much time my daughter spends--or wants to spend--in front of a screen, yet I have to admit that I am nearly as addicted as she is!

Webheads in Action

2007-04-30T22:22:00.000-04:00

Cris Costa has a new blog in which she writes about the wonderful Community of Practice that is the Webheads in Action. I totally agree with everything in her post! This marvelous community of EFL/ESL (and other) professionals is so supportive that I can overcome my fear of the unknown and try all sorts of new things. Next month, I will be trying a new challenge: that of presenting at an online conference, the second Webheads in Action Online Convergence! I am going to do a small presentation on the online gradebook that I use, Engrade. To do this, I am using FastStone for screen captures and Power Point; and I will need to learn to be a moderator at Alado or another virtual classroom. A stretch for me, but I can do it, with the help of my fellow webheads.

Moving icons

2007-02-27T15:19:00.000-05:00

Today one of my students showed me how to embed free moving pictures in my blog:

(Visit his blog to see how to take this to an extreme.)

The Learning Goes On...

2007-02-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

This year, unlike last year, I made it to the BaW graduation party. (Last year, I went Greek dancing the night before and overslept!) Things were not totally smooth, however--I tried to click on something in Tere's wonderful graduation page and my old overloaded computer could not handle it. It crashed and I got kicked out of Alado. What was worse, when I tried to reenter, I couldn't because the room was full! I sat here, chatting with Leanne in YM and trying to master my disappointment. Eventually, somebody left and I was able to reenter the room. I didn't miss too much and of course, everything was being recorded so I can listen later. Anyway, it was lovely. I had a great time. It's a warm, cozy feeling knowing I was interacting with friends all over the world!

When I finally looked up from my screen, I saw that it is snowing--big, beautiful fat flakes already covering the ground!

I will take a short screenbreak and then attend the EVO wrapup session at Worldbridges and then, at 1:00, the B4B wrapup party. What a day!

The Final 48 Hours

2007-02-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe that EVO 2007 is coming to an end. Doing the Week 4 threads for BaW completely derailed me. I essentially dropped out of Blogging for Beginners after Week 3 and just lurked in BaW. As a result, I didn't get to explore the voice tools of Week 4. I attended Isabel Perez' talk on creating activities and exercises during week 5, but I was working on the threads during her presentation, so I couldn't really focus on it. I barely dipped into the readings and gave up trying to post on the Forum. As I write this, my gmail inbox is crammed full of unread YG digests--hundreds of messages. I knew I was beaten when I couldn't decide if I should keep trying to catch up from behind or just try to work backwards! What I ended up doing was nothing: just watching the digests accumulate, occasionally glancing through the most recent one.

So, I am disappointed not to have done more; but I've still enjoyed it and must admit I've achieved some of the goals I had set for myself. I've learned quite a lot about wikis and have been using two in my UMEI005 class; I've gotten lots of ideas and new tools to explore; and I've kept up with old friends and made new ones. Maybe I set the bar too high. I thought that because I had done BaW once, I would be able to co-moderate a week, and do the threads for a week, and take Blogging for Beginners on the side, and still do everything that I didn't have time to do last year (which amounted to a good half of the total). Duh! Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that I couldn't do all that (and teach 005 and help my daughter with her homework and spend some time with my husband...)

But there is still lots to learn, and lots of fun to be had. In just a few short weeks, I will be flying to Seattle to the TESOL Convention, where I will meet many of my webhead friends f2f! Now that is something to look forward to!

Drowning in EVO

2007-02-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

I just registered for Gliffy, a web-based application that enables users to create diagrams, flowcharts, etc. But when I tried to add my little diagram about nouns here, nothing showed up! :-( Then I tried to publish anyway even though the preview showed nothing. I got an error message. I told Blogger not to show the error message and published again. Bingo! I got an absolutely HUGE page with a tiny little diagram in it. So I went back to Gliffy and copied the code for a smaller image: http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/1152883/S.jpg Unfortunately, it doesn't show up in the blog! Grrrr.

I still haven't figured out how to deal with the fact that both count and noncount nouns can be definite or indefinite. Maybe I have to write those twice.

This has been my week to co-moderate BaW. Just keeping up with the emails on the YG has been very difficult to do. It didn't help that I had to be out three evenings (one teaching, two high school registration meetings) and Saturday morning (teaching). I actually felt as if I got less done--never got around to the readings, didn't post on the Forum--than in previous weeks. I had hoped to explore podcasting a little bit but I never did any experimenting at all. Maybe when EVO is over I will see if Carla will help me get started with that, since she has moved to Key West and isn't teaching for the moment.

Despite my frustration at not getting much done, I am enjoying all the new people in BaW07 and B4B (although I get confused about who is taking what--quite a few are taking both, as I am) and have enjoyed text and voice chats with Monica, Beyza, Marjan and several other people.

Counting down...

2007-01-13T22:02:00.000-05:00

EVOnline begins tomorrow with an opening ceremony at WorldBridges at 15h GMT, or 10 a.m. EST! Last year, I completely missed the opening webcast (didn't yet know what a webcast was!) and only listened to it a couple of weeks later. This time I feel more like I am on the same page as everyone else.

The BaW07 Yahoo Group (YG) has been very active in the past weeks, over 300 messages; most of them are self-introductions from some of the 200+ participants and responses to them. I remember how overwhelmed I was last year when I first visited the YG and found hundreds of posts already there; I never found the time to go back to the beginning and read them all. I am sure many people will have the same experience this year, but I suppose it can't be helped. People are excited and anxious to start interacting, and those who are less proficient at web tools and need a little prompting will not figure out what to do until the course actually begins on Monday.

The B4B group has been more patient, waiting to begin until the official starting day.

In the meantime I have been playing around with wikis for my 005 class. First I tried a WYSIWYG editor in pbwiki, but I had trouble with the sidebar: it looks fine in editing mode but once saved, looks awful. From Dafne, I learned that this is not my fault: it's the editor. She has the exact same problem! So I created a second pbwiki using the classic editor. However, it took me forever to get my pages looking the way I wanted them to, since I am just learning WikiStyle. Then I tried a wikispaces wiki, but that too was not easy to do quickly, so finally I decided to go with the first one and try to ignore the ugly sidebar. I've complained to pbwiki though. Maybe they will fix it sooner, rather than later. One can always hope!

Anyway, becoming proficient using wikis is one of my goals for this year (learning more about podcasting is another one). I found out last year that trial and error is the way to learn.

WikiFrustration

2007-01-11T15:36:00.000-05:00

I've just learned that running words together with a capital letter somewhere in the middle, as I have done above, is called (among many other things) CamelBack. I learned this because it is one way to create a new page on the wiki I am creating for my UMEI 005 class this semester. Today I spent a lot of time adding pages of handouts I have created on general topics, such as "Extra Listening Practice" and "How to Study Spelling" (actually that one isn't there yet). For each page, I added a link in the sidebar. However, the sidebar, which looks sort of okay in editing mode, looks completely different and very weird on the wiki itself--not at all like the one in the BaW07 wiki, for example. I can't figure out where I went wrong! I emailed Daf to ask for her help, which was very selfish of me, because Daf is up to her ears in EVOnline (which she is coordinating), BaW07 (which she is moderating) and her job (oh yeah! She's a university professor in her spare time!). Everyone I could think of to ask is busy getting ready for EVOnline at the moment. Only 4 more days!

A New Look for a New Year

2007-01-03T15:40:00.000-05:00

To celebrate my first year as a blogger, I just changed the look of this blog! When I first set it up, I was overwhelmed by all the choices of templates, so I picked a completely bland, boring one. Now that I am more adventurous, I have selected a brighter color scheme, green to honor the environment!

Gearing up for EVOnline 2007

2007-01-03T14:56:00.000-05:00

Participating in Becoming a Webhead 06 was a pivotal event in my professional (and personal) life. Before BaW06 was even finished, I was already planning on signing up for it in '07 in order to explore all the neat tools I didn't get a chance to investigate in '06. (I meant to do this on my own, but--without that incredibly supportive community pushing me to do it, it did not happen.) Now 2007 is here and I am not only taking BaW07 (I officially signed up yesterday) --I am also co-moderating the week on Building an Online Presence. I am thrilled to be part of the BaW07 team and excited about the course itself.

I have also signed up for Blogging for Beginners (B4B)! This course is being moderated by my webhead friends Carla, Erika, Claudia, and Gladys (with Silvana as co-mod). Although I am not exactly a beginner at blogging, the course syllabus has several things I want to explore further (such as really understanding about RSS feeds!). There is another course targeting more advanced blogging tools, but I don't want to overload myself. Last year, BaW06 took up all the time I had to give it (and then some).

The courses don't start for two weeks, but I have already begun by visiting the wikis, Yahoo!Groups and blogs that each has set up, putting myself on the maps, leaving comments, etc. (Maybe I have too much time on my hands!)

Today, I also added a cbox to this blog. Wonder how I will know if anyone leaves me a message (other than checking it daily, yuck!)??

I also checked out Chinswing (http://www.chinswing.com/pages/default.aspx), a new site for spoken "conversations". It looks promising for both listening and speaking practice! I have not downloaded it because apparently in just a few weeks there will be a web-based version with nothing to download. :-) This computer is so full of stuff already....

On another note, our replacement printer arrived today. My HP printer, just a year old, has been acting very grouchy since the summer. I finally got HP to replace it! I must unpack the new one (I hope it works better than the one we have now!) and return the defective one.

Switching to the new Blogger

2006-12-14T21:01:00.000-05:00

I decided to try putting a Bloglines button on the sidebar here (not that anyone still reads this blog! but just to try it out), and was invited to switch over to the "new" Blogger, which seems to have merged with Google. What the heck! I went ahead and did it. I like the new dashboard; it seems a little easier. I was startled to find unapproved comments on two of my inactive blogs. I never got emails on those comments; I guess I hadn't set up those blogs that way. So the new Blogger has already helped me out.

I love my Bloglines account, BTW. It's so easy and convenient!

I registered for You-Tube tonight also, and tried uploading my little soundless video of the UM marching band, taken with MEI's digital camera at the UM/FIU game. I haven't yet seen if it worked or not.

Bloglines

2006-12-03T10:40:00.000-05:00

Vance to the rescue again! This morning he showed me how to create a Bloglines account (http://bloglines.com) which I can check to see at a glance if any of the many student (and other) blogs I monitor occasionally have a new post. I can stop trying each blog individually only to find nothing new for 6 months. Thanks, Vance!

The Vanishing Blog Repaired

2006-12-03T10:36:00.000-05:00

Subtitle to this post: Webheads are Wonderful (WaW).

I took my sad story of the vanishing blog to last week's webheads chat at Tapped In. Vance Stevens had the solution: change the template. He cautioned me to save my old template in Notepad first because changing the template would lose all my links and any other changes I had made. It worked like a charm! The blog is back online, visible to all.

Although I did not see any other posts regarding this problem in the Blogger Help group, it may not be so rare. I noticed this morning that one of my students' blogs is a blank white page--just as mine was last week. I hope she follows my advice and fixes it.

The Vanishing Blog

2006-11-26T00:58:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, The 003 Blog (http://003fall2006.blogspot.com) vanished from the web. It did not vanish from my dashboard, so I have not (so far) panicked. I can view individual posts, and I can apparently create new posts and edit old posts, but I just can't view the damn blog! It's really irritating. I have asked Blogger Help for assistance and sent a message to the Blogger Help Group. A Norwegian person posted to the group that s/he had experienced the same problem, but I clicked on the link provided and I can see that blog without any problem. I wonder if anyone can see mine, just not me?!? I doubt it because I can't view it either from home or from work. It has been 4 days now, and I am anxious to get it back. There are only 2 weeks left in this semester anyway!

Blogchat

2006-11-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

Well, I never went any further with the wiki! Hopefully I will get some wiki experience in BaW07, where I have volunteered to co-moderate Week 3 (blogweek), so I am now part of the planning team (although I have so far done nada besides lurk).

However, I am going to try and install Blogchat on this blog. Wish me luck. :-)

My first attempt got me nowhere. This is more complicated than I thought.

Creating a wiki

2006-09-03T21:55:00.000-04:00

I am branching out. Today I made it (late) to the Blogstreams Salon chat at Tapped In, but they were chatting about wikis and not blogs. I have wanted to learn about wikis ever since BaW06 when I didn't have the time to explore the topic, so after the chat I visited pbwiki.com and wikispaces.com, took a couple of tours, and then went ahead and took the plunge: I created my ExperimentalWiki at pbwiki.com. Then I fooled around with it a little bit but was pretty unsuccessful.

Well, my first halting blogsteps were pretty lame, too.

On another note: AGU in America (program and blog project) was a roaring success! The blog is now linked to the main MEI website and also to the website of Aoyama Gakuin University!

During the program, I got quite proficient at making Bubbleshare albums and posting them on Blogger.

Progress (Not Much, But Some)

2006-07-24T22:03:00.000-04:00

I was looking back at the goals I stated earlier. One of them was to familiarize myself with Wordpress. I do now have a blog on Wordpress, Nina's Reading Blog. Every time I finish a book, I post a comment about it. I have a mix of adult and young adult books because Vicki, my daughter, and I are reading to each other a lot this summer. One thing I like about Wordpress is that I can categorize my posts. I have categories for fiction, nonfiction, young adult, and recommended for EFL/ESL readers. A post can be in more than one categoriy, which is useful. What I don't like is that I somehow managed to put duplicate links up on the blog, but I can't figure out how to delete some of them!

Six of the AGU students have now left comments on AGU in America. They arrive in 9 days! I am trying to post more frequently now, and tonight someone commented that reading the blog made her feel almost as if she were here already--which is exactly what my goal is!

I am also excited about being able to use Bubbleshare to place lots of photos on the AGU blog without using up too much space!

First attempt to create and post a photo show

2006-07-17T09:25:00.000-04:00

I have been meaning to try out Bubbleshare (www.bubbleshare.com) for a long time. This morning, I finally registered for a free account and created a little slide show, or album, whatever you call it, of pictures of some of my former students. I am not actually sure exactly how to post it, but here goes my first attempt:

This album is powered by
BubbleShare
- Add to my blog

Oh my God--it worked! :-)

Audioblogger

2006-07-09T22:12:00.000-04:00

I finally managed to add audio to my AGU in America blog. It wasn't easy! I had to call a number in California to record the message. I tried to use Skype to do this, but it didn't work (despite assurances from Blogger help staff that it would). I finally used my cell phone but was not pleased with the audio quality. Still, it's there! Check it out at http://agu2006.blogspot.com.

Four of the Japanese participants in AGU in America have left comments on the blog. Yesterday I sent them all two emails: one regular and one Springdoo, encouraging them to visit the blog an to leave comments.

Recommencing...

2006-05-10T15:10:00.000-04:00

This blog has been about learning to blog. Since I am still learning, it seems appropriate to come back to it.

I now have 3 blogs, or 4, depending on how you count:
1. this one
2. "Learning English at MEI," http://umei003rwg@blogspot.com, my first class (team) blog, done in collaboration with my intermediate ESL students at the Maryland English Institute, University of Maryland (College Park, USA). Features student paragraphs and essays, diary entries, recommendations and final reflections on the class. I recently managed to add links to individual student blogs which certain students created to fulfill an assignment to keep a diary over spring break.
3. "AGU in American 2006", http://agu2006.blogspot.com, a new blog-in-progress related to the two-week American English and Culture program for students from Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. When the ~20 participants have received their visas, I want to encourage them to visit and comment on the blog as a way of initiating interaction with them before they even come here. When they are here, I plan to transform that blog into a team blog and also have each participant create a culture diary/blog in which to record his/her impressions and reflections of the program (with links to the main blog of course!).
4? A little bloglet attached to my Frappr map. This seems to elicit no comments from anyone, so maybe it's just for my eyes.
5? A couple of posts on my personal blog at http://webheadsinaction.org, also eliciting no reactions from anyone.

I have already submitted a proposal for the WATESOL Fall Convention in October for a demonstration entitled "Blogging 101" or some such thing. I want to talk about different ways to use blogs in ESL classes, and show people how easy it is to create a blog for themselves or for their class.

My goals for my own professional blogging development include
1. learning to audioblog! (soon!)
2. learning to videoblog? (eventually)
3. familiarizing myself with some other blog hosts, like wordpress.com.

Finally, a thought which came to me just today: why not try to set up some "blog buddies" among the webheads, so that rather than haphazardly trying to help everyone out by sporadically visiting and commenting on their/their students' blogs, each of us could adopt one or more other teachers interested in blogging and make a point of visiting and commenting on their class blogs or student blogs on a more regular basis? I think I will post a note to that effect on the Yahoo!Groups message board and see what happens.

A Webhead at last!

2006-02-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

After a fun evening of Greek dancing, I arrived home at 1 a.m. and change the setting on my alarm from 6:00 to 6:45 (sleeping in!) and then forgot to set the alarm! Result: when I woke up at 9 a.m. today, I had missed the graduation!

(Well, not totally. I managed to find my way to Tapped In, where there were, as always, helpful cyberfriends to tell me that perhaps all was not lost and to point me in the direction of Worldbridges, where I discovered the Graduation Chat [party, whatever...] still in full swing. It took me a while longer to figure out that there was audio going along with that, and then a rather long time to figure out how to hear the audio, but in the end I was able to join in for almost a full hour.)

To put my disappointment over missing (most of) the graduation into perspective, let me add that the last graduation I attended was my junior high school graduation. I missed my high school graduation (I left school early to take part in a study tour of France, which surely was a turning point in my life, pointing me down the road to a lifelong love of language and culture), my college graduation (I spent my senior year in France and graduated late) and my master's degree graduation (Why break the mold?). I had dubbed myself a hater of ceremonies (even had a civil wedding). But the BaW graduation was something I was really looking forward to.

No matter. I was there for the EVO closing ceremony and even got to Skype in and talk about my BaW06 experience to all!

Anyway, now that I am officially a Webhead, the learning goes on!

PS Last week, I started a new blog for my class at the Maryland English Institute IEP: umei003rwg.blogspot.com. Several of my BaW friends not only visited the blog but actually took the time to read the students' work and leave thoughtful comments. Webheads are really terrific.

Reflections on BaW-06

2006-02-22T12:53:00.000-05:00

Homework: Reflect on and write a short text about your overall impressions of this 6-week workshop, what you've achieved, and what you plan to do with your newly-acquired know-how. Post your reflections to our YG list, or post them on your blog and send the link to the YG list.

This experience has been incredible.

Understand this: I remember life before computers, the Internet, and email. I remember being assigned an email address at the university where I work (I think it was in the 80s) and wondering what I would ever want with an email account anyway—wasn’t it just a way to receive more junk mail than the mailman already brought to my house? (This, unfortunately, turned out to be partly true.) I remember laboriously learning to use MS Word by copying my grandfather’s 12-page autobiography on an early Macintosh. My first home computer, a little Mac Plus, lacked even a hard drive!

Fast forward to 2006. At home, I have a PC with a cable modem, running Windows XP. At work, I have a new flat-screen PC on my desk and a fully-equipped ASC multi-media lab to teach in. I have 3 email accounts and check my email more often than strictly necessary. I use my word-processor for course-related materials. I attempted (unsuccessfully) to create a webpage for work. I’ve been teaching in the fancy-schmancy lab, but have done nothing very original or innovative or even availed myself of many of the bells and whistles (even those I know about!). I’ve gotten my feet wet with WebCT, our current campus online teaching tool. But my attempts to create a webpage have been abandoned. I don’t know what an MP3 player is. A young friend in China recommended I get Skype so we can talk, but I didn’t do it. I visited a friend’s blog but never left a comment. There is SO MUCH I don’t know, and the technology keeps changing! I am overwhelmed.

Enter EVOnline. To be honest, I would not have signed up if there had not been some pressure to do so. I almost forgot to sign up, in fact, and when I remembered late in the afternoon of January 15, I didn’t give much thought to which course to take—just picked BaW as the one that looked the most suitable for a total newbie. Providential!

It’s hard to describe my overall impression of this experience. One thing is certain: it’s not been like anything I have ever done before. It has been like a whirlwind of new experiences: making online friends (something I never thought possible), exploring resources I never knew existed, attending sessions at Tapped In, Alado, and Worldbridges. I’ve gotten pretty proficient at text chat. I’ve installed Skype and YM and acquired 2 headsets (one at home, one at work), enabling me to talk not only to my friend in China but also to old friends in California, Taiwan, and Mexico, as well as BaW friends in Sweden, Russia, and France. I’ve tried my hand at serious multitasking: listening, and at times speaking, while reading and participating in text chat and looking at a Power Point presentation. (I managed, sort of, until I also tried to follow a link, when I kind of got lost.) I’ve participated in the YahooGroups discussion and checked out almost all the links on the main site and the YG. (I intend to go back to those I have missed.) I still don’t know what an MP3 player is, but I now know what webcasts and podcasts are. I even have my own blog (but no webpage—yet)! I have been carefully avoiding anything to do with wikis, which were not officially part of the curriculum, but I am pretty sure that I will be learning about them in the future (maybe in BaW-07, which I am already planning to be part of). At the Maryland English Institute, where I work, BaW has transformed me from a reluctant technophobe to someone who is seen as having some expertise in this area. Who could have foretold that? I introduced Skype to my best friend, who happens to be very tech-savvy (from my point of view anyway), and we can now chat regularly for the first time in 35 years. Finally, I feel more competent around technology. I am less timid than I was previously—not only about the Internet, but also with other forms of technology—a jammed photocopier, for example. I attribute my newfound boldness to BaW. It’s the “webhead mentality” I have heard about!

So what do I intend to do with my newly-acquired know-how? First, I intend to build on it. There was such a wealth of information available, so many links I didn’t have the time to explore fully or at all, so much I want to go back and revisit. (I still need to find out about wikis, remember!) Not to mention the fact that technology transforms itself with such lightning speed that just staying up-to-date requires constant vigilance. Second, I intend to use it to make my classes more interesting and fun, and to stay in touch with the people I’ve met during the past 6 weeks. Third, I plan to share it with my colleagues. But my strongest recommendation to them is to sign up for BaW-07. What an adventure this has been!

Continued BlogFrustration

2006-02-17T22:26:00.000-05:00

I got cocky tonight and decided to try adding some links to the blog, as I have seen on others' blogs. I read the instructions and followed them (I think). It was one of my first attempts at using html. First I added Karen's KATravels blog and republished. It worked! I added two more links to MT's blog and one of Carla's blogs, republished again, and viewed the blog to find--nothing (not even KATravels). I have no idea what happened to my links, but they don't appear anywhere. Grrrr!

Snow

2006-02-12T17:51:00.000-05:00

It has been an unusually warm winter so far, and except for a couple of freak snows in November, without snowstorms--until yesterday. It snowed heavily all night, and when I woke up this morning the view out my window was sort of like this--only not really this, which is a picture my sister took of Tarr Creek on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where she has a house and a digital camera. I have a house, but I don't have a digital camera, so to see the view from my window you would have to wait a long time for me to finish my film, develop it, scan it.... well you get the idea. Anyway, snow is snow. If you've seen one, you've seen all.

The really annoying part was that the storm resulted in our losing power this morning, so I couldn't be at Tapped In to chat with the webheads!

Success!

2006-02-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

It turns out the problem was my browser (I use Netscape). When I opened up IE (which I normally avoid), the browse window allowed me to select my photo and upload it.

Next step: transfer it to my profile. Stay tuned!

Chatting with Chrissan

2006-02-09T10:22:00.000-05:00

How do I ever get any work done around here? I was just finishing a delicious chat with my best friend in California when Chrissan, just back from her dentist's, IM'ed that she was available. It was neat chatting with her in Trollhatten, Sweden, but unfortunately all we could discover was that the image icon in blogger is not doing what it should. I sent a request for help to blogger and am waiting their reply.

On the other hand, I did figure out how to add my photo to my Skype profile! (I think.)

An offer of help

2006-02-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

Chrissan IM'ed me yesterday with an offer to help me with the photo upload problem. BaWers are such nice, helpful people! I couldn't take advantage of her offer because I was on my way to class, but I hope to do so later today. Fingers crossed.

I am considering starting a new blog for my class to put up student work, but maybe I should wait until I get more proficient at it myself.

BlogFrustration!

2006-02-07T16:36:00.000-05:00

I've just spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to add a picture to my profile or blog. I've installed Hello and something called BloggerBot, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the pictures from my hard disk into any of these things, or to the blog. Then I wrote what I thought was a post, but it disappeared (I think). Aarrgghh!

A few cautious baby-steps in cyberspace

2006-02-06T21:35:00.000-05:00

Attended a cybersession with Jonathan Finkelstein at Learning Times today. I cyber-raised my hand and cyber-participated in the session. It's a brave new world!

I also figured out how to upload my saved HandyBits voicemail to the Links--all on my own!

On the negative side, I cannot figure out how to delete an entire post from this blog--only to edit it.

Teleworking Together: February 2006

2006-02-05T21:47:00.000-05:00

Teleworking Together: February 2006
I visited Silvana's blog, as she had visited mine and said kind things about it. She also posted her picture. There's a picture I like that is on my computer at work, which I will try to upload tomorrow.

Nina's First Blog

2006-02-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

Here I am, finally creating my first blog. This was my homework last week in BaW06, but somehow I couldn't do it. So why am I doing it now? Because I was just trying to add a comment to Kat's Edu-Kat blog and I found I couldn't do it without starting one of my own! So thanks, Kat, I think.