First of all, Happy New Year. I hope it is a great one for all of us.

2015 was a really good year for me, professionally. I know I didn't update this blog much, but I was super busy elswere.

The highlight of my year was the British Council Trainer Development Course, which took place last spring and which I completed successfully. So, I am now a teacher trainer and I have got a shiny new certificate to prove this.

                            Coffee vector designed by Freepik


Week 4 in EVO is over and we are well into Week 5 by now. It was, in many ways, an exciting week for me professionally.

First of all, it was the week I moderated #ebookevo. It was my first time as a moderator. I was nervous to start with. I shouldn't have been, because I was moderating a group of enthusiastic, creative teachers.  I had the privilege to look at some chapters in making. I learnt a lot about new tools and resources. We discussed ways to engage learners and have them contribute to our ebooks, as well as technology elements that support learners. I will be forever grateful for this learning opportunity. I am officially an EVO moderator now.

Week 3 in EVO is over. It was a very busy week and I ended up with two new lesson plans, a new wiki, three new videos, a mind map and a couple of Hot Potatoes exercises.  I am going to share all of them here and I hope you find them useful.

Week 3 in #ebookevo was a mind-mapping week. I played with NovaMind, which is free. In fact, I liked it so much that I created a mind map for this blog post to let you know what you are going to read about.You can see a larger version here. NovaMind comes in various shapes and sizes (depending on your device and platform) and it even provides cloud storage for your maps.

In #ebookevo we mapped out our chapters, which helped us plan them better. Here's the map of my chapter:


Or see it here.

I am not going to go into various ways you can use mind maps in EFL (this deserves a separate post and I am planning to write it), but one immediate idea I had was to include the map of my ebook at the beginning of the book (thus giving the students the idea about what they were going to find inside) and then again at the end (as a kind of can-do checklist). And there is no reason why we couldn't start and end our classes at school like that, so that the students could keep track of what they are learning. Mind maps are easy to use and they are a powerfu visual tool.

This was a very busy week in #evoflippedlearning. We looked at a lot of great examples of flipped lessons and we created our own lesson plans. Here's mine:

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography via Compfight cc

I am incorrigible. The five weeks of EVO finished a long time ago and here I am writing about Week 3. If you go through my last year's posts (for example, here), you will notice that this is not unusual. For me, real learning starts after the sessions are over. I go through the tasks I skipped, finish the readings and try to stay in touch with the community. And, from time to time, I even post something to my blog.

This year I chose to organise my weekly reflections around #rhizo14 challenges. #Rhiso14 is not even an EVO session, but I did sign up initially because it was my #MultiMOOC "homework" to sign up for a really massive online course and then observe what was happening. I only ever heard about #rhizo14 through #MultiMOOC.

#Rhizo14 was organised around weekly challenges. The challenge in Week 3 was to embrace uncertainty.


Photo Credit: Russ Allison Loar via Compfight cc

In Dave's own words:

We've spent two weeks talking about power - first from the student's perspective and then from the facilitators perspective. Come down the rabbit hole with me my friends. At the heart of the rhizome is a very messy network, one where not all the dots connect to all the lines. No centre. Multiple paths. Where we have beliefs and facts that contradict each other. Where our decisions are founded on an ever shifting knowledge base. Our challenge this week... how do we make our learning experience reflect (and celebrate) this uncertainty?

Dave goes on to ask:

How do we make embrace uncertainty in learning? How do we keep people encouraged about learning if there is no finite achievable goal? How do we teach when there are no answers, but only more questions?

During this same week in #Multimooc, Vance Stevens talked about chaos in learning and its resolution through networking. Here's the link to the audio. And here are Vance's slides:



In his webinar, Vance talks about serendipitous learning. If you need to know something, it will find its way to you. If you miss it the first time, it will come back. Trying to absorb it all at once is impossible. It is also unnecessary. Letting go is the first step.

The second step is networking. During Week 3 there was one more webinar in MultiMOOC. Ali Bostanciogly talked about Technology Professional Development: Networking and Online Communities. Here's the link to the MP3. Ali talked about the difference between networks and communities and how they can help us in our professional development.

This was the week when History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education started on Coursera. I have really enjoyed this course and I am going to share a couple of things that fit nicely with the topic of this post. First of all, let me remind you of this video:



Did you see it? I did. But then, I wasn't very good at counting those balls. Maybe because the activity was boring (and I am terrible at boring repetitive tasks). Maybe I am good at multitasking. Or maybe I have an attention deficiency, which is why you wouldn't want me to count your money for you or be a basketball referee when your favourite team is playing.

In the first chapter of her book Now You See it (titled "I'll Count, You Take Care of the Gorilla"), professor Davidson talks about why collaboration has become a necessity in the modern world full of distracting stimuli. She uses the term "collaboration by difference" - we need people who can count and we need people who can spot the gorilla. We also need teachers who can bring together different personalities and teach them how to cooperate. Or maybe the kids will find ways to learn how to cooperate on their own. Isn't that what rhizomatic learning is all about?




Tags: #rhizo14, #MultiMOOC, #evomlt, #evosessions, #futereEd

EVO sessions finished last week. So far I have been giving you weekly updates and, as far as those go, I am still stuck in Week 3, but today I would like to do something different. I am going to put together my EbookEVO artifacts, because it makes more sense to do this in a single blog post. EbookEVO was one of the best EVO sessions I have ever attended. The course taught us, step by step, how to write a chapter of an interactive e-book. What I'll try to do in this post is show you just how brilliant the whole idea was. This is my way of saying "Thank you" to the moderators.

The goal of the workshop was for us to complete our chapter. I finished mine and a lot of other people got there as well. I have to admit that I was worried at the beginning of the workshop. I thought it would be much harder than it was and that I might not get to the end. Now all I want is to write more chapters.

My two collaborators, Sneza and Milica, finished their chapters too. The three of us are planning to finish the whole book. Here's Sneza's chapter and here's Milica's.

And this is how the course was organised:

Week 1 was devoted to introductions. 3-2-1 was a popular introduction format in this year's EVO. It is a nice way to introduce yourself and (if you are an old EVO participant like me) maybe reveal something that others haven't heard yet. What was refreshing about the 3-2-1 introduction in #EbookEVO was that we were given a choice of tools and told to use one of them and create a 3-2-1 digital story about ourselves. Here's mine:




Kudos to the moderators for the inspiring questions. I swear that my saying I wanted to be a travel writer had something to do with the topic I chose for my chapter. I didn't plan this, it just happened.

Here's what was in store for us in Week 2:

• evaluate the current content in your textbooks
• evaluate various ebook designs to determine how you want to design your e-textbook
• decide what you would like to include in your e-textbooks
• map out the content you have to cover in your curriculum
• outline your e-textbooks
• evaluate your peers' outlines and provide feedback
• discover basic design elements and tips from experienced authors
• attend a live online session with moderators

While I was outlining my e-textbook, I started daydreaming. What would the perfect textbook for the new age be like? Surely not something static or linear that you had to read from cover to cover? Here's my dream e-textbook(with apologies because I have already shared it in this post):



Week 3 was the mind-mapping week. We got into more detail with what we wanted to include in our chapter and then we mapped the chapter out. I was surprised to find out that I had a very clear idea about what I wanted to include in my chapter. Here's the mind map. A really bad side of Popplet is that it is not embeddable (even though the website claims it is). Here's the Jing capture, hope it does the trick:



In Week 4 our goal was to complete a part of Chapter 1 and post it for peer feedback. I used Storify:




Yes, I know that Storify doesn't really look like a book. I wonder if that matters. We don't read on the Internet the way we used to. Isn't a wiki really a book? Doesn't the same go for a blog? Maybe the Storify isn't as appealing visually as some other tools, but doesn't its functionality make up for that?

And I would like your honest opinion on this because in Week 5 I remixed my chapter and created a Glossi.. I am leaving the Glossi for the end of this post because Blogger refuses to publish any text after my Glossi ebook. Is this Glossi's fault, or Blogger's? I don't know, but here I am trying to republish this post for the third time.

Glossi does improve the visual design of my ebook, but it lacks the functionality of Storify. And, speaking of functionality, my own personal favourite is still a wiki.

Here you are - the same materials, three different tools. Which do you like best? And why?

I owe special thanks to the Wonderful Words moderators, who have provided me with the tools I needed to create vocabulary exercises for this unit.


Photo on Flickr by mcamcamca

I feel empowered. Internet is full of open educational resources and authentic materials that can be adapted to every student's needs. The OERs can be put together like Lego bricks. Each one of them can be taken out when it is no longer needed, or reused and remixed on another occasion. Ebooks can be offered in different formats, depending on the teacher's personal taste, the students' computer skills, or the ways the materials are going to be seen (in a computer lab, at home computers, or on mobile devices). I still have so much to learn. My ebook writing journey has only begun.

Thank you, #ebookevo team. You rock.


Photo on Flickr by Caro Wallis

And now, here's my Glossi:

The whole topic of open online badges is new to me. One of the reasons why I am fascinated by them is that they give you credit for studying what you want, even if it is just a single unit in a course. Instead of getting a certificate for the whole MOOC, you can get a badge for the unit you studied. Badges are transferable, so that you can share them in your eportfolio, on your website or on any one of your profiles.

I would like to learn more about badges and this is something I am leaving for after EVO is over. There are a few online courses that teach you how to use badges. I intend to go through one or two of them (there is a great one on P2PU). In the meantime I have joined Credly and created the "Relearner" badge I started this post with. Relearning is one of the topics of my next blog post.

Relearning is something I am practicing in EVO. One important lesson I learnt in Mobile Assisted Language Learning in Week 2 is that what's really mobile in MALL are not the devices, but the learners and the resources. I was one of the first teachers in Serbia who got hooked on CALL, but I am late with mobile learning. I only got my first Android device in November. Since then I have had to relearn a couple of things.

In Ebookevo we worked on the visual design of our ebooks. We got to daydream a little and create our dream ebooks. Here's mine:

I have recently participated in one of the Seeta monthly webchats. You can listen to the chat here:




When they asked me to suggest a topic for the chat, it didn't take me long to suggest blogging for reflection. As you might know, I have been blogging for five years now. Preparing for the webchat gave me some time to reflect on why I blog. I have to say that I failed to come up with a rational answer to this question.

I blog because I like blogging.

I know, this doesn't lead anywhere. Especially since, in the chat, quite a few teachers expressed their concerns related to blogging. A few have tried this activity, only to stop after a while, disappointed. Nobody left comments in their blogs and they seemed to be talking to themselves. Blogging was time-consuming and left them with less time for classroom preparation. Teachers are too busy already. Why should they add blogging to their list of duties?

Although for me blogging is a passion, I have decided to try and look at some rational reasons why blogging for reflection might be something educators should do. I will also try to address the concerns that were expressed during the chat.

1. Blogging helps you reflect on what you do in class. 

This one is rather obvious, since I am advocating blogging for reflection. Steve Wheeler says that teachers naturally think back on what has happened in their classroom, and often wonder what they could have done better. Blogging can help with this process, enabling teachers to keep an ongoing personal record of their actions, decisions, though processes, successes and failures, and issues they have to deal with. Wheeler also observes that “Blogging can crystalise your thinking.”

Yet, blogging shouldn't be the same as sharing your teaching journal with the world. If you are one of those teachers who reflect on their practices through a journal, then you are probably not ready to share those thoughts with the world. Nor should you. A journal has to be the place where you can be completely honest with yourself, without worrying about what others might think. It is also not the right place to worry about punctuation, spelling and style. Just keep writing and keep your thoughts private. However, every now and then, there will be a journal entry that will make you stop and reflect. If you sit down and work hard on it until it is presentable, you can share it with the world and make other teachers benefit from your experience.

Technorati Tags: #wexmooc

The next day I met a group of Serbian teachers who were also going to the conference and we boarded the van that was going to take us to Topolšica. As I was getting onto the van, I saw Shelly Terell's smiling face and she gave me a hug.





I am so glad that I have managed to meet Shelly face to face. She is every bit as wonderful as I thought she would be. A great thing about being a blogger is that you end up having a large PLN and that, from time to time, you actually get to meet the people in it.

Another person I met face to face was Saša Sirk. Saša has been in my PLN from the very beginning. I met her in my first BaW, where she was one of the moderators.

And don't you dare tell me that my online friends are not my real friends, because they are.

The only session we had on Thursday was Shelly's Motivating our Learners to Write with Webtools. She shared a bunch of free online resources with us, together with great ready-made lesson plans. Her presentation is here.

Friday started with Having Fun with English, a plenary by Vanessa Reis Esteves. She greeted us at the door, thus modelling what she was going to teach us later (get students into the English mode by greeting them at the door, build relationships on the way out, set the tone for the next lesson, always provide some positive feedback). She talked about the similarities between children and teenagers (impatient, distracted, demanding), as well as the differences (children are eager and energetic, teenagers are demotivated and apathetic). Finally, she shared some fun activities that can be used with both age groups.

Bojana Nikic Vujic had a workshop on Critical Thinking in EFL Curriculum. Step by step, she led us through the creation of a lesson plan which included critical thinking skills according to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. The process included the creation of a first draft of the lesson plan and its revision after the introduction of the Taxonomy. We learnt how to include critical thinking activities into the textbooks we were using.

My presentation was next and, yes, I survived. There were some technical issues, which reminds me: If you are new to presenting, take your own laptop with you whenever possible. And don't use fancy fonts you downloaded from the internet, as they might turn into something else on somebody else's computer. And don't apologise for the technical difficulties you are experiencing. And don't walk in front of the slides while you are presenting.







Having said that, I think (hope) that everything went well. Quite a lot of people turned up, which was a pleasant surprise. It was almost the same as teaching a class, in fact. Now, here are my slides:



 


And, if you would like to hear me giving this presentation again, I will be doing it at the Virtual Round Table in May.

Ok, let's move on.

Willy Cardoso's workshop Open Space: Becoming the Best Teacher You Can Be was for me one of the highlights of the conference. You can read more about Open Space Principles here. Willy gave us little post-it notes and we wrote onto them a topic connected to teacher development that we wanted to discuss. Then we voted and three topics were selected. I am happy to say that mine was one of the three ("I want to keep improving as a teacher"). Three groups were formed based on the topics, but we were free to roam about the room and change groups. Finally, a summary was created for each group, as you can see in Willy's post (I linked to it above). It is easy to see how Open Space Principles can be used in the classroom and adapted to various levels and age groups.

Shelly's plenary Wings and Webs was about the social networks that educators create in order to share resources and collaborate. Shelly looked at reasons why teachers connect and she also shared places where someone who doesn't have a PLN could go to in order to start connecting. Her talk was something that resonated with me deeply. I have been a part of the large international family of educators since 2008 and I have a hard time remembering what my life was like before that.




Jean McCollister and her border collie Bamm Bamm taught us about Animal-assisted Language Teaching. Dogs are used in therapy, as well as in teaching. In a language classroom, a dog is a strong motivator and the presence of a dog also has cognitive benefits. It provides mental stimulation and improves concentration and attention. This is true, since I have to admit that I remember everything from this workshop vividly. My attention was on the dog all the time and I remember everything he did.

Here's more about what Jean and Bamm Bamm do. It's in Slovene, but I am sure you will be able to understand the gist.





Our first plenary on Saturday was Peter Dyer's Getting Them to Speak. It was very interactive and lively, full of practical and fun activities. For one hour, we improvised, we passed around imaginary gifts, we invented stories and we lived in the fantasy world. These activities are easy to prepare and materials light (in fact, there was no PowerPoint).

The next workshop I attended was Danny Singh's The Power of Laughter Exercises in Learning. To find out more about the application of laughter yoga in language teaching, visit Danny's website. All  I can say is that I have enjoyed this workshop tremendously and that I felt more alert after it. I can see how these exercises can lower inhibitions and boost learning.

Willy Cardoso's plenary A Philosophy of Teacher Development  was another treat. He defined teacher development as trying to decrease the gap between what you believe you should do and what you can do in your teaching situation. Teachers should ask themselves to what extent they can influence, shape and create their own knowledge. Classroom observation helps here (recording yourself, asking a colleague to sit in your class, co-teaching with a colleague, or even giving your learners an observation task). Rather than wait for someone to give them the knowledge, the teachers should legitimise what they already know and share it bottom-up. They should create portfolios, start blogging or give a workshop at a conference.

Marija Lukač spoke about Your Next Step on the Professional Development Ladder. Presenting to fellow colleagues is a way for teachers to grow and develop. Nobody is going to promote you into a conference presenter, you need to make that step yourself.

The last presentation I visited on Saturday was Shelly's Teaching with YouTube. Once again, she shared an abundance of links, resources, lesson plans, ideas...

So far I haven't talked much about evening entertainment, which was great. And the beer was more than great. I grabbed this image off Shelly's Facebook timeline, hope she won't mind:



Yes, it's a beer barrel. In fact, there were three, each one with a different kind of beer.

And let's not forget that Topolšica is a spa. That meant that, when we got tired after sitting in workshops all day, we could always grab an hour to swim in the pool or relax in the sauna park. And we even had a discount on massages.

And kudos to the organising committee. They really went out of their way to make us all comfortable and everything was perfectly organised. Thank you, guys.

And, of course, big thanks to ELTA Serbia for sending me there in the first place.

Conferences are not only about presentations and workshops. They are about networking and meeting new people. And going to an international conference means meeting a lot of great new people. For me this was even more valuable than the presentations themselves. In fact I am looking forward to seeing some of those people again in Belgrade on 11th ELTA Conference in May.

Technorati Tags: #edcmooc, writingmatrix

Meanwhile, in #ETMOOC it was the first digital storytelling week and I created several 6-words stories on Twitter.

First there was the horror story series:


It was a fascinating week in #EDCMOOC, as we discussed future-focused visions of technology and education, both the utopian and the dystopian ones. We looked at metaphors as lenses through which these visions are seen. Metaphors are deterministic. This is the point where #EDCMOOC has a lot to do with Multiliteracies. Here Vance Stevens writes about why looking at computers as tools determines the way we use them and why the tool metaphor shouldn't be enough. Here's more on computer metaphors from the #EDCMOOC reading list. And here's a blog post I wrote about computer metaphors when I attended Multiliteracies two years ago. In this post I compared the computer to a geenie from a magic lamp, a magic wand and a communication tool. The second and the third are tools, but what about the geenie? Is the geenie a person? I think I will have to go back to this in my next post where I will look at this week's #EDCMOOC topic - redefining the human.

A Manifesto for Networked Objects with its notion of "blogjects" will amuse you. But just at first. Are the "blogging objects" and the "networked objects" really our future? Or, are they already our present? Are they really "more dangerous than the Terminator"? Or will they save the planet for us? Yesterday, I read in my son's weekly science magazine about a project which aims to save the rainforests by equipping the trees with mobiles. Once somebody tries to cut it down, the tree "calls for help". It is this type of thing Bleecker is looking forward to.

Now for something dystopic. The following film (7:50) was the highlight of my week:

Sight from Sight Systems on Vimeo.

I believe this movie can be used in TEFL to discuss, among other things, the gaming addiction. Not to mention the future and relationships.

Another point where #EDCMOOC crosses paths with Multiliteracies is the idea of edupunk. Here's what I found in the Multiliteracies wiki archives about edupunk:




And if you are the sort of person who likes to take notes, Audrey Watters has already done it for you here.

Well, that's all folks. Next week, we will be looking at what makes us human.

I would like to finish with a great image I found in the #EDCMOOC Flickr pool which, I believe, says it all.


cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Angela Towndrow: http://flickr.com/photos/90243669@N05/8461301620/

Tags: #evomlit, #mmooc13, , #2013evo, #brainelt, #edcmooc, #etmooc