I would like to post my thoughts on ELT issues, share some of my own lesson ideas for learners and teachers of English to use and to keep up to date with modern trends by following leading ELT specialists via their blogs. I would also like to write about life in the spectacularly beautiful region of Abruzzo.
IT happened last night. The Wordle above shows the story of the grizzly events. The protagonists are 3 dogs and 1 chicken.
Below is the main culprit.
Here is the accomplice
Is this the only dog that really knows what happened afterwards??
Sadly this chicken is no longer with us.....
I blame myself for being so naive. I read the Absolute Beginners' Guide to Keeping Chickens and noted this particular question. Will my dog hurt chickens? Anyway, I picked up some of the many feathers scattered around the garden and I hope to use them all when I create my homemade cards.
I honestly thought that all the animals were coexisting harmoniously, but I was wrong. So, now I will wait for K to begin the animal behaviourist training which is obviously necessary, if the other three chickens are to have much hope of lasting longer than the one above. Thank goodness he is back tomorrow.
Thank you PLN I have been alone in the valley for a whole week. This is another first for me. Only myself for company. Not a soul has been here apart from the postman once, briefly for one second. Very late last night a crowd of hunters were out with their huge searchlights wandering across the fields below. They were looking for the wild boar which roam freely in this area. I haven't felt lonely because I have had my PLN around me virtually. It's kept me busy and I appreciate the contact I have had with everybody via my computer. Thank you very much for your great company.
I will be offline as of next week. I hope to rejoin you after that. Please feel free to continue my Digital Story, if you wish.
Background Information This week in my fab Images4Education course we had to create a digital story using any form we wished. I chose to make up a story using pictures from my folder and create a Power Point presentation. I then easily uploaded my PPt to Slideshare. I let my imagination flow. The characters consist of the ever present Princess Arabella, Victoria, Joseph and two farmers. It has an enigmatic ending because I would like you, my dear readers to think of what happens at the end. I will be away for the next week with no Internet connection and so, it would be lovely to find some suggestions when I get back. If not, the story will end enigmatically forever, and that will also be ok!
A Week of Firsts My first time with Slideshare, Power Point and GoAnimate. Which of these tools have you used before? Do you have any tips you would like to share? I look forward to hearing from you!!
I've done it! After losing most of the data last night to recovering it just now, I am proud to present my first GoAnimate! slidecast. Many thanks go to Alex Francisco from Zarco English, for her excellent tutorial via the Moodle4Teachers "Web 2.0 Tools" course that I have recently joined. Please click on the link just above the video box to see it in a bigger screen.
My first creation is very basic but I am so glad that I persevered. Next time, I will work on moving the characters a bit more and also try to create a dialogue.
I'd like to include a link to Alex's GoAnimate! Screencast which she made in order to introduce the tool to her students, who have created amazing video animations.
As you can see from what can be achieved, my first rendition is pretty basic in comparison and one-dimensional, but it's a start!! By the way, did you notice the moving desk? I didn't mean it to move, but never mind :) Also I like the fact that you can introduce your own photos as background and add your voice, to make it a truly personal show. Why don't you have a go and try it out? This tool is great for vocabulary exploitation and dialogue building purposes. It's free and easy to use. I'm going to present mine as an icebreaker and speaking activity with a group of EFL teachers I will be teaching in April at the wonderful Lake School of English, Oxford.
The 15th edition of the EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival has just been published by the amazing Shelly Terrel from Teacher Reboot Camp and it is a very comprehensive and fascinating read. There is a wealth of input and Shelly has organised all the entries very well. My blog is also included in the Technology section! I would like to say a personal thank you to Shelly for giving me the encouragement and opportunity to participate in this wonderful carnival.
Among the excellent posts included in the blog carnival, and there are too many to mention them all, I particularly liked the following. It's the Small Things that Count by David Deubelbeiss. The post gives some great pointers on how to conduct a class effectively and highlights some of the small details of day to day teaching that in fact are so important in the bigger picture. Powerpointing Me by Karenne Sylvester on her Kalinago English Blog. I found this post useful because it shows what can be done with PowerPoint Presentations. Allowing students to create their own presentations to teach grammar points is a great technique and one which is very rewarding for the students. 2010-The Year of the Personal Learning Network? by Graham Stanley on Blog EFL, caught my eye. PLN is an acronym I didn't really know about until last year so it's interesting to read Graham's thoughts on what lies in the future for these 3 very powerful letters. You will have to go over to Teacher Reboot Camp now to read all these articles in addition to the other fantastic ones in the carnival. I am sure you will enjoy them!
The 30 Goals Challenge Shelly Terrell has recently run a brilliant series of challenges on her blog called "The 30 Goals Challenge". A free e-book is now available and you can share it with other teachers in your PLN or embed it in your blog as a reference for what can be achieved if you really put your mind to it. I have found this series to be very inspiring and have already set myself some goals which I hope to achieve in 2010.
I have also come across a lovely site called www.scottish.eu.com which writes about all aspects of keeping chickens.
Top Chicken in the Pecking Order
Welcome to Norris. She is definitely already the top chicken in the pecking order. She is a Rhode Island Red. This is the most common type of laying chicken and they are said to be very robust. She has ventured out today and has already broken my nice terracotta pot, devoured the parsley in it, jumped on top of the car, made her way upstairs to the balcony, deposited a lot of chicken droppings ready to be placed in my compost bin to make fresh friable compost, made friends with Kelly and even managed to lay her very first egg in her lovely new nesting-box. Indeed, she is an incredible "multi-tasking" chicken. The Very First Freshly Laid Egg My dream of having fresh eggs every day in order to make pasta, cakes, Tiramisu, you name it, has been realised! Our Italian pasta machine is a manual handcrank Atlas 150, bought and kept in the attic in England for many years. It has now been dusted down and is waiting to be used on a regular basis. Soon, K and I will be able to make home made pasta with our very own eggs like the first egg below, freshly laid by Norris this morning!
The Power of a Twitter PLN Yesterday I sent Sean Banville from the excellent Breaking News English website a tweet on Twitter asking him if he had any lessons on chickens. The following is the remarkable dialogue that ensued.
@SeanBanville An unusual request- do u have any lessons on chickens? Am doing post on arrival of chicks. Wld like 2 link 2 some lesson ideas
@janetbianchini Only bird-flu-type lessons. When do you need it? Tell me the level / focus and i'll make you a special chicken lesson.
@SeanBanville Thank you soo much!! Any level +4 idioms would be great! Posting in next few days, but will add your lesson when it's ready?
@janetbianchini Will try and have the lesson uploaded tomorrow - must look for chicken idioms - PLN help?????
@SeanBanville Fantastic!! Idioms:"chicken feed/headless chicken/be a chicken/chicken out/play chicken/count one's chickens/no spring chicken
from SeanBanville: 'Chickens' Latest #esl listening lesson from my Listen A Minute.com site: http://bit.ly/bYDYe6 - for @janetbianchini (hope u like it :-)
@SeanBanville Absolutely love it@ http://bit.ly/bYDYe6. Brilliant- am very privileged that you have done it for me! Thank you very much!.
@janetbianchini My pleasure - I had fun making that one :-)
"Chickens" by Sean Banville So there is now a fabulous newly created lesson on chickens and chicken idioms on Sean's Listen a Minute.com site. The 9-page worksheet has all the different components that a great lesson should have. I really can't wait to try this one out!!! Nikita, Chikita, Norris and Berry are well on their way to becoming super Chick stars and they say "Thank you very much, Sean, for creating this lesson so quickly and brilliantly!!
Some More Egg and Chicken Lessons and Ideas Have a look at this lovely BBCLearning English lesson on Egg Idioms. Again, via my Twitter PLN stream, David Deubelbeiss, from the fantastic EFL Classroom 2.0. gave me this fabulous link to "What's in an Egg", Tar Heel Readers, which are great for children beginning to read.
Have a look at Pamela Stephenson's "Book Chook'" blog, which is a great site for children's book reviews and lots of other useful information on children's literature and literacy.
In the photo below, a nice Picture Dialogue Game activity could be played with students, either spoken or written. Ask them to create an imaginative and funny dialogue between the pair and then vote for the funniest one.
My friend Uli from Germany was inspired by the photo and has just sent in this delightful dialogue below.
Shandor and Patrena
"Hi Shandor, nice day, isn't it?"
"Hi Patrena. What exactly do you mean?"
"I only mean it is a nice day", smiling.
"Yeah", thinking, until you came.
"Fancy place you found to place your eggs?"
"Don't be ambiguous, Patrena, I'm here on scientific purposes only."
"Uuh!" Patrena reflecting,what crossed his mindthis time?
"Well, looks as if you were trying to spy on the ghosts of your ancesters in the clouds."
Shandor not listening while in deep contemplation. They said it would occur at Sagittarius… "Woof!"
"Whatdo you mean by woof,Shandor?"
"Oh, it's just a relaxedwoof" and after a while,
"You are not inspired by astronomy, Patrena, are you?"
"No, not really. To be honest, I keep my mind off superstition."
"Hey, old peck, I pronounced it correctly, I said astronomy, not astrology!"
"Oh, Shandor, you fool, but that's one and the same thing after all. Don't be so silly!"
Shandor to himself: That snobbish hen, one day I'll kill thecheeky pecker.
Loudly: "Didn't you watch Faunatics last night?"
"Nepp, I watched 'Killed in a Chicken Run.', the whole bloodystory."
"Therefore you don't know that they announced a Supernova for 7.11h ."
"… and now the bus doesn't arrive to get you near it!", laughing.
"Shandor, don't let yourself be fooled all the time. I remember you sitting here when your friend Stroby had announced a solar eclipse last month. Then only a thunderstorm came and you were nearly struck by lightening. Remember!"
"Don't bring that up! This one is another tale and a really good one. And now, I ask you, keep your beak tightly shut and place your eggs somewhere else. I am thoroughly convinced that I'm going to watch something extraordinary. If only those rotten clouds would fade away…"
Many thanks Uli! Anyone else care to make up a dialogue??
If anyone has some tips or advice for keeping chickens, I'd love to hear from you!
I'll sign off now with this short Youtube animation of the Creature Comforts "Countryside Codes".
My EVO Images4Education course is going very well and I am enjoying exploring all the new features and connecting with other participants. I now have a Flickr account and I have been learning a lot. I have also found out about all sorts of lovely sites to use to edit photos in a fun way. Big Huge Labs is an amazing tool just waiting to be played with and well, dear reader, I certainly have played to my heart's content! The following photos have been simply re-edited with different effects such as create a stamp, a magazine cover, a postcard, a film poster and so on. Below is a video from my Images4Education course, which shows you how to make such posters.
How can this tool be used in class? Well, the students can create projects, promotional posters, visual prompts for poems, they can use their imagination (like I have!).
The following pictures show you some of the special effects you can create on Big Huge Labs.
The first picture below was taken yesterday by K. It shows me with one of the 5 new olive trees I bought with some birthday money from my family. It made me reflect. I don't have any children, but these 3-year-old olive trees should last for many centuries, so for me, they represent a very powerful symbol of what I will leave behind for future posterity and that is something which makes me happy. I just hope this young olive tree below will last the course! I will be writing up a blog post soon on the topic of "Olive Tree Cultivation."
I love the film poster effect and this is one I have created, starring the elusive and very mysterious film star Arabella Cascarino and her Creator. Rather cheekily, I have taken the liberty of nominating the film for 5 special and imaginary Bit's'n'Bobs, Show'n'Tell Oscar awards. Oops! The film star is Isabella Cascarino (the sister).
Abruzzo poem Part of week 2's imaginative and challenging tasks was to write a poem based on a photo depicting your origins. The photo of the mountains is one of my favourite and I have referred to it many times in my blog, for example here. I really enjoyed this activity and I let my imagination run freely and the poem came straight from the heart.
I am now from the wilds of Abruzzo from central Italy I was from the cosmopolitan hub of a medieval university city The two forever linked by nonna Natalina's move from rural village to sophisticated Oxford The mountain of adventure beckons enticingly amidst the cool backdrop of ancient olive groves, centuries old learned trees, the fruits waiting to be picked by my fair hand Ice-capped peaks denoting a majestic grandeur The valley of adventure waiting to be explored Virgin territory as yet untrampled by swarms of tourists I am off the beaten track No postman dares venture beyond the old ruined farmhouse perched precariously on the hilltop Isabella and Sofia rule the roost Nikita and Chikita as yet unborn Soon to be united in a glorious mingling of all creatures great and small This is my destiny This is my future This is where I am now
Interesting Linksto Explore Natasa is also taking the Images4Education course and her writing and feedback is inspiring. The poem she has written is amazing.
Carla Arena is one of my brilliant facilitators on the course and her blog is very inspiring. Her knowledge and fantastic use of Flickr is incredible and her enthusiasm is infectious.
Ana Maria from Life Feast blog is also one of the excellent co-moderatators on my course and I am learning a lot about how to exploit images from her.
Here is an interesting blog post I found on the resource-packed Box of Tricks which focuses on Using Images in the MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) Classroom.
Moodle for Teachers-3 Gardening and Cooking Course I am also busy on my Moodle course. There was a weekly live Wiziq session on Saturday and I presented a Power Point presentation on behalf of my team mates on the Gardening and Cooking Moodle course. It was the first time I had done such a thing "live" and I actually enjoyed myself. The slides were a collaborative project via Google Docs and we have been organising ourselves with daily emails and weekly meetings on Skype and Google-Wave. My Team members come from Canada, USA, Canary Islands and Japan. We also use Diigo to bookmark useful links for the course that we are developing. We are now busily working and collaborating to present and showcase our future course next weekend. No rest for the wicked!
As you can see, I have been able to combine some of the new things I am learning from my Images4Education course. I am delighted to share them with you here.
I hope writing this post will inspire you to experiment with a few new tools. Are there any other Web 2.0 tools for using images that you like and that you would like to share here? I'd love to hear about them!
Princess Caroline of Hanover, formerly known as Princess Caroline of Monaco, is one of my heroines. I have followed her life story from the moment she was born on January 23rd 1957, 53 years ago to be precise. She is the first child of the late Prince Ranier 111 of Monaco and of the late American actress and Princess Grace of Monaco. Princess Caroline's life has been full of adventures and amazing experiences, but she has also had more than her fair share of difficult times.
An Amazing Coincidence Princess Caroline and I were born on the same hour, same day, same month and same year!! I have written to her twice on the occasion of two of our very special milestone birthdays and she has personally responded twice. I was extremely delighted and honoured by this fact.
I have a collection of original stamps issued in Monaco in 1957 to celebrate the birth of Princess Caroline.
A delightful image below of her beautiful mother, the late Princess Grace of Monaco.
Princess Caroline and I not only share the same birthday and age, but we also share the same values and interests. She is very dedicated to her family, like I am. She has a passion for languages, like I do. She is a keen gardener and she loves socialising. Of course, we share the same horoscope sign and this is also a unifying factor. Like most Aquarians, we are both fiercely independent and loyal companions. We both have 2 siblings and we are the oldest of the three.
Differing Lifestyles I sometimes reflect on our completely different lifestyles. Princess Caroline is a member of a royal dynasty going back centuries. She is a member of the international jet-set. She is very wealthy. She has four beautiful children. She has a hectic schedule with many responsibilities. She has fabulous homes around the world. Her life is in the public domain. The list is endless. In comparison, my lifestyle is relatively simple, living in rural Abruzzo. I am of very modest means, I have no children, only 5 lovely furkids. I don't physically jet-set around the world any more like I used to but, I guess I'm a "virtual" global jet-setter now, which is equally exhilirating for me. I don't have too many responsibilities. My life is not in the public domain. The video I found on Youtube below highlights some photos in the life of Princess Caroline.
A Special Message Happy birthday, Princess Caroline, from one of your greatest admirers. I wish you all the happiness in the world. You truly deserve it. I hope you will have a wonderful day today, wherever you may be.
23rd January 2010 Happy birthday to Silvana, my cousin's wife, and happy birthday to Gemma, my best friend Daphne's daughter. Enjoy your special day!!
Other events and people born on the same day can be viewedhere.
A Fabulous Web 2.0 Birthday Surprise! This is what I received from my absolutely lovely colleagues from the Lake School of English. It made me feel very emotional and I would like to say thank you to all of you for thinking of me. I can't wait to see you next month!
You can press on the Wallwisher link to see all the lovely messages. This has well and truly made my day!!
I am a teacher/teacher trainer with a passion for teaching and an unquenchable thirst for new knowledge. I am currently having a break from teaching "in the real world" and I suppose I am a career gapper undergoing a bit of a seachange. I have absolutely no idea what 2010 has in store for me but hopefully it will lead me to some wonderful places either based in "terra firma" or in "Cyber space".
In my free time, I am restoring an old farmhouse in Abruzzo together with my hubby K.
Will keep you posted...
IT happened last night. The Wordle above shows the story of the grizzly events. The protagonists are 3 dogs and 1 chicken.
Here is the accomplice
Is this the only dog that really knows what happened afterwards??
Sadly this chicken is no longer with us.....
I blame myself for being so naive. I read the Absolute Beginners' Guide to Keeping Chickens and noted this particular question. Will my dog hurt chickens? 
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