Friday 4 January 2013

Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013!

2012 was a challenging year for all sorts of reasons, and I would like to share some of the highlights.

Project 366
One of the biggest challenges was taking part in Project 366. I had to take a photo a day for 366 days and this proved to be quite difficult at times, but I think in the end I managed to achieve the aim.  I enjoyed taking part very much indeed, and also I liked viewing daily / weekly images from fellow participants.  2013 will somehow be different without this daily focus.

Presentations
I would like to share a link to my Slideshare presentations which grew in number during 2012.
These presentations have been viewed over 60,000 times, (yes, unbelievable, I know!!) and in total downloaded approximately 900 times, an incredible amount!

The most popular presentation I have ever created is definitely 'Fun with Phrasal Verbs' which to date has had a record 16,498 views, and has been downloaded 622 times.  This makes me feel extremely happy. I am thrilled that it is being used and enjoyed by so many teachers and students from around the globe.  Many thanks!!

I have included 'Fun with Phrasal Verbs' below.  Most of the images were taken by me and maybe the fact that it is a very visual presentation could be the reason for it being quite successful.  I do hope it will continue to be viewed in 2013!



The second most popular presentation I created in 2012 was 'Fun with Comics' with 11,529 views and 50 downloads to date.  Could the title which includes the word "Fun" have anything to do with its popularity, I wonder?




Comics & Cartoons
My Scoopit on Comics and Cartoons also gained more followers during 2012, and I would like to say a big thank you to everyone!  I hope to add more resources and links in 2013.


A - Z Wiki
My wiki on A - Z Tools was somewhat neglected in 2012,  but it is still useful as a reference for me to have as an easy and accessible storage place for things that I learn about. I hope it might be useful for you, too. 


Fluffy

Image of Fluffy on K's motorbike

Fluffy's Blog went from strength to strength and he was very active and enthusiastic about sharing interesting web 2.0 tools.  In 2012 he even created a presentation. I have embedded it below.  It was huge fun for me to help him create this. If you haven't viewed it before, I hope you enjoy it!




Teach Meet International
I was fortunate enough to present at two Teach Meet International econferences in 2012. Below you will find links to my webinars and a list of all the presenters with their webinar presentation links.

1) Fun with Comics!
All the presenters in March 2012.

2) Visual Blogging with Muzy.
All the presenters in September 2012.

Many congratulations to Arjana and Teach Meet Team for winning 2nd Runner Up position in the 2012 Edublog Awards!

CO12 Book Chapter on Idioms
In 2012 I was involved in a CO12 collaborative book writing project organised by Dr Nellie Deutsch.  Educators from around the world collaborated on a book chapter each, and mine was on Idioms. I am very much looking forward to its publication this year.  Watch this space...


Glogster poster with book highlights below:


 

Warm wishes for 2013

 Image of Fireworks  from flickr eltpics taken by @pysproblem81


I would like to wish all my viewers, blog readers and members of my PLN a very happy and peaceful 2013. I hope we will share some good times in this New Year.




4 comments:

Betty Carlson said...

You are absolutely amazing -- I'm always tempted to ask people like you when you find time to teach!

I love your slide presentations -- I have got to get my skills up to snuff. I use slides and image projection but haven't got into the really creative stuff. Do you use Powerpoint or another platform?

Happy New Year to you!

Janet Bianchini said...

Hi Betty

Happy New Year to you too! Thank you so much for commenting on my post here and for your very kind words :-)

Yes, I use PowerPoint and I love it! I know I should try Prezi, but I find it is a bit distracting with all the zooming around, so I will stick to PPT for the moment.

As for teaching and finding time to do stuff, I don't teach full time all the time, so this means I can fit things in when I have a bit of free time! This definitely makes things easier to handle, I must admit..

However, when I DO occasionally teach full time, I usually do creative stuff very late into the night, and the idiom "Burning the midnight oil" is one of my faves to describe how I manage to do things!

All the best

Janet

Business English translator said...

The idea of using comic strip is great. But you need to be adept at that or have great tools, or a skillful friend. Anyway, I will follow this idea and try to implement it in my classes.

Janet Bianchini said...

I hope you have fun trying out some of the comic and cartoon sites! Thank you for visiting my blog :-)