CO15 MOOC - February 6-8, An Excellent CPD Opportunity for Educators!

I am thrilled and proud to be one of the 35 presenters at the upcoming 6th annual 3-day MOOC, Connecting Online 2015, hosted and organized by the incredible Dr Nellie Deutsch. My presentation is called The EVOlution of Jan!

You can register for this webinar, held on Friday February 6th at 3pm GMT (4pm CET), by clicking the link below:

https://www.wiziq.com/online-class/2475174-co15-the-evolution-of-jan-and-electronic-village-online

I have been presenting at this exciting free annual event since 2011 and this is my fourth time in its 6 year history.  The platform is WizIQ and the event this year is held from 6th-8th February.  The webinars focus on instruction and learning.  The theme for this year is 'connecting online for collaborative work'. The presenters have prepared some great sessions for you to attend, and share their experiences.

I do hope you will be inspired to join in the fun with the presenters below!

Lots of useful information about CO15 has been shared in the Smore flyer, created by Dr Nellie Deutsch.  She has invited her PLN and presenters to share this information so that the MOOC will be attended by as many teachers from around the world as possible!

Smore promotional CO15 flyer with youtube video link reproduced below with kind permission from Dr Nellie Deutsch, and the direct link is also here: https://www.smore.com/zts4g

You can click on each of the presentations in the Smore poster below, and you can register to attend any of the webinars.





My CO15 presentation is viewable below as a clickable and downloadable ebooklet via Youblisher. Resources can be found on my wiki page here.The recording can be found here.
Thanks to everyone who attended my session, and for those who have viewed the recording.  A very special thanks goes to my moderator for the session, the tireless and inspirational Dr Nellie Deutsch!!!





SMORE
If you are interested in finding out more about Smore, one of  the co-moderators on the EVO Crafting the ePerfect eTextbook, Maria Jesus Garcia San Martin   has written an informative blog post with video tutorial to show you how it can be used. It is called First Steps on Smore.



 

The EVOlution of Jan!

The EVOlution of Jan! from Janet Bianchini

I am honoured and delighted to be invited by Dr Nellie Deutsch to present at the Bi-monthly webinar WiZiq sessions held by IATEFL YLT Sig.  I have created a brand new session for this meeting and will also present it at Connecting Online 2015 econference in February.

This talk is about how my life has been transformed by the TESOL Electronic Village Online yearly sessions that I have been attending regularly, since 2009.  It has been a transformational journey of liberating learning opportunities, exciting experiments with new tools, and  inspirational encounters with the wonderful groups of moderators, and participants from each of the sessions.

This special presentation is my personal and heartfelt ............

......... to everyone who has been involved with the sessions I have attended as a participant, and most recently for the past two years, as a member of the moderating team for the EVO Crafting the Perfect eTextbook session.

I aim to outline what I have personally learned from participating in these sessions and hopefully this will encourage more people to join and attend in future years.  The Electronic Village Online sessions are usually held for five weeks in January - February each year.  They are open to teachers from around the world and a huge variety of topics are discussed and explored.

I have recorded my thoughts and experiences on all the EVO sessions I have ever attended in this blog, and it constitutes a learner's diary, an evolving journey of exploration and enlightenment!  You can click on the EVO tags below the post, and you will be taken to my blog posts, and feedback on each of the sessions.

Webinar Update:
Thanks very much to all the attendees of my webinar (16).  I really enjoyed the session, and here is a screenshot from the webinar at the end.

A very special thanks goes to Dr Nellie Deutsch for being such a fabulous moderator, adding all the URLs and links as they came up, and for dealing with all the chatbox comments in such an expert manner. 

All my links have now been posted on a special wiki page I have created, called CO15 Links and Resources:  HERE.
 
Link to RECORDING: YLT Webinar: The EVOlution of Jan!The recording lasts just over one hour, so I do hope you will view it!

I tried to join in with the chat as much as possible, as this is a part of doing webinars which is so much fun - interacting with a live audience.  Sorry if I missed a few comments here and there!

Using Smore as a Flyer for EVO Crafting the ePerfect eTextbook Session

EVO Crafting the ePerfect Session - Week One Introduction - Tips and Digital Literacy

I am delighted to be one of the moderators of the 'Crafting eTextbooks' Electronic Village Online 2015 sessions.   I have the great pleasure of helping to moderate Week One together with my fellow team members Shelly Terrell, (Creator), Ozge Karaoglu, Debbie Tebovich, Michelle Worgan, Jason Levine and Jennifer Vershsoor!  It is already promising to be an awesome experience, and if you would like to join us for this session, or of course any other of the Electronic Village Online 2015 sessions, you still can!  It begins in earnest today on Monday January 12th!

My personal journey with publishing ebooklets

I have been creating personal ebooklets for a few years now and would like to showcase some of my favourite ones.

My Top 3 digital formats to publish my presentations, lessons and documents are:

Slideshare

Issuu

Youblisher

Usually I do my preliminary drafts in a Word document, and then I publish to a PDF format, before uploading to the sites above.  I also use Powerpoint to create slides which can be easily converted to Slideshare.

As these presentations are 'in the cloud' they are easily accessible whenever I need them from any computer and this makes it very easy to locate them.

SLIDESHARE

Below my very first simple digital e-story called A Fable of Sorts, uploaded to Slideshare:

A Fable Of Sorts from Janet Bianchini

I later created a more complex digital story highlighting the use of idioms with web 2.0 tools, as seen below:

 

An Idiomatic Love Story from Janet Bianchini

I created a promotional flyer for my Idiomatic Love Story by adding some information to Glogster, an interactive poster making tool.

You can click on the 2 heart-shaped audio tabs to hear a little bit about this dramatic love story between Frederick and Isabella!  You can view the Glog in bigger format by clicking on it below.



My 2014 EVO session 3-2-1 poster introduction using Glogster can be viewed HERE:

YOUBLISHER

I like Youblisher for its very quick and easy publishing options and I have created digital ebooklets to use with my students, and presentation materials for econferences as seen in the 4 examples below.  Please click on each image icon to be taken directly to the clickable ebooklet:

Language in Motion: Teaching with the Flow: Presentation



 Teaching Idioms with Web 2.0 Tools: Prersentation

The Man with the Golden Voice: Lesson plan



The Cat that got the Cream: Lesson plan

A Romantic Love Story
On the occasion of my parents' anniversary in 2010, I published a small ebooklet to celebrate it.  I wrote about their very special love story and sent a link to the family as a souvenir. They were able to click the pages to read the story.  I also printed it out to give to my parents as a personal memento.  I hope to create another ebooklet to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary later this year, and again I will use a digital format and update it to reflect the events of the past 60 years.

1955: The Look of Love



ISSUU
I have used this publishing tool Issuu with student projects for a while now, and it is simple to use, by uploading your pdf file and then a clickable ebooklet is created within a very short time.  Your publications can be kept in stacks for ease of reference.  This is one of my ebooklets below, based on a webinar presentation:




Janet's TOP 5 TIPS for publishing your stories, texts and documents in an ebooklet format!

Remember the following:

I hope you find these resources helpful for crafting your future ebooklet.

3-2-1 Animoto Introduction for EVO 2015

The excitement is beginning to mount in the pre-registration week for EVO Crafting the ePerfect Textbook session. Many teachers from around the world are registering, ahead of the start on Monday January 12th.  I have just met one participant who lives in Abruzzo, not far from where I live!  It is wonderful to meet new people and also familiar faces. This is what EVO sessions are all about: the power of collaborating with like-minded educators, the excitement of sharing new ideas, and the joy of exploring new avenues for continuous professional development. It is an incredible mixture of emotions and experiences!

Registration and lots more information for the Crafting the ePerfect Textbook can be found at the following link: http://ebookevo.pbworks.com 

I have created a new 3-2-1 introduction for this session using one of my favourite tools, Animoto.  It is only 30 seconds long, but hopefully it gives a few facts about my life. 



Janet's 3-2-1

News Update: January 12th 2015
Inspired by my fellow moderators and participants on the 2015 EVO Ebook session, I have just created a new introduction using ThingLink, as seen below.  It looks like a relatively easy tool to use!
Just click on the heart symbols to be taken to a link....

Registration for Electronic Village Online 2015 Sessions Now Open!!

I would like to share the message I received today, and to spread the word, as requested by Nina Liakos, from the EVO team.  I can honestly recommend that you join at least one of the 13 free sessions!

I have attended an EVO session every year since 2009, and each session was an awesome learning experience which helped to shape the teacher I am today!  Once again, for the second year, I am proud to be one of the moderators on the Crafting the ePerfect eTextbook, led by our inspiring main moderator and creator of the session, Shelly Terrell.

Hope to see you there :-)

Registration for EVO2015 begins today! To register, go to http:evosessions.pbworks.com.

Reminder to subscribers of the EVO Newsletter: Registration for this year's Electronic Village Online (free online professional development sessions for EFL and ESL teachers) begins January 5, 2015. The sessions themselves run from January 12 until February 15, 2015. Get more information about all thirteen sessions at http://evosessions.pbworks.com. If you are having trouble deciding on which session to register for, please join us at http://learningtimesevents.org/webheads/ (scroll down for instructions and technical requirements) for the EVO2015 kickoff webcast on January 11, 2015 at 14:00/2:00 p.m. GMT (your local time at bit.ly/1CaH6fq)! Session moderators will be on hand to introduce their sessions and take questions. Please share this announcement with your colleagues and personal learning networks, and thank you for helping us spread the word! Nina Liakos EVO2015 Coordinator

Copyright © 2015 Electronic Village Online, All rights reserved.

I will be doing a webinar on 25th January based specifically on my EVO experiences called 'The EVOlution of Jan'.  More details to come soon :-)