Connecting Online for Instruction and Learning: International Perspectives

I am absolutely delighted to announce the recent publication of a printed book called Connecting Online for Instruction and Learning: International Perspectives.  I am one of the 14 co-authors who collaborated on this book over a period of time from 2012 - 2013, under the gentle guidance of our inspirational editor Dr Nellie Deutsch. The book contains 312 pages, full of international perspectives based around aspects of elearning and instruction.

A Dream Team
I would like to say a huge thanks to Dr Nellie Deutsch for making this dream project happen, and also heartfelt thanks to all my fellow fabulous co-authors, for being a dream team to collaborate with.

'The authors of the book are: Janet Bianchini, Karen Blumberg, Dr. Christel Broady, Dr. Michele Drechsler, Jennifer D. Klein, Dr. NIki Lambropoulos, Alain Gourdin, Sophi Michael Danis, Antonio Nazzaro, Lenandlar Singh, Kemul Gaffar, Dr. Ludmila Smirnova, Diethild Starkmeth, Steve Tuffill, J. Aleta R. Villanueva, Dr. Revathi Viswanathan, Jason West.'

 I enjoyed every single aspect of this quite ambitious undertaking, and I am so proud to be a part of it all!!

 Screenshot image of book cover taken from Amazon site here. Copyright @ Nellie Deutsch 2013

 'The chapters were written by 14 presenters of Connecting Online (CO12) for instruction and learning live online conference on the first week of February 2012. The free online conferences for educators and by educators started in 2009. The conference takes place on WizIQ Education Online on the first weekend in February of each year'.

Enlightening
The process of working collaboratively with educators from around the world was an enlightening experience.  We each undertook in small groups of 4-5, to proofread and edit each other's book chapters, give comments and advice on how to improve the chapters.  Dr Nellie Deutsch allowed us to collaborate freely within our groups, and gave us gentle reminders for when deadlines were due. She oversaw the whole process from start to finish, and finally published it for us. I and the whole team of co-authors are indebted to her for her invaluable guidance and mentoring of us all.

Below a screenshot glimpse of the first few chapters:

I have just ordered my own copy from Amazon and I am very excited about reading all the book chapters and learning from each of my fantastic co- authors, who are experts in their field.

Now I can't wait for the postman to deliver my copy.  My only worry is that the Italian postal system can be rather unpredicatable at times, so fingers crossed!!

Currently if you click on the image of the book here, you can read a free sample first chapter....

My chapter is entitled: Teaching Idioms Effectively with Web 2.0 Tools. It is based on the background to my original slideshare presentation below:

I had originally created a Glogster, as at first I thought the book would be an ebook. It is in fact a printed publication.


Once again, many thanks to Dr Nellie Deutsch and all my fabulous fellow co-authors for making this dream project come true!!

Crowdsourcing Idioms

I am doing research into idioms for a forthcoming book chapter related to my Connecting Online 2012 presentation, that I had been scheduled to do on March 3rd. I am required to write 6,000 words and I am almost half way there. I didn't realise that 6,000 is quite a big amount to write and I haven't had to write so much since my university days, which is a long time ago. It's a huge challenge for me and I am prepared to do my best. I am grateful to Dr Nellie Deutsch, my former tutor and mentor on Moodle For Teachers and WikiEducator courses, for allowing me to work on this collaborative writing project which will be published online next month. One of my goals for this year was to write an e-book, so this is definitely an excellent start.

My chapter is based around my Teaching Idioms with Web 2.0 Tools presentation, which was originally premiered in Brighton 2011. The book chapter will support my presentation and will include some brand new lesson activities and ideas, which I have been working on the past few days.

I love teaching idioms and my students have always enjoyed learning them, too. I hope this chapter will provide further insight into how idioms can be taught effectively.

Looking through my folders, during my research on idioms just now, I found I had created an Xtranormal animation on Idioms a while back, and I include the tweet below. If you click on the image, it will take you to my Xtranormal page and you can view all the animations I have created. Be warned. They are very simple, but I hope they manage to convey whatever vocabulary I am trying to put across to my students!

I have published an Idiomatic Love Story and you can view it online at Slideshare/JanetBianchini or you can simply click on the image of the book below.

In the chapter, I would like to write a few sentences about how some British idioms have completely different meanings in other languages, or make no sense at all. I had read about the power of "crowdsourcing" on Nicky Hockley's fab blog, e-Moderation Station, entitled, "Sourcing the Crowd." So, I decided to do a bit of crowdsourcing myself, for the first time, and this is what I tweeted to my PLN yesterday:



In British English if you were to say "Victoria is full of beans today", it wouldn't mean that she had just eaten lots of beans and so was literally full of beans. No, the meaning would be that Victoria is very lively today, on the ball, very energetic.

http://www.free-stockphotos.com/download-free-coffee-mug-full-of-beans-images/

So my question to my fellow bloggers and readers is this: how would this idiom translate in your language?

Please do add your comments in the Comments' Box as this will help me in my research. Thank you in advance!!

The previous day I had done another bit of crowdsourcing as follows:


Sandy Millin responded within a very short time and gave an excellent reply as follows:

Evelyn Izquierdo my lovely tutor on the EVO Podcasting 2012 course also replied to my tweet and this is her super response:


Thank you both, Sandy and Eve for taking the time to add your thoughts!

I would be thrilled if anybody else could add their comments to my two questions, either here, or via Twitter. I will then be able to summarise the ideas in my book chapter.

My deadline is March 15th, so please do write in before then. Many thanks!!

NB
Below you can view a new idiomatic movie I have just created with Dvolver.

In the movie, Frederick is trying his best to woo Isabella back. I have deliberately chosen this movie to be in silent mode. There is a selection of music that you can choose to embellish your movie and make it more jazzy.

Connecting Online 2012 - A Missed Connection

Abruzzo Under Snow!!
Sadly I was not able to attend my own webinar presentation for Connecting Online 2012 due to unforeseen circumstances, namely the terrible weather that hit the Abruzzo area the day before. I had been very excited indeed about presenting and I wrote about it in this post here.

A very big apology to Dr Nellie Deutsch and all the attendees who came to my session on Teaching Idioms with Web 2.0 Tools. I had recorded my Powerpoint presentation to send to Dr Nellie in case I encountered problems with the weather, but unfortunately we got cut off before I could send it.

I made a very big effort to get to an Internet point to do my webinar, but the odds were against me. Mother Nature, in fact.

This is my story below.

A huge amount of snow fell overnight in our area of Abruzzo, and I woke up to this view:

The situation was about to get even worse. Our phone and Internet connection went down and mobile phone reception was poor to non-existent, due to the severity of the weather. I decided we had to try to get to our neighbours, who hopefully would have a connection for me to deliver my webinar at 2pm. So we started walking up our road (over one kilometre long), which was just a mass of deep snow. Karl very kindly carried my laptop on his back.

I got stuck many times as the snow level was very high!

At this stage, I was hopeful that it was just us without connection, so I was hoping that our neighbours would be able to save the day.

While we struggled to make our way along the snow-covered road, I tried to ring my sister on my mobile phone to get her to contact Dr Nellie to let her know about my difficulties. Sadly, that message didn't reach its destination.

As you can see, I was dressed suitably for the arctic conditions. I wore my motorbike waterproof leggings and jacket, and Russian-style hat to keep me warm.

When we eventaully got to our neighbour's house after one and a half hours of walking through quite treacherous and dangerous conditions, we found out to my huge disappointment, that they too were cut off!!! No phone line and no Internet connection. This was so upsetting, because I had really hoped that I would be able to deliver my session, especially after having gone through all that struggle up the road. It was not meant to be.

I would like to thank Dr Nellie for valiantly holding the session together with 39 attendees from around the world. I take my hat off to her!! She conducted the session, despite her presenter (me)not showing up, in an amazingly calm and professional manner. I will observe and learn from her and this will be a role model for me. This is definitely something positive, which has come out of the negative. I think she did a brilliant job, coping with the situation. Thank you once again!!!

I have viewed the video, and it is an excellent example of how to remain calm and deal with an unforeseen situation. Thank you for holding the fort, Dr Nellie. Kudos to you.

JanetAbruzzo Unplugged!
To while away the days while we were cut off from the outside world, I created a series of podcasts, called JanetAbruzzo Unplugged, using Audacity. You don't need the Internet to record audio, so that was great. All I had to do next was upload the mp3 file from Audacity to Podbean or Podomatic for me to be able to publish the posts on my blog, which is what I have done now whilst in England.

How I got to England whilst being snowbound, is another story, and one which I will post in my Project 366 blog. This blog stopped abruptly due to the snow and Internet disruption, on Day 33:The Big Freeze is Looming.

Below the image is my Episode One: Dash Through the Snow, on Podomatic. You may need to turn up the volume, as I am still a newbie regarding recording with Audacity, and I am still feeling my way around this new tool.






Our road on 12th February after more snowstorms had hit our area. Karl has been without connection with the outside world for 10 days. Thank goodness he was able to ring me today and the Internet and phone line is finally back up!!!

Thanks very much to Marco, a local farmer and neighbour, who had cleared some of the snow from the road before this picture was taken.


The terrible weather has caused over ten million Euros of damage in the Abruzzo area alone, according to Il Centro, the local Pescara newspaper. The last time it was so bad was in 1956, before I was born.

You can view a video and more pictures from Abruzzo in the Snow here.