Goodbye 2013, Hello 2014!

  

2013 will go down in my personal history as a year of being preoccupied with an event from the past. At times this year, I could think of nothing else, and it threatened to overshadow any of the joys that 2013 actually managed to bring.  I am happy to say that the situation that has dominated since February 2009, is thankfully over for me and my family. I thank the legal team for all their tireless support and faith in us.  I thank the judge, who listened attentively, and then agreed to everything. I thank Karl for being my rock, I thank my sisters for always being there with me throughout the long process we have endured, and I thank everyone who has supported us along the way.

We can now look to the future, and hope that it will be a quiet and peaceful one, without high drama or worries!  Safe to say, this will be unlikely, given the very fabric of human nature.  Whatever happens, however, I am sure I will go forth with great optimism. Let's see what this new year will bring.

Highlights of 2013
In January & February, I attended and also had the opportunity to moderate on the EVO DigitalStorytelling for Kids. I enjoyed this experience very much indeed, and I learned a lot, thanks to the fabulous team of moderators and participants.

Attending Connecting Online 2013 e-conference in February, presenting at the 6th Virtual Round Table e-conference in May, and the Reform Symposium in October, all helped me to develop professionally.  It was wonderful to share so many interesting moments with educators from around the world.

I became a registered blogger for IATEFL Liverpool, but actually only managed to write 2 posts.  I was sorry I couldn't write more...

I worked on a collaborative book writing project with a group of international educators from Connecting Online 2012, and I wrote a chapter on Teaching Idioms Effectively.  I am now the proud owner of my own printed copy of Connecting Online for  Instruction and Learning, International Perspectives.

I celebrated my fifth year of blogging by writing this post, simply entitled Five.

Olive Picking Weekend
I enjoyed picking our olives in November, and I then created a Photopeach slideshow as an example for a weekend activity to show to my 'Blend It' online students at the time.

Janet's Weekend on PhotoPeach

 

Fave Blog Post of 2013
My favourite post of 2013 has got to be The Machine vs Janet, which I later changed to Janet vs the Machine.  It is a true story, and I was thrilled that my perseverance in this particular case, finally paid off.

The motto is: If something seems insurmountable to overcome, never, ever give up hope!!

Out of a negative situation, a positive one emerged, and to my delight this blog post was turned into a chapter for an ebook,called The Little Book of Blogs, compiled by Anne Fox from The Consultants-e.  The ebook contains a host of great chapters on all manners of topics, and you can download a free copy if you click on this post.   Enjoy!

Fluffy's Hectic Life
Fluffy's Blog - Fluffy is a constant source of joy and a bundle of fun.  He is very mild-mannered, and he tends to have a lot of adventures.  His presence can brighten up anybody's day! His portrait is now hanging in the local museum, as seen below.

An Indomitable Spirit 
 The person I most look up to in the whole world is my dear mum, who has overcome all the odds that were stacked against her one fateful day in February 2009.....

The image below, taken just a few weeks ago in Oxford, is full of optimism for the future.  Nobody can imagine the history of what lies behind her beautiful smile, the stuggles and frustrations of the past 5 years, the incredible will to live, the courage, fortitude and bravery.  To survive her catastrophic brain injury after months in hospital and rehabilitation, and to now lead a quiet, peaceful and simple lifestyle, is more than we had ever hoped for.  The anxious and terrifying vigils by her bedside, in the weeks following the cycle accident, not knowing if she was going to come out of her coma, not knowing if she was ever going to be strong enough to live a normal life ever again, is something hard to forget.

Now, however, it is time to finally move on, and look forward to a happy future, which is full of hope....

A Toast to 2014!
Finally, to sum up this reflective post, a huge cheers to all my blog readers, members of my PLN, friends, family and colleagues all over the world.  I hope 2014 will be a wonderful year for you all :-))

Post Scriptum
2014 has some exciting events in store, and I will be writing about them in the New Year.  Watch this space!

2014 is now!!

Photopeach Comics & Cartoons

I am enjoying the wonderful EVO DigitalStorytelling4kids session, and this is one of the tasks for Week 3.  We have to create a video / slideshow using a tool such as Photopeach.  This tool is very easy to use and you simply upload your photos, choose some music, add some captions and press Publish.  There is also a Quiz feature, which is great for reviewing vocabulary topics with students.

I have chosen to create a slideshow to showcase some of the comics and cartoons I created for the EVO Digital Storytelling Week 2 tasks, and I have also included some of my favourite comics & cartoons from the past.

I owe special thanks to Shelly for inviting me to join this inspirational session. I'm hooked!

Janet's Comics & Cartoons on PhotoPeach

Life in Civitaquana on PhotoPeach

I have been inspired to create a new PhotoPeach slideshow after looking through the fabulous examples from participants on the excellent EVO Digital Storytelling course. I will be writing my feedback as soon as I can. Watch this space!

Preparing for TESOL Italy National Convention 2010

A little taster of what I will be presenting soon in Rome at TESOL Italy.
I've been having some fun experimenting with www.photopeach.com, one of my favourite sites for using photos.

Language Flows on PhotoPeach

Teacher Reboot Camp:Guest Post

I have had the great pleasure of writing a guest post on Shelly Terrell's awesome "Teacher Reboot Camp" blog. I was delighted when I was invited by Shelly via Twitter a few weeks ago. I immediately knew what I wanted to do. I was in the middle of creating another Powerpoint presentation, one on Phrasal Verbs. I decided it would be a good theme to expand for a more in-depth post. I wrote my article directly onto Teacher Reboot Camp and did all the research whilst writing the draft there. I will confess now that it's all up and running fine, I was a bit afraid of accidentally deleting stuff, as I did in "Gone with the Wind". It's one thing to mess up one's own links, but to do so on someone else's blog, was absolutely unthinkable and not really an option to consider. I have asked Shelly's kind permission to present my guest post in full on my blog. The embeds and animations are now all in one easily accessible site for me to re-use and show to teachers and students in the future.

An Xtranormal Kind of Introduction

Teaching phrasal verbs is my favourite activity of all! Why is this so? Well, in my experience, I have found that students generally don’t like studying them because they find them “too difficult, miss!” I set out from elementary level to train my students not to be afraid of them, but to look forward to showing off their newly acquired knowledge of them. To stand out from the crowd. To use phrasals in a natural way. In the correct context. How do I do this? I will explain.

I encourage them to chill out during the lessons if I see they look a bit stressed out. I ask them to come up with ways of using new phrasals both in class and outside of class. I encourage them to ask each other this question as a natural starter “Have you come across this word? Do you know what it means?”, if for example, they don’t know the meaning of a word. Instead of asking me all the time, students are encouraged to ask each other first, always using this phrasal verb until it becomes instinctive for them and of course, second nature. On a Monday morning my first question is inevitably “What did you get up to over the weekend?” Students then ask each other in pairs and dialogue ensues following this prompt. Another question would be “Did you get through the weekend homework?” I make sure that these questions are all in context and provide opportunities for practice.

Slideshare

Below is an example of a Powerpoint presentation converted to Slideshare. I have created this in order to maximise opportunities for student discussion. This would either be used as an introduction to this set of verbs, or as a review and recycling activity. I have introduced 18 phrasal verbs with some follow-up activities at the end. I have experimented with whole pictures as background for added interest.

Fun With Phrasal Verbs

Bookr

Bookr by Pim Pam Pum is a nice tool for exploiting images to enhance your phrasal verbs lessons. You can easily create a “book” in minutes by selecting pictures, according to the theme you want to explore, and then simply dragging them into the pages of the book. You can write a short sentence on each page. The example below is one I created especially for this post to demonstrate how it can be used.

Dvolver

This is a great site for dialogue exploitation. The animations are easy to create with a set group of characters. There is a choice of background music which adds to the special effects. There is no sound for the characters.

Go!Animate

This is another cool site for creating animations. Go!Animate can be used by students to recycle phrasal verbs learned or indeed, any item of vocabulary that needs to be reviewed.

GoAnimate.com: Getting Down to Phrasals by Janet Bianchini

Create your own at GoAnimate.com.

The ZimmerTwins

I registered on the ZimmerTwins site for the purpose of researching for this post. I was surprised at how intuitive and easy it was to create my very first animation. I have a feeling that students will love this tool!

Have a look at Phrasals in the Jungle!

ToonDo

I love ToonDo because it’s easy to create cartoons for any topic you like. Students enjoy creating small dialogues or comic strips. Here’s one I created which has a phrasal verbs theme. The cartoons can be easily embedded into your class / student blogs or posted via email.

Create your own Toon!

PhotoPeach

The last on my list of favourite e-tools to make teaching and learning phrasal verbs fun is PhotoPeach. I was able to create a simple quiz using my own photos. You have to select a synonym out of the 3 options given for the verb in the picture. I hope you enjoy it!

Test your Phrasals! on PhotoPeach

Challenge

I hope I have inspired you to use some of these cool sites with your students. You can adapt them to suit whatever theme you are working with. Why don’t you try one of these out for your next class? I am sure your students would enjoy creating short animations and dialogues or short books or indeed quizzes to test each other on new vocabulary or structures they have learned with you.

Have you had experience with any of these tools? If so, I would love to hear from you to learn how you and your class got on with them!

I would like to thank Shelly for giving me this wonderful opportunity to write for her Cool Sites series. It’s a great honour for me to be here.

A Combination of Courses

I am enjoying my Electronic Village Online Images4Education course and Moodle4Teachers course. The PhotoPeach video below achieves two objectives. Firstly, I have used my own photos except for one from the Internet- can you guess which one is not mine? Secondly, I have created a simple gardening quiz for my Moodle for Gardening and Cooking course, that I am currently developing with the help of my 3 lovely coursemates from Canada, Canary Islands and USA. I was inspired by Ana Maria Menezes' posting on PhotoPeach Quizzes here.

Have a go at my quiz! It was very easy to create.

Gardening Quiz on PhotoPeach

How did you get on? I would welcome your feedback!

Happy Birthday to Karl

PhotoPeach

Many thanks to Sue Waters for her excellent post on PhotoPeach.