Feedback on Connecting Online 2015 Conference

The Wordle sums up a few key phrases I collected from the 6th Annual Connecting Online 2015 free econference held on WizIQ platform from 6-8 February 2015.

I attended or viewed the recordings of a total of 12 sessions over the weekend.  Each one of them was educational and totally inspirational!!  I found the topics engaging and highly instructional. All the presenters in the image (created by Dr Nellie Deutsch) below shared their passion for their particular areas of expertise, with great enthusiasm. I hope to catch up with a few more of the webinars over the coming days and weeks.  The one thing they all had in common was the muti-faceted ways that technology integration can enhance learning and teaching!

I enjoyed interacting in the chatbox with attendees and the presenters, and this informal sharing of information reinforced the fact that 'Sharing is caring'.  Communicating synchronously in the WizIQ chatbox with teachers from around the globe brought the sessions to life in a fun and exciting manner.

I had deliberately set aside parts of the weekend to fully immerse myself in this educational event, and I was able to place my worries about the current state of The Road at the back of my mind.  If you view the recording of my talk, you will know exactly what I am refering to .....!

The Witty Comics highlights a few impressions of the weekend event.  Please click on the image for an enlarged view:

You can catch all the recordings on WizIQ if you simply register for free, and then you can sit back and enjoy the sessions at your leisure!

The one person who was always central to all the live action was Dr Nellie Deutsch, the organizer and 'hostess with the mostest'.  I do not think she slept at all during the 3-day event.  She did a truly impressive job of moderating all the sessions, and helping each of the presenters to do and give their best, and putting everyone at ease. 

I wish to say a huge personal THANK YOU to her.  It was a pleasure to be one of the presenters of this exciting online event!

Quattro!

Janet's Abruzzo Edublog is proud to announce its fourth birthday.  My blog has been going for four enjoyable years, and I hope to continue writing on it for many more years to come.  Last year I didn't celebrate, and I vowed I would in 2012, after reading this blog post by Natasa.

My blogging adventure started four years ago.  Since then, I have written and published over 400 posts, on a wide range of subjects.  These include teaching English to students and teachers, thoughts on educational technology matters, experiments with many Web 2.0 tools, and my own lesson ideas and materials. In addition, I have posted my opinions of the beautiful region of Abruzzo, where I am currently living.

I would like to say a very big thank you to all my readers and viewers. I feel incredibly honoured and humbled that viewers from 171 countries from around the world have at one time or another taken the time to read one of my posts. Below are screenshots taken just now of the different countries.  The first shows the top countries from the Clustrs list that is in my dashboard.
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The second shows the countries where readers have visited occasionally:

Here you have a current view of the world map:

...and another view:

The most popular posts being viewed today include some which are over two years old!

Fun at the Lake is one of my most recent posts, and outlines some of the activties and lessons that I taught recently at the Lake School of English, Oxford.

Why do I blog? There are many reasons, but the most important ones are as follows:

• to share my teaching ideas
• to share my presentations and webinars
• to share my experiments with using new tools
• to reflect on my teaching
• to reflect on my experience of online courses
• to have a repository for my thoughts on teaching
• to connect with teachers and educators from all over the world
• to connect with my PLN
• to write my personal reflections on conferences I attend
• to write book reviews
• to write about my life in Abruzzo
• to connect with other bloggers via my sidebar

Once again I would like to say a very big .......

......... for reading my blog!! 

A Traditional Abruzzo Christmas Delight:Recipe from Life in Abruzzo Blog!

Following recipes has never been my forte, but seeing one for the traditional Abbruzzo Christmas "Calgionetti", in Life in Abruzzo blog, spurred me to have a go, and the results are truly delicious!! These special treats were made by my mother every Christmas time, and she used to make hundreds of them for us to eat, and also to share with friends and family. Sadly I wasn't at all interested in cooking in my youth, so I did not pay attention to how these were made. Imagine my delight when I came across the recipe! Without hesitating, I knew I had to make them and hopefully you will be inspired to make them, too.

Please note that this recipe contains quite a few nuts, so will not be to everyone's taste.

I noted today that homemade calgionetti were on sale in the special Christmas food section of SISA, the local supermarket. They were selling them for 18.50 Euros a kilo, which makes them quite a delicacy!!

Here is a link to the post"Caggionetti, Calggionetti, Cagiunitt" where you too can make your own Abruzzo special Christmas treats, if you follow the instructions carefully!

The ingredients required for "calgionetti" can be found in the Wordle below!

Below you can see images I took of some of the stages.

Boiling the chestnuts, an important part of the process!

Rolling out the dough made from flour, olive oil and wine! A copy of the Life in Abruzzo recipe which I used can be seen next to the rolling pin and dough.

The pastries waiting to be fried!

Angel Delight
The angel you can see in the photos certainly helped me to create these yummy sweets which are a traditional part of the Christmas festivities! She was able to oversee the delicate process while I made two batches.

The finished pastries, sprinkled with icing sugar, waiting to be devoured!

To make these Calgionetti, please read and follow the recipe instructions in Life in Abruzzo.

I have just submitted an article for the series on "A Few of My Favourite Abruzzo Things", so please watch this space for further details coming soon!

A Wordle in the Gallery

Dave Dodgson from Reflections of a Teacher and Learner blog set a very inspiring challenge during his excellent presentation on Word Clouds at the 4th Virtual Round Table. He asked fellow bloggers to create a word cloud from the current URL of their blogs and then to answer the following questions.

• What does it tell you about the content of your writing?
• What does it tell you about your writing style and use of vocabulary?
• Is there anything that surprised you?

Well, not surprisingly, my Wordle can be summarised using the following key words:

I enjoyed the fabulous online Seeta Reading Challenge course with Marisa and teachers, because of the many lovely digital texts, activities and resources that everyone shared!

One thing that strikes me is the juxtaposition of the word "time" near "day. This refers to the fact that I recently haven't had much free time during the day due to my recent virtual and face to face presentations. It's a coincidence, I feel.

It looks as if my wordle is dominated by the recent Reading course challenge. Maybe this is because I enjoyed it so much!

My choice of vocabulary seems to be quite simple judging from the words generated, and I feel that is a bit odd. I do try my best to write as interestingly as possible and yet, there are no unusual or difficult level words at all!

My wordle also contains references to the recent devastating earthquake in Japan, and you can read My Message to Yokko in Japan.

There is more about the earthquake from Barbara Sakamoto's moving and very insightful posts about the aftermath and also how people can help here.

Thank you very much Dave for setting such a lovely challenge! You can read about all the bloggers who have also done the challenge here.

PS
There is only one reference to "cat", and no references at all to the rest of my menagerie, and so Wordle hasn't really represented the contents of my blog very accurately!! I therefore decided to create a Tagxedo in the shape of a dog to make up for this absence, and here is the image below with quite a lot of different words.

Technology, Twitter, conference, blog, English, Abruzzo and virtual - all figure prominently and I believe this is an accurate reflection of what my blog is all about.

Language Flowed in Rome at Tesol Italy!

I am still on a high after a whirlwind 2 days fully intensive and literally flowing and stimulating Tesol - Italy conference in Rome from Friday 19th November to Saturday 20th November. I would like to sum up my experience of my time at the 35th National Convention of Tesol Italy so that I will remember it for a long time. There were over 70 talks and presentations, but of course I couldn't attend all of them. I will give feedback on the talks that I was able to attend. I hope it will give you a little taste of what it was like to be there in person. Below is a priceless magazine souvenir from the conference, courtesy of bighugelabs.

Like last year, I stayed at the delightful and very welcoming Casa Betania, which is situated right next to the SGM conference centre. Sister Serafina welcomed me back with open arms and showed me to my room. After a long train journey from Chieti I was quite happy to retire for the night. I read a booklet about the life of Sister Scolastica, who is buried in the crypt of the church, right next to where I was staying. It was written in Italian and I was pleased that I was able to read it easily.

Talk 1
My first talk of the day was by Jenny Dooley, teacher trainer and ELT author. The title was "Developing communicative competence" and it was fantastic. I loved Jenny's style, presence and dramatic way of presenting. In addition, I loved her elegant LBD and choice of jewellery! She wowed her audience by being lively and very entertaining. "Activation" of the language is key to developing communicative competence, and with the use of mind maps and plans, students can be guided towards this objective. She discussed the merits of fluency over accuracy, the use of proper scaffolding, exposure to real-life language tasks, and the need to expose students to authentic materials. I agreed with everything Jenny said and it was good to be reminded of all these points.

Talk 2
"Sociable media and language learning" was a plenary session by Steven L. Thorne, the renowned author and researcher. I was fascinated by his talk and his research into statistics regarding the use of virtual worlds, including Second Life, computer games, FaceBook, Twitter and WoW (World of Warcraft), which I didn't really know a lot about. He also mentioned fan fiction authors such as Rebecca Black. Bring the world into your classroom was a key message. A lot of theoretical background information was imparted and I learned a lot. It opened my eyes to a new world. A world which could soon become an integral part of everybody's lives.....

Talk 3
"Good lessons: the role of flow and transformation" by Luke Prodromou, the well known ELT author and teacher trainer. This was an entertaining and practical session, which I enjoyed very much. Luke Prodromou was able to craft the session in a very skilful way, showing us examples of lessons with students he has taught. A variety of metaphors including music, were explored in a fun and motivating manner.




Talk4
"Language in motion:teaching with the flow" was presented by Janet Bianchini, teacher, blogger and olive oil cultivator. She spoke about the new words coming into the English language like a fast-flowing torrent. How could teachers keep up with this ever rapid flux?

She outlined some sources where words came from, mostly from the Internet. She showed some web 2.0 tools that could be used effectively to teach, review and recycle new words. You can see her presentation here. For some unknown reason, she didn't feel at all nervous, even though it was her first big presentation at an international conference. She just "went with the flow" and enjoyed herself to the full!

Note to presenter: Next time, maybe at IATEFL Brighton (???), she should use a remote control to control the slides so that she can walk around and participate more with the audience?

She was asked some very pertinent questions by members of the audience, including the one below:

Q How do you know which words to teach, which words will "stick"?

A. Ermm, I don't really know, I just use my intuition and see how often the emerging word is used in the papers, internet etc.

Janet stressed to her audience that because of the evolving nature of English, she had to keep herself up to date the same as everyone else. Being a native speaker does not give her an extra advantage as a lot of the new words are new to her as well. Her fave site is www.wordspy.com.

She demonstrated a few activities such as the one below. Can you match the pairs of words taken from the Top 20 words from Word Spy?

Did you guess them correctly? Below is their definition.

Hobby bobbies
Flash mobs
Laptop zombies

I have recently found out that there is an Abruzzo "CouchSurfing" wiki network.
Here is an informative post on "Searching and requesting a couch".

You might be interested in this article: 50 Coolest Online Tools for Word Nerds". I think it's a very useful collection of some great sites!

Talk5
"Shaping the language of the future via the Internet" by Yulia Sergaeva from Russia was a very informative talk, which I enjoyed immensely. She is presently doing research in Neology and Lexical Creativity. I learned about Urban Dictionary containing examples of newly created slang terms.

I also found out about a delightful site called Verbotomy, where you have the chance to create a new word and definition in a competition. I had never heard of this site before, and so I will definitely be looking into it, as it looks fascinating and I love new words!! I was surprised to hear that the average age of the people who submit definitions for new words were in their '80s. Coining neologisms is an excellent brain exercise for "silver surfers". I also love the cartoons which accompany the activities.

This excellent talk finished at 6.15pm and it was time for the special event of the evening: "La Dolce Vite", a play on "La Dolce Vita", an evening of Italian cinema and wine tasting. Bocca di Gabbia , from Le Marche region, was the fabulous choice of wine and I enjoyed some glasses together with strong Parmesan cheese and lovely nibbles and canapes.

I mingled with teachers from all over Italy and abroad. I also chatted to the teachers of L'Aquila whom I had met in L'Aquila last month. It was lovely to see them again! Hopefully, I will be returning to L'Aquila in the new year to do another seminar there.

I hit the sack, very happy after a wonderful first day of events.

The following day I attended sessions until 2.15 pm. I had an action-packed and exciting morning.

Talk6
"English as a Lingua Franca: idioms as tranlingual flows" by Luke Prodromou, was a great entertaining session, and I enjoyed the focus on idiomacity, "which by definition, is fluid and innovative and at the heart of ELF". Luke pointed out that stress and intonation must be observed for idioms to work. He also gave us some wonderful examples of what happens when students mix idioms up or don't use them appropriately.

The key to being fluent in English is "phraseological fluency". I always stress to my students that idioms, phrasal verbs and natural English (colloquial English) used in the correct context, are vital elements of becoming a proficient speaker of English. The puzzling aspect for students, however, is when an idiom is changed for fun as in "It was raining kittens and dogs!" or "That was a teacup of a storm!"

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbraine/2346699537/

Talk7
"Learning English through the media: from language to culture" by Roberta Facchetti from the University of Verona was another highly interesting talk. The speaker demonstrated the topic with authentic materials, showing us lots of newspaper headlines, cartoons, comic strips and advertisements, which focused on the social life and cultural aspects of the English language.



Plenary: Talk8
"Flowing in new directions" was the wonderful talk by David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics, prolific writer, editor, lecturer and broadcaster on Linguistics and the English language. I sat totally engrossed for the full 45 minutes of the talk. There was no Powerpoint presentation, no great fanfare. David Crystal stood and talked without notes, and brought his subject alive with his quietly spoken and convincing demeanour.

Language is like a river, with many new tributaries. Nothing is ever going to be the same again. Two important factors have changed everything: the Internet and Global language. The electronic world is taking over our lives! In fact at exactly 11.55 am, David Crystal coined a new phrase, which with the age of Twitter, would become a possible new word. That newly made up word is "retesolisation". One needs to respect the power of technology!

There is a seachange of language change as I write.
I was surprised to learn that in the future, varieties of Indian English will have a massive potential effect on the English language with phrases such as "I'm knowing it!" becoming commonplace. Note the use of "I'm loving it" - this expression is now no longer frowned upon and corrected. It has become a part of our daily usage. David Crystal stressed the plurality of the English language. We should teach this "global" English from a very early stage.
I was absolutely fascinated by the talk and it has provided me with great food for thought.

Talk 19
The final talk for me was Susanna Licciardi's session "Teaching language in the 21st century: the next platform in education". Susanna is a teacher trainer from Italy. I enjoyed her talk very much and I was able to identify with the challenges she mentioned facing teachers with regards the new media that surround us. "Smartphones, iPhones and iPods have broken the barrier to real communication in real time in the language classroom" Susanna explained. We also watched a very interesting video of what K12 pupils expect from their teachers - to be taught using technology, as that is the world in which they were born. There is no hiding place for teachers who refuse to adopt the new media. We have no choice but to learn about these new technologies. As David Crystal said, we are living in a "Brave New World" and we must deal with it. As teachers, though, are we ready and prepared to change the way we teach? Or will we get lost by the wayside?

Beautiful Flowing Music Rising from the Ruins

Before I left the conference, I attended a wonderful harp concert from a young girl, whose beloved harp was practically destroyed in the L'Aquila earthquake in April 2009. "Atlantide" rose again from the ashes, like the Phoenix, and I witnessed a fantastic and stunning performance from Claudia Pintaudi.

This lovely harp which had been buried under the rubble in Claudia's house for months, was for her, the symbol of rebirth. I was moved to tears. I sat amongst the brave teachers from L'Aquila, who had made me feel so at home in their city last month. The power of hope emanating from the sweet melodies being played so exquisitely by the young and beautiful harpist was something I will not forget in a long time.
Original image of Great concert harp from http://blog.collectables-now.com/tag/musical/

Congratulations
I congratulate TESOL Italy for choosing such a topical and absolutely vital modern theme for the conference. Many thanks for providing an inspirational and wonderful event. I'm already looking forward to returning in 2011!!

Dear Marina, Rosanna and Tesol Italy team ,

I appreciated your very warm welcome. It really made me feel at home. Many thanks!

PS
You may like to read this guest post I wrote in May 2010 on OUP ELT Blog called "Renew the Passion and Go with the Flow!"

My Life as a Wordle

On Monday I will have the pleasure of teaching face to face with 2 groups of students at the Lake School of English. A possible "getting to know you" introduction to myself will consist of this Wordle. Students (in pairs or small groups) will have 5 - 10 minutes to discuss what connection the words have to my life. They will get a point for each correct fact they guess about me! The students will then in turn create a wordle of their own. In small groups, they will show their wordles to each other and discuss the connections to their lives.

Addendum
All due credit due to the amazing inspiration behind this simple activity comes from the fab "Powerpointing Me" lesson by Karenne Sylvester. Many thanks, K!!

You will also find "Using word clouds in class - a lesson plan" by Marisa Constantinides extremely useful and practical.

Feedback: #VRT10

Taking part in the 3rd Virtual Round Table Conference this weekend was an amazing experience and one which I thoroughly enjoyed. The array of guest presenters was fantastic and the choice of sessions was huge and varied. A very big thank you to all the organizers, Heike, Shelly and Berni. They did brilliantly! Below is a slideshare of my Phrasal Verbs presentation. Here is a link to the recorded sessions, which are currently being updated. Here is a link to a Google Docs with useful notes and further links to all the sessions. I have a lot of viewing to do over the next few days, as I wasn't able to view all of them. I hope you enjoy them as well.

You can see a recording of my talk, alongside Russell Stannard's excellent Web 20. Tools presentation, here. I have to add that most of my learning about new web tools has been entirely self taught from watching Russell's excellent step by step video tutorials. So it's a huge honour to be in the same recording as my virtual teacher!

3rd Virtual Round Table Conference 2010: Fun with Phrasal Verbs

View more presentations from Janet Bianchini.

Addendum

I came across the word "entropy" recently and I had to look it up in the dictionary. Lo and behold, very shortly afterwards and by complete coincidence, entropy cropped up in a fascinating blog post by Terry Freedman, entitled "In Praise of Entropy".

My summary of last year's Virtual Round Table's Pecha Kucha event has been selected from the archives, with many thanks to ESLlibrary.com.

Fotobabble
Here is a great post on ways of using Fotobabble in the classroom from iLearn Technology blog.

Here is Russell Stannard's fab step by step training video on Fotobabble.

Why don't you try one today and add it to your blog or wiki? It really is as easy as A-B-C!

1955: The Look of Love

It was instant, eternal love through a mirror.

Special effects of photo above generated by tuxpi.com


The young man immediately knew when he saw the beautiful young girl in the reflection of the mirror, that she would be his wife.

Joined up photos of Lucia and Emidio in 1955, with special effects from tuxpi.com

Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the handsome face in the mirror in front of her.

In one timeless second, their love was sealed.

It was 1955, in Abruzzo Italy.

Within 5 days my father had proposed and then, he left her.

For England.

A few months later, my father married my mother.

He was in England, working on the farm on his special day.

My mother was in Italy.



She wore a beautiful wedding outfit.


A wedding ceremony was held in her village with family and friends.

My uncle stood in as a proxy for my father.
As a child I always wondered why my mother had a picture with everyone but my father on her wedding day on September 1st.

She joined my father in England on September 17th 1955.


They have lived in England ever since.

They always celebrate 17th September as their true anniversary.


Unchained Melody, this version sung by the Righteous Brothers, was their song in 1955.




"Come Prima" is a classic Italian love song. This English version here is sung by the famous American/Italian singer Mario Lanza. I would like to dedicate "Come Prima" to my parents, who I hope will read my blog post today and "feel like the first time" they met, 55 years ago.



Events in 1955
You Tube Time Machine (YTTM) is a cool site which shows you a selection of videos of what was happening in any given year that you choose. Click on the link to find out what was happening in 1955.

I have created a Wordle which contains a romantic quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Can you unjumble the words? You can find the answer to this quote at the bottom of the post.



A final message to my amazing parents. Have a wonderful celebration! I will be thinking of you from here in Abruzzo.

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking in the same direction."