Lathyrus Apenninus

Photo above copied from article below
A new plant has been discovered in Abruzzo! It is a member of the leguminacea family and it has been christened "Lathyrus Apenninus". This species of flower has never been seen before and it was discovered by the Apennine Floral Research Centre in the Abruzzo National Park of Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga.
In addition, a new type of Delphinium has also recently been discovered. Please click here to read the article in full, which is in from the Abruzzo "Il Centro" newspaper.


Here is a link to my WikiEducator page that I am developing on the theme of Abruzzo. I started it last year during my excellent WikiEducator course and I hope to add to it in 2010. It is a collection of links connected to the beautiful region of Abruzzo, where I live. My home is just within the National Park area and I am surrounded by wild and spectacular rugged scenery.

Happy Birthday to Karl

PhotoPeach

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

For Janet's Eyes Only- an Interview with Nicole K

Starting in September last year, I looked through and commented on various new student blogs from America and Australia as a direct result of the Student Blogging Challenge - Better Comments, which Sue Waters from the Edublogger organised here. The standard was very high and at such a young age, I was so impressed with how the pupils organised their new blogs. I had great fun reading through the posts and leaving comments as often as I could. It was a learning curve for me, too. I wanted to see how class blogs were organised and also wanted to help young new bloggers on their learning path by encouraging them with positive and helpful comments.

A Very Special Interview
I have great pleasure in showcasing an interview with Nicole K, a student from Moran Middle School in USA. I first met Nicole via her delightful "Welcome to NIKKI'S" Blog which was one of the blogs I was assigned to on the Student Blogging Challenge. I first commented on Nicole's blog on September 10th 2009 on this post called The Perfect Classroom. Over the months since then, I have followed Nicole in her progress as a blogger and she has done brilliantly. With her kind permission, this is an interview we have arranged about the film Nicole has made recently for a school project on her hero Johnny Clem.

Please click on "For Janets Eyes Only" to see the full interview. I would like to congratulate Nicole for her fantastic development as a blogger. For someone who only started blogging a few months ago, she has made remarkable progress.

I include the link to Nicole's fantastic SchoolTube video below because I am sure you will want to view it again.

Thank you very much Nicole for agreeing to be interviewed by me. Good luck with your future blogging. I look forward to reading more of your posts. You are a natural!

All the best
Janet

Fun Subtitles

Having just read Ana Maria Menezes' excellent blog post where she highlights a new site called BombayTV, I decided to try it out immediately, as it looked like such a lot of fun. Here is the result below. Thank you very much, Ana Maria for inspiring me!!



I believe students would love creating new subtitles for these short scenes either in pairs or small groups. This would certainly be a different way of exploiting dialogues in class.

My EVO (Electronic Village Online) Images4Education course starts on Monday and I am raring to go!! I will be charting my progress as the course develops and hopefully I will recount my experiences here on my blog.

2010:The Year of Living Studiously?

I have just enrolled for an EVO course!! As of 11th January I will be learning about Images4Education 2010, hosted on the Ning platform. I am very excited about learning more about how to exploit the power of images and how to use them effectively in my lessons. There is a fantastic group of participants already registered and enrollment is open until January 10th, so hurry and join me if you are interested in this subject area!! It would be lovely to connect with you.

I have to admit, it was soooo difficult for me to choose because I liked the look of every course!! I almost opted for Digital Material preparation techniques and resources for TESOL professionals.
Maybe I will do this one next year.

As well as the Images4Education course, which I am really looking forward to, I am currently doing a course in Moodle for Gardening and Cooking. You can see details of the Moodle4Teachers programme here on the Integrating Technology for Active Life-long Learning website. This promises to be very interesting and I will write about how I get on in the coming weeks.

Arabella Cascarino
Yes, she does exist, virtually!! Arabella Cascarino was created at the end of 2008 and has lain in limbo ever since. She is waiting for a First Life, let alone a Second Life, but I haven't given her any sort of Life yet. This is a bit sad but, tweeting, blogging, ninging and horticultural matters have impeded her development. I would love to resurrect her and give her a dazzling lifestyle in Second Life but I am a complete novice and so, I kind of RAN away as soon as her eyecatching name was penned.

A Matter of Life or Death
Why Arabella? It sounds aristocratic and old-fashioned even if I have found out it's also the name of a famous racing horse. Why Cascarino? It sounds like a cool surname and added to Arabella it engenders a mix of aristocracy and"je ne sais quoi". Resolution for 2010? To take the plunge and breathe some life into Arabella and see how she develops??? This will mean even more learning. Am I up for it all? Why not? Life is for learning and challenging oneself. I should begin by teaching myself the basics by reading Nik Peachey's excellent posting here, which also contains references to informative Second Life video tutorials by Russell Stannard.

I hope 2010 will be a fantastic learning opportunity for you all, doing whatever your heart tells you to do!!