Due

My blog was officially 2 years old on 9th November. I was in Oxford at the time and very busy, so I wasn't able to focus on doing a post, so here it is!

2010 has been an incredible year for Janet's Abruzzo Edublog. It has given me a lot of pleasure and I have met so many people and via my sidebar PLN, I have learned so much in the process. Thank you very much to all my readers for viewing my blog. I appreciate it a lot.

This is what I wrote on my first year anniversary called "Uno".

The Menagerie
Apparently, according to the recently introduced Google "Analytics" on my Blogger dashboard, which mysteriously just appeared, my most popular post in my second year of blogging is "Let Sleeping Cat Lie", which I did on the theme of animal idioms, a recurring topic. Incredibly, it has had over 1,200 page views!! As you may know, here in the wilds of Abruzzo, I am surrounded by my menagerie. The animals inspire me constantly to write up posts such as "Chicks'R'us", "And Then There Were Three" and "An Open Letter from Samantha to Valentina".

Here is a new Animoto that I have created:

Sadly, little capon "Al Capone" is no longer with us, as he was eaten by a wild Goshawk a short while ago. Life moves on, and I am now in the process of preparing myself for the arrival of a multi-coloured cockerel that will be named "Fred". Ever since I bought this Cockerel mug and coaster set, I have wanted to buy a similar looking chick. I would like to train him to wake me up at 6.45am on the dot! We haven't bought him yet, but it's good to imagine what he will be like......

Key Events
On a more serious note, in my second year I have reflected and given feedback on the live webinars that I have presented at, which include the Reform Symposium and 3rd Virtual Round Table conference. Both these online conferences were truly fantastic, and they were skilfully organised.

I have written book reviews on Moodle for Packt Publishing:Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching, Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques, and Moodle 1.9 Theme Design :Beginner's Guide. I am currently finishing off my latest review on Moodle 1.9: The English Teacher's Cookbook.

I also enjoyed writing a book review of the wonderful "Zen and the Act of Teaching" by David Deubelbeiss.

Lifelong Learning
Why do I write my blog? Well, it is a learning diary, a place to keep all my ideas and emerging lessons, a place for feedback on what I have learned, a place to share new ideas, a place to keep everything under one roof, so to speak. I also write it to give encouragement to teachers who may not already have a blog, but who are tentatively thinking of starting one.

I never thought it would lead me to where I am today, but it has. It has completely revolutionised my way of life and I am very happy as a result. It has also made me a much better teacher and most importantly of all, it has allowed me to keep up to date with this new, fast evolving era of digital technology. Can you believe I was a technophobe just 2 short years ago?

However, I have to add, the image of the blackboard below is there to remind me that all will not be lost if technology were to let me down. Give me a basic board and a pen and I would be able to deliver my lessons, in the "Unplugged Way". You may like to read this fabulous series on the Dogme Blog Challenge by Karenne Sylvester on Kalinago English blog.

Education Needs Reflective Educators
A terrific new educational initiative has just been set up by Shelly Terrell and Gret Sandler in the shape of a Blogs 4 Edu wiki. "Education Needs Reflective Educators" is intended to help all new bloggers and existing bloggers to help spread the word. As Gret says, "Blogging is a great way to share what is happening in every classroom". Please do read through both blog posts and I hope they will inspire you to start a blog!!

I am thrilled and feel privileged to be currently tutoring online for the Consultants-E and proofreading for Macmillan. At the same time, I can stay at home and tend to my olive trees, my plants, check up on Samantha and co, and write my blog and tweet. I really couldn't ask for more.

I will leave you with a fabulous image taken by K in our garden. The thousands of starlings were flying over the olive trees and K was able to take this amazing shot. This is what life in Abruzzo is all about.

Coming soon!
Feedback from TESOL Italy
Back to the Grove
Moodle book review

TESOL-Italy: Language in motion, teaching with the flow

I have just had an amazing time in Rome at TESOL Italy's 35th National Convention. The theme was "Language Flows".

I would like to say a huge thank you to TESOL Italy organisers for putting on a fabulous action-packed 2 days of exciting talks and presentations. I will do a feedback summary of the talks I attended as soon as I can. I learned soooo much, and met so many people from Italy and abroad. I want to write my incredible experience down, so that I can share all the excitement and "buzz" with my readers.

As promised, below is my presentation from TESOL Italy's 35th National Convention. You can see it in full screen if you press the icon on the slideshow. Thank you to all the teachers who came to my talk. It was lovely to see you in Sala Antioca on Friday at 2.15pm.

Language in Motion: teaching with the flow 2010

View more presentations from Janet Bianchini.

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

Learning Curves: Lake School of English, November 2010

Photo above courtesy of Veselin.

I was very excited when I was asked to teach on the Teachers' Refresher course "Learning Curves: Making Use of New Technologies in English Language Teaching" at the Lake School of English, Oxford. Without hesitating I immediately agreed to do this exciting new course. Teaching with technology seemed like a tailor-made project for me, especially as I enjoy using new technologies.

I hope to showcase some of the tools demonstrated to the 11 teachers during the one week intensive course, and also anything that is created by them after the course, which is sent to me. We covered a lot of ground in the one week intensive course, culminating in a workshop / swapshop on the final day, with some Karaoke music and singing, courtesy of www.tuneintoenglish.com, and lovely drinks and nibbles in the last half an hour!

My lovely group of "Learning Curves" teachers at the Lake School of English, Oxford.

The course comprised of the following:

• Introductions and Icebreakers with web 2.0 tools including Wordle, Xtranormal, Photopeach and Go Animate.
  
• "Coat of Arms" introductions: drawing and speaking activity
• Presentation and discussion on a wide range of web 2.0 tools including Voki, Glogster, Voicethread, Wordle, Wallwisher, Fotobabble and ToonDo amongst others.
• Language update comprising of idioms, phrasal verbs and colloquial English including examples of new acronyms in the context of authentic materials. I showed the teachers this recent lesson from my archives.
  
• Presentations on the Interactive Whiteboard at Oxford University Press, and also at the Oxford and Cherwell Valley College. The talk and practical demonstration at the vocational college included references to digital materials and VLEs. We were then treated to a fabulous 3-course meal prepared for us by the hospitality and catering students, who also served us in a very efficient and friendly manner.
• Presentation on the use of images, with reference to image editing sites, such as Image Chef, (always a winner!), Tuxpi, Big Huge Labs etc.
• A session on "Britain Today", which included a discussion on current social issues. We also looked at some Cockney rhyming slang for a bit of fun. We learned "Take a butcher's at this!" = Take a look at this! and also "Not a bad Dickory Dock" = clock!
• Discussions based on input from the teachers, eg dogme teaching, the validity of text speech etc
• Pair forms / group forms using language / vocabulary taught in class
• Storybuilding from picture prompts.
• Community dictation activity using new words studied. Please see below.
• Introduction to the social networking site Twitter, with a live exchange on Twitter with my PLN and the teachers. (Thank you so much once again to all the members who responded to my call out. It was lovely to see so many messages and my teachers really appreciated it all. Unfortunately, we were not able to participate in the ELTChat as originally planned.) Hopefully, there will be some new members of Twitter joining the ranks soon!
• Other topics which cropped up "unplugged".
• Introduction to "Quizlet" a site for creating dynamic quizzes for revision purposes. I created a set on "New Words".
  
• A lovely presentation on Webquests by Elena from Romania on the final morning.
• A final workshop / swapshop where participants were able to practise what they had seen during the course.

The classroom became a hive of activity with fabulous creations on computers including blogs, wikis, animations, wordles, glogsters and wallwishers. I floated around the classroom(s) monitoring the teachers' experimental activities. I stressed to them that learning new tools needs a bit of practice and patience, but with Russel Stannard's excellent Teacher Training Video Tutorials to hand, they would easily pick up how to use a lot of these web 2.0 tools.

Below is a lovely photo of some of the teachers taken by Veselin Chantov, from Bulgaria, and turned into a Glogster.



Below is a Fotobabble created by me of Veselin's photo.



A screenshot of a lovely Glogster created by Stella Mastruzzi, Marinella Adamo and Paola Biancolini from Italy.


Here's a fab Glog that Stella created on Environmental issues. Please click on the link below.

http://stella50.glogster.com/glog-1208/

Below a fab "Wanted" poster effect from www.tuxpi.com from Veselin, who embraced the new technologies with great enthusiasm. I think this is brill!

You might like to read more about Tuxpi "Photo Effects" by the amazing Alex Francisco, on her Zarco English Tool of the Day blog.

A lovely Wordle of some of the new expressions we looked at, from Lorella Paltrinieri.

A poster that we saw, which contained a lovely example of a phrasal verb we had discussed in class. Photo courtesy of Lorella .

Below is a wordle summary of Day 2 vocabulary, edited with Tuxpi in 3 different ways.
I had a lot of fun!!  Which one do you prefer???

A Wallwisher Feedback for all the group. This will be added to over the coming weeks. Contributions so far: myself, Connie Burchert from Germany, Dana Muntean from Romania, Stella and Lorella from Italy.



"The Oxford Experience", a fantastic Bookr created by Dana, using www.pimpampum.



You might like to view this lovely post entitled "Drilling with Bookr" by Eva Buyuksimkesiyan.

My very first Voicethread! This was a great opportunity and learning curve for me as well to try out something new. I had contributed to other people's Voicethreads many times, but not created one myself.



A lovely newspaper article feedback summary of the course by Veselin:

www.fodey.com

GoAnimate.com: Talking about a city also by Veselin.

A Special Message
To all my Lake School Learning Curves teachers: many thanks for being such a fabulous group! Keep in touch! I really enjoyed teaching you, and sharing lots of new things. Take care.

To all my lovely Lake School colleagues: It was fantastic being in the staffroom again for 2 weeks. I loved all the chats and fun that we had. Hope to be with you all again in the New Year.

To Susan, Carmel and Lilly: Thank you for welcoming me back so warmly. I look forward to working with you again soon.

Future Blog Posts in the Pipeline
TESOL-Italy Rome National Convention 2010
Packt Publishing - Moodle Book Review:Moodle 1.9: The English Teacher's Cookbook
Olive Tree Picking - Back in the Grove!
My 2nd Year Blog Anniversary.

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.