Traveloteacher

Welcome, Europe!

2012-01-22T18:31:00.002+01:00

Yes, today is the long-awaited day for Croatia - today we're voting in a referendum on whether to join the European Union and I do hope the Croatian citizens say yes.

But no, this post is not about the referendum. This post is my way to extend a warm welcome to the participants of the Comenius project Imaging Europe. My school is one of the 8 participants of this project financed by the European Comission and I'm the coordinator of the Croatian team. 50 people are coming to Zagreb today and they are going to be our guests over the next five days.

31 students from Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Greece and Spain will be hosted by the students from my school while 19 teachers will be staying at a hotel. Over the next week we plan to show our guests all the sights of Zagreb and the surroundings, visit several muesum, go to a musical, learn how to make movies and actually make them, eat delicious Croatian food, speak English and most importantly, get to know each other, learn from each other, learn to respect each other no matter how different we are, recognize prejudices and sterotypes and hopefully eliminate them. This is my vision of the Europe I want to live in.

Virtual TeachMeets and StudentsMeets - yes, we can!

2012-01-02T13:41:00.000+01:00

On March 3, the TeachMeet Int'l Team (Sonja, Bart and I) will be hosting another virtual TeachMeet. I think it's not an overstatement to say that the first one, held in December 2011, was a great success. There are two reasons for its success. Firstly, the teachers were given the floor! They had a chance to talk about practical matters and ideas that worked in their classroooms and they embraced this opportunity with burning and contagious enthusiasm. Secondly, all the participants, be it presenters or the audience, were given a wonderful opportunity to connect with educators from all over the world without leaving their home.

I believe that the same can be done for students as well, so we'll be hosting our first StudentsMeet on Feburary 7. We are eager to bring together all the students (and their teachers) who want to share their ideas and their creativity with the rest of the world, no matter where they live, what language they speak or what school they attend. What matters is willingness to share and to learn from peers.

I think it's time to give the floor to students! Let's switch the roles. Let's give the students the opportunity to teach the teachers. I'm ready, are you?

Highlights of 2011

2011-12-26T11:05:00.000+01:00

What an incredible year 2011 has been for me and my professional development! While I was nothing more than an ordinary yet enthusiastic lurker in 2010, I dared and I did in 2011!

Despite being a shy presenter I plucked up the courage to present at two ELT conferences and a Teach Meet and I gave a talk on new technologies in education to teachers in two schools in Zagreb.

I'm extremely proud of the series of webinars for students that Sonja and I launched in the spring. There were 13 webinars that I co-hosted and/or presented at and they proved to be extremely successful, useful and popular among the student population. Besides student webinars, I delievered two webinars for teachers, entitled School Without Walls and Safer Internet Day - How They Do It. I was a co-presenter at the webinar about the Microsoft Partners in Learning Institue 2011.

The highlights of the year have been by far the two TeachMeets that I co-organized and co-hosted with Sonja and Bart. The first one was aimed at Croatian teachers, the second one was international with 22 presenters from 15 countries.(See the video clip below)

So that makes 23 presentations in one year! Not bad for a shy presenter, huh?

In 2011 I finally had a chance to meet many great educators in person - Vicky, Eva, Chiew, Chuck, Vladimira, Ann, Ania, Anna, Ceci, Sue, Brad, Fiona, Dan, Kelli, James..... I've been lucky enough to have met some of my Twitter and Facebook friends twice - Fiona, Shelly, Marijana, Cheryl, Beyza, Isil, Valentina, Sue, Denize, Luke, Rakesh, Ania, Ken, Julie.... and even three times - Jugoslava, Dede, Tatiana, Jan and Bart.

The world has become a small place, literally! It doesn't matter where they are - we're in touch - be it virtually or f2f! Nothing is impossible any more. At least not when it comes to travelling. Of which I've had my share in 2011 - I've travelled to Egypt, Turkey, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the US, Greece and France. Not bad for someone who is just a teacher, huh?

Good vibrations

2011-12-18T15:35:00.000+01:00

If anything deserves to be described as a truly out of this world experience, then the two yesterday's webinars should be it! The iTDi webinar and the TeachMeet Int'l definitely set new standards for professional development and I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks to all the speakers and participants who shared their experiences, ideas and best practices and sent out a great deal of good vibrations into the cyberspace.

I'm especially grateful to Bart and Sonja, my co-hosts for the TeachMeet Int'l for their wholehearted support before, during and after the event. The Twitter back channeling was absolutely amazing and I extend my huge thanks to Jeannette @7MrsJames for compiling the tweetdoc and for being there with us although it was middle of the night in Australia. Jeannette has written a wonderful post about this special day, and so did Vicky, who was one of the TeachMeet Int'l esteemed presenters.

Just a perfect day for webinars

2011-12-15T02:12:00.000+01:00

I first presented at a webinar a year ago - and got hooked immediately! When it comes to webinars, it doesn't matter if I'm a moderator, a presenter or only a listener, I simply love them. They're really contagious - you do it once - you want to do it all the time! And on Saturday Dec. 17 there is going to be a real treat for all the webinar fans out there. Two fanatastic events will take place in the virtual world:

At 10:00 am CET, iTDi will be hosting a special webinar What's a Teacher? moderated by Shelly Terrell with live online presentations by Scott Thornbury, Luke Meddings, Marcos Benevides, Steven Herder, Chuck Sandy, and John Fanselow. 300 teachers from 57 countries have registered for the event. Are you one of them too?

Immediately after the ITDi webinar, at 2:0 pm CET, Sonja, Bart and I will be moderating our first virtual Teach Meet Int'l. In this webinar, 25 speakers from 15 countries will be sharing their ideas and projects in 3-minute presentations. Check out who our fabulous presenters are and what they're going to talk about. You don't have to register to hear our speakers, just follow this link to the Live meeting room which will be open at 1:30 CET. Click here to see your time and date.

What is GFTW, anyway?

2011-12-06T17:58:00.001+01:00

I feel elated and excited because my wiki Greetings From The World hasbeen nominated for the Edublog Awards 2011! This is the third time in arow that it has been nominated and if you take a look at the sidebar you'll see that GFTW is the proud winner of the 2009 and 2010 Eddies.

It started with a tweet about Glogster by Shelly Terrell . I liked this tool so much that I immediately created my own glogster called My Magic Wand a.k.a Web 2.0. On the very next day I introduced it to my students who loved it even more than I did and a new project was launched. Three months later it was nominated for the Edublog Awards! I felt as if I had been nominated for an Oscar Award and I will never forget that December night when the winners were announced. At that time there were 10 participating schools in the project. A year later wewere joined by another 8 schools and this year we have grown again -for the time being there are 29 schools from 6 continents with morethan 500 students who have contributed to the project with theirglogsters. There are more than 300 amazing glogsters that our members havecreated. Over the past year we have worked with Beetroote, whosetravels and glogs have inspired all of us to create glogs that can beused as wonderful learning resources.

If you want please vote for Greetings from theworld on the Edublog Awards website. This year the voting process is slightly different: you can votefor us every single day! But please make sure to view all the other wonderful wikis, blogs and blog posts and let amazing educators and students from all over the world inspire and enthuse you.

My fav piece of tech

2011-11-29T15:08:00.001+01:00

After having taken the poll about using technology in the classroom onthe Facebook page of the International Teacher Development Institute, I'd liketo recommend my favorite web 2.0 tool that my students and I used - and liked - the mostover the past year.

Wikispaces is definitely Number 1 on my list. I started using wikis threeyearsago, then moved from there to blogs (I tried all of them: wordpress,edublogs and blogger) and theGoogle sites as well. But this year I returned to the wiki - I think wikisconvey the true essence of Web 2.0 - collaboration! It's amazing howeasily we can work with students and teachers from all parts of theworld. Even teachers who aren't tech-savvy can easily use it and keepit running smoothly. Here's my Greeting from the world wiki, which has connected more than 500 students and educators from across six continents.

In October 2011, I set up a virtual classrooms for my second-year students where we do the tasks that accompany the course book. It's called My English Class 2B and we've done quite a lot over the past two months. I have recently introduced the wiki to my first-year students as well: My English Class 1E and right now they're learning how to use it.

A tweet that made a lesson

2011-11-22T18:58:00.001+01:00

Yesterday evening this tweet grabbed my attention

and it brought me to an amazing lesson which I did in my class today. The author is Ian James, a teacher with fantastic ideas and great lesson plans.

What would you do.... if you came across these videos? is a lesson on 2nd conditional in a completely different and very real kind of way. And it came as if on cue, because I've just finished the conditionals with my students. What's more, I'm their classroom teacher (something of an advisor or home room teacher) and we've been discussing bullying and violent behaviour among teenagers quite a lot lately and the video that we saw this morning triggered an interesting discussion on teen dating violence - during which they used 2nd conditional without noticing that they were actually practising a grammatical concept.

Following Ian's suggestion, my students will watch one of these thought-provoking videos at home and next time they'll role-play different situations. For this I chose six videos that teenagers who live in this part of the world can easily relate to, which will make the role-plays more authentic.

What Would You Do videos are produced by ABC Prime.

#eddies2011 - my nominees

2011-11-19T18:04:00.001+01:00

It's this time of the year again: The 2011 Edublog Awards are on! I'm particularly fond of the eddies, they are so dear to my heart - for two reasons: Firstly, because I'm extremely proud of my wiki which has been recognized with the Best educational wiki award twice in a row, and secondly, because I'm given a chance to let the world know about the distinguished educators who have inspired, enthused and motivated me over the past year - or years, as a matter of fact. Here they are:

Best individual blog: Teacher Reboot Camp by Shelly Terrell
Best individual tweeter: @evab2001
Best group blog: Take a photo and ...
Best new blog: A journée in language by Brad Patterson
Best ed tech / resource sharing blog: Free Tech For Teachers by Richard Byrne
Most influential blog post: Teacher Development 2.0 by Steven Herder on Barbara Sakamoto's Teaching Village
Best twitter hashtag : #eltpics
Best teacher blog: Vicky Loras's Blog
Best School Administrator blog: The Principal of Change by George Couros
Best free web tool: QuizStar
Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast: Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard
Best educational wiki: Welcome back to Egypt
Best open PD / unconference / webinar series: The Reform Symposium
Best educational use of a social network: Free Rice
Lifetime achievement: Ken Wilson

TESOL France sessions

2011-11-14T16:00:00.000+01:00

At TESOL France my greatest wish was to be omnipresent and to attend different sessions at the same time! Because with 68 attractive talks and workshops given by amazing educators from 27 countries we were literally spoilt for choice. But in the end, a choice had to be made, regardless of how difficult it was to decide which session to go to.

Fortunately, the post-conference buzz is still going on all over theblogosphere and twitterverse with blog posts, tweets, videos and photosof the speakers we didn't get a chance to see, so that they've all comealive in Vicky's posts on Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3, in Ceri's Echoes of Paris, in Brad's #TESOLfr made me think thrice and Shelly's Sharing Stories. Here are some of the most interesting thoughts, ideas, activities and links that I learned from the speakers whose sessions I attended.

I consider myself to be a true lifelong learner but Stephen Brewer added two new dimensions to learning: lifewide learning and lifedeep learning. Definitely something worth exploring.

David Hill's talk about culture and cultural backgrounds as well as doing the activities with Julie Raikou and Paul Maglione made me think about the importance of living in different countries, of being more flexible and yes, more courageous.

Vladimira Michalkova was a real gem in the early Saturday morning. My students loathe homework (and so do I, to be honest) and Vladka gave some interesting ideas how to make homework fun, for which Vocaroo and Today's Meet have proven to be useful. Ania Kozicka, Chuck Sandy and I had a lot of fun with our chain story (no, you don't want to hear it!) which was based on an Old Spice commercial - except that we didn't know that!

Anna Musielak's workshop was as energetic and lively as Anna is herself. A workshop packed with verbal and non verbal activities that made us laugh and behave like little kiddies.

Cecilia Lemos shared fanatstic ideas on how to improve students' writing skills, such as forming a reading club at your school or making students do some mini writings in every class. She showed us her own worksheets that she used to check if students have actually read the book - a far cry from the ordinary, boring ones that we are so familiar with. Interacting with the writer per e-mail is something that can definitely boost students' motivation to read more. Rakesh Bhanot recommended a jigsaw reading activity which students will find inspiring as well.

Luke Meddings! Dogme and the city! Absolutely brilliant! Especially when he impersonated Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas (Thank God for tech malfunction).

Fiona Mauchline showed us different ideas on how to motivate students to write. I especially liked the activity with two totally different songs which students listen to and write about the images they can see in their mind's eye.

Ceri Jones' session You've got mail on using e-mail in the classroom is an excellent example of how to achieve big results with little tech. Also, Ceri's students wrote the summaries of every lesson, which was a great way of learning. Important: The summary writer was always chosen at the end of the lesson.

Weronika Salandyk showed us different ways of learning new vocabulary. We listened to music, wrote on the wall, played tug of war and had a lot of fun.

I didn't get to see Geoff Tranter's That's a Fun(ny) Way to Teach and Learn English, because I was way too overwhelmed after my own presentation. Luckily, Geoff's pleanary is online and I'm looking forward to grabbing an hour of free time and listening to this fantastic talk.

Cecilia Lemos

Stephen Brewer

With Vladimira Michalkova

Anna Musielak with Vicky Loras and Dale Coulter

My TESOL France presentation

2011-11-08T16:19:00.000+01:00

I just arrived from Paris where I attended the 30th TESOL France conference, which was perfectly organized by the wonderful Bethany Cagnol and her amazing team. Those three days were absolutely fabulous.

I'm delighted not only because I was there, but also because I met many of my Twitter friends in person. Another thing is that my presentation went well, especially as it was my first international presentation ever.

Photo by Chuck

I'm deeply grateful to all the teachers who came to my talk, especially to

my iTDI family - Chuck Sandy, Anna Musielak, Anna Loseva, Vicky Loras and Vladimira Michalkova,
my wonderful Twitter and Facebook friends Valentina Dodge, Elizabeth Anne, Helen Noire and Sue Annan.
Special thanks go to Sue Lyon Jones who inspired me to create my own tests and quizzes
and Shelly Terrell, my good fairy of the internet, without whom I would never be where I am now.

Here's the slideshare of my talk. I hope you find some useful tools for creating online quizzes, tests and puzzles.

Online testing

View more presentations from Arjana Blazic

My story: Vicky's blog challenge

2011-10-19T11:45:00.000+02:00

Vicky Loras has recently started a new blog challenge What's your story? Vicky invited teachers from around the world to share their stories about the changes they've made that helped them become a better educator or a better person. Vicky herself has made some big changes in her life and so have so many other educators, people who I know from Twitter and Facebook and who took up the challenge and wrote amazing posts about their amazing lives.

Do I lead such an amazing life? Do I have such a story? I've never lived anywhere else but in Croatia. I've never done anything else but teach. I'm not thinking about a change in the future (no matter how much I would love to live in a foreign country - any foreign country, for that matter - and learn a new language by speaking it - but I simply don't have the courage to make such a move). But despite living and teaching in one country for a long, long time I have changed as an educator and a person because of - you guessed correctly - Twitter and my PLN!

Before Twitter I rarely got the opportunity to share my experiences/knowledge/vision with other teachers and more importantly, the very thought of me giving a presentation to an audience sent shivers down my spine. I used to be an extremely shy presenter. I've been a teacher for many many years, but standing in front of an audience always made me feel ill at ease. Today things have changed, my confidence has increased tremendously and I readily accept every invitation, in spite of the butterflies that appear at the first mention of a possible presentation or talk.Yes, I'm still nervous at the beginning of a talk, but this is positive nervousness, more like adrenalin, something that makes me want to keep on talking to my audience forever and ever.

At the beginning of November I'm going to do something that I would never do if it weren't for Twitter and my precious PLN - I'm going to speak in front of an audience of English teachers at TESOL Paris! I know I'll die ten times during the first ten minutes of the talk, but I want to go through it and I'm so terribly excited about it that I can hardly sleep. What's more, I'm thinking about singing karaoke in Paris! Something stupid - you might be thinking. (No, it's just that I love Robbie Williams:-) This would have been absolutely impossible two years ago, but today I feel quite comfortable with it. Yes, I have changed, definitely.

Despite having butterflies during my presentation in Redmond, I thoroughly enjoyed it

A very sad iActivity

2011-10-06T11:43:00.000+02:00

It's not an exaggeration to say that today the world is deeply saddened by Steve Jobs' death. I admire him greatly because he was a dreamer who dared to pursue his dream. As soon as I heard about this tragic loss, I knew I had to create an interactive exercise for all the students who regularly visit my website Moja matura. Inspired by Cecilia Lemos' speaking activity for advanced students, I created an open cloze test for upper-intermediate students and Sonja, my friend and co-founder of the website put the finishing touches to it with some nice photos.

My activity is based on the Wikipeda's article on tributes to Steve Jobs given by notable Americans. When someone dies, it's so hard to find the right words to extend our condolences and this activity might be a great practice on how to do it.

Tributes to Steve Jobs

Pretty girls, a determined boy and a Comenius project

2011-09-27T14:56:00.000+02:00

It was in October last year when a teacher from Turkey sent me a friendship request on Facebook. I gladly accepted it, as I really like connecting with teachers from all over the world. On the very same day, however, it turned out that he was not a teacher but a high school student. As my policy regarding student friends on Facebook is very strict, I defriended him immediately and explained clearly why I couldn't be his friend. The boy, however, didn't want to disappear from my Facebook page just like that and it took me several messages to find out what he really wanted. It turned out that he was eager to connect with students from Croatia because someone told him that Croatian girls were really pretty!

And so here we are now - his school and my school together with schools from six other European countries have just begun a Comenius project, entitled Imaging Europe, and at the end of October I'm going to Athens to meet the participating teachers. In January 2012, Croatia will be hosting all the students and teachers and I hope the boy from Turkey will be able to meet some pretty girls - not only from Croatia, but from seven other countries as well.

Icebreaker extension

2011-09-11T18:52:00.000+02:00

The September edition of the ELT Carnival was hosted by a brilliant teacher from Istanbul, Eva Büyüksimkeşyan. The theme of this month's carnival was Warmers, Fillers and 1st Week Activities - because for most of us September means a new beginning - and meeting new students. Eva has compiled a fantastic list of posts about amazing acitvities for the first day of school, which would ease the nervousness many teachers feel before entering a new classroom.

I contributed to the Carnival with my post - Who am I? - about one of my favourite icebreakers for large classes. But this year, I extended it a bit, and it worked very well with my students.

Even though it was their first English lesson of the new school year, I made an exception and gave them homework. (Yes, they looked at me with disbelief in their eyes, but didn't say anything, of course.) They had to write a short composition about themselves, about their family, their likes, dislikes and hobbies and about their wishes - to put in words what they drew on paper as part of the icebreaker activity. On the following day they took turns in reading their classmates' work and had to guess who the author was as well as to explain why they thought so. We had a lot of fun with this guessing game, especially as they remembered very well what their classmates said about themselves the day before - like who wants to climb the Eiffel Tower on foot (an easy guess), who has an older brother (absolutely impossible to guess for me, but not for them) and the like.

My first Teach Meet Session

2011-08-25T14:53:00.003+02:00

In Redmond I had a wonderful opportunity to present at my First Teach Meet ever. If you don't know what a Teach Meet is you can take a look at this video.

All our Teach Meet sessions were recorded on video, but while we're waiting for the videos to be uploaded, and following Fiona's suggestion, I made a screencast of my presentation on Live Meeting webinars for students.

Teach Meet session
- Watch more Tech Videos at Vodpod.

It's all about us

2011-08-06T10:21:00.019+02:00

It's been a week since we returned from Seattle, but the blogoshpere is teeming with posts about our visit, our experiences, our learning activities and excursions, about the wonderful time we spent together. In order not to miss any of the precious posts by my fellow PIL bloggers, I've decided to make a list of all the posts about the Institute that have been published up to now and I'll update the list on a regular basis. Please keep me posted about the new arrivals.

Here they are (in the order they appeared)

Bart: Ped Xing
Dan: Microsoft Magical Mystery Tour Part 15 - Amazing just the way you are (feel free to read parts 1-17 as well:-)))
Bram: Maken we chef koks van onze leerlingen of keukenhulpjes? ; Follow the guide through the Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute and The balance between Microsoft, partners and learning
Arjana: Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, Inspired, motivated and enthusiastic (+ 4 posts on my Croatian blog)
Jugoslava: First Partners in Learning Institute
Kylie: The End is here... (+ more posts about the Institute from her archives)
Robyn: Dancing to a Great Song Part 1
Fiona: Will you be the next to attend the Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute week? and Why not hold a TeachMeet in your area?
Gergely: Ma van a tegnap holnapja, Immerzív tanulás, Innovatív tanárok fóruma USA, Tananyagok és tanulás and Jó nekünk?
Laurence: From … Partners in Learning Institute / retour sur une semaine à Redmond
Kiley: Recap: Microsoft Partners in Learning Institute

Don't forget to take a look at these amazing videos:

Bart: Redmond, Seattle
Bram: MS PIL Institute in Seattle, Washington
Arjana: MS PIL Institute 2011
Dan: Partners in Learning Institute 2011 Redmond
Laurence: Seattle

Inspired, motivated and enthusiastic

2011-08-02T13:04:00.002+02:00

I just returned from Seattle where I attended a training for top 50 educators from 31 countries, organised by the Microsoft Partners in Learning Network. We were invited to Seattle to be trained to become teacher-trainers in innovative teaching and learning practices.

This past week has been absolutely fabulous. Whenever I come home from a trip, I always ask myself what the best moment of the trip was. But now it's simply impossible for me to pick out just one, because

- meeting 49 amazing teachers from 30 countries and learning from them (and there was so much that I could learn from each and every one of them)
- meeting the excellent organizers of the seminar who made the whole week as memorable as possible
- taking part in meticulously organised sessions and workshops
- getting familiar with so many wonderful tools that can be used in the classroom
- feeling inspired to apply what I have learned
- being ready to change my teaching practices and
- bubbling up with enthusiasm to change the Croatian educational system (Yes, indeed, I really mean it:-)))

is what makes this conference simply one of the best I have ever attended!

Top 50 in Redmond

2011-07-24T10:14:00.000+02:00

I feel tremendously proud and deeply honoured to be among the top 5o innovative educators from around the world who have been selected to attend the Microsoft Partners in Learning Institue 2011 in Seattle next week.

During this activity-packed week we'll be learning how to improve our own teaching practices, how to effectively teach with technology, how to prepare our students for life in the 21st century and how to train other teachers to implement innovative teaching and learning practices.

I'm immensely looking forward to it - to seeing the teachers who I have already met in Berlin and Cape Town, to meeting f2f those teachers who I have known only vritually but for such a long time, to meeting others from around the globe who I haven't had the opportunity to talk to yet, to learning from them all and together with all of them, to lifelong learning, which I'm so pasionate about, to flying across the Atlantic with a dozen of innovative educators, to travelling..... yes, it's all that and more!

Not just an interview

2011-07-12T01:45:00.002+02:00

When Chiew asked me if he could interview me for iasku, his new blog series, I just couldn't believe my eyes! Me? He wants ME in his interview? I mean, his first interview was with Scott Thornbury! THE Scott Thornbury! What could I talk about that people would be interested in hearing?

Of course, I felt immensely flattered and proud and a bit of a VIP and I agreed to do it. The interview was supposed to last up to 15 minutes, but I was kind of worried that I would say everything about my work in less than five. It turned out that it was too long so I had to cut out some of its parts!

When Chiew published it, I thought no one will ever watch it, let alone leave comments! But what a wonderful surprise! - So many fabulous people have tweeted about it, left nice comments and told me what a great educator I am. Yes, Chiew, I really feel rewarded. Thanks a million :-)

Discovering Cork

2011-07-05T23:16:00.001+02:00

In January 2011 I applied for a two-week seminar about teaching pronunciation as part of the Comenius Professional Development Programme - and I got the grant! So, right now I'm in Cork, Ireland, together with 10 (mostly) English teachers from different EU countries (well, most of them are from Spain :-) and sharing the apartment in a student dorm with three nice teachers from Spain and one nice teacher from Romania.

What we did yesterday morning was being introduced to the other students, the teachers and the course itself, and in the afternoon we were given a task - to discover Cork. My group was made of a Spanish and a Danish teacher and our task was to explore the very centre - there where the shops and pubs are! This morning we showed our classmates what we had discovered and how beautiful the city of Cork is! Here's the preso:

Cork Discovery

View more presentations from Arjana Blazic

Free webinars for students

2011-06-10T16:25:00.002+02:00

A month ago I blogged about a series of webinar presentations given by a bunch of enthusiastic Croatian teachers to high school students from all parts of the coutnry as part of the preparation for their exit exams. (More about it here.)

The webinars turned out to be a huge success both among the student and teacher population, so that we're now planning the second series of webinars for the next school year - but this time with even more teachers involved - because presenting online does not only pump up adrenalin, but it's also very contagious and addictive.

The number of attendees (or webinarees) shows that this type of e-learning is what students want and need. The number of downloads of the webinar recordings over a short period of only two months shows that we have struck the right chord:

No.of attendees: 998
No. of webinars: 13
No. of presenters and guests: 14
No. of downloads: 2525

That's the reason why we want to keep on doing it during the next school year as well. Another thing that we especially like is the song that we play both at the beginning and the end of every webinar - Barry White's My First, My Last, My Everything has become an inseparable part of our webinars. I have even made a video listening task for the webinarees.

Collaboration and Fun

2011-05-28T22:10:00.015+02:00

Over the past two years I have met a lot of fantastic teachers from all parts of the world via Twitter. I often exchange tweets with many of them and I've always had a feeling that I know these people well. But then Brad Patterson (@brad5patterson) challenged his PLN to a series of interviews in which members of the PLN are asked five questions so that we can get to know them better. And I just couldn't stop reading the interviews with teachers who I thought I knew well. It turned out that there's more to them than the Twitter bio or the About page.

So I immediately wanted to know more about Eva Buyuksimkesyian.

Eva was one of the first teachers who I met on Twitter and who joined my glogster project. Her students made a dozen of wonderful glogs about Turkey and ever since that time I had been dreaming about visiting Istanbul. Our students also successfully collaborated in her award-winning project Celebr8UandMeDigitally. Together we tried to organize two skype chats for our students, but failed both times - once because of a bad Internet connection on my side, and the second time because I was at the right place at the wrong time (I have an issue with time zones). However, this won't stop us, as right now we're planning a third-time-lucky skype chat on Penpal Day, June 1.

I finally met Eva in person at ISTEK in April 2011 and when I saw her on the third floor of the main building at the Yeditepe University I just felt I had known her forever.

So I tried to predict what her answers would be to the five questions of the PLN blogging challenge:

1) If your students were to label you with 3 adjectives, what might they be? If I were Eva's student I would say that she's warm-hearted, caring and innovative.

Here's what she said:
Well, I'm not sure,It depends but I guess most will say 'very strict' (when they first meet me), then they find out that I'm understanding and for a third adjective I'd like my students to think that I'm challenging.

2) What would we find in your refrigerator right now?
If I were a teacher in Turkey, my refrigerator would be full of baclawa and kadaif - absolutely delicious!

What she said was:
Cheese, yoghurt, milk and vegetables and chocolate :)

3) If you weren’t a teacher, what might your profession be?
I thought she would be a writer.

And she said:
I love teaching but if I weren't a teacher, I'd like to be an interior designer.

4) What do you find most difficult about the teaching profession, or What has been your most difficult class as a teacher?
I keep thinking that the end of school with tons of grading and testing is the most difficult part of school year for every teacher.

She replied:
Teaching itself is a challenge and keeping up to date is a must. What I find difficult is that I usually find myself motivating myself. From time to time it would be great to hear that you are doing well. We don't usually have a finished product at the end of the process so we can't know where our students will end up but all of a sudden one of them appears and thanks you. That's one of the things I love about my job. I sometimes feel guilty I steal time from family because I need to work at home too. I once wrote about my most difficult class as part of Shelly's #30 Goals Challenge. They taught me when there is a will there is always a way.

5) What was the last book/movie you read/saw, and what have you seen/read way too many times?
As I think that we have so much in common, I wanted her to name one book by my favourite writer Nick Hornby.

Imagine my surprise when she told me that:
Finally I managed to finish High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity is my all time favourite book!) on my way to IATEFL and started reading The Glass Menagerie by Sylivia Plath on my return and I don't know when I'll finish it. Unfortunately, I spend more time in front of the computer so I read less but I read lots of blog posts :) The last movie I watched was The Pirates of the Caribbean: On strange tides. I watched it on Saturday with kids.

Thank you Eva for doing this interview and for being my friend!

Almost a State Alumna of the Month

2011-05-12T21:36:00.000+02:00

I first published this post on my Croatian blog, but as I shared it on Facebook, my English-speaking friends saw it and after reading part of the post that was in English, they congratulated me on winning the award - but I didn't win any awards! I was only nominated for the State Alumni of the Month award at the Department of State. According to Ms. Odhuu, the E-Teacher Program Officer who nominated me for this award, I was in the top three in Europe and "the board liked me so much that they put an article about me up on the State Alumni website."

Because they have really written some nice things about me, I've decided to copy it here too. To be honest, this is kind of a show-offish post so you can just stop reading it. Now!

Croatian E-Teacher Alumna Creates Award Winning Websites to Engage English Learners

Posted on 2011-05-11 11:04 am
ZAGREB, Croatia -- Even before joining the E-Teacher Scholarship Program and completing the course “Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web”, Arjana Blazic was a self-starting user of the Internet for English language instruction. In fact, between her two exchanges, the 2005 School Connectivity Project and the 2010 E-Teacher scholarship, Blazic created an award-winning website, "Greetings from the World," which is a virtual repository of multimedia posters (glogsters) created by learners to teach others about their countries.

Through the "Greetings from the World" site, students can take a “trip” around the globe. In this way, students are actively engaged in learning from and with their peers about their countries and cultures. In creating this site, Blazic successfully exploited new web technologies to develop students’ reading and writing skills and foster mutual understanding through cross-cultural collaboration. “Greetings from the World” is a growing community, now with 500 students and 24 teachers participating from 15 countries across five continents. Blazic continues to maintain this site and actively recruits international students. Applying the skills she learned in her E-Teacher course, Blazic continues to use this project in her classroom by focusing on the learner autonomy that this project fosters: students do not look to the teacher for knowledge, but instead look to their peers and to themselves to construct knowledge.

"In my classroom today I try to find activities that cater to different learning styles," Blazic explains, "and I think that I have made headway in making my students take control of their learning and become responsible for it.”

"Greetings from the World" won the Croatian Microsoft Innovative Education Forum award in 2010 for its innovative method of online community-based learning. The site reached the semifinals in the European Innovative Education Forum 2010 and the finals in the Worldwide Innovative Education Forum 2010. The project has also been recognized as the Best Educational Wiki by Australian Edublogs for two years in a row, in 2009 and 2010.

Blazic began a second project, “Cultural Profiles,” in her E-Teacher course. Her classroom technology skills and her desire to create autonomous learners helped Blazic create this project for her students. Students from her class research with their peers from Belgium, choosing and investigating an English-speaking country’s culture and norms. As the students conduct this online research, they expose themselves to opinions and stories beyond what they would uncover in a regular classroom. They collaborate, learn about web 2.0 tools, and share their knowledge with the world. So far, Blazic has repeated this project with three separate classes.

Blazic is also one of the three co-founders of “Moja Matura”. She collaborated with two teacher colleagues at her school to create this website, which enables secondary students from all over Croatia to access free interactive exam preparation materials for their standardized exit exams. The founders interact daily with students visiting the site, and as such it has become a unique place for senior-year students to prepare for the exam. Though this project began in December 2009, Blazic has since applied the knowledge she gained in her E-Teacher course to this site by adding webinars, changing the way the founders interact with the students, and introducing the students to a new way of independent learning. As a result, the site’s popularity has grown immensely. On any given day, this website may have up to 12,000 visitors. The founders and students also interact on social networking sites, such as Facebook, where they have more than 5,000 fans.

Blazic’s innovative strategies for engaging students in the learning process encourage teachers and learners worldwide to participate in the rich and unique online learning environment. With her pioneering use of technology in the classroom, Blazic is influencing educational objectives around the world as teachers adapt Blazic’s projects into their own curriculum. The future of education is evident through her projects, as students who are thousands of miles apart work collaboratively online. Her example of peer-to-peer learning in an international environment, through her “Greetings from the World” and “Cultural Profiles” projects, will certainly lead education toward the next great theoretical foundation.”

Volunteers and webinars

2011-05-06T14:35:00.004+02:00

Have you ever wanted something so much that it almost hurt? No, nothing personal, but something for a greater good. And you knew that you could achieve it only with the help of a bunch of other people? And when those people responded with an enthusiasm and commitment that matched yours, did you feel that you could fly and touch the sky?

Well, I just did! Sonja, my friend and the co-cofunder of Moja matura and I came up with a terrific idea of organizing free webinars for school-leavers from all over the country. In the webinars, given by teachers who teach different subjects, students would be able to get all the necessary info on the upcoming school-leaving exams and also ask as many questions as they wanted. So all we had to do was to find a platform for free webinars and teachers who would be willing to present online - for free.

And we managed to do it! The Croatian MS Partners in Learning community kindly provided as many Live meeting rooms as we needed, eight teachers from IX. gimnazija (my school) and Medical school from Varaždin enthusiastically embraced this unique opportunity to share their knowledge not only with students from their schools, but with the students throughout the country.

So over the next week, eight teachers will give nine webinars covering 12 subjects for the national school-leaving exams. Now we just need the students.

Avatars, autoshapes and digital identity

2011-04-27T12:59:00.007+02:00

One the tasks that our Embedded-in-EU students had to do as part of our collaborative project was to create their own digital identity. First they discussed the importance of their own sensible and responsible behaviour in the cyberspace. Then they watched the Lorenzo video clip and we showed them our own examples of how to use different photo editors and MS Autoshapes to create their internet ID.
We turned all their avatars into this PhotoSory slide show, which shows how creative and imaginative our students are.

Writing muses

2011-04-25T19:16:00.003+02:00

Kelly Tenkely from iLearn Technology has recently blogged about The Bookshelf Muse, a blog that every English teacher should know about.

The Bookshelf Muse is run by two writers, Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman or better to say two muses who unselfishly share their knowledge and want to help all those writers who suffer from writer's block. On their blog you can find several comprehensive thesauruses with lists of all the words and expressions that might come in handy when writing a blog post, a short story or just an ordinary descriptive essay.

The Bookshelf Muse can be really useful for English language learners on the (upper-)intermediate to advanced level. Not only do the muses create lists of words used to describe the sight, the sounds, the smell, the taste or the touch, but they also provide helpful hints and tips on how to improve your writing skills.

I highly recommend the Bookshelf Muse:

Some thoughts on ISTEK

2011-04-14T11:11:00.006+02:00

Last week I had a great privilege to attend the 2nd ISTEK ELT conference in Istanbul. Upon coming back I wanted to write a blog post about it, but then I thought Prezi might be a bit more convenient for me to say what it was like.

ISTEK ELT Conference on Prezi

A tweet up

2011-04-02T16:08:00.004+02:00

Yesterday was my second Twitter birthday. I got the most wonderful present ever – a tweet up in Istanbul! Who could have imagined it two years ago when I signed up for Twitter with a nickname that still sounds so meaningless, but which actually says who I am and where I from?

Yesterday I met my virtual Twitter friends in person for the first time, but it felt as if I'd known them for my whole life. We all came to Istanbul to attend the 2nd ISTEK conference, an event that I only watched in my twitterfeed last year. I was thrilled to see Burcu and Shelly face to face, because they were the first two teachers who I stumbled upon by pure chance one day in May 2009 and who introduced me to this amazing world of educators. It was great to talk to Sue, Elizabeth, Willy, Petra, Ken, Gavin, Mark, Russell, Dave, Anna, Luke, Lindsay, Eric and David without being limited to 140 characters. (No, I have nothing against 140, quite to the contrary, I love it, we all do). I got a chance to meet Rakesh, who I only recently friended on Facebook. And I was so glad to see Ken, Dede and Jamie again.

The morning brought another tweet meet – with Eva,Valentina, Culia, Isil, Mike, Beyza, Deniz... so incredible, I still can't believe that I'm here in the real world with my virtual friends.

Embedded in EU

2011-03-04T18:09:00.006+01:00

This year my students and I have started a new project with a school from Belgium. In the project, the students explore the world of widgets and "embeds", they collaborate and share what they have learned.

Their first task was to set up their blogs and create headers with images of the networks they are "embedded" in. In order to make posters for headers they used MS AutoCollage. The full version of Autocollage can be downloaded from the Partners in Learning website and it's absolutely free for educators.

Our students come from two different countries, but their networks seem to be so similar - almost all of them feel "embedded" in Facebook and YouTube. In the video below you can see how creative the students are. We are also holding a competition to choose the nicest header. Feel free to drop by and cast your vote.

Twitter, anyone?

2011-02-14T18:10:00.002+01:00

Recently I've become an associate partner in a newly launched European project called APLaNet (Autonomous "Personal Learning Networks" for Language Teachers). The aim of the project is to introduce language teachers to social networking sites and help them build their personal learning networks. You can read more about this exemplary project in the post by Burcu Akyol, one of the coordinators of the project.

I'm a strong supporter of social networks, especially Twitter, and I've already tried to introduce Twitter to newbies many times before - with a disastrous result! I failed every time but once. Now, I don't want to lament about that, but I've been thinking about what I've done wrong.

And I think I might know the reason why my mentees haven't made it further than a couple of introductory tweets. What they needed was a constant, gentle push, which I didn't give, simply because I didn't want to be a bore. I used to tell them that Twitter is what you make it and so I actually let them sail through the twitterverse on their own.

But it's more than obvious that Twitter newbies need someone to hold their hand, someone who will help them cross this huge gap between a beginner's keen interest in Twitter and the world of the PLNs that lies at the other end.

Despite my futile attempts so far, I'm on my mission again and hopefully my mentees will manage to build their PLNs. I'll nudge them to log in to Twitter more often, even if several weeks have passed since their last tweet. I'll help them learn by doing - by tweeting. I'll introduce them to my PLN more frequently and more forcefully. I'll be more than willing to dedicate an hour or two of a lazy Sunday morning to teaching them the basics of Twitter and PLNs. And I'll keep you posted on how we're doing.

In the meantime, you can read more about Personal Learning Networks in this excellent post by Shelly Terrell.

E-safety in my classroom

2011-02-09T12:27:00.005+01:00

In support of Safer Internet Day, my students and I did some of the actitivies I wrote about in my last post.

After seeing the video clip about parental protection and online dangers, my students took part in a walking debate. The idea for this activity came from the Debating the issues activity, which I downloaded from the excellent Think B4U Click Click website. However, unlike the suggested procedure, I decided to go paperless, so I created a short Power Point with five issues to be discussed. After reading out loud each of the statements, they took a stand and explained why they agree or disagree with it.

What really surprised me was the fact that most of the students feel safe on the Internet. Some of them supported their feeling of safety with the fact that teachers and parents constantly talk about it. Others explained that they are very careful about the stuff they publish on their blogs or on Facebook. Only some of them think that adjusting Facebook privacy settings keeps them protected.

I was taken aback when I heard that most of them think that cyberbullying is not as big an issue as bullying, mostly because one can switch off their computer or mobile phone and thus not be cyberbullied. It's obvious that we need to delve deeper into the topic of cyberbullying.

Finally, I asked them to think about advice that they would give to their peers and share it on the Wallwisher which you can see below.

(Click here to see our wallwisher Safer Internet Day by msblazic)

This one is my favourite, although I'm a strong supporter of social networking sites:

Talking to a friend
and reading a good book
is better than Facebook.
(by Norma)

E-Safety in the EFL classroom

2011-02-06T15:42:00.004+01:00

My students spend a lot of time on the Internet and even though they say they know absolutely everything about the perils of the virtual world, I strongly believe that every now and then this topic should be brought into discussion.

The most suitable occasion is of course Safer Internet Day, which will be celebrated on February 8. I think that teachers around the globe have the responsibility to dedicate at least part of their lesson to e-safety and help their students to acquire essential skills about the efficient, safe and more responsible use of the Internet.

Last week I held a webinar for Croatian teachers on how Safer Internet Day is celebrated around the world and I found some fabulous resources. So here are some that you might use in your classroom on Tuesday, or, as a matter of fact, on any other day of the year.

These two pages helped me find my way around the www resources:
Insafe, which is a network of national Awareness Centres in 27 countries in the European Union, Norway, Iceland and Russia and Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day. Larry is an outstanding English teacher and blogger from California.

There you will find excellent links, brochures, lesson plans, worksheets etc. which you can use with your students.

What I'm going to do on Tuesday will be the video clip "Wo ist Klaus" that I found on the activity-heavy German website KlickSafe about how parents protect their children in real and virtual life. The clip is in German, but on the KlickSafe website there is also the English version, as well as versions in many other languages.

Another powerful video by Klicksafe "Wo lebst du?" is about the addiction to the Internet. (Unfortunately, I found myself in it..... and I really must give some serious thought to my Internet addiction)

Think B4U Click is an Irish website where I found the most interesting lesson ideas about the matters of privacy, online rights, mobile phones etc. I highly recommend this site.

The Australian website Cybersmart is a fantastic resource with educational games, quizzes and activities for kids and teens. It provides excellent materials addressing different safety issues that teachers can download and use in the class.

It's more than a game, it's your life!

2011-01-17T18:58:00.005+01:00

It's more than a game, it's your life! is the motto of Safer Internet Day 2011 which will be taking place on February 8. Safer Internet Day is observed every year in countries around the world. It is coordinated by the Insafe Network, co-funded by the European Union. Its main golas are to promote safer and more responsible use of the Interent and mobile technology by children and teenagers and to raise awareness about online safety issues.

A wide range of activities, initiated by the Croatian Teachers Network, will be conducted in Croatian schools, with contests, workshops and webinars being some of them. I'm delighted to be able to take an active role in the event with a webinar in which I'm going to talk about how this important event is celebrated in other countries.

So that's why I'm asking your, dear PLN, to share your best practices with me and my audience of teachers and parents. How have you celebrated this event over the past years? What do you plan to do this year? What activities will your students be taking part in? What kind of resources are you planning to use? What ideas and tips would you like to share?

There might be borders between our countries, but there are none in our virtual world. Let's make this world a better and safer place for our kids.

Moving forwards

2011-01-01T10:41:00.006+01:00

If a good beginning is half the battle, then I'm on the right track. It's still the early morning of 1/1/11, and I've already posted two comments to my virtual friends' blogs. Actually, I started writing comments last week, on the day I made my resolution and I really hope I'll keep it in 2011. Not so much because of the resolution itself, but because I know that commenting is the best way to connect and interact with like-minded teachers from all parts of the world.

So watch out for my name in the comment section of your posts, dear bloggers.
But not before Jan 10, because my travel bug has been bugging me for a while so next week I'll be trying to discover the secrets of the pyramids.

Looking back

2010-12-26T18:30:00.004+01:00

Last year I made some New Year resolutions: one was to meet my Twitter friends f2f, the other was to share with Croatian teachers everything I learned on Twitter. A year later, I think I may say I've accomplished my goals - to a certain extent.

My blog for Cro teachers is still alive - by no means is it a lively, dynamic site, because only three people are subscribed to it and only rarely (actually: never) have my posts been inspirational or catchy to make my visitors leave a comment. However, there have been more than 2500 visits to the blog and more importantly, I've written 45 posts about different web tools that can be used in the classroom. Perhaps one day someone finds something useful in one of my posts.

The tweet-ups began early in January when I met @kenwilsonlondon (and his wonderful wife Dede) in London.
March brought a fantastic opportunity for a tweet-meet with @cheimi10 in Zagreb.
In April I went to Berlin and met @janwebb21, @MrMalcontent, @w2YDAvid, @jugoslaval and @olliebray.
In October came Cape Town and more tweetups: @c_arnett and @coolcatteacher.

My resolutions for 2011 remain the same: more tweet ups and more (more interesting) posts on my Croatian blog. However, there's something else I want to do add to it: more comments to my PLN members' blog posts. Let's say I write one comment a day. Too optimistic? Too enthusiastic? Undoable? Never mind, I'm going to give it a try. (#luvchallenges)

Merry Christmas

2010-12-23T19:06:00.002+01:00

Merry Christmas to all the visitors of my blog! May your holidays be filled with joy, peace and love.

My own glogster

2010-12-20T19:54:00.009+01:00

It's this Oscar-ish feeling again. Indescribable.

Deena from Edu.Glogster created a glogster to celebrate ME!

Thank you!

Greetings From The World is the winner!

2010-12-16T14:59:00.003+01:00

Huge congrats to Viviana, Rose, Eva, Culya, Judy, Clara V., Clara G., , Shyam, Vicki, Gyöngyi, Jesstern, José, Candace, Valerie, Monika, Shannon, Heidi, Dan and Claudia. It's because of you and your wonderful students.

Edublogs Awards 2010

2010-12-06T15:45:00.009+01:00

To my absolute delight, our Greetings From The World wiki has been shortlisted for the Best Educational Wiki Award. A big thank you to kind educators out there who nominated it this year again. A big thank you to those wonderful teachers and their amazing students who have been part of it since we started it in October 2009. (Do I sound a bit Oscar-ish? Well, I can't help it, that's who I am:)

But what makes me the happiest teacher in the world right now is the fact that this wiki has grown from one single class of 24 students to 18 classes with 420 students from 12 different countries on 5 continents. Here they are, those wonderful teachers, my real virtual friends:

Viviana Alayo, Colegio Machado de Assis, Joinville, Brazil

Candace Townsley, Owasso Public School, Owasso, Oklahoma, USA

Valerie Burton, West Jefferson School, Harvey, Lousiana, USA

Dan Roberts, Saltash Community Schools, Saltash, UK

Eva Büyüksimkeşyan and Culya Yapici, Esayan Armenian High School, Istanbul, Turkey

José Romão,Colegio de Alfragide, Alfragide, Portugal

Clara Vieira, Escola EB 2,3/S de Vale de Cambra, Portugal

Monika Hardy,Thompson Valley HS, Loveland, Colorado, USA

Shannon McClintock Miller, Van Meter Community Schools, Van Meter, Iowa, USA

Judy Uhrig, Latham Elementary School, Winston-Salem, N. Carolina, USA

Shyam Sunder Malhotra, St.Simran School, Patiāla Area, India

Vicki Palmer, Brisbane Grammar, Brisbane, Australia

Rositsa Mineva, The Fifth Primary School, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria

Heidi Musterós, Colegio Goethe, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Jesstern Rays, Catholic High School, Singapore

Gyöngyi Tóthné Bán, Primary School Balatonboglár, Balatonboglár Hungary

Clara Gutierrez, Westwood Elementary School, Houston, Texas, USA

And yes, if you want to give us your vote, please click here.

David Crystal in Zagreb

2010-12-05T15:10:00.001+01:00

Quite a few members of my PLN spent the last weekend at a conference in Paris. I couldn't be there with them, (I strongly believe the time will come when I too will go to a conference and meet my PLN:-) but now I'm enjoying reading their reflections on their very special tweet-ups and the fabulous TESOL conference. One of the brilliant presenters and speakers at the conference was David Crystal.

This weekend, imagine that, I had a fantastic opportunity to hear David Crystal give two talks at the 10th OUP Conference in Zagreb: Advanced Conversational English: fact and fiction and The perils of being a linguist.

David Crystal held his audience of about 400 (or maybe even 500) teachers enthralled for over two hours. David Crystal didn't use power point. He didn't need it. His speech was powerful without it.

moja matura online

2010-12-03T11:18:00.008+01:00

On December 1, 2009 an ICT teacher, a math teacher and an English teacher launched a website for their school-leavers with nothing but boundless enthusiasm. The website contained links to free exercises on the Internet as well as interactive exercises created by the above said teachers for their students. They also created a facebook fan page, a ning site and a twitter account for the website.

The word about this free site for online preparation for the standardized school-leaving exam spread incredibly quickly all around the country. The website is no longer the place to practise writing, reading and listening skills, math and ICT for the students from one school only. It is THE place where school-leavers from the most southern island to the most northern village can get ready for their exams, provided they have internet access. And they do - in their schools if not in their homes.

In the past year, more than 400 links to English exercises have been posted on the website, together with more than 200 Math, ICT, German and Croatian exercises and more than 400 links to important notices on the official webpages of the Croatian Edu Department et.al. as well as links to related newspaper articles. Students clicked on (and hopefully solved) math tasks about 100,800 times. There has been a considerable number of visitors ....and unique visitors.... and hits on the website.

As you might have guessed, I'm the English teacher in question, Sonja and Nataša are the ICT and Math teachers respectively. On December 10, we're throwing a party to celebrate our first anniversary with our dear friends and supporters. I just wish I could invite my online friends from different parts of the world - teachers who create all kinds of activities for English language learners and who generously share their knowledge with the world. I'm deeply grateful to you:

Sue Lyon Jones

Sean Banville

Fiona Joseph and Peter Travis

Alex Case

Miracel Juanta

Randall S. Davis

Todd Beuckens

Dominic Cole

Charlie Williams

to numerous teachers who create video listening quizzes for ESL Video

to the teachers who are behind:

Exam English

ESL Lounge

Using English

and many, many others....

Without you, we wouldn't be here where we are now. Thank you!

My nominations for Edublog Awards 2010

2010-12-02T14:16:00.004+01:00

This time last year I was beside myself when I heard that my wiki Greetings from the world was shortlisted for the Best Educational Wiki Award. And I will never forget the wee hours of one Friday in December when the winners were announced. Just don't ask me what I said in my winner speech. That I don't remember.

But here I go with this year's nominations:

Best individual blog: Janet's Abruzzo Edublog by Janet Bianchini

Best individual tweeter: @europeaantje

Best new blog: Webb's Wide World by Jan Webb.

Best resource sharing blog: Esolcourses by Sue Lyon Jones

Most influential blog post: The 30 Goals Challenge by Shelly Terrell

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: #eltpics by @VictoriaB52, @cgoodey and @vickyloras

Best teacher blog: Kalinago English by Karenne Silvester

Best educational tech support blog: iLearn Technology by Kelly Tenkely

Best educational use of audio: Breaking News English by Sean Banville

Best educational use of video / visual: Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard

Best educational wiki: Celebr8UandMeDigitally by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan and Alexandra Francisco

Best educational use of a virtual world: ELTChat

Video Listening Quiz: Step into Christmas

2010-11-28T17:35:00.002+01:00

Elton John: Step Into Christmas

Video listening quiz: Monday Morning

2010-11-21T17:40:00.001+01:00

Hope you all have a wonderful Monday morning!

Melanie Fiona: Monday Morning

MS WW IEF Gala

2010-11-10T18:41:00.002+01:00

Can you find me?

My Capetown

2010-11-08T20:33:00.007+01:00

It's been more than a week since I came home from Capetown where I attended the MS Worldwide Innovative Education Forum. There are different reasons why it was an out of this world experience.

Firstly, my project Greetings from the world made it to the finals in the Innovation for Collaboration Category. This is the best result ever achieved by a Croatian teacher at a worldwide competition. However, this project is not strictly Croatian, it's rather global in the true sense of the world, and I'm just a member of a team of exceptional innovative teachers who love this project.

Secondly, who doesn't like to travel? I have a strong passion for travel and this was an amazing opportunity for me to travel to South Africa for the first time. Seeing Cape Town at the foot of the stunning Table Mountain , its many depressing townships, the Cape of Good Hope, pretty proteas in bloom, cute little penguins which I couldn't swim with, as well as the excellent South African wine was unforgettable.

But most importantly, the Forum brought together innovative educators from all parts of the world. 500 teachers from 72 countires had already won their regional competitions in the first stages of the Forum, so being there in Cape Town was actually our special award. Together we celebrated what we are so passionately dedicated to: innovation in education.

So much passion, enthusiasm, warmth and devotion that I absorbed in the halls of the Convention Center, at the opening ceremony in the vinery and the gala in the Botanical Garden will keep me going for a long time.

The only thing that makes me a wee sad is this little bug: what if I don't make it to MMS WW IEF 2011 in Washington, DC????

The finalists

2010-11-03T22:19:00.013+01:00

The Partners in Learning Worldwide Innovation Education Forum held in Cape Town last week was a true celebration of enthusiastic, inspiring and passionate teachers.

These are the finalists and the award winners in four different categories:

The Innovation in Collaboration Award

The finalists are:
(I'm proudly one of them)

And the winners are:

Best Practice:
Martin Ryum and Mette Hauch, Denmark: Teachers Leave Them Kids Alone
First Runner-Up:
Jan Webb, UK: Working in a Classroom Without Walls
Second Runner-Up:
Ian Fogarty, Canada: Xenotransplant Debate
Anna Karlsson, Sweden: ICT Enriched Learning

The Innovation in Content Award
The finalists are:

And the winners are:
Best Practice:
Pat Yongpradit, USA: Game Programming with the Microsoft Zune to Promote High School Women in Technology
First Runner-Up:
Adriana Silva de Oliveira, Brazil: School on the Cloud
Second Runner-Up:
Peter de Lisle, South Africa: Biodiversity

The Innovation in Community Award

The finalists are:

And the winners are:

Best Practice:
Samuel Avornyo, Ghana: Rural Food Processing Industries

First Runner-Up:

Barry Corrigan, Northern Ireland: Making Homework Count – Engaging Parents

Second Runner-Up:

Simone Timms, Australia: It Takes A Community To Raise A Child

The Educators Choice Award:

Best Practice:
Tareq Mahjoub, Tareq Mahmoud, Shahzlan Al Saffar, Omar Ashour, Futooh Khareetah, Majdi Daoud, Arabic Region: Accepting Each Other
First Runner-Up:
Preesheila Bheem singh Ujoodha, Mauritius: Wellness and Fitness for Life
Second Runner-Up:
Ricardo Espino González, Mexico: Electronic Logbook

Cape Town, here I come

2010-10-23T10:49:00.004+02:00

I'm doing the final preparations for the trip to Cape Town. My level of excitement is at 10!

To teach with tech

2010-10-12T14:50:00.007+02:00

I just received an e-mail from a student of mine with a link to the Map of Online Communities.

He writes:

"First of all, I know how interested you are in many creative and interactive internet sites and perhaps you just might use any of 'countries' in your future projects with your future classes or even us, but what really caught my eye was a country named Ning. That brought back the memories. Best ones, of course!"

This is what makes teaching with tech worthwhile.

Blogging with students

2010-10-10T22:02:00.007+02:00

This is the second year that I'm blogging with my students. Last year I introduced my 17-year olds to blogging the moment I learned how to do it. Or at least I thought I knew how to blog with students.

This year, I started out thoroughly prepared. Well aware of last year's weaknesses and strengths, I clearly defined the goals and strategies. I put together a clear and meaningful Power Point presentation. I thought long and hard about possible threats. And was convinced there would be nothing to catch me off guard. How wrong I was! There's always been something I took for granted and expected my students to know. But it turns out that most of them don't go beyond the basics of Facebook and MSN. And when it comes to blogging they rely entirely on me. Maybe it's time I said "Go figure it out yourself!"

Next year I'll do it differently.

#MSIEF

2010-10-04T11:28:00.010+02:00

I'm an Innovative Educator and I'm going to Cape Town!

What a respectable siganture! I still can't believe that I'm one of those who will have the opportunity to meet innovative educators from all over the world. What's more, I'm one of them!

What have I done to deserve this? I just came up with an idea - and these fabulous teachers were kind enough to join me with their students.

They are Innovative Educators and I wish they all went to Cape Town with me!

Viviana Alayo, Colegio Machado de Assis, Joinville, Brazil
Candace Townsley, Owasso Public School, Owasso, Oklahoma, USA
Valerie Burton, West Jefferson School, Harvey, Lousiana, USA
Dan Roberts, Saltash Community Schools, Saltash, UK
Eva Büyüksimkeşyan and Culya Yapici, Esayan Armenian High School, Istanbul, Turkey
José Romão,Colegio de Alfragide, Alfragide, Portugal
Clara Vieira, Escola EB 2,3/S de Vale de Cambra, Portugal
Monika Hardy,Thompson Valley HS, Loveland, Colorado, USA
Shannon McClintock Miller, Van Meter Community Schools, Van Meter, Iowa, USA
Judy Uhrig, Latham Elementary School, Winston-Salem, N. Carolina, USA
Shyam Sunder Malhotra, St.Simran School, Patiāla Area, India
Vicki Palmer, Brisbane Grammar, Brisbane, Australia
Rositsa Mineva, The Fifth Primary School, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Heidi Musterós, Colegio Goethe, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Jesstern Rays, Catholic High School, Singapore
Gyöngyi Tóthné Bán, Primary School Balatonboglár, Balatonboglár Hungary
Clara Gutierrez, Westwood Elementary School, Houston, Texas, USA

5 continents, 14 countries, 18 schools, 19 teachers, 290 posters and 420 students

Video listening quiz: Problems with English

2010-09-27T19:47:00.000+02:00

Problems with English

European Day Of Languages

2010-09-25T19:20:00.004+02:00

Yesterday we celebrated the European Day Of Languages with our students. First the teachers collected several frequently used proverbs and tanslated them into the languages taught at our school.

The teaching procedures differed from class to class. Some teachers asked their students to match the proverbs with their definitions, others wanted their students to match the first half of a proverb with its ending. I was lucky enough to sign up for the computer lab so that when I said a proverb in Croatian, my students had to search the Internet to find its English and German translations. I divided the class into two teams, which added a competitive feel to the activity.

The list of proverbs can be found on Google Docs. Feel free to edit it.

TED Talk: Sugata Mitra

2010-09-11T21:42:00.002+02:00

I had the pleasure of hearing Professor Sugata Mitra at the Innovative Teacher Forum in Berlin in March 2010. In his splendid keynote he talked about his Hole In The Wall experiments and children from slums and poor, remote areas in India who acquire basic computer skills, even though they don't speak English and don't have a teacher to help them. They learn because they want to.

First lesson, new students and no computer

2010-09-05T11:27:00.005+02:00

Recently I came across some wonderful introductory lesson ideas shared by Seth and Karenne on their blogs. They suggest activities in which teachers share some information about themselves to motivate their students to ask questions and to get to know each other. However, as most of these activities are computer-based, I can't use them with my students. I don't have a computer in the classroom, unfortunately.

So I have to make do with what I have. One of my favourite icebreakers that works well with large classes and students who have just met for the first time, is in fact similar to Seth's writing facts on the white board, except that I don't do facts, but photos, and to a certain extent to Karenne's Power Point presentation, except that I don't create a presentation but a poster.

For my Who am I? activity, I created a poster divided into four parts, each depicting a different topic:

or:

Each of the parts contains photos only, so that students have to ask questions if they want to know more about me.

After they've found out "everything" about me, I ask my students to take a piece of paper, divide it into four parts and draw pictures that describe their family, their wishes, their hobbies and what they do. They are not allowed to use words, letters or numbers.

After that, they do a pair-share activity, in which they try to find out more about their partner, based on their drawings. Finally, instead of introducing themselves to the whole class, they introduce their partners.

I've noticed that students talk about their partners in front of the whole class more willingly than they would about themselves. They feel less shy and more confident, as they are not supposed to know everything about the person they've just met.

Reading practice

2010-09-02T18:20:00.011+02:00

For teachers who want to enhance their students' reading skills, Read Print is the website to go to.

Read Print is a free online library that contains over 8,000 online books by 3,500 authors, from classics to non-fiction. There is a huge, easily searchable database of essays, novels, poems and short stories. There are different search criteria: by title, by author, by section (e.g. short stories) or you can simply write what you want to read. Another great feature is that each author page contains a short biography of the author, followed by quotes by the same author.

No additional downloading is necessary and no registration is needed. Great works of fiction and non-fiction are just a click away.

Problems with English

2010-08-31T12:32:00.007+02:00

The other day I stumbled upon this hilarious video about English language learners who have problems with different aspects of English.

As I thought this could be a great beginning-of-the-year activity, I searched the Internet for the tapescript. However, not only did I find the tapescript but also a great activity sheet with all the explanations of expressions, proverbs and colloquial words and phrases. There are also some tips on how to use this video with pre-intermediate, intermediate or advanced students of English. I found this activity sheet on Multimedia English Classroom, a fantastic site for English language learners and teachers, where you will find a plethora of fabulous ELT materials which can be used in the classroom.

Another idea is to compare the American sketch with the (original) British version.

My first WebQuest

2010-08-23T17:31:00.009+02:00

After six weeks it feels good to be home and online. Not that I wasn't online at the seaside, on the contrary, I spent hours and hours on blogging, commenting and discussing various topics from teaching pronunciation to multiple intelligences for my Webskills Building Course, offered through the American English Institute of the University of Oregon.

The course is not over yet, but my final project is complete and ready for marking. (Yes, in order to get the certificate we need to complete the course with a pass rate of 70% or higher and our work is marked on a weekly basis by our mentor. And yes, I'm going to pass with flying colours, I guess, because right now at the end of Week 9 my rate is 104%, because I did some extra work for extra credit:-)

Anyway, my project is a webquest, which I have never done before and I can't wait to implement it in my classroom in October. It's called Cultural Profiles and students are supposed to find info on various aspects of 6 English speaking countries.

All summer long - a video listening quiz

2010-08-03T15:59:00.001+02:00

Kid Rock: All Summer Long

Enjoy your summer

2010-07-31T22:16:00.002+02:00

Mungo Jerry: In the summertime

Somethin' stupid -new video listening quiz

2010-07-19T23:44:00.008+02:00

Sonja, my dear friend, fellow worker, blogger and mojamatura.net admin, just published my new Learn English With Songs exercise: Somethin' Stupid by R. Williams and N. Kidman. In the song all the prepostions are missing.

My AEI web skills course is now in its fifth week. Last week we discussed reading and writing skill-building. As always, we were given a list of websites to explore. Can you imagine how thrilled I was to see that on the list there was Breaking News English whose author is Sean Banville, one of the most prolific ELT material writers and someone who I know - although not in person, but virtually! Sean's website was highly praised by my course mates.

Hey Soul Sister

2010-07-06T22:38:00.007+02:00

This week's task in my AEI Web Skills Course concentrates on aural/oral skills. Again, we've got tons of reading, commenting, reflecting, comparing, discussing, but I managed to find some time to do a gap fill listening quiz based on the lyrics of my fave song.

Moving at the speed of e-learning

2010-07-04T21:31:00.004+02:00

I've been blogging for more than three years now, but never have I written so many posts in such a short time as during this Web Skills course. What's more, the number of comments I've posted to my colleagues' forum and blog posts is surprisingly high for someone who found deleting comments much safer than publishing them.

New learning adventure

2010-06-23T09:48:00.005+02:00

School might be over, but certainly not for me. I have just embarked upon a new learning adventure at the American English Institute at the University of Oregon.

Together with 30 like-minded teachers from all over the world I'm taking part in a 10-week online training course "Building Teaching Skills Through The Interactive Web". We all have the same goal - to learn how to teach with tech.

Pub quiz

2010-06-19T12:07:00.011+02:00

The teachers from my school recently discovered a fun way of hanging out and testing their knowledge at the same time. Last week we participated in The Ultimate Pub Quiz by Libris communications created by Peter Hopwood, a Brit living in Croatia. Pub quizzes are fairly new here, but they're becoming more and more popular. The prizes are absolutely awesome - a hot air balloon ride over Zagreb or rafting on the River Una. Peter is a fabulous quizmaster and the trivia questions reveal how much we (don't) know.

We knew
the name of Liverpool Airport
the names of three American states beginning with 'O'
and two American states that begin with 'North'
where the show Magnum is set
which of these (Vienna, Toronto and Brussels)(Rio, Prague, Marseilles) has the highest number of metro stations
when was Do they know is Christmas released
the name of the character played by Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop
who was the mayor of NYC in 2001
the names of the cities written on the Trotters' three-wheeled van
which FIFA World Cup tournament had the Naranjito mascot
the name of Alf's planet

We thought that
the name of the Italian Captain from Allo Allo was Bertollini,
the postman from Seinfeld was called Newton
Ivy's father from You Rang M'lord was Adam
but we were wrong.

To my husband's outright disbelief, we thought 40 teams qualified for the 2010 World Cup.

In the Phone a Friend round one minute was enough for my husband and sons to google what colour was Anna Karenina's bag when she threw herself under a train, and where ABBA started their 1977 tour.

We had no idea
what the capital of Ghana was
the name of the pub from Only Fools and Horses
Blackadder's first name
the name of the main child character from E.T.
we didn't put Robert De Niro's films (Showtime, Taxi Driver, Meet the Parents, Analyse This) in order from the oldest to the newest

and many many more...

They grow so fast

2010-06-16T13:10:00.005+02:00

The exam coordinator from my older son's school phoned me this morning. Exam coordinators don't usually call home. I froze up. She said my son was one of the 39 top ten students in Croatia who scored 100% in their maths school leaving exam. She wanted to know if he could come to school and talk to the newspaper reporters!

My knees turned into jelly. I wanted to hug her! I wanted to hug my son too, but he's at the Adriatic, with a bunch of his classmates and has no intention whatsoever of cutting short his holidays for the sake of a newspaper article.

Gosh, I'm so proud of this (little) boy of mine....

Video listening quiz: Waka Waka This Time For Africa

2010-06-13T13:49:00.001+02:00

Shakira: Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)

A fast state of readiness

2010-06-11T16:15:00.006+02:00

I have just noticed that I tend to put my computer on stand by rather than shut it down. Firstly, because I don't have time to exit all those open tabs and applications as I sit at my computer until I have to literally run off if I want to avoid being late to school.

Secondly, my computer is ready to take me back to where I left it in a jiffy.

Am I hooked on technology? I don't think so. It's all about relationships and learning, says Kevin Jarrett in his thought-provoking post.

How do you rate the morning sun?

2010-06-07T18:53:00.002+02:00

Fancy a Robbie Williams ESL Video Listening quiz?

Robbie Williams: Morning Sun

Pleasantly chaotic

2010-06-03T22:14:00.005+02:00

What I like about Twitter is that it connects me with people who are on the same wave-length as me and who can't wait to let their imagination go wild with ideas, projects, activities, wikis.. and yes, skype chatting.

Eva and I tried to connect our classes via Skype several months ago, but for different reasons I wasn't able to use the computer lab at the arranged time. About a month later we gave it another try, but this time I managed to be at the right place at the wrong time (time zones have always given me a headache!).

But then came trecha srecha as we say in Croatian ('e' is pronounced as in pet), or the luck of the third adventure. On June 1, Brazil and Spain came to my classroom. Ana Maria , Guido and I successfully connected our classes via Skype.

It was a bit chaotic, but absolutely amazing for all the teachers and students.

Here you can read Ana Maria's post about the chat and watch the video she kindly recorded.

Tread Softly

2010-05-28T13:42:00.003+02:00

I know, I know, you've already seen Sir Ken Robinson's latest TED talk, but I want to have it here on my blog:

together with this wonderful poem by W.B. Yeats:

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

.....'because every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly!'

60second Recap

2010-05-25T09:55:00.005+02:00

My Google Reader brought me a very interesting post by Patrick McGrath from Teaching & Learning @ Mohonasen entitled Definitely Read This If You Teach High School English about a site that I think deserves to be bookmarked.

The site is called 60secondRecap and aims to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today’s teens.

How, you may wonder, when today's teens spend most (or should I say all?) of their free (and should I say study?) time on their computers? Through 60 second videos! I think this is a wonderful way to bring the great works of literature a little bit closer to students, in a way they're familiar with. What's more, the videos are so brilliantly made that I dare hope they could motivate students to read 'real' books!

For now, there are about 30 novels and for each of them there are 6 - 10 videos. If you sign up you can request a recap of a novel of your own choice. Isn't that great?

There's also a splendid resource section with a glossary and video tips on how to write an essay that won't put your teacher to sleep.

Take a look at one of the videos about Wuthering Heights:

My first video listening quiz

2010-05-22T21:19:00.001+02:00

Mika: Rain

Can you trust people on the internet?

2010-05-21T15:26:00.010+02:00

As my TickerFactory widget, which I found in Mrs Bluebird's Classroom, is counting down days until the last day of school, allow me a small digression from edublogging. My travel bug is nudging me to write a post on travelling, which I haven't done for almost a year.

Before our recent trip to Beijing, I stumbled upon an in-depth trip report by a Canadian family of four on Tripadvisor. I took an instant liking to this family because:
- before the trip the mother planned a detailed itinerary by reading trip reports
and recommendations written by other travelers
- during the trip the family would patiently, although a bit boredly wait for the
mother to indulge her desire to shop
- the mother made her 15 year old son write this excellent trip report.

(I can easily relate to two of these.)

Anyway, the report said that they hired a car with a driver for a day trip to The Great Wall of China. They hired Victor, whose email address they found on the internet and they strongly recommended his services. So we contacted him and arranged everything via email two weeks before the trip.

He was supposed to pick us up at our hotel at 8am on Easter Sunday. On Saturday evening, however, the worm of doubt started gnawing at us. What if this Canadian family never existed. What if Victor kidnapped us. What if we were never heard from again.

Luckily, it turned out that we had watched too many of those CSI shows. Victor was very polite, really helpful and spoke very good English.

After a pleasant 1-hour ride in his comfortable car, we arrived at the Mutianyu entrance to the Great Wall, where we took the cable car to Tower 14 and then walked to Tower 20, which is the highest point of this section of the Wall. After that it was an easy stroll (well, most of the time) towards the 6th tower where we went for a toboggan ride. That was a lot of fun and we enjoyed it immensely.

After that, Victor took us to the Birds' Nest, but on the way there we stopped at a bank where he translated for us, becuase no one there spoke English. After visiting the beautiful Summer Palace, we wanted to try Beijing roast duck, so he suggested Quanjude, a famous restaurant. Victor went with us inside, made sure that we got a good table and explained the menu, but kindly declined our invitation to join us for the meal.

So despite our worries and fears it turned out to be a memorable day and of course, I heartily recommend hiring Victor!

Dear class IVB, IVC and IVE

2010-05-17T12:47:00.004+02:00

If I could offer you only one piece of advice for the future (you do remember, don't you: advice is uncountable, and so is information!), Sunscreen would be it, says Baz Luhrman in this video.

I wish you the best of luck!

The Odd One Out

2010-05-15T18:11:00.006+02:00

I'm just writing an article for the Partners in Learning website. It's about Twitter so I print-screened part of my Twitter background, created by Twilk so many months ago. But these people are still valuable members of my PLN, together with others who are not in the photo. However, there's someone who doesn't belong to my PLN. Can you find the odd one out?
And yes, there'll be prizes!

This time of the year

2010-05-14T18:39:00.007+02:00

It's this time of the year again. The seniors leave on Monday. What a relief! Now don't get me wrong. I love them, but this has been an exhausting school year with the implementation of the new standardized testing procedures, the results of which will be published only at the beginning of July. Not to mention the grading part of every school year's end which makes the lives of teachers so miserable.

But do we know how our students feel at the end of the school year?
Take a look at this fantastic video: Kyle's Last Lecture in which Kyle says:

Dear grades; Why do you try to cut me like a cookie and shape me to a mold?

Bombay TV

2010-04-30T15:31:00.009+02:00

Bombay TV is a fun site where students can add subtitles or their own voice to video clips from Bollywood movies. I wanted to use it in the classroom ever since Russell Stannard first tweeted about it and showed us how to make a Bollywood movie on his fantastic site Teacher Training Videos.

I introduced it to my students last week:
<a href="http://www.grapheine.com" title="design">publicite graphique</a>

These are the clips they made:

Martina:
<a href="http://www.grapheine.com" title=logos d entreprise>campagne marketing viral paris</a>

Josipa:
<a href="http://www.grapheine.com" title=creation publicite>graphiste logo</a>

It's Worth Taking a Look at this Blog

2010-04-25T17:19:00.011+02:00

I like being tagged. It makes me feel I belong. Today I was linked into the It's Worth Taking a Look at this Blog project and I'm flattered to be part of this fab community of blogging teachers.

I was tagged by Janet Bianchini, who I admire greatly and whose ashcloud motorbike adventure I followed with great interest.

Now my task is to insert the above picture into my blog with a link to the blog where I was nominated, compile a list of ten blogs that I find worth reading and tell the bloggers about their award. What a pleasant task, indeed!

So take a look at these fabulous blogs:
you blog by Monika Hardy
The PLN Staff Lounge by Sue Lyon-Jones
jamiekeddie.com by Jamie Keddie
Life Long Learning by Valentina Dodge
Technology Tidbits, Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by David Kapuler
Webb's Wide World by Jan Webb
The Spelling Blog by Johanna Stirling
David Rogers: Geography. Learning. Teaching by David Rogers
Netend by Marta Mrozik
Turkish TEFL by Nick Jaworski

You can find more fabulous blogs on Eva's blog. Eva is a dear friend of mine, whose blog is certainly worth following, but she's not on my list, simply because she was already tagged by Janet.

Earth day and what we did

2010-04-23T13:19:00.011+02:00

Here are just a few zimmer twins videos created yesterday. Oh, what fun it was! I'll write more about it soon (sounds familiar, doesn't it? Ken? Karenne?)
Anyway, have fun with the stories below and don't be harsh on their mistakes...

Earth Day or what I'm gonna do?

2010-04-21T10:23:00.003+02:00

I pledged to go paperless on Thursday. I told my students not to bring books to their English class. I signed up for the IT lab on time - and the room is mine for the whole day! I have a PLN. And I'm ready for my first ever paperless day. This is how we're going to celebrate the Earth Day.

Warm-up:

After a brief discussion on why we celebrate the Earth Day, students follow this link and do the What's your Earth Day IQ?

Presentation:

A reading exercise on the Earth Day by ESL Holiday Lessons: Earth Day.

Two video listening quizzes: Sustainable energy projects in Africa and Sustainable Fishing in Bali by Free English Lessons Online.

Practice: What can I do? Students make a Zimmertwins movie.

Peer evaluation (informal) and reflection.

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn

2010-04-11T18:11:00.002+02:00

How not to be a shy presenter

2010-04-08T22:37:00.006+02:00

The very thought of me giving a presentation to an audience sends shivers down my spine. I've been a teacher for many many years, but standing in front of an audience has always made me feel ill at ease. Before Twitter I rarely got the opportunity to share my experiences/knowledge/vision with other teachers. Today things have changed and I readily accept every invitation, in spite of the butterflies that appear at the first mention of a possible presentation or talk.

Today I came across a post called The Shy Presenter by Sacha Chua giving tips on overcoming the uneasiness before and during public speaking.

Make eye contact. Don’t stare. Imagine your audience naked. Don’t read the slides. Watch others for inspiration. Practise. Practise. Practise.

Naked? Isn't that hilarious? But why not give it a try and see if it works? Can it really boost my confidence?

Berlin Video

2010-03-21T00:19:00.006+01:00

This is a video about the Greetings from the world project that is officially representing Croatia at the Innovative Education Forum in Berlin from 23-25 March. Unofficially, however, it is a truly international project with participants - students and their teachers from Australia, Brazil, India, Portugal, Turkey, the UK and the USA.
Here's also a slideshow that I created for the Forum.

Innovative Education Forum

2010-03-16T14:38:00.007+01:00

Unbelievable as it may seem, Greetings from the world won its second award! It was chosen among 30 outstanding projects to represent Croatia at the Innovative Education Forum in Berlin next week.

There will be more than 150 participants from 44 countries. I feel so lucky to be able to take part in such an amazing event and am looking forward to meeting teachers who use new technologies in their classroom.

The fact that Greetings from the world will be representing Croatia at the Forum, by no means implies that this is a strictly Croatian project. I'm proud to represent innovative teachers who I have become friends with via twitter or wiki and whose students have shown the world what Brazil, the USA, Turkey, Portugal, Australia, India, the UK and Argentina are like.

From tweet to meet

2010-03-06T20:40:00.009+01:00

It was on Obama's Inauguration Day when I first heard about 140 characters and the little blue bird known as Twitter. Although I love trying out new things, Twitter didn't attract my attention. It wasn't until April 1 when I finally gave up and joined Twitter, but, I must admit, for a reason as silly as following Ashton Kutcher and Rob Luketich.

One day, and I'll never forget it, as it was the day of the tragic AirFrance plane crash, I stumbled upon @TheEngTeacher and I started to follow her. She has never followed me back, but it was thanks to her that I met @burcuakyol, @ShellTerrell and @kalinagoenglish, wonderful and inspiring teachers who helped me with my first steps on Twitter. My personal learning network has been growing ever since then and today I'm part of an amazing virtual staff room.

The connections I've made with teachers worldwide are so powerful that when we meet in person, I have a feeling I've known them for a long time. No wonder, because we have so much in common: friends, interests, enthusiasm and a strong desire to learn.

That's me!

2010-02-16T14:16:00.003+01:00

Travel posts turned practice tests

2010-02-05T15:23:00.018+01:00

mojamatura.net is quickly becoming a well-known site with 400 visitors a day. This might seem quite low compared to other educational sites, especially those that boast of having 3 million visitors a month, but we're proud of what we're doing for our students.

I divided the English pages of the website into sections for practising reading, writing, listening and the use of English. They all contain links to free interactive exercises written by teachers who I admire greatly for their willingness to share their knowledge with millions of students and teachers worldwide.

My students and I use these free sites on a regular basis, so I strongly felt I must give something in return. I'm not a materials writer, but I've written about 100 travel posts on this blog. Most of them are way too personal for a practice test, but I managed to create two Hotpotaoes exercises which are free to use.

So maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful carr... oh no, I don't dare to write the word...just let me finish with ....Louis, I think this is the beginning of ~~a beautiful friendship~~ beautiful giving (more) and taking (less).

Las Vegas

Georgia's Antebellum Trail

Free interactive tests for ELLs (Part 2)

2010-01-20T15:25:00.005+01:00

This is the second part of my list of websites with brilliant interactive tests written by English teachers for English learners.

English Online - I love this simple site with lots of tests for different exams and a concise explanation of each of the exams.

Parapal Online offers a wide variety of interactive exercises for different levels. It's also possible to choose the font size that suits you best.

The English Speaker is regularly updated and contains plenty of interactive tests for beginner, intermediate and advanced students.

English Club ESL Learning Centre has lots of interactive tests, quizzes and games, plus tips on how to improve your English.

The ICT in FLT hasn't been updated for a long while, but I like this site because it was one of the first that I used with my students.

My fave sites with free online tests for English language learners

2010-01-16T10:57:00.009+01:00

Last September, two of my colleagues and I set up a website called mojamatura where we help students from all over the country to get ready for the recently introduced unified school-leaving exams. We offer online preparation for the English, Math and IT exams, but we have plans to include other school subjects as well.

In order to teach our digital natives how to use the Internet more efficiently, we follow these rules:

1) easily clickable exercises
2) there's an answer key.

My two colleagues write their own material, but I don't. Firstly, because I'm not a materials writer and I know how difficult and time-consuming it is. (Up to now I have written only one quiz about books and it took me ages to build it.) Secondly, there are so many brilliant English teachers who unselfishly publish their tests on their websites for the sake of English language learners worldwide.

This is my tribute to them:

First and foremost:
Free English Lessons Online not only because this brilliant site is run by my dear twitter friend Sue Lyon-Jones, but also because Sue's lessons are always up to date, be it about Barrack Obama or the Big Freeze in Britain.

2) Flo-Joe is an award-winning site with plenty of useful tests for Reading Comprehension, Use of English and Writing.

3) Exam English is a great site with lots of tests for different levels.

4) International House Budapest is a very well laid out site with plenty of different tasks.
Update: Unfortunately, there are no exercises on this site any more. They deleted all the pages with exercises. I wonder why:-(

5) Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab is an extensive resource for listening activities.

What is web 2.0?

2010-01-13T09:10:00.001+01:00

This fantastic video was created by a dear twitter friend of mine, Tomaz Lasic, an English teacher from Australia.

My NYR - part 2

2010-01-10T21:13:00.004+01:00

In one of my recent posts I said that my only professional resolution was to meet my twitter friends. If it's true that good beginnings promise a good end, then I'm on my way to achieve my goal. Well, I know it's too early to talk about making my resolutions actually happen, but it's a great start, isn't it? As great as meeting @kenwilsonlondon and his lovely wife Dede in a cosy little pub in Bayswater, London.

What I didn't mention in the said post was that I decided to set up a new blog for Croatian teachers and write about all these amazing tools that can be used in the classroom.

I'm all enthusiastic about sharing the web 2.0 knowledge with teachers who want to keep up with the latest developments in the educational technology. My new blog is called The Fellowship of Twitter, because it's on twitter that I learn about new techie stuff from my PLN.

The Fellowship of Twitter

2010-01-02T15:30:00.006+01:00

One of the most influential Croatian computer magazines published an article about the failures and successes of 2009 in its December issue. Twitter, according to them, was a failure of the year. I freaked out when I saw it and didn't waste a second to write them a letter and teach them what twitter is about.

Can you imagine that they ran it in their January issue on the letters-to-the-editor page with the headline The Fellowship of Twitter. I mean, I'm just an ordinary language arts teacher, no one would say that I'm a computer geek, and my letter was published in a computer magazine?! How cool is that? And BTW, doesn't the title brilliantly depict the true essence of twitter?

My NYR

2009-12-31T15:37:00.006+01:00

My only resolution is to meet my dear twitter friends in real life.

Happy New Year to my PLN!

Lessons Learned from Great Educators

2009-12-31T13:51:00.003+01:00

I was tagged by Shelly Terrell in her wonderful challenge to write about our most inspirational educators.

German was my first foreign language. I studied it for 5 years before other languages came along. These days, however, it's all about English. At school, out of 21 classes that I teach per week only two are German. I write my blog in English, I google in English, I tweet in English, I sometimes communicate with other German teachers in English. However, the most inspirational educators who have deeply influenced me belong to the German side of my education.

Mr. Kazimir Sviben was my primary school German teacher. It was him who opened the door to the amazing world of foreign languages. He was one of the first multitaskers and lifelong learners I have ever met and he always encouraged us to pursue our dreams. His teaching instilled a love of languages in his students, many of whom became language teachers later on.

Professor Viktor Zmegac, my German Literature professor, is one of the most prominent Germanists in Croatia. This learned and versatile scholar is also a very quiet and modest man who has always been enthusiastic about sharing his profound knowledge of literature and music history with his students. His new book Masters of European Music, published earlier this year, carries a dedication to his wife who he loves as much as he did on the first day, immeasurably. This simple yet very powerful statement of love by a 78-year-old scholar shows the true greatness of an extraordinary man.

Christmas Eve at my house

2009-12-26T18:56:00.002+01:00

Make a Smilebox greeting

Make a Smilebox calendar

Happy holidays

2009-12-22T19:28:00.014+01:00

And the Educational Oscar goes to....

2009-12-19T15:09:00.006+01:00

We're famous in Croatia today. There are articles about our achievement in the papers. As far as I know, we're the first school in Croatia to be recognized with the Edublog Award, so that's why it is called the Educational Oscar.

Published in today's paper

2009-12-15T11:31:00.004+01:00

The proud nominees for the Best Educational Wiki.