Traveloteacher

Today I'm proudly announcing and inviting you, dear readers, to take part in the learning event The Pedagogical Value of eTwinning projects , which I'll be running with my Belgian colleague Bart Verswijve l in the Learning Lab from February 28- March 9. This is the first time that I'm running such an event, and also the first time that a Croatian educator is doing it. Learning Events are short online courses aimed at improving teachers' skills and putting them in touch with other eTwinners. Learning events take place in a specifically designed platform called the Learning Lab . Our learning event is about technology, but technology that is used only as a means to achieve the learning goals set by the teacher and to develop students' 21st century skills.  As you can read in my bio, I'm an avid user of web 2.0 technology and have been using it in my classroom for quite some time now. I must admit, however, that at the beginning of my tech journey, ...

As a token of appreciation, the BaW team sent me this personalized badge of the 10th anniversary! This is my BaW story: But first some background: Every year  the Electronic Village Onlin e , a project of TESOL's CALL Interest Section, organizes five-week long professional development courses for teachers of English. Teachers can choose from a variety of topics. Becoming a Webhead (BaW) , a hands-on workshop on how to use web 2.0 tools in the classroom, is  EVO's longest running workshop. This year, the BaWers are celebrating their 10th anniversary. BaW represents an excellent way to get started with new technologies in education. It encourages teachers to pursue new ways of teaching and to bring changes into their classrooms. This is exactly what BaW did for me when I applied for the 2010 workshop! It opened up a new door and let me enter a new world of digital delights, which I continued to explore, to experiment, to learn! And the icing on the cake was me being ...

Here's my third Thinglink interactive image: this one is about Google tools that can be used in the classroom.

Recently I discovered Thinglink - a fantastic tool for creating interactive images. Today I created this one - about Microsoft free tools for educators. It's easily embeddable on Blogger (not on Wordpress, though) and all the interactive features function properly. The image can also be found on my Thinglink page . My first Thinglink was about Zadar, a beautiful city in Croatia, famous for the most romantic sunset in the world. My interactive image made it to the Thinglink's staff favourites:

What started in 2011 , continued in 2012 as well - I travelled, I learned, I was invited to speak at conferences, I ran workshops and I co-hosted teachmeets. To my delight, TeachMeet Int'l won second runner up in the Edublog Awards 2012! The year started with our trip to Cuba - it was a fantastic holiday with no internet access whatsoever! In March, we explored Berlin and Potsdam, in April we flew to Boston, saw the sights and tried our very first clam chowder in a bread bowl! (Absolutely delicious!). Then we headed for Toronto, and on our way there we stopped to visit the Niagara Falls, both on the US and the Canadian side. In Buffalo I treated myself to what is now my beloved Kindle Touch. I never leave the house without it! In January it was my school's turn to host a Comenius meeting. 31 students and 19 teachers from 7 European countries came to Zagreb to meet their project partners and to learn from each other. The spring was abound with conferences: Microsoft S...

This morning I got an email from my dear friend Jean-Paul Auffrand, an English teacher from France who I met in Finland back in 1997 when we both attended a course on how to introduce modern technologies into foreign language teaching. That was 15 years ago! Since then we've implemented many a modern tool in our teaching, but what I appreciate most when it comes to new technologies is that that they've given us the opportunity to stay in touch over all those years, for which I'm so grateful! Jean-Paul's email made my day. He sent me a list of paraprodoskians. According to Wikipedia, a paraprodoskian is: "A   paraprosdokian   ( p ær ə p r ɒ s ˈ d oʊ k i ə n / ) is a   figure of speech   in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. " Here are some more: The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas! Age is a...

I've written about teachmeets here and here and everywhere, but I simply must write about this favorite topic of mine again, because TeachMeet Int'l that Sonja, Bart and I run, host and moderate has been nominated for this year's Edublog Awards in the category Best Open Professional Development along with other prominent conferences and  PD courses. We're all so excited and proud to see that TeachMeets have earned the recognition they, I believe, fully deserve.  Because TeachMeets give a voice to ordinary teachers who do extraordinary things ... extraordinarily well! TeachMeets in numbers: 67 teachers from more than 40 countries from across the 6 continents presented at 3 virtual international teachmeets; 20 teachers presented at 2  virtual regional teachmeets; 44 teachers presented at 3 teachmeets live That's why I invite you to vote for us: Click VOTE HERE , choose the category OPEN PD and vote for TeachMeets. Voting is open till 11:59 PM US Easte...