Traveloteacher

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.

Problems with English

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.

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.

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.

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: publicite graphique These are the clips they made: Martina: campagne marketing viral paris Josipa: graphiste logo

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 fab...

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...

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.

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, beca...

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 ...

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.

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 on...

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.

The proud nominees for the Best Educational Wiki.

I've just read a post about a blogger who is going to decline his nomination for the Best Individual blog 2009 because he knows the worth of his work and his readers' daily comments and reading are affirmation enough . I guess it takes all kinds to make a world. I'm the complete opposite. I don't know what I'm worth. I'm an ordinary teacher teaching ordinary students. I need nominations to show me which way to go. I deeply appreciate it when my colleagues tell me I'm doing my job well. I cried when I saw the nomination for my wiki. I immediately tweeted about it, published it in my Facebook status, wrote a blog post, sent emails to all my contacts and called my friends. The ICT teacher from my school linked the voting page to the school website and the head teacher informed all the Croatian educational institutions and all the newspapers and Internet portals about this nomination. On Monday, reporters are coming to my school to interview my students. We hav...

Yes, I'm thrilled, I'm overwhelmed with joy and I'm sure this is how the Oscar winners feel.... Thank you Eva, Valentina and Karenne for nominating my wiki project Greetings from the world . Thank you Edublogs judges for shortlisting it. My heartfelt thanks to all the members of the wiki who created such amazing glogsters. You're awesome!!! If you feel like voting, just click here . There's another nomination I want the world to know about: talk.ed is nominated for the Best Educational Use of a Social networking Service. Monika and her webclass definitely deserve this award because they help, they encourage, they support.... they care !

It's 7 pm in our virtual room. Monika and I extend a warm welcome to our students. The long awaited virtual lesson begins. We listen to American students talking about Thanksgiving. Croatian students ask questions. Whoever wants to speak next, raises their hand. At the end, they all deserve a round of applause. The 'freedom bloggers' in two classrooms on two continents raise their glass of sparkling cider and toast to change. Tupac Shakur is singing in the background. Everybody is happy. Too good to be true? Unfortunately, yes. Our first Connect Pro Meeting was complete chaos. The beginning was almost perfect, though. A very friendly CARNet guy went over the whole meeting with me. I was even sent a tweet by @connectusers, the official community for users of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro wishing us fun: Then I sent the address of the site to Monika, but she just couldn't open it. Later we found out that it was blocked by her school district! However, after 29 hours of phone...