Rita Zeinstejer live session On Google apps in the classroom

We just had an amazing live event with Rita Zeinstejer, our wonderful grand finale guest speaker, at Webheads in Action Elluminate virtual room hosted by Learning times.

Rita is a resourceful EFL teacher at the Association Rosarina de Cultura Inglesa in Argentina, she has been the CALL SIG Coordinator in her area for 7 years now.

In her usual sparkly manner she led us through several ways to use Google apps and sites in the classroom giving us examples of her own work, tips and great ideas to use those applications with our students. The presentation looked at all the supplications that Google has created to use for free with our students.


She took us from iGoogle to Google Buzz passing by Google Wave, Google Live Stories and Google Knol which is still in beta version giving examples of the use of the tools to enhance course content, create a warm learning environment and engage the students. Her ideas are brilliant!

There were several questions asked by teachers all over the world, Rita answered them all in very clear terms, all participants felt time fly away.

If you didn’t have the chance to be there live or you want to have a look at it once more, visit Rita's session wiki page, you'll find the recording here.

Thanks Rita, it’s BaW tradition to have you closing this session, we’re blessed for that. To all participants... a big round of applause. You’re less than 24 hours away from Becoming a Webhead!

We’d love to read your comments about the session, they have great value for us.

Hala Fawzi and Maru del Campo
Week 6 Moderators.

Rubena St. Louis on Materials Creation

Today, we had another successful live event with Rubena St. Louis at the Webheads Elluminate virtual room in Learning Times. 

Rubena is a professor at Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela.

Her presentation was about the different aspects that need to be considered in order to create meaningful and motivating materials for  our students. 



In her theory-to-praxis approach, Rubena explained the bases that should be taken into account when designing materials:

After her illuminating presentation, Rubena answered all the questions posed by the participants

If you missed this presentation or would like to go back to it, please check our session page at: http://baw2010.pbworks.com/Livesession_Rubena  and you will find the link to the recording.

Congratulations Rubena, and thanks to all the attendees for your active participation :-)

Live session on Elluminate

Dear Bawers,
Last Friday, we had the great pleasure of having our third and last live session for Baw10-Week 4. Our guest speaker was Jonathan Finkelstein, the founder and President of LearningTimes, LLC and Executive Producer of The LearningTimes Network. Jonathan delighted us with an outstanding presentation and gave us bright ideas on how to use the Elluminate Virtual Room. It was not only a very pedagogical and interesting presentation, but also very fun. All attendees had the opportunity to interact by using the mic, writing on the chat box, using the board tools and much more. Below you can see some screeshots of this unique presentation.

Rocks Vs. Cats

If you couln't attend the session, don't worry, the chatlog is available on the Week-4 wiki page and the recording will be added soon.

What do you think about Elluminate? What are the benefits of using these VLE? You are cordially invited to leave your comments here.

Best wishes,

Kat Urbaniak and Evelyn Izquierdo

Week 4 - Comods

Live session on Alado

Hello everyone,


.
Yesterday we had our 2nd live session for week 4. We were delighted with Andy Pincon's presentation on Alado and about the community programs.

Not only did we confirm once again how amazing his sessions are, but also it was interesting to see how he manages Alado as a virtual room.

The presentation looked at many things including efforts to improve digital literacy, access to computers, and the recycling of computers. We were joined by a variety of speakers from different projects. The most amazing surprise was when Andy's daughter, Gaby, made a presentation about her school. As a skilled Alado moderator she wont the respect and admiration of our BaW audience.

To see a recording of the session please visit:
http://www.digibridge.net/webheads/baw10/Feb42010/

And our session page is here:
http://baw2010.pbworks.com/Live_session_alado

Thanks again to Andy and his speakers, also thanks to all our participants as well as our lovely coordinators Teresa and Dafne.

And we would love to hear your comments on this online learning platform.

Best wishes
Evelyn Izquierdo and Kat Urbaniak
Week 4 co-moderators

Live session on WiZiQ

Dear Bawers,

Yesterday we had our first live session for Week 4. It was about WiZiQ and its potential as a virtual classroom and/or learning environment. The session was offered by Evelyn Izquierdo, an ESP/EAP teacher at the School of Education of Central University of Venezuela, where distance education is offered. Since her school has a very low tech infrastructure, WiZiQ has become a powerful tool for her and her students. WiZiQ is free, easy to use, simple and effective when offering online classes. WiZiq provides a virtual room with many tools, such audio, voice, text chat, video and writing; besides, classes are recorded and the content can be shared publicly if wanted. WiZiQ is also excellent for videoconferences and meetings for teachers' organizations, among many other advantages.

This session was a very exciting experience to those who visited a virtual platform for the first time, and a very nice opportunity to learn playing around with the board tools. If you didn't attend, you will find the recording of this interesting and informative session below. You will need a WiZiQ account to watch the recording.

Once you've learned on WiZiQ, we would like to know your thoughts and comments about the session and we would appreciate very much if you answer the following questions:

1. How would you use this tool with your students?

2. Would you feel comfortable moderating a session this way online? Why 'yes', why 'no'?

3. What advantages and disadvantages do you see in the use of WiZiQ? Why?

Thanks!

Visit the session page at: http://baw2010.pbworks.com/Live_session_Wiziq

Kat Urbaniak and Evelyn Izquierdo

Co-Mods Week 4

Exploring WiZiQ - BAW10 - Week 4 by Evelyn Izquierdo

Get your own Virtual Classroom

Graham Stanley's Live Session

Graham Stanley is an experienced teacher specialising in English as a foreign language and particularly interested in using technology with language learners ,especially blogs , video , podcasting and other emerging web tools such as Secondlife , twitter and others .Graham gave BAW 2010 Tuesday January 27 , 2010 , a rich and entertaining live session entitled "Microblogging in Twitter " at Webheads Vroom at illuminate .He talked about different aspects of twitter , its main features and its possible implementation in ELT .Graham used great slides in his presenatation which started at 9:00 GMT and lasted for an hour .Graham's live session was a real success to be added to the rich tradition of Webheads.

If you could not attend the session, please visit the page created for this session or just watch the session recording :http://bit.ly/a3L9pX

Live Session with Michael Coghlan

Synch AND Swim

View more presentations from michaelc.

We had a wonderful session with Michael Coghlan at yahoo messenger today. We did have some technical glitches. Some members (I myself included) were kicked out of the session and some could not get in despite several efforts from my part and other colleagues to bring them in.  However, this is also part of learning.

In the session Michael  discussed the use of synchronous and asynchronous chat tools for teaching after briefly reviewing its historical context. During the presentation he got participants involved asking them to talk about their experience and their context. He also went a bit beyond the tools we have covered so far and talked a bit about other communication tools that are presently making and impact in the way we communicate and teach.

 It was a very lively session. Everyone participated asking questions or giving valuable contributions through text or voice chat. The grand finale came with Michael singing the Webheads Theme Song . For information on participants, chat log, and slides to the presentation, please visit our wiki page . We have recorded the session and will also make it available for those who could not be present or would like to listen to it once more.

We would love to know your impressions and opinions about the session through your comments on this blog.

Jose Antonio and Larissa

Moderators of Week 2

Exploring Yahoo Messenger and Skype

In week 2 of BaW10 we are exploring synchronous voice and text tools. In the last two days we have conducted text and voice chats with participants in Skype and Yahoo Messenger. We have also run some mini conferences with some participants. The feedback has been really positive and people who joined us were delighted at the possibility of exchanging ideas with colleagues in different parts of the world.
We would like to know if you have used these tools and if you could share your experience/impressions with them with the group.

Jose Antonio and Larissa
Moderators of Week 2

Tapped In: Second Tour

We had a very successful second tour at Tapped In on Janaury 16 at 7 P.M..BJ did a wonderful job and the participants learned many things such as creating their own office and joining other groups.We had more than 30 people taking part of this second live event.We hope this tool can enhance your professioanl life and be aware that you need to take some time to explore it better. Please, write about your experience today and think about the possible uses for TI.

If you could not attend this session, you can read the chatlog on our wiki.

Potential uses of Tapped In

Hi Bawers,

Tapped In is a powerful educational tool.It´s a place for the ones that work in education to interact. It is also possible to have students interacting with their teachers via text-chat, files, whiteboard, links and discussions. How do you think Tapped In could be used as a pedagogical tool? Share your ideas!