Webheads in action :: Blog

I've experimented just a few times earlier with voice messages recorded online with Odeo http://www.odeo.com - first in a beta version. Although I'm sure I'm not really capturing the finer details, I find that it is getting better for each time I get back. This is how Buthaina suggest that we use Odeo: "For those of you who have created their odeo channels, please go to our Audi-WebPresence 2, odeo channel: http://odeo.com/channel/56415/view Then, scroll down and look for the category, "Tags for this Channel", in the right side column. After that, enter your country or any word or term you want to search, e.g. "blogs" or "connectivism". Click add and you're done. Later, go to your odeo channel and add the same tags(the words and terms) you entered. Finally, click a tag on your channel and see the results it brings you. Searching the Net has never been as easy as with Tags!!" Hmm - I did got get it at first and just had to try again, I had been looking all over to find out how to get the subscribe thing to work. Then, I saw that Buth had tagged her channel with evo2006 - so this is what I did to ours, as well, on top of the other tags, such as evoblog06 that I'm also using in del.icio.us. If you choose a very general tag you will get lots of hits, but if you agree on a code tag, this will work for you.

Together with Jane Petring, Montreal and Anna Koorey, Sydney I am co-moderating the Collaborative Blogging in EFL/ESL session.
We wish to encourage participants to explore possible uses, and to create their own blogs as a collaborative project for the peer exchange of ideas and knowledge. We plan to promote elgg as one such useful blog environment.

We're having virtual guest experts in weekly synchronous sessions such as James Farmer, Bee Dieu, Salvór Gissurardottir and Steve o'Hear - dates are not yet finally negociated, but we will probably be using Elluminate in Learning Times for our live meetings

We already have about fifty registered participants, and there's still room for more - because of the tradition for having peer webheads already somewhat experienced with us, we consider this an opportunity for knowledge sharing and expeimentation, not "Teaching"! Please register before January 16 when we begin - the session is for six weeks?

PS Did I mention these sessions are free, and we work as volunteers!

PS PS the Electronic Village online also offers ten more highly relevant course/workshop sessions, and with one or two exceptions,we're all Webheads co-moderators!
http://webpages.csus.edu/%7Ehansonsm/announce.html

http://webpages.csus.edu/%7Ehansonsm/Blogging.html

http://www.aglat.com/voz/prz.html

I like how Rita describes how her students are using their blogs from this interview:
"What about your own blog?"

"Actually, I have several but the one I created for my students has to do with teenage topics. They talk about what they like to do during English classes, their outside activities; now they are talking about what happened in London. They know that they can say what comes to mind and share their ideas with others. That way they learn sociology and language at the same time, applying their language to meaningful situations. A blog is an interactive means to communicate with other bloggers, as threaded discussion is open: students can post their comments in other blogger' sites, they can share links, they can get experts to visit their blogs and leave their comments. This interaction allows for critical thinking, increases students' interest, and fosters ownership and learning by receiving input and insight from others."

http://64.71.48.37/teresadeca/webheads/wia-index2.htm#blog
This link goes to the page where Teresa d'Eca keep her index of blogs created by webheads. You will find all sorts of examples, and as they're just listed, there is no guarantee that you will find those who represent the best examples just like that. But Teresa also has many other ways of representing and indexing Webheads activities,such as this starting with helpful sites for newcomers.
http://64.71.48.37/teresadeca/webheads/wia-index.htm#Relev

One quite popular way of creating online content in language courses and with students has become the blog format - and in this field I think Webheads in Action,or just WIA have been among the pioneers. I have no precise list of all of these but will seek to share some evident examples. Not all are of course very succesful, but I do know of qute many who reported back that their students were actively contributing and liking this way of writing to an audience. Many of these blogs bear the unpolished charm of the tentative experiment, ehile others have moved to a really professional structure and interface

The best organized example of a group blog made by webheads, is the http://www.dekita.org Edublogger prize winning dekita.org . created and managed by Bee Dieu, Aaron Campbell and Rudolf Ammann. Dekita is made for teachers who wish to start collaboration projects with classes.

This was a motto invented by one of the new enthusiast participants, during a very active course where many new webheads were initiated in the world of online collaboration amongst language educators in the Electronic Online Village 2002. I was part of this myself, as one of those "others" who is not actually teaching language but more directing my focus towards the online social and technological side of all this - the exploration of how to becme familiar with tools and strategies in collaboration with others was such an interesting and stimulating challege, and for those of us who could afford to spend much time and energy, this course or workshop was a fantastic experience. We met both regularlyand by improvisation, found out how to get in touich in many different channels and experimented with all sorts of free tools and technologies accessible from online.

This course was free, scheduled to last for six or seven weeks - and at the end most people decided for themselves they did not want to stop there! OK, It was a great mix of newcomers and some pople who already had been working together, meeting and sharing, playing "teachers and students" in a volunteer context where the borders between leader and follower was non existing,or at least blurred

When I first started an elgg blog, some months ago, I also created a Webheads In Action Community - but I never promoted it, and it has not been activated - not until just now.