One more quizz !

Recovered from Augustine's blog. This is what I do when I am prevented from going to the countryside on weekends :-). I just must get culturally involved in the urban area when not in contact with inspiring natural environments. Yesterday I took a class to see Henry Moore's exhibition (had already visited it twice) and came out as elated as after the first two visits. I also managed to get some shots of some scenes of our urban life, which I usually do not see happening as I am most the time in my car going to or coming from work. Check my Flickr account and tell me what you think.

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative		94%
Postmodernist		69%
Idealist		69%
Romanticist		50%
Existentialist		50%
Modernist		38%
Materialist		31%
Fundamentalist		25%

What is Your World View? (corrected...again)
created with QuizFarm.com

Webquest Workshop

Bernie Dodge Senac Workshop,
originally uploaded by evo05.

From 9:30 to 17:00 pm, about 50 teachers from Senac and other schools in Sao Paulo attended the workshop on webquests led by Bernie Dodge.

The event also marked the soft launch of a new webquest editing tool that Bernie is developing and which will be released to the general public on June 29th at the NECC conference in Philadelphia.

This new tool facilitates the uploading process for teachers who are not familiar with FTP. It provides teachers with template pages they can write their webquests into, save and edit. An embedded explanation on each page scaffolds this process step by step.

What I really enjoyed here are the collaborative possibilities:

• comments can be added to existing webquests or in development
• a webquest in the database can be imported, transformed and adapted it to the teachers' own needs and context (the tool acknowledges the original authorship and further modifications)
• webquests can be exported to other locations
• webquests may be locked out from the general public while in pilot mode and be released later on
  

This is most welcome as not many teachers have the time to devote to fiddling with the best structure and design to support their content.

Bernie Dodge Presents at Senac, Sao Paulo

On his fourth visit to Sao Paulo (the first in 1989), Bernie Dodge explained to a room packed with teachers from different schools in Sao Paulo, the concept of the webquest and how it has evolved from the Archeotype structure in 1995 to the matrix he has today. The event counted on a simultaneous interpreter and was video-conferenced to 3 different Senac locations across the state.

Professor Jarbas, a Senac old timer and the man responsible for bringing the webquest concept to Brazil, introduced Bernie with one single sentence: "The man who makes simple what usually seems complicated" and for the whole hour that followed, Bernie confirmed it. He illustrated, with humour, slides and timely interventions, episodes from his childhood which showed the contrast between the rote learning of those times and the pressing need for an education based on higher order skills to face the increasing flow of information and change of the 21st century.

As society becomes more and more complex, the role of the educator is to prepare the learners to face uncertainty and deal with it. There are no easy multiple choice answers in such situations, so the verbs that should be used in the classrooms of today are design, decide, create and judge.

Looking forward to the workshop tomorrow which will gather teachers who, like me, have been producing webquests and integrating them into our classroom. It'll be nice to meet them and contrast and compare results and experiences.

Reunion of old friends at Senac, Sao Paulo

Reunion at Senac,
originally uploaded by evo05.

Mrs and Mrs Jarbas Barato on the left, Cristiana Assumpçao (Colegio Bandeirantes) in the middle, Mr and Mrs Dodge on the right.

Cannot believe it's true!

This evening I met Bernie Dodge face to face at the presentation he was making at Senac, Sao Paulo. Why must I close my eyes when the flash sparks! In spite of closing my eyes, I managed to notice Bernie's blue eyes matched his shirt!

Well...here apparently I succeeded in opening them. It's Mrs Dodge's first visit to Brazil. Doesn't she look radiant?

23rd Tutor Mentor Conference

Every six months, Dan Bassil hosts a conference to gather people interested in tutoring/mentoring and helping kids move from poverty to careers.

Have a look at the programme for the next eConference , which starts on May 6, 2005 hosted by Andy Pinçon and the Webheads in Action .
Aaron and I will be presenting on bringing Learners, Tutors, and Mentors together through Web-publishing at Blogstreams and Dekita.org. On Thursday, some students of mine are preparing a party for Gallistel School and another school in Mexico.

Invite your friends and their respective networks of colleagues to join us as virtual participants during this week. This international networking can increase the sharing of ideas and building of collaborations needed to increase resources and quality.

Update: Click here to view the schedule and all the recorded presentations.

Category:Education