Cyberlangues 2005

The 5th Cyberlangues three-day colloquium started this morning in Artigues(Bordeaux) featuring presenters from all over France.

Last year, I had the pleasure to give a conference online and introduce participants to blogs and the blogosphere. This year, Gabriella Vernetto from Italy will take educators a step further with her workshop "Les blogs au service de l'écriture collaborative : un projet Netdays", illustrating and explaining her Netdays2004 blog project: Jeu de Langues, Langues en Jeu.

The Cyberlangues bureau also hosts a blog and a Flickr account to document what is happening and to bring nearer those unable to participate f2f.

Next year, Cyberlangues takes place on the Louvain La Neuve (pdf file) campus in Belgium.
I hope I can be there "en chair et en os" and who knows we might even organize a Cyberlangues BlogTalk? If anyone is interested, let me know.

QuestGarden

Bernie Dodge's Quest Garden, an online authoring tool, community and hosting service designed to make the creation of high quality WebQuests easier and quicker, will be opened to the world on September 1st.

QuestGarden is an apt metaphor for a community garden which will provide all the resources needed for users to plant many trees and flowers (webquests), share and exchange "hybridization techniques". The environment encourages educators to comment on each others' work, to share links and images, and to build new WebQuests on existing ones. Rather than starting from scratch, users can bring a WebQuest written by another member of the community into their workspace, modify the content or appearance to suit their needs, and use it with their own students.

Arrangements with friends around the world have been made for translation of QuestGarden into Chinese, Portuguese (by Prof Jarbas,Brazilian webquest evangelizer ), Catalan and Spanish.

View the Powerpoint slides from the NECC presentation in June and follow the latest buzz on QuestGarden News.

Blogging as freedom and as home

The Blogstreams Salon welcomes educators interested in blogging and international webpublishing projects. Members get together synchronously in the group room every Sunday at 21:00 GMT to chat informally, sort out doubts, examine and discuss innovative work, cutting-edge tools and international webpublishing projects. Once a month, we invite guests, experts in their fields, to make a presentation in the ASO room (After School Online).

Next Sunday August 14th, we have a special session with a very special person. Meet London-based artist/writer/philosophical cartoonist Natalie d' Arbeloff and her cartoon alter-ego Augustine, whose blog "Blaugustine" won the award for the most beautiful and best designed blog in the 2004 Edublog Awards promoted by Incsub.

Read Natalie's August 6th post INTERVIEW MEME: NATALIE'S (not Augustine's) ANSWERS and discover how blogging freed her to be who she is and how it has become her virtual home with open windows to the world.

Join us at Tapped In (free membership)and engage in this conversation!

HB_Bee

HB_Bee,
originally uploaded by anark.

I'd like to publicly thank all the birthday wishes from former students on Orkut, cards and warm words from friends, webheads in action and also share with you one of the most cherished birthday gifts (after Pinky, the iPod) I received this year. A hand-made card from artist and friend Rudolf Ammann.

Thank you all. You've made my day :-)

Back from Holidays

I have just logged into this blog today and realized that I have not posted anything since June. This is the first time in two years I skip a month here. Not that it matters so much, but for someone who has been blogevangelizing for some time, this is not a good example to set :-) I have been considering other hosting options(Textpattern, Word Press) and have opened an account at Elgg.net. However, I am still undecided as I am also planning to redesignThe English Department and would like to have it all under the same address.

Although I was officially on holidays until last Sunday (here in Brazil we get a winter month in July) and supposed to rest, I have been buzzing, caught in a whirlwind as usual, doing some serious work while enjoying myself immensely.

On the very light side, I have discovered Flickr and photography and do not go anywhere without my little Nikon Coolpix. There is always a moment to record as I now belong to a million different interest groups, ranging from Nature in Circles to Property Numbers or Catchy Colours. What I enjoy is not only the pleasure of discovering life from a new angle but also the possibility to compare what you have found to a million other views and perspectives and engage in dialogue. Lots of fun and more than 420 pics of my trip along the northeast coast of Sao Paulo (Rio-Santos) and the countryside. I have involved my students in this craze as well and they seem to have taken to it.

In July, Aaron and I hosted the Blogstreams Salon Open House Event during the Tapped In Summer Festival (do our quiz to find out about the resources we have gathered). We are also thinking about presenting for the Webheads Online Convergence: Bridges Across Cyberspace next November.

In addition to Dekita, Aaron, Rudolf and I have collaborated on a media review (to be published in the September issue of the TESL-EJ Journal).