Looking back

Last year I made some New Year resolutions: one was to meet my Twitter friends f2f, the other was to share with Croatian teachers everything I learned on Twitter. A year later, I think I may say I've accomplished my goals - to a certain extent.

My blog for Cro teachers is still alive - by no means is it a lively, dynamic site, because only three people are subscribed to it and only rarely (actually: never) have my posts been inspirational or catchy to make my visitors leave a comment. However, there have been more than 2500 visits to the blog and more importantly, I've written 45 posts about different web tools that can be used in the classroom. Perhaps one day someone finds something useful in one of my posts.

The tweet-ups began early in January when I met @kenwilsonlondon (and his wonderful wife Dede) in London.
March brought a fantastic opportunity for a tweet-meet with @cheimi10 in Zagreb.
In April I went to Berlin and met @janwebb21, @MrMalcontent, @w2YDAvid, @jugoslaval and @olliebray.
In October came Cape Town and more tweetups: @c_arnett and @coolcatteacher.

My resolutions for 2011 remain the same: more tweet ups and more (more interesting) posts on my Croatian blog. However, there's something else I want to do add to it: more comments to my PLN members' blog posts. Let's say I write one comment a day. Too optimistic? Too enthusiastic? Undoable? Never mind, I'm going to give it a try. (#luvchallenges)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all the visitors of my blog! May your holidays be filled with joy, peace and love.

My own glogster

It's this Oscar-ish feeling again. Indescribable.

Deena from Edu.Glogster created a glogster to celebrate ME!



Thank you!

Christmas Vocabulary Game

Find the items on the list! A game to practise Christmas vocabulary (Father Christmas, Christmas lights, Christmas tree, chimney, bells, star, snow, gifts, fireplace, carol singers, snowman, candle...).



Check out our Christmas Vocabulary List.

Greetings From The World is the winner!

Huge congrats to Viviana, Rose, Eva, Culya, Judy, Clara V., Clara G., , Shyam, Vicki, Gyöngyi, Jesstern, José, Candace, Valerie, Monika, Shannon, Heidi, Dan and Claudia. It's because of you and your wonderful students.

Edublogs Awards 2010

To my absolute delight, our Greetings From The World wiki has been shortlisted for the Best Educational Wiki Award. A big thank you to kind educators out there who nominated it this year again. A big thank you to those wonderful teachers and their amazing students who have been part of it since we started it in October 2009. (Do I sound a bit Oscar-ish? Well, I can't help it, that's who I am:)

But what makes me the happiest teacher in the world right now is the fact that this wiki has grown from one single class of 24 students to 18 classes with 420 students from 12 different countries on 5 continents. Here they are, those wonderful teachers, my real virtual friends:

Viviana Alayo, Colegio Machado de Assis, Joinville, Brazil

Candace Townsley, Owasso Public School, Owasso, Oklahoma, USA

Valerie Burton, West Jefferson School, Harvey, Lousiana, USA

Dan Roberts, Saltash Community Schools, Saltash, UK

Eva Büyüksimkeşyan and Culya Yapici, Esayan Armenian High School, Istanbul, Turkey

José Romão,Colegio de Alfragide, Alfragide, Portugal

Clara Vieira, Escola EB 2,3/S de Vale de Cambra, Portugal

Monika Hardy,Thompson Valley HS, Loveland, Colorado, USA

Shannon McClintock Miller, Van Meter Community Schools, Van Meter, Iowa, USA

Judy Uhrig, Latham Elementary School, Winston-Salem, N. Carolina, USA

Shyam Sunder Malhotra, St.Simran School, Patiāla Area, India

Vicki Palmer, Brisbane Grammar, Brisbane, Australia

Rositsa Mineva, The Fifth Primary School, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria

Heidi Musterós, Colegio Goethe, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Jesstern Rays, Catholic High School, Singapore

Gyöngyi Tóthné Bán, Primary School Balatonboglár, Balatonboglár Hungary

Clara Gutierrez, Westwood Elementary School, Houston, Texas, USA

And yes, if you want to give us your vote, please click here.

David Crystal in Zagreb

Quite a few members of my PLN spent the last weekend at a conference in Paris. I couldn't be there with them, (I strongly believe the time will come when I too will go to a conference and meet my PLN:-) but now I'm enjoying reading their reflections on their very special tweet-ups and the fabulous TESOL conference. One of the brilliant presenters and speakers at the conference was David Crystal.

This weekend, imagine that, I had a fantastic opportunity to hear David Crystal give two talks at the 10th OUP Conference in Zagreb: Advanced Conversational English: fact and fiction and The perils of being a linguist.

David Crystal held his audience of about 400 (or maybe even 500) teachers enthralled for over two hours. David Crystal didn't use power point. He didn't need it. His speech was powerful without it.

moja matura online

On December 1, 2009 an ICT teacher, a math teacher and an English teacher launched a website for their school-leavers with nothing but boundless enthusiasm. The website contained links to free exercises on the Internet as well as interactive exercises created by the above said teachers for their students. They also created a facebook fan page, a ning site and a twitter account for the website.

The word about this free site for online preparation for the standardized school-leaving exam spread incredibly quickly all around the country. The website is no longer the place to practise writing, reading and listening skills, math and ICT for the students from one school only. It is THE place where school-leavers from the most southern island to the most northern village can get ready for their exams, provided they have internet access. And they do - in their schools if not in their homes.

In the past year, more than 400 links to English exercises have been posted on the website, together with more than 200 Math, ICT, German and Croatian exercises and more than 400 links to important notices on the official webpages of the Croatian Edu Department et.al. as well as links to related newspaper articles. Students clicked on (and hopefully solved) math tasks about 100,800 times. There has been a considerable number of visitors ....and unique visitors.... and hits on the website.

As you might have guessed, I'm the English teacher in question, Sonja and Nataša are the ICT and Math teachers respectively. On December 10, we're throwing a party to celebrate our first anniversary with our dear friends and supporters. I just wish I could invite my online friends from different parts of the world - teachers who create all kinds of activities for English language learners and who generously share their knowledge with the world. I'm deeply grateful to you:

Sue Lyon Jones

Sean Banville

Fiona Joseph and Peter Travis

Alex Case

Miracel Juanta

Randall S. Davis

Todd Beuckens

Dominic Cole

Charlie Williams

to numerous teachers who create video listening quizzes for ESL Video

to the teachers who are behind:

Exam English

ESL Lounge

Using English

and many, many others....

Without you, we wouldn't be here where we are now. Thank you!

My nominations for Edublog Awards 2010

This time last year I was beside myself when I heard that my wiki Greetings from the world was shortlisted for the Best Educational Wiki Award. And I will never forget the wee hours of one Friday in December when the winners were announced. Just don't ask me what I said in my winner speech. That I don't remember.

But here I go with this year's nominations:

Best individual blog: Janet's Abruzzo Edublog by Janet Bianchini

Best individual tweeter: @europeaantje

Best new blog: Webb's Wide World by Jan Webb.

Best resource sharing blog: Esolcourses by Sue Lyon Jones

Most influential blog post: The 30 Goals Challenge by Shelly Terrell

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: #eltpics by @VictoriaB52, @cgoodey and @vickyloras

Best teacher blog: Kalinago English by Karenne Silvester

Best educational tech support blog: iLearn Technology by Kelly Tenkely

Best educational use of audio: Breaking News English by Sean Banville

Best educational use of video / visual: Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard

Best educational wiki: Celebr8UandMeDigitally by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan and Alexandra Francisco

Best educational use of a virtual world: ELTChat

Video Listening Quiz: Step into Christmas

Video listening quiz: Monday Morning

Hope you all have a wonderful Monday morning!

Action Verbs Game

Put the action verbs in the right boxes! A game to practise action verbs (open, close, pull, push, jump, run, kick, catch...).



Check out our list of Action Verbs.

MS WW IEF Gala

Can you find me?

My Capetown

It's been more than a week since I came home from Capetown where I attended the MS Worldwide Innovative Education Forum. There are different reasons why it was an out of this world experience.


Firstly, my project Greetings from the world made it to the finals in the Innovation for Collaboration Category. This is the best result ever achieved by a Croatian teacher at a worldwide competition. However, this project is not strictly Croatian, it's rather global in the true sense of the world, and I'm just a member of a team of exceptional innovative teachers who love this project.

Secondly, who doesn't like to travel? I have a strong passion for travel and this was an amazing opportunity for me to travel to South Africa for the first time. Seeing Cape Town at the foot of the stunning Table Mountain , its many depressing townships, the Cape of Good Hope, pretty proteas in bloom, cute little penguins which I couldn't swim with, as well as the excellent South African wine was unforgettable.

But most importantly, the Forum brought together innovative educators from all parts of the world. 500 teachers from 72 countires had already won their regional competitions in the first stages of the Forum, so being there in Cape Town was actually our special award. Together we celebrated what we are so passionately dedicated to: innovation in education.

So much passion, enthusiasm, warmth and devotion that I absorbed in the halls of the Convention Center, at the opening ceremony in the vinery and the gala in the Botanical Garden will keep me going for a long time.



The only thing that makes me a wee sad is this little bug: what if I don't make it to MMS WW IEF 2011 in Washington, DC????

The finalists

The Partners in Learning Worldwide Innovation Education Forum held in Cape Town last week was a true celebration of enthusiastic, inspiring and passionate teachers.

These are the finalists and the award winners in four different categories:

The Innovation in Collaboration Award

The finalists are:
(I'm proudly one of them)

And the winners are:

Best Practice:
Martin Ryum and Mette Hauch, Denmark: Teachers Leave Them Kids Alone
First Runner-Up:
Jan Webb, UK: Working in a Classroom Without Walls
Second Runner-Up:
Ian Fogarty, Canada: Xenotransplant Debate
Anna Karlsson, Sweden: ICT Enriched Learning

The Innovation in Content Award
The finalists are:





And the winners are:
Best Practice:
Pat Yongpradit, USA: Game Programming with the Microsoft Zune to Promote High School Women in Technology
First Runner-Up:
Adriana Silva de Oliveira, Brazil: School on the Cloud
Second Runner-Up:
Peter de Lisle, South Africa: Biodiversity

The Innovation in Community Award

The finalists are:

And the winners are:

Best Practice:
Samuel Avornyo, Ghana: Rural Food Processing Industries

First Runner-Up:

Barry Corrigan, Northern Ireland: Making Homework Count – Engaging Parents

Second Runner-Up:

Simone Timms, Australia: It Takes A Community To Raise A Child

The Educators Choice Award:

Best Practice:
Tareq Mahjoub, Tareq Mahmoud, Shahzlan Al Saffar, Omar Ashour, Futooh Khareetah, Majdi Daoud, Arabic Region: Accepting Each Other
First Runner-Up:
Preesheila Bheem singh Ujoodha, Mauritius: Wellness and Fitness for Life
Second Runner-Up:
Ricardo Espino González, Mexico: Electronic Logbook

Cape Town, here I come

I'm doing the final preparations for the trip to Cape Town. My level of excitement is at 10!

To teach with tech

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.

Family Vocabulary Game

Put the names in the right boxes! A game to practise family vocabulary (father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, cousin...).



Check out our Family Vocabulary List.

Blogging with students

This is the second year that I'm blogging with my students. Last year I introduced my 17-year olds to blogging the moment I learned how to do it. Or at least I thought I knew how to blog with students.

This year, I started out thoroughly prepared. Well aware of last year's weaknesses and strengths, I clearly defined the goals and strategies. I put together a clear and meaningful Power Point presentation. I thought long and hard about possible threats. And was convinced there would be nothing to catch me off guard. How wrong I was! There's always been something I took for granted and expected my students to know. But it turns out that most of them don't go beyond the basics of Facebook and MSN. And when it comes to blogging they rely entirely on me. Maybe it's time I said "Go figure it out yourself!"

Next year I'll do it differently.

#MSIEF

I'm an Innovative Educator and I'm going to Cape Town!

What a respectable siganture! I still can't believe that I'm one of those who will have the opportunity to meet innovative educators from all over the world. What's more, I'm one of them!

What have I done to deserve this? I just came up with an idea - and these fabulous teachers were kind enough to join me with their students.

They are Innovative Educators and I wish they all went to Cape Town with me!

Viviana Alayo, Colegio Machado de Assis, Joinville, Brazil
Candace Townsley, Owasso Public School, Owasso, Oklahoma, USA
Valerie Burton, West Jefferson School, Harvey, Lousiana, USA
Dan Roberts, Saltash Community Schools, Saltash, UK
Eva Büyüksimkeşyan and Culya Yapici, Esayan Armenian High School, Istanbul, Turkey
José Romão,Colegio de Alfragide, Alfragide, Portugal
Clara Vieira, Escola EB 2,3/S de Vale de Cambra, Portugal
Monika Hardy,Thompson Valley HS, Loveland, Colorado, USA
Shannon McClintock Miller, Van Meter Community Schools, Van Meter, Iowa, USA
Judy Uhrig, Latham Elementary School, Winston-Salem, N. Carolina, USA
Shyam Sunder Malhotra, St.Simran School, Patiāla Area, India
Vicki Palmer, Brisbane Grammar, Brisbane, Australia
Rositsa Mineva, The Fifth Primary School, Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Heidi Musterós, Colegio Goethe, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Jesstern Rays, Catholic High School, Singapore
Gyöngyi Tóthné Bán, Primary School Balatonboglár, Balatonboglár Hungary
Clara Gutierrez, Westwood Elementary School, Houston, Texas, USA

5 continents, 14 countries, 18 schools, 19 teachers, 290 posters and 420 students

Video listening quiz: Problems with English

European Day Of Languages

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.

TED Talk: Sugata Mitra

I had the pleasure of hearing Professor Sugata Mitra at the Innovative Teacher Forum in Berlin in March 2010. In his splendid keynote he talked about his Hole In The Wall experiments and children from slums and poor, remote areas in India who acquire basic computer skills, even though they don't speak English and don't have a teacher to help them. They learn because they want to.