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