A very sad iActivity

It's not an exaggeration to say that today the world is deeply saddened by Steve Jobs' death. I admire him greatly because he was a dreamer who dared  to pursue his dream. As soon as I heard about this tragic loss, I knew I had to create an interactive exercise for all the students who regularly visit my website Moja  matura.  Inspired by Cecilia Lemos' speaking activity for advanced students, I created an open cloze test for  upper-intermediate students and Sonja, my friend and co-founder of the website put the finishing touches to it with some nice photos.

My activity is based on the Wikipeda's article on tributes to Steve Jobs given by notable Americans. When someone dies, it's so hard to find the right words to extend our condolences and this activity might be a great practice on how to do it.

Tributes to Steve Jobs

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!