Miscellaneous

A report by researcher David Graddol forecasts English as a world language….with 120 million children learning it in Chinese primary schools – and many other countries embedding English-language learning in their scolarity. (BBC) . In France the debate rages whether to start it in primary school. A recent survey evaluating competences of 14-15 year old … Read more

Jean MichelChaupart (Colombia) and Mario Asselin (Canada!) have graciously nominated me for the Edublog Awards , in the Best use of weblogs within teaching and learning category. The polls are hosted on James Farmer’s Incsub Association community site, a free-for-teachers hosting support and community in using weblogs, wikis and open source CMSs. Thank you Jean … Read more

Via Edu_RSS I got to the Blogger’s Code of Ethics issued by the Media Centre of the American Press Institute. Be honest and fair, minimize harm and be accountable are the main recommendations. A number of people have thrown in their two cents in the comment area. My question and comment: is this only to … Read more

On August 4th I celebrate my namesday (Barbara) or “imieniny” as we say it in Polish. The day of our patron saint is more important than our birthday and there are important and practical reasons for it. First, these days are usually related to old Polish traditions or seasons of the year. Second, celebrating the … Read more

Barbara Dieu ( Sao Paulo, Brazil) has been nominated for the Edublog Awards for the ‘ Best use of weblogs within teaching and learning’ category. Jean Michel writes: “I want to nominate Mrs Barbara Dieu, “Bee”,from Sao Paulo, Brazil, for her set of blogs and online presentations on blogging for language teachers, in french and … Read more

Blog: Word of the Year – not only for Merrian Webster publishers but also for me for the past year and a half. It’s incredible how involved I got in it: from a simple experiment in class to presentations in French and English , two (believe it or not !!!) nominations in James Farmer’s blog … Read more

Global Learn Day starts on November 21st at 0:00 GMT(tonight at 10:00 pm in Sao Paulo, Brazil) and goes on non-stop for 24-hours. This yearly educational voyage around the 5 continents , initiated by John Hibbs from the Ben Franklin Institute, showcases highly innovative activities in education and internet technology. This year topics will cover: … Read more

The 22nd Tutor Mentor Conference took place in Chicago on Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th November in partnership with Digibridge (The Digital Workforce Education ), Tappedin and the WiA (Webheads in Action), an online community of practice I belong to. I had already participated in one of the audio-conferences with Gallistel Language Academy on October … Read more

Lost my template once again…and had not saved it anywhere 🙁 so had to choose a new look. All the previous comments are on Haloscan…I wonder whether I can recover them and place them on the older posts. Must insert all my blogroll again, feed andall…argh. It is definitely the end of the year and … Read more

After photoblogs,moblogs and videoblogs, podcasting is the most recent development to reach the educational blogosphere. D’Arcy Norman from The Learning Commons imagines a scenario where “students … subscribe to an RSS feed, and have recordings of every lecture automatically stored on their hard drive or iPod or whatnot for review” or “interviews with external resources”. … Read more