Annual Meeting at Escuela de Lenguas

Escuela de Lenguas, the language teaching institution that depends on Facultad de Humanidades of the University of La Plata, celebrated a new anniversary with a round of conferences on Saturday 22nd September. The talks were grouped into four different topics. I chose Educational Technology (of course!). Not only did I choose that set of conferences because it's my favourite topic, but because I knew Nelba Quintana would deliver one of the talks and I wanted to see her. Liliana Simón, a colleague that I met at Facultad de Informática when we were attending the seminars of our Master's, would also make a presentation. Good opportunity to know what other colleagues are dealing with.

The first three talks were by a group of French teachers: . They have fostered an agreement between the University of La Plata and l'Université de Poitiers to use an online course and LMS developed by the French university, DEFI, to teach advanced French to Argentine students. The French will provide the online platform, technical assistance and content. Argentine teachers will tutor the students. This is the first step towards more localized content in the future, once the contract is over. The curriculum has a strong oral component with written and recorded feeedback.


Then Liliana presented the concept of Web2.0 and some social webtools and the audience discussed the assumption that children are technology natives and we adults are technology immigrants. In her second talk she shared how she is using the online platform developed by Facultad de Informática of the University of La Plata, webUNLP, with her 1st year students of the English teacher training university school. Unlike the previous case, which consists of a purely online course, the content on webUNLP would be complementary to the regular f2f classes and would only comprise one of the units of the syllabus.

Lastly, Nelba presented the Writing Matrix project and showed some participant example blogs, and her experience encouraging blogging among the Escuela de Lenguas students. Nelba did an excellent job promoting blogging among the audience and her enthusiasm sounded real and catching.

ABS Conference for Coordinators

Last Saturday August 18th August, Gladys and I presented at the 6th ABS International Congress for English Coordinators and Directors of Studies in Buenos Aires. Gladys devoted to wikis and their use in an educational context and I did the same about blogs. We were assigned a rather big room this time (much bigger than the one we had in February's Congress for Teachers of English), but people kept coming in even after the beginning of the presentation. We were happy to see that more teachers are becoming aware of the importance of integrating technology in schools.
Due to the profile of our expected audience, I devoted a section of my presentation to dealing with different ways in which school principals can make use of blogs. First, they might assume a leading role in encouraging blogging among the teachers and students in their institution to build a school learning network and second, they might engage in blogging themselves to:

1. Present and share with parents (and receive feedback if they enable the comments feature):

• School behaviour rules
• School goals
• Students’ projects

2. Announce and give the possibility to react to:

• Celebrations
• Shows
• Meetings
• Sport events
• Open classes
• Field trips

3. Introduce staff (and give them the chance to introduce themselves and their projects and methods to the community)

4. Comment on issues related to children and education (sexual education, mobile phones and shools, addictions, cheating, education policy)

5. Link class blogs and give feedback on them

6. Write their memoirs to pass on their experience to the new generations.

School administrators might choose to enable the comments feature in order to interact with students, parents, staff within school community and among other communities (other administrators facing the same challenges), conduct informal polls, etc. to get in touch with the feelings and opinions of the people involved in their school as staff, parents or students, or disable the comments feature if they think this is too risky, and use their blogs as newsletters.

I don't know if there are any school principals blogging in Argentina. My opinion is that people here are not ready yet to discuss things openly and may be afraid of others' reactions. It will take time and lots of schoolteachers blogging to bring this healthy activity to the top of the pyramid.

Gladys has uploaded the slides for our presentation to her wbsite. They are also available from her Slideshare space.

On a more personal note, we had the opportunity to meet a LwCer from La Plata, Nelba Quintana, at the conference. She's a very enthusiastic supporter of technology integration and is currently running English Virtual Community, an e-group for teachers of English.

Below, a slideshow of few of the photos of the event made with PictureTrail (a discovery of Carla Arena for our EVO 2008 session wiki)

Cool Slideshows!