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Showing posts from July, 2006

Student fined for anonymous comment on his blog

On Saturday there was an article published in el Pais (in Spanish of course) about a student who has been find 400 Euros (200 acording to the electronic edition of the newspaper) because of a comment published on his blog . Ivan Fresneda wrote about his college, saying that it was incoherent and absurd, complaining about the lack of newspapers in his school, and was extremely critical of the methodology of his Philosophy teacher. Now Ivan has been taken to court and fined because of threats to the Philosophy teacher that were published in the comments section of this blog post. Although the comments were published anonymously, Ivan has been held responsible because it is his blog, and he should have let the comment be published. Obviously, this has repercussions for bloggers everywhere, who could potentially be held responsible for comments published anonymously on their blogs, and is also related to the cyber-bullying incident I wrote about recently. At the very least, we need to ens

Blogs, kids, parents & teachers & cyber-bullying

According to a recent article on the BBC website , almost a third of kids in the UK now use blogs and social networking websites, "but two thirds of parents do not even know what they are". We've all heard of the digital divide between technologically rich countries and technologically poor ones, but there are strong indications that there is another digital divide and it's generational. The article goes on to call this gap in technological knowledge between generations "alarming", and indeed it is. Of course, this is "alarming" because unless adults have a clear picture of what the children are doing online, and take an interest, then they cannot guide them in matters of Internet safety, etc. Here's anotgher quote from the article: "A tenth of the 11-year-olds who took part in the survey said their parents did not know about the people with whom they communicated online." Why is this? Is it that they don't take an interest? Or ar

Using recorded Skype conversations as assessment tools

I was asked today by Barbara Sawhill to briefly take part in a presentation she's giving with Barbara Ganley on ' Using Skype, Podcasting and Blogging in Foreign Language Teaching ' Sitting here waiting for their Skype call, I decided to prepare myself a little bit and refresh my memory about their work. As soon as I start looking I'm struck by what I've been missing out on by not blogging much, or taking much notice of the 'edublogosphere' recently. I can't let this happen again, no matter how busy I get. First, I found a description of the workshop they are giving today: "Recently, new technologies have distinguished themselves as credible tools that increase students' production and competence in a target language. With this change, a new conversation has begun about the structure of a language class, thinking about moving from a traditional teacher-and-text-centered classroom to a student-centered and possibly even a totally un-centered, t

Networking on the Net with Braz-Tesol

Bee has invited me and other webheads to participate in her presentation ' Networking on the Net ', which she is giving at the Braz-Tesol 10th National Convention today,Sunday, July 9th 2006 From 13: 45 -15:15 GMT She is using a wiki for the organisation of materials, guests, and online places , and people have been encouraged to join in the Skypecast , which is to be hosted and webcast by World Bridges via the Webheads in Action community site. If this seems like a lot of URLs already, then you ain't seen nothing yet, as the plan is to take participants to Tapped In , Alado & Learning Times too, introducing some of the best tools around for online synchronous participation. It's ambitious, but will be a lot of fun, and a very interesting learning experience for anyone interested in the cutting edge of e-learning (if you pardon the cliche) Feeling lost? You needn't be. Just start off at Bee's wiki and in the Skypecast and let Bee , the host, guide you

The Webcast Academy

I've not been blogging much lately as I've been too occupied with work and with EFL Bridges and the Webcast Academy that World Bridges have organised to help all of us learn how to use webcasting tools well enough to handle our own live streams, etc. It's been a lot of fun, but I want to get back to blogging too as I miss it, and I now have more time on my hands. If anyone is still out there reading this and would like to try their hand at webcasting, then now is your opportunity as the Webcast Academy is looking for its second intake of interns: Here's what Jeff Lebow, our webcasting guru has to say about it: We are now accepting applications for the 'Class of 1.2'. Applicaitons are due by July 16 and the session will begin July 23. More information is available at: http://www.webcastacademy.net/Class_1.2_Application If you have any additional questions, please post them in The Academy Forums http://www.webcastacademy.net/forum/22 Try it, it's a lot of