#RSCON4 - what, where, why?

If you still haven't heard of one of the best free online conferences then it's time for you to know:

RSCON is BACK!!!!

One of the best online conferences I have ever attended so far will be held for the 4th time from October 11th - 13th and it will be opened almost 24 hours a day. Depending on where you are in the world you will be able to participate in so many wonderful presentations and keynotes. Have the opportunity to listen to educators from all over the world who will share their ideas, their passion towards teaching and technology.

The conference seeks to present ideas, examples, and projects that exemplify transformative learning, instructional practices, professional development and leadership practices worldwide. Our presenters represent students, teachers, trainers, and education leadership worldwide who inspire and transform with their passion and innovation."

                                                        (Quote taken from the official RSCON4 website)

So, if you want to be inspired, you mustn't miss this Annual Online Event.

I, myself will have a small role this year as well,  with my topic:
Student-Teacher-Facebook, Yes or No?

I feel so excited! For me this is great honor to be among so many great educators! WOW!

If you are still thinking about it, then you definitelly need to read my older blog post The Funny side of  the world of #RSCON3

See you there!

Student-Teacher Facebook

It is evident today that social networks have changed the course of our lives and especially, the lives of our students, whether they are 7, 17, 27 or even 77.  Since,  I have been doing lot of project works with my high-school students and having many extra-curricular activities, I decided to communicate with them using email, but not many of them would check it very often or even use it. What they wanted me to do is to contacted them via Facebook or send them message on Facebook. This is something I started thinking about. I didn't want to rush into it as I didn't want to be friends with them, so the only logical thing is to have a Facebook group with them. The use of Facebook with my students is something I have been exploring for 3 years now. It works fine for me even though I was worried about Parental Permissions, Privacy issues and other.

Students.teacher facebook from msmolcec
 

Some interesting things about Student-Teacher Facebook activity you can check in my presentation that I had had for TeachMeet Int'l. I am still exporing the benefits of FB.  Why? I can tell you that there are many reasons, but the best benefit so far is that you can choose to create 3 different groups: OPEN, CLOSED and SECRET. For the purposes of my students group I always choose the last one.

The majestic webinar: Online testing and Google Apps

 Since I've entered the World of ICT after finishing TESOL EVO BAW2011 course I am a regular guest at many different webinars hold online by many great teachers and organizations. Last night I participated at a webinar organized by Croatian National Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes and eTwinning (AMPEU). It was a specific webinar, only for Croatian teachers, especially those who are using eTwinning as a EU school collaboration platform for project working. The webinar was moderated by Dunja Babić, Croatian representative for eTwinning. She had an excellent role of presenting two wonderful CRO teachers Arjana Blažić and Sonja Lušić Radošević - the presenters.

Screenshot nb.1 taken by me: Arjana's bundle of online testing tools!

The webinar was titled "Online testiranje i Google Alati" (Online Testing and Google Apps) and it was very clear and simple, while the two collegues even better. Arjana was talking about Online testing websites she uses like Quizlet, Kubbu, ProProofs, Puzzlemaker... and how she uses them with her students, But, she also mentioned some disadvantages of the sites, even though they can be ignored, like commercials that can be found on some of the online testing websites. I had listened to Arjana twice before and even moderated her webinars for TESOL EVO BAW2012 and TESOL EVO BAW2013 on the same topic as she was our guest speaker. She was fantastic then, but last night I really can say I enjoyed her performance, probably because I was now in the role of a spectator, not a moderator :) What I want to say is that if you were a beginner it was all so very clear and for us who are in the online testing world for some time now, you could have still learned a lot, at least get an idea and open some new account as I have on Rubistar which was

mentioned among other websites.

Screenshot nb. 2 taken by me: Sonja about to start her ppt on Google Tools :)

Sonja on the other hand, as an IT teacher is very systematic, like she is reading my mind. I love her GoogleApps presentation, because she answered some tricky questions for me like installation of GoogleDrive. Thank you Sonja, as always, You rock! It's so nice to have collegues like this in our country and if I may say friends. Wonderful!

The recording of the webinar and the links of all presented tools and websites is available on the official NA website, here.

It was useful, concise and clear and I look forward to few more in the near future, who knows maybe I will be the one to present!? :))

Pasch Radio Ogulin

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A bit lazy but waking up!

I haven't been writing for some time on my blog (almost a year) even though I had been writing for other websites mostly in Croatian. I was very busy with so many things that are going on in my life but to be honest, I think I've been a bit lazy. 

When you think none is looking! (Our cat Fred in his lazy phase)

 But, now it's time to wake up and have things in order!

There are so many things to write about, so let's see what you can expect in future posts:

• TeachMeets (there were 4 online Teachmeets; I have presented at 3 so far)
• CRO-URUG project (My students and I had with a dear collegue Claudia Carrill  and her class  the project lasted for almost 3 years and it was an evolving project; started with penpal writing, continued towards skype interviews and leading to opening a Facebook secret group for our students taking the project to a new higher level. 
• Comenius Multilateral Project "Enterprising Healthy and Creative" that I am coordinating in my school.
• eTwinning seminar I have finished that was ran by Arjana and Bart
• Moodle 2.0 course I finished and how I feel about this interesting platform
• TESOL EVO Baw2013 online course I was co-moderating from Jan-Feb 2013 with a fabulous team of  dedicated teachers
• Being a host to a wonderful Shelly Terrell, a dear friend and a collegue who visited my school and introduced our students to some mobile device lessons and activities.
• Blogging project my students and I are involved in with a dear collegue Jose Antonio and his students from Brasil.
• Skype interviews my students had with some of my online collegues who gladly find some free time for us.

and many, many more activities, lesson ideas, web tools I started using.

Stay tuned as MS is

NEEDS TO START WRITING BLOG POSTS!