The 30th anniversary of the Time Project: A Project That Holds a Special Place in My Teaching Practice

 If you are a fan of videoconferences and online projects, then you must have heard of the Time Project.

This year, this fantastic project marked its 30th anniversary. To learn more about the project itself, simply visit their official website. And while the project did mark its 30th anniversary, I have to say that for me it was a big 10.

The first time I joined the project was in 2015, and since then—together with my students from Croatia and now with students from the international European School Brussels I—I have been a proud member of this great team of teachers who aim to bring students together in a 24-hour worldwide event to discuss, research, and share topics relevant to them and to the world.

On 28 November 2025, 18 EEB1 students once again took part in the TIME Project for the third year in a row, marking a special milestone, as 2025, as mentioned before, was the 30th anniversary of the event. For our students, however, it was even more special, as we achieved 4th place in the Unite the Nations Quiz, representing Belgium out of more than 20 schools from 11 countries worldwide. This is so far the best result our students have achieved since joining the project in November 2023. Read more on the project’s official website.

                                                (TP certificate presented to the EEB1 school)

Throughout the day, besides researching and answering questions for the UN quiz, students engaged in House of Commons debates, presentations, and discussions with peers from across the world. They actively shared their opinions and demonstrated strong listening and communication skills on this year’s UN SDG topics, such as Responsible Consumption and Production, Mental Health and Wellbeing, and Sustainable Cities.

This year, we travelled online to seven different schools from Turkey, Croatia, India, Poland, Canada, and Taiwan.

                                     

This experience once again holds a special place for me and my students, as I still remember 2015 and the first group of enthusiastic students from my secondary school in Croatia, who worked for hours from 1 a.m. on the UN quiz, took part in dozens of videoconferences, joked, laughed, slept in school corridors, and still to this day remember the Time Project as one of the best experiences they had during their secondary education.

Some of them are now married and have become teachers themselves, so maybe in the near future they will join this remarkable event!

I myself will continue to promote the project among EEB1 students and bring them joy, experience, and sense of unity that such projects create. They bring out the best in our students: they teach collaboration, teamwork, tolerance, and flexibility, and sometimes we teachers are positively surprised by their improvisation. Most of all, we love seeing our students grow in confidence.

So, see you all next year for the 31st Time Project which will be held on 27 November so MARK the DATE!! :)

StudentsmeetCRO

Pinterest board - Safety Online

Primjer kreiranja Pinterest ploče - pinterest board!

Pinterest Board - Safety Online - CARNet MOOC

Moodle MOOT Online Conference 5- 7 August 2016

Even though many educators tend to enjoy their holidays and have a free time from school and lectures, there are still those who apart from taking time off and enjoying their vacation still like to work on their personal development. I am no exception!

This year I participated in a 3 day free online conference MMVC16 organized by Nellie Deutsch. It was not my first time, but I never took the time to reflect upon the many webinars I watched LIVE or took the pleasure in listening the recordings.

I joined the Moodle  MMVC16 platform and had the pleasure of participating in several LIVE webinars held by many of my dear colleagues, but I also had the time to watch few recordings.

I mainly chose the webinars that were of my interest at this point in my teaching career and these webinars will have quite an influence in my teaching practice.

The list of the webinars and my reflections are avaliable in the presentation below.

LINK to Google Slides

Creative Storytelling by students of 4.b by Students of 4.b Gimnazija Ogulin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Time Project - 24 hours online event for students worldwide

Time Project Selfie Commemorative Banner

On 27 November 2015 I had the pleasure to organize a Time Project Day in our secondary school of Gimnazija Bernardina Frankopana; an intercultural 24 hours online event for students worldwide. This was Time Project's 20th anniversary and it was the first time for our school to participate in this event. There were 17 students (15-18 years of age) and 2 teachers from our school who wanted to be a part of various activities organized by the Time Headquarters. 

Time project school team - 2015

Our school participated in Pre-Selfie Activity, Videoconferences and "Unite the Nations" quiz. It was a fantastic experience for both students and teachers with more than 10 video conferences with students from Canada, India, Indonesia, Russia, Netherlands, Turkey, Colombia. The Time Project day started at 1.00 am in our Croatian local time and it was fun to see the time zone differences.

If you want to participate in the next year's Time Project Event learn more about it on Time Project official website.

Here is a short Animoto video clip of this year's Time Project event held in our school.

                               

Our students really had a great time and here is the article written by one of our girls who describes the projects experience and her joy of winning the 5th place in answering Unite the Nations" quiz questions. It is a true student's point of view and I hope it will inspire your students and you to join us next year on December 2nd 2016 for yet another - 21st Time Project Event!

DORA'S TIME PROJECT EXPERIENCE!

For the 20th time, The Time Project was held worldwide. Out of 80 schools that participated in this project, even two Croatian schools made it to the top five, and our school, Gimnazija Bernardina Frankopana, took the fifth place. As a group, we are very happy of our achievement, because it is in fact, our first time participating in this project.

You'd think that staying inside your school the whole night would give you goosebumps, but it didn't though, the school only looks scary at daytime, with all the professors around, but at night(and with great company) it is just fine. We all gathered at the entrance around 1 am and settled ourselves in PASCH. In a flash, we got our laptops out and went online in the classroom(I finally got the password!). 

Everyone was told to bring some snacks and something to drink with them, so we put all of it on the „sacred table of foods“ we were to eat from the whole night. Our professor gave us our assignments with certain country's questions that we had to answer until the next morning. We were also split into two groups: one group was supposed to have video conferences with many students from other countries and the other one was to answer the questions about these foreign countries. 

Distributing tasks

We had to answer 325 questions in total, and I must say that Taiwan really gave us a headache. I'm not even sure if we answered all of their questions. After we had gotten our assignments, we all settled down in our own corners, some working in groups and some being lone wolves. Anyway, the first coffee of the night was made in an instant, but „mister my coffee must be perfect“ didn't quite like it, so we gave it another shot. In the end, the coffee was fine, but because of a reason I am not supposed to share here, the coffee was gone around 3am. I, myself, had fallen asleep by 4 am. My „beloved“ friends with whom I was to share the pain of not having any caffeine, tried to pull me out of the classroom, along with my mattress, so I would wake up in the hallway. They failed because I had entangled my legs around the table legs I was sleeping next to. (I was working on my assignment on that little table in The PASCH classroom and I was basically sitting on the floor and my legs were under the table so I guess you get the picture). I must say that their disappointment made me question our friendship, hahaha. After I woke up, I continued to work on my assignment just like everyone else had been doing while I was asleep. The morning was close to come when we were almost done with our answers. Some of the guys went to get us coffee around 7 am and that coffee saved me from passing out (I am very weak, I know). By the time we finished, we were all a bit grumpy and were teasing the group that was having video conferences. We would wave our hands in front of the camera or just stand in the background and grin like idiots. 

                    

Some just loved to have fun as well!

The last video conference was the best(they do say sugar comes at the end) and if I am not mistaken, it was a video chat with Netherlands. Our and their groups started talking about politics and it was really interesting to listen to them go on about the global problems. If we had people sitting in the government like these guys, we wouldn't have any issues. Unfortunately, the chat was finished and we started packing our things. The day was Friday and it was 12 pm. The 20th Time Project was officially over for our school. We had 10 video conferences with students from 6 different countries in less than 10 hours. I think I would call this a SUCCESS and teacher Smolčec says it very often. After that inspiring night we just went home to get some sleep.

Even though nobody got any rest that night, we all had great fun and I think that this really connected us to youngsters just like us all around the globe. This was truly a wonderful experience and I hope this project will carry on in our school in the years to come and that the next generations will experience the same sense of unity we had felt that night. I just hope that Mrs Smolčec will carry on with this and that she will also agree to have me next year.                                                  (Dora H. - age 15)

The last memorable selfie - one of many taken during the event.

Teachers with their great students!

Toondoo Comic book about Honey

Exploring the way of Creating ToonDoo Comic Books and embeding them into websites

about bees and honey by msmolcec | Make your own at www.toondoo.com

Frankenstein quiz- graded reader on PhotoPeach

Experimenting with a new Polling tools

A new polling tool I discovered - Flisti.com



It can be easily embeded into a blog or website.

And here is the link to the poll I created. Please try to answer the simple quetsion.

What videos do you mostly watch on youtube?

Are You Ready to Be Wowed #iTDiMOOC?

Challenges are tests. Either you pass them and celebrate moving one step ahead or just surrender and stay still in your place. Since I opened my door to the online virtual world of wonders, my professional development as a teacher and my whole life have changed a lot. (Ayat Tawel, ELT teacher, iTDi Associate from Egypt)

I can only totally agree with the above quote written by my dear colleague Ayat Tawel. She has recently published a wonderful blog post for iTDi.pro - on the topic of Challenges, Projects and Opportunities and this has reminded me of how I got started. To tell you the truth, Ayat's story and mine are very similar. We both started at TESOL EVO session Becoming a Webhead in 2011 and somehow we ended up doing so many online things: learning, sharing, meeting wonderful and committed educators worldwide because we are #PD fanatics, as I have been told!

This summer it is all about PD. There have been many great and inspirational free online events. And now, at the moment it is all about #iTDiMOOC, a free four week online course that is happening at WiziQ. It has gathered so many wonderful teachers who are willing to share their ideas with everyone.

I presented at the iTDiMOOC as well, together with my dear colleague and a friend Marcia Lima, about our mutual (still in progress) BRAZ+CRO project. Marcia has written a wonderful post about it which you can read here.

If you want to invest more into your own personal development than #iTDiMOOC is the place for you.

Join the movement and follow it on Twitter and Facebook as well.

 HAVE a happy learning and get your own personal badge :) 

What a fantastic #EDU weekend with #RSCON5

It would be hard to summarize a three day free online event known as Reform Symposium Conference #RSCON5 with just one post, but I am sure this message is the one we can ALL agree with  Be inspired to inspire!

A screenshot from Hayfa Majdoub presentation "ICT in the EFL Classroom"

If you ask me why, the answer is simple. This conference was the first one I encountered after becoming a Webhead and stepped in the online world of ELT. It was the one to INSPIRE me even more! Let me put it this way; the organizers, the presenters, the wonderful participants and educators from all the parts of the world were the one who showed me that the best way to learn is to share your ideas, to motivate and to inspire, whether with just one slide or a word, a small project or a lesson idea, you will for sure find the way to those who are willing to try! Maybe they will follow your examples, maybe they will get an idea and try to do similar things, but you will for sure meet some new friends, new colleagues and bond friendships that could last for years. 

My first conference was #RSCON3 in 2011. I was just an active participant who carried her laptop around the house. You can check that old blog post here. But I don't know what happened and in 2014 for #RSCON5 I somehow ended up on the other side, helping presenters, moderating and working with wonderful team of online colleagues/ladies - my #PLN.

Heike Philip(GER), Shelly Sanchez Terrell(USA), Peggy George(USA), Marcia Lima(BRAZ) and me (CRO)

The annual Reform Symposium Free Online Conference (RSCON) took place July 11-13th with an Author Spotlight Pre-Conference Event on July 10th. The online global event featured 50+ presentations, 11 keynote speakers, 3 panel discussions, a tech/app swapalooza, and plenary, Dean Shareski. (Taken from Reform Symposium website - Future of Education - Ning)

My husband and kids supported me, esp. the older son, who was invited to present as a 10 year old non-native English speaker, a young youtuber who shared his vision and insight about "Minecraft" in education. He shared his insight on how he learned English, video editing and even presenting through games and youtube tutorials. It was nice to see messages from participants and educators saying that we can even learn from the kids. So true!

 

There were many interesting presentations for everyone. We could hear keynote speakers and presenters talking about humanity, students voice, bridging gaps with students, online projects, use of ICT in EFL class, poetry reading, rap singing, gamifications, flipping classrooms etc.

 

Just a small insight - find more screenshots Reform Symposium eConference Google+ website

I, myself had the opportunity to present this year as well. I talked about Developing an online Project, pros and cons and Comenius Multilateral School Partnership Project "Enterprising, healthy and creative" 2012-2104. 

Thank you Shelly! My pleasure!

It was very exciting, to be a part of it all, because as a Lifelong Learner it is hard to stay away from such wonderful events. As an organizer I am happy we cheered our presenters and participants with lovely badges and certificates made by Shelly and Peggy. 

Mine are here.

My #RSCON5 badges and certificate :)))

Hope I motivated you to listen to at least one of the recordings. Try to join us in future for new & interesting miniCONs. You can find the recordings of all the sessions here.

I will finish this post with the official #RSCON5 team song by @tastenspilerr ft. TamaraS.

#RSCON5 - Online Reform Symposium Conference - it's that time of the year!

The photo image says it all (my post on Twitter)

I will be joining almost 100 educators who will try to share their classroom and teaching ideas, the passion of teaching and learning from 11-13 July 2014 for the not more nor less #RSCON5 conference which has now been going for about 4 years.

I remember to have first learnt of  RSCON in 2011. At that time it was RSCON3 and I enjoyed every minute of it. So, I invite you all to join us at this  free education event - clear your schedule, open your mind as there are some fantastic topics for you to know about.

I, myself was invtited by Shelly who is one of the organizers of . RSCON. To know more about the event soon to come, go to Future of Education site - RSCON. Check the schedule, accepted proposals and hope to see you.

I have two topics accepted. I hope I will cope to the expectations.

First topic is on Saturday 12 July (7pm Zagreb time)- Developing and online project- pros and cons

Created by Marcia Lima

Second topic is on Sunday 13 July (8pm Zagreb time) - Comenius Multilatera school partnership project "Enterprising, healthy and creative"

Created by Marcia Lima

But, what I am even more proud of is that one of the presenters will be a young boy on a topic of Minecraft in Education.  His insight into this great game that even educators are talking about. I will not tell more details, but this :

"I am ready to inspire, are you ready to be inspired!?"

Please join us!

My 11 Random Facts and Answers

There was a blog challenge going on before winter break and New Year 2014 and I was tagged four times. First by our dear Shelly Sanchez Terrell, then the next day by the newest member of my PLN Malu Scimarelli. Third by Fabiana Casella.    And then I didn't even havae the chance to read the blog posts when I was finally tagged by my dear Croatian collegue Sanja Bozinovic. With all the baking and Christmas preparations I barely found the time to share this blog post with my PLN, and now it's end of June, beginning of July so I finally found the time to finish this. Maybe it is a good thing I am a bit late:) While I am doing this at the moment another interesting challenge is going on on Facebook. Of course I am participating in that one as well. All in all let's see what can I share with my PLN as I have kept them in big suspense for months.

The mission was this:
 1. Acknowledge the nominating blogger(s). 
2. Share 11 random facts about yourself. (let's see what I have to share)
3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you. (that would be 44 as I was tagged 4 times)
4. List 11 bloggers. (will not do that as this is an old challenge )
5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. ( no challange now)
Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you.

So here it goes!  11 random Facts about me!

1. I got married on my birthday. :)))
2. I love sports and I used to train handball when I was a teenager
3. I love to dance
4. I think I am a coffee addict, but who isn't :)
5. but, I can't also live without a chewing gum
6. I simply adore my husband and our kids
7. My favourite movie is "The Mummy" as I like both romance and adventure. (My friend Maria Bossa will probably like this as she is a Tutankamon girl)
8. When I was little and still didn't know how to speak English I would invent my own English words, (e.g "plate" would be "Tanjur" - which is actually plate in Croatian but I would use different stress and accent. :))))
9. I sang in a church choir, I don't sing any more but I regularly go to church on Sunday as a good Chatolic.
10. I used to watch western movies with my dad. I still love them!
11. My biggest support is my husband.

Shelly's questions:

1.What is a goal you hope to accomplish from your bucket list?
I don't know if I have a list. I think I have accomplished a lot so far, since I've joined online community of teachers. So my biggest goal now would be trying to spend more time with my boys before they grow up so fast, so this summer 2014 that is my biggest goal.

2. What is one goal you hope to accomplish in 2014?
Well, I do hope all goes well with EU LLP Comenius project I am coordinating in my school which will be finished  by 31 July 2014. It was hard work and had taken me a lot of free time from my family, but it was really interesting.

3.If you could host a reality TV show, what would it be about?
Well, that's easy. Since I love dancing I would like to host "So you think you can dance!?"

4.  How do you blow off steam?
I have direct and indirect support from my husband and I do bother him a lot. He is my shoulder to cry on. I will never thank him enough for all.

5. What is one of your personal theme songs?
It's hard to say, but I like "Footloose" by Kenny Logginns and "Stronger" by Kelly Clarkson. They are like boost energy for me.

6. What are you incredibly proud of accomplishing?
Well, in three words: "having a family"

7. What was one of your favourite gifts?
A gift of life and two beautiful boys (our sons)

8.How have you dealt with a past failure?
Hmmm, the main thing is that I encourage myself with these words: "We learn on our own mistakes."

9. What is one piece of advice that has helped you throughout life?
There were many of them, and those made by my dearest once, but I think the best was by my father: "Knowledge is something that nobody can take away from you!" - he always encouraged me to learn, read, study, I remember he would by books, encyclopedias for our home library.

10. What was your favourite toy when you were a child?
I don't remember! I was always playing outside, running around, climbing trees, playing football with boys, but I do remember I was very proud when I got my first Barbie doll. I was very proud as they were very rare and couldn't be bought at that time in Croatia.

11. What's your favourite piece of art?
I love art in general, but I don't know if I have a favourite. Maybe Michelangelo's "Pieta"
Source: wikipedia


For Malu, Fabiana and Sanja's question answers I decided to take 3 short recordings, so here there are.

Listen to ‘11 answers for Malu’ on Audioboo

Update of Fabiana and Sanja's later tonight! :)

Here are the UPDATES - 18.00 (July 1st)

Fabiana's questions

listen to ‘11 answers for Fabiana's questions’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘11 answers for Sanja's questions’ on Audioboo

Virtual Round Table Online Conference #vrtwebcon

If you are a teacher, educator, technology fan than you should definitely attend the annual VRT conference which starts on 25 April - 27 April. The conference has gathered more than 70 speakers in 66 sessions. More about the conference you can read here.  The conference has been carefully prepared by great organizers like Shelly Terrell, Heike Philip, Russell Standard, Berni Wall, Jennifer Verschoor, Vance Stevens, and if I haven't intrigued you by writing these great names in the online educators world, maybe this photo from the Opening Session will.

Here is the Programme Overview, hope you will find something for yourself.
You can follow Livestream here.
And a twitter hashtag: #vrtwebcon

I will be there, attending and moderating some of the session :) Go, go #vrtwebcons

What is #ETWION? Who are #PINKETWIONS

As usual I don't have much time for writing, but I had to write a short post for #etwinning Learning Event about eTwining and Social Media which is run by two most popular teachers/presenter on eTwinning; Arjana Blažić and Bart Verswijvel (always have problems spelling Bart's surname).
If you are a teacher from Europe, then you should sign up for etwinning and join many other Learning Events that usually last from 7 to 15 days.

This is my third Learning Event and my second run by Arjana and Bart. Teachers from all around Europe, I would say about 140 of us communicate using modern and very popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We also meet in the Learning Event for our daily activities - where we follow and learn the "Magic" Bart and Arjana serve to us!

"ETwinning and Social Media" Learning Event is very popular as we get to explore other interesting tools that are closely connected to Twitter and Facebook but we also learn the pitfalls of this Media and if it is possible to use it with the students.

Face my Manga :)

I must say I have been using Facebook with my students before.( I also had a webinar #RSCON4 about it.)
I know some of the students also have twitter account, but it's always good to know, to explore the Social Media in more depth by doing it in a FUN way just as we are doing it #ETWION. That's why I am so happy to have signed up to this Learning Event as every day there are so many new tools to know about.

Bart and Arjana put me in the #pink group with other collegues in the Learning Event. What do we do and who are we? We need to make #PINKETWION a viral in the google search! Why - well it's interesting to see how the things change quickly on the Internet - so if you are reading this post please tweet it, retweet it and let's see how the Pink group will do opposite to the Browns, the Yellow and the Green :)))

#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!? :))