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!

#ELTChat – The Loss of ELTChat – Plan B

 

Reposted from  Vicky Loras‘ blog 

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.
Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.
And that is how #ELTchat was created.  
The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.
Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.
A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011,  he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.
We never found out for sure.
We never received a single word of response to our emails.
eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.
And yesterday we lost it.
On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.
The news is really upsetting.
The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment
We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.
But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org
It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet.
And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations.
We will be back with a vengeance.
We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!
We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!
Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden
Vicky Loras
Marijana Smolcec (I can't always participate in every Wednesday #ELTchat's but I do support it a lot. I have learned so much, got lot of  ideas, links, met some great collegues, so I can only say #go, go ELTchat!)

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers,  teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers,  reposted this on your blog.
If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.

Google search

Every day google changes the picture on its google search button. Today they put a synthesizer in the honour of Robert Mooge. Since there is also an option to record your own music and sharethe  link on your website, I took the liberty to do so. My sons were trying to create their own interesting sounds.

Screenshot of google search from 23 May 2012

Here is the link to my younger son's recording:  http://g.co/doodle/3s56xn

This is the link to my older son's recording: http://g.co/doodle/xap5gv

Should my hubby and I think of buying them synthesizers?

Second Studentsmeet - wonderful experience

European students got together in another wonderful studentsmeet that took place online on 24 April in Adobe Connect Pro which was sponsored by Croatian CARNET. Our wonderful hosts were again Bart from Belgium and Arjana from Croatia. This time there were students from 6 countries Italy, Hungary, Poland, UK, Turkey and Croatia, and 9 schools. It is great to mention that Croatia was represented by 3 schools; IX. Gimnazija from Zagreb, Gimnazija Bernardina Frankopana from Ogulin and Primary School from Cakovec.
Our school Gimnazija Bernardina Frankopana took part for the second time. Check out the video.
If you want to read more about the first studentsmeet you can find the post on our school page here.



The main topics were about  students' countries and volunterism. We learned a lot about Italy, Hungary,Poland, Polish school system, but we also learned that in order to get together and live in peace and harmony we should break down the walls. Presentations varied from a video, power point or even a song. It was a great experience for both students and their teachers.
Read older post about studentsmeet by Arjana or simply visit http://www.studentsmeet.org

Zondle games

My son loves Zondle. He saw his mummy attending an online webinar about creating Zondle games and posibility of creating interesting quizzes.
I am still trying to figure this tool out, but if my 6 year old likes it, it must be good.

I will write more about it later, so far here is the simple vocabulary quiz I created so he can play with eggs and chickens.

zondle - games to support learning