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!? :))

Pasch Radio Ogulin

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