It is amazingly surprising how reading and researching inspires the human being. Annie Murphy Paul´s blog post Leverage the “Fresh Start Effect” To Generate Motivation, adds one more reason to celebrate this year that has just begun and to say good-bye to very good 2015.
I am particularly excited because being so active on Twitter finally proved what experts say: you PLN grows and your connections become stronger. I recently got in touch with a fantastic group of educators and Edu-leaders from who I´m learning and getting so much inspiration: #edchat #globaledchat #EdBeat
First, by the end of our school year, I got in touch with Spanish Teacher Fran Siracusa a fantastic Spanish educator from Florida, USA. One day, she contacted because she found it exciting we were both connecting our classes globally and engaging ourselves in almost the same online conferences. Fascinating! ¡Me encanta! Here is her project on Padlet, a real masterpiece of collaboration and awesomeness among classes around the world and where I had the chance to make my students participate (the very last day of school, November 25) Aren´t my students super!: they just made all the Holiday cards for fun and not for a grade, isn´t it rewarding?. #LoveMyStudents!
Second, I got fascinated with #onesong, a movement started by Principal Sean Gaillard, since music is one of my passions and even my children inherited this appreciation for it.
My presentation was via Periscope but as usual, Internet was really unstable and made things a bit complicated. Fortunately, I could broadcast some of my material, which included showing my school webpage: how the classes look, some vocabulary related to global exchange: the trip to Canada our students make every year, or the English Fair, basically ALL what I used to share with my students in the US when I taught there.
As the conference took place during our Summer, I was not able to contact my students to make them talk, but had my nephew, niece and my daughter speak with some participating classes in an asynchronous way. I asked my nephew Nicolás and my niece Natalia (both Canada School´s students) made a short video introducing themselves for Mrs Fran Siracusa´s Spanish class and I recorded a short video too talking with my daughter Carolina.
Also, I had the chance to share the same video with Mrs Cassie Reeder, a teacher presenter and web-conference organizer who teaches 3rd Grade in Texas, taking advantage that my daughter is 8 and she is in 3rd Grade here in Argentina. This is the link to her video:
https://www.youtube.com/watchv=gUbbMm9ACew&feature=youtu.be
As the conference took place during our Summer, I was not able to contact my students to make them talk, but had my nephew, niece and my daughter speak with some participating classes in an asynchronous way. I asked my nephew Nicolás and my niece Natalia (both Canada School´s students) made a short video introducing themselves for Mrs Fran Siracusa´s Spanish class and I recorded a short video too talking with my daughter Carolina.
Also, I had the chance to share the same video with Mrs Cassie Reeder, a teacher presenter and web-conference organizer who teaches 3rd Grade in Texas, taking advantage that my daughter is 8 and she is in 3rd Grade here in Argentina. This is the link to her video:
Highlights of this Online Conference:
Last, but not least, to my surprise, in November 2015 I was selected Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert and Guest Speaker.
One of the last surprises was that my EduGoalGuru wonderful Shelly Sanchez Terrell invited me to be part of her last creation: EdSpeakers. So, if you want to contact me to be a speaker at your next webinar, MOOC or online conference, you know where you can find me before I achieve my first goal for Cycle 7.
For this school year I had planned two projects: World Refugees: #YouMatter and "Be the Change You Want To See In The World"/ My Name is Malala.
The first one was inspired by Rusul Alrubail a teacher-colleague from Irak living in Canada whom I "met" during her keynote for Shelly Terrell´s 30 Goals Web Conference, where I was keynote too. I asked Rusul if she would read the article she wrote for PBS for my students to listen to her while they read: my goal was to have double impact to read and listen to real testimony. So, as soon as she sent me the audio, I had my class listen to her and write down questions she would kindly answer in the near future.
My students´ very positively to the idea of listening to a "real person telling her story", as we always practice Listening Comprehension with the coursebooks´ cds. After listening they were a bit shocked by the reality: first, it was hard for them to understand how I knew Rusul and the fact that I could direct message her to ask for that favor was a bit confusing for them: they would not believe me that she sent me the audio on Facebook Messenger. Right now, we are in the process of sending her some questions: Do you miss Baghdad?, Did you ever go back there? Did you understand what the word war was? This project is in collaboration with three more teachers at school: I shared my idea the History teacher who immediately jumped in, together with the Civics and the Geography teacher: they were fascinated!. The Social Studies teachers are in charge of introducing what ISIS is, terrorism in Europe, Syrians fleeing their country: routes in Asia and Europe. Although all the content is in Spanish, I make my students comment, read and listen about these topics in English, which can be titled a full CLIL class. Up to now, I have done this with one of my Intermediate classes. I will have my other class do the same activity the last week in March.
These ideas, projects, visions and dreams are a result of being a global educator: all I have cited above wouldn´t have happened, if I hadn´t been able to be an exchange teacher, cultural ambassador or international educator: so I have to acknowledged the opportunity VIF International Education gave me to teach abroad.
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