Recovering Drama

Maybe living in the Southern Hemisphere is not that bad after all. The EVO Sessions held every year in January/February co-occur with my holidays, which makes it possible for me not only to read and interact and discuss and reflect and learn, but also to fully enjoy them.

This year I’ve signed up for two of them: Process Drama and Virtual Language Travel. On this post I’ll focus on the former.

Why I joined the session.

Many years ago I took drama classes. It was something I hadn’t planned or I hadn’t even dreamt of. Moreover, I would have stated I couldn’t act. A friend of mine was about to start to coordinate a drama group and I agreed to join it just to help him get to a meaningful number of members. The very first class I got hooked. Besides learning lots of things I had never suspected about myself, I learned something really important: anybody can perform drama. I’m not talking about being a great actor/actress, I’m just talking about performing drama.

At that time I started to use drama techniques in my classes. Sometimes through carefully planned lessons and many times spontaneously introducing an activity when I glimpsed the chance/need as the class was developing.

After quitting my drama classes I gradually stopped using drama in my EFL courses. I just missed the habit. I know how much students can benefit from drama. Being someone else frees you from the bonds you’ve built to construct your personality. As the person you are unties, your language unties as well.

When classes restart next March, I hope I will have recovered that healthy habit of taking my students into that trip through action and imagination.

Photo credit:  Johnson Cameraface

A day in the life of a third world citizen

What a day today!

I started classes at school, woke up at six for the first time since December (except for a couple of days in February), met my students, oh, new paragraph.

The first group, 14 and 15 years old, inspiring group. Love at first sight. But that deserves its own post, not just its own paragraph.

Second group, a challenge.  Not now, please.

I forgot to say it’s been raining since I got up. The rain revealed a leak in my son’s bedroom!

Well, I left school, went to psychoanalysis session, that’s something we do here in Buenos Aires, came back home, worked on a project, chatted with Daniel, couldn’t talk, his mic? my headphones? his connection? my connection? his computer? my computer? this country? who knows?, electricity cut off. Yes, just like like. It was raining, I told you. When it rains I don’t know what it is that gets flooded and the electricity suddenly disappears. I cooked, candlelight. Romantic? No, undeveloped.

Clap, clap, electricity is back. I turn on my PC. Yes , no mobile, no laptop. A comment to moderate . An ex student, well, a student. She blogged with my class in 2007. She’s back. On her own.

I forget about the rain. About the leak. About the electricity. About living in the third world. I even forget about the things the institutions stubbornly deny.

Welcome, Renata .

(Ah, the title, should I have said consumer? Citizen is quite a dated word, I think.)

Update (a couple of seconds after posting and re reading). Mind you, I’ll not forget forever.

Images4Education. Week 3.

No matter what your teaching objectives might be, a class activity is always addressed to a certain group. Consequently, it’s usually difficult for me to design an activity when I’m on holidays.

Our task for week 3 was to create three slide shows using three different tools: Animoto, Slideshare and the slideshow in Big Huge Labs. As there were no students around to bring some inspiration, I decided to build a slideshow for me. Poetry was already in my mind when I read Sandburg meets Flickr, by David Jakes.  Poems and images go naturally together.

I like the brevity of Pound’s In a Station of the Metro. The brevity, the lively description and most of all the beauty he discovers in a scene which is, for me, quite ugly.

What I did was very simple: I replaced adjectives and nouns by images.

Animoto is so easy to use, it gives you immediate satisfaction and the outcome is always attractive.

I also prepared a presentation and uploaded it to Slideshere. There I could include the photo credits. You can add a youtube video to slideshare presentations. That’s how I managed to include the Animoto show in the presentation. (The image quality is lost when you send your show to Youtube.)

Pound first published this poem in 1913, and I wondered if I could get some photos from The Commons. I thought it was great to see those pictures in the BigHugeLabs slideshow as the photo information appears as the slides play.

Here it is, you’ll have to follow the link: it’s not possible to embed a BigHugeLab show.

This last one was an interesting photo search. And it was then when I could place my hypothetical students. Digging into the past, not through history books, but through pictures showing everyday life.

People with Tools

My thoughts a month ago.

I already had the suspicion I was a a member of too many nings. In fact, I couldn’t even remember which ones I had signed up for. I accidentally found my Ning profile: 16. Impossible to participate, even impossible to read. Lurk? How would I lurk if I didn’t know where…

This time I lurked, I didn’t research, I just had a quick look. Which Nings are active? I concluded:

• The ones that have reached a critical mass. Self feed.

• The ones with an active creator that starts most of the discussions, sends messages to members, has enough energy and time and a clear objective to keep it alive.

• The ones that in spite of not having reached a critical mass, still work due to community contribution. Those are the ones I love. They seem to cover a very specific need.

So, what to do with my own memberships? Just let them die at the bottom of those social networks? Conclude Nings are not for me and never join one again? Visit them all again and see if I get hooked?

I was in the middle of those musings, when something showed up: I registered for images4education. How to register? Join a Ning! Another one?, I thought. Well… so once more the paper work, your name, your website, your interests. Don’t they know all that?! They have myNing profile! Old Ning friends appeared on my page, I was not alone.

My thoughts now.

Ning was a good choice for the EVO session. Why?

• You don’t need any special training on how to use Ning.

• Everything is there, neat and clear. You just need to be ready to click.

• Being able to add external links on the tabs is a great possibility for a course which is using other sites as well.All you need to access is just there on top, on a clean line.

• The Group feature contributes to the organization of activities.

• You have your own page, which you can even modify.This helps to create a sense of belonging.

• There are different degrees of possible participation. One to one interaction through comments, and also private interaction through messages. Group discussions in the forum or groups.

Is that all? Of course it isn’t. That’s just the description of the tool. The most important thing is participants leaving their traces on that environment. Modifying it. Building new short-cuts.

If we were interacting through a mailing list, would the session atmosphere be so friendly, supportive, encouraging? I doubt it.

If participants and moderators weren’t ready to socialize, to add their 2cent worth, to respect each other, would Ning be fostering interaction? I’m sure it wouldn’t.

OK. But now I don’t know whether to wear that shirt or not.Photo
by davitydave

Technorati Tags: EVO09 images4education ning

Images4Education – Week 2

I loved one of the tasks for last week. We had to write a poem about our origins. I had never written a poem, the first time I saw the task I thought, ‘How am I going to do this?’ Then I forgot the I can’t, I never, no way and got to work on it.

Several things helped:

• No experience as a writer, but loads of experience as a reader.

• The topic was highly motivating.

• I immediately knew what picture to choose.

• I made a point of connecting to my past through the senses, one connection brought lots of other sensory associations to my mind.

• When you use your senses to connect to your past (I’ve also experienced this in drama classes) the scenes come so vivid.

• I had a lot of fun choosing just a few words to try to make those scenes vivid. The result was lots of other not taken photos.

I published my poem on flickr feeling lucky no eye contact was necessary.

Technorati Tags: EVO09 images4education flickr i4eorigins

Images4Education- Week 1

Learning environments

Wiki

• The whole session is scheduled on a wiki.
• The sort of organization wikis allow make them easy to navigate.
• It ’s great to know all the syllabus in advance. It allows you to get organized and reduces anxiety.

Ning

• The place for sharing, socializing, making suggestions and looking for help
• It’s easy to use, quite intuitive, really.
• The pages and external links are easily visualized in the tabs.
• You can connect at different levels: private, personal, groups.

Flickr
Flickr is an excursion. It’s one of my favourite sites, the one I’m always reluctant to leave. (I’m even considering getting a pro account, I’m tired of having to delete photos.)

Week one was about getting acquainted with participants and with the different session environments. When I teach (face to face) I always privilege personal contact. I need my students to get involved with each other. I need them to develop a sense of belonging. I make this clear the very first class. No. I don’t speak about this. I develop activities that make them get involved, show them as individuals and visualize themselves as part of the group.

I know some (a lot of) people might think it is impossible -in only one week- to create a feeling of belonging in a virtual environment with 350 people taking part, people scattered all over the world. Well… believe me… it’s not impossible.

And in this case, the same rule that works with the physical world works with the virtual world. Don’t speak about it it, do it.

If you want to know what I’m talking about, just have a look here or here.

Technorati Tags: EVO09 images4education

EVO09

Registration for EVO sessions has just started.

I’m about to sign up for two of them:

Collaborative Writing

Why?
Last year I explored (or rather attempted to explore) collaborative writing with my students. Some questions have not been answered yet:

• How to break the “group work” tradition which always results into a sort of Frankenstein piece of writing.

• How to facilitate CW. What could be done before. Activities? Warm up activities?

• How to help students assess their result.

Bonus motivation: WiZiQ sessions will be held.

images4education

Why?
Well, just because I love images.

• My flickr account is one of my favourite ones.I would love to explore it further.

• Images make me think, dream, create, imagine…

• However, I cannot say images are part of my class.
  

Bonus motivation: Mary Hillis and Joao Alves are among the moderators.

Finally…

I hope to learn a lot, come across old friends, meet new colleagues and have fun.

I feel tempted to sign up for the drama session. I’m in two minds right now. I don’t know whether to follow the organizers’ advice (warning?) :

We strongly recommend that you sign up for no more than two sessions.

or Oscar Wilde’s:

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

What to do?