Saturday, March 31, 2007


Another mind-stretching workshop completed ... I am continuously amazed at how different each one is. This is a good thing as it reminds me how different every individual student is. And they always surprise me with the understanding they gain and impart, and the high learning curve they are willing and able to achieve! This time we were joined by Dr Norm Vaughan at the University of Calgary as he shared with us some of his experiences and reflections on the forms and usefulness of webquests and inquiry-based learning. This discussion stimulated some interesting questions and ruminations afterwards :-)


posted by dlh_downunder @ 4:51 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

I'm just starting to prepare for the second workshop - my how time flies! :-)
 This time we will be focussing on creation & functions of webquests & other associated ideas. But the highlight will be a live discussion with Dr Norm Vaughan at the University of Calgary, using ELive. He'll be talking us through how his students created their Webquests & what they used them for.
 My students seem to be taking up the wiki & blog challenge & starting to post - it's also great that some of my past students are taking an interest in this semester's activities again & interacting with them! :-)

posted by dlh_downunder @ 2:44 PM 0 comments

Monday, March 05, 2007

The 1st workshop for this semester went ahead well, I think. I'm concerned that so few students are enrolled, though ... and I wonder why. But those of us who came had a great time & learnt lots, which is the aim of the activity - apart from enjoying some delicious morning tea snacks :-)

So now I start planning for the next one & getting ready for questions in the 1st drop-in session which will be this coming Friday. We didn't mange to have an ELive session with University of Alaska this time, because of a local conference over there, but we have high hopes for the 2nd workshop when Dr Norm Vaughan from University of Calgary will be talking to us about WebQuests & his students' experiences.

posted by dlh_downunder @ 11:27 AM 2 comments

Friday, March 02, 2007

















How time flies! A new year, new semester, & tomorrow new students in the 1st workshop for Sem. 1 2007! Very exciting ... Unfortunately we won't have quite the excitement this time that we usually have in the 1st workshop since the University of Alaska CDE people are busy with a local conference this weekend, & can't do a live presentation for us. But I should be able to organise something for the next workshop. And in the next workshop we will be able to (virtually) meet Dr Norm Vaughan from University of Calgary who will talk to us about webquests, blogs & wikis, & how he & his students use them in Calgary.

In December I had the opportunity to present at the ASCILITE conference in Sydney (photos above):
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/
proceeding/onlineIndex.html

And tomorrow the first workshop will happen, we'll learn about the history of Technology Enhanced Language Learning, begin to talk about Social Networking software & learn how to create & maintain our own blogs & class wiki ... I'm looking forward (with some anxiousness) to working with a new group of students and seeing how they develop and learn all these new skills and understandings.


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posted by dlh_downunder @ 1:13 PM 0 comments