Month: September 2009

Last June I spent a very enjoyable but also very tiring day being filmed by Teachers TV. The premise of the series of which my programme was to be a part was that an ‘expert’ in an area of ICT was visited by an interested / curious ‘beginner’. The ‘beginner’ observed the ‘expert’ for a day then went back to their school to try out some of the things they had learned. My area was ‘online communities / social media’ and my visitor, Marie Guyomarc’h, a secondary French teacher.

I love it when I open my Inbox and come across an email that points me to a new resource. I received one such email tonight and loved it so much that I had to blog it immediately.

Wallwisher is a site that allows you to add multiple short posts on a wall. As JimmyP says in his email –

It’s got a lot of potential I think to encourage pupils to write in the
target language. The site lets you create a page or ‘Wall’ very
easily. You give the address of the page to the pupils and they double
click on the page and can then write a short post. They can even add a
picture/video although I haven’t tried this yet. When you create the
page you can set up some restrictions in terms of viewing and posting.

Jimmy posts an example that he’s made with his class – http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/miordenador Looked impressive so I decided to have a go!

My resulting wall is on the theme of Los planetas, linking into Yr5’s topic this term.
I’ve tried embedding a video – works well – and a picture – from wikicommonmedia

I’ll be inviting pupils to join in later on in the topic. This to me is a little like Tweeting and blogging at once. There is a limit to how many characters you can use so pupils are not expected to write a long post which I feel will appeal!

Thanks Jimmy for the heads up!

Made it to the hotel at 2.30am this morning and this is what I did!

Already engrossed in the conference and tweeting madly, but I’m looking forward to the sun sea sand and swimming pool!

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Cathedral, Varna, Bulgaria, originally uploaded by Tim Waters.

By now I should be schmoozing wth eTwinning Ambassadors from across Europe at a 5 star hotel in Varna, Bulgaria. Instead, I am sitting in a pub at Budapest Airport. It’s a long story….

I will finally arrive in Varna at 1.35 am – was due at 15.30. However, I am grateful that
a)I met George Glass at Heathrow this morning to save me from a serious panic attack
b) the ladies at the Austrian Airways ticket desk were much more pleasant than their representative at the gate when our original ‘plane was horribly delayed
c) BA had flights today to Varna
d) George had some euros

So, hoping to report from Varna tomorrow.