Beata+Mirecka-Jakubowska


 * Beata's end of the world**

**Space for Reflection:** I learned a few things about publishing to the web, wikis, wordpress and iweb, but I am leaving with a feeling of insufficient input, as I was expecting to learn more.

Reflection on the cohorts and organization of the conference: I thought the cohort groups were too big even after dividing on the first day, and it was hard to build a sense of familiarity and trust. In cohort time I was hoping to learn more from various English teachers what they actually DO in the 1:1 classroom, how they balance the time in the classroom with Macs and/or hand writing (or maybe no one does this anymore?) and how they use the tools for particular activities. I guess I expected a sort of job-alike sharing in the cohort, with people showing what they've done in a 1:1 environment and whether it worked or didn't - I learn best when I see an example and immediately tweak it to suit one of my courses/ topics/ units I teach.


 * LAST PART of the Saturday session was great, therefore :))))**

**Ideas and Takeaways:** I liked our discussion on Saturday, and I'm taking away the idea that's it's ok to still be a paper and pen person while embracing technology for certain tasks. I'll use Google docs for collaboration on adding setting and characterization to a short story that is written entirely in dialogue form. I'll use www.issuu.com **(for lack of a better place - if anyone knows a better site for .PDF readers please let me know!)** to publish the 9th graders' travel articles - but as usual, I'll collect the first drafts of the text they write printed out on paper, so I can mark and provide feedback the traditional way, as it works better for me (OR I might have them post it to www.turnitin.com and use the comments there to slide over the text and mark electronically.
 * For example,**

And since we talked about discussion and forums, maybe someone might be interested in looking at how my students commented on Romeo and Juliet last year. The link is http://english-9-bmj.wikispaces.com/Quarter+4 and at the top you can click on DISCUSSIONS and see how the commenting went during the year. Some interesting threads are: @http://english-9-bmj.wikispaces.com/message/view/Quarter+4/37920064 @http://english-9-bmj.wikispaces.com/message/view/Quarter+4/38200014

I had better responses a couple of years before on a wetpaint.com wiki I'd made for my class (I've moved from wetpaint to wikisites since), with quotations from the play. Here's a link to one of the questions. @http://eng1-bmj.wetpaint.com/thread/2773806/If+Tyblat+did+not+end+up+dying%2C+would+he+accept+Romeo+being+his+family

I don't know how I'll handle discussion this year, on Moodle or on wiki, whether to use the wiki or move to iweb - I'm lost a bit.....

Need to figure out the difference between a Moodle blog (my school's preference) and Wordpress blog (my preference) for my students. Can anyone help me with that?
 * Questions:**

Well, I figured it out after the Moodle workshop where I learned that Moodle was not a good place to blog as it can't be personalized the way students would want to personalize their pages. Iweb has a blog page, however, so now I'm torn between Wordpress and Iweb.

How to reduce movie file size to be uploaded to Wikispaces instead of to Youtube and then embedded? I don't like embedding, sometimes the internet connection with Youtube doesn't work in Indonesia or it's slow, and I'd rather upload to the wiki or Moodle directly. What program/tool to use?

Didn't learn the answer to this question yet, so still seeking help.

http://english-9-bmj.wikispaces.com/ last year's 9th grade class site [] just started, students comment on each other's blogs ||
 * Contacts**
 * ~ **Name** ||~ **School** ||~ **Email** ||~ **Twitter** ||
 * Beata Mirecka-Jakubowska || Jakarta International School, Indonesia || bmirecka@jisedu.or.id || I don't twitter, but I have a few websites for my classes that might possibly give someone some ideas.