Friday 28 January 2011

Hands around the World.

Last night was very interesting. The moderators, this week, of BAW2011  had decided to introduce  communication tools to the newbies, so Wednesday was a Skype day, and Thursday was for Twitter.
By the time I logged in, the session had moved to tweetdeck and its uses.In order to help the people who were unfamiliar with the tool, it was decided to do a walk through, using Skype conferencing.
Well, I am becoming more tech-savvy all the time, but it was actually thrilling to be involved.
I suddenly realised that I was speaking to Mbarek in Morocco,Teresa in Portugal,Maria in Argentina,Svetlana in Czech Republic, Marisa in Greece, and Juan (not sure where he's from) ALL AT THE SAME TIME! How cool is that?
In the back of my mind, I am aware of being able to connect like this, but when you consider it, it's an amazing thing to do. Not only is the world becoming smaller, but the access to these fantastic educators is a prize beyond compare.
There was a lot to take in for the teachers who were unfamiliar with the tools, so we ended up investigating how to make groups in Skype, leaving Tweetdeck for another time. I even offered to do a summary of how to use it, which will be posted to the group forum.
What a long way I have travelled.It was only a couple of weeks ago that I did my first summary at all. This was for #ELTchat, and involved trawling through about a million tweets and re-tweets(only a slight exaggeration) to extract the main points. Second time around doesn't hold the same terror.
It's the same with this blog :the more I post and reflect,the easier it feels.

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