ABSTRACT: ¿Cómo acompañar a los docentes en su actualización profesional en servicio? ¿Cómo garantizar que sus nuevas prácticas favorezcan el aprendizaje y se incorporen en forma permanente a sus prácticas áulicas? En esta presentación, discutiremos qué es un «programa de asesoría entre pares» y por qué resulta una alternativa efectiva para lograrlo.

• Date: Saturday, Nov 11, 2006
• Venue: Centro de Convenciones Salguero Plaza, Salguero 2686 (CABA)
• Enrolment: info@abs-international.com.ar; [5411] 4749-3600

Gladys

Venue: Av. Callao 362 - 1ºPiso (Ciudad de Buenos Aires)

Enrollment by phoning to (011)4374-5668

You must have been wondering what's happened to this blogger...  Is she enjoying a year off?  Has she changed cyberspace for books and papers?  Or has she just gone away on a cruise?

Well, nope!I've just been TOO Busy to be able to post entries regularly, not even once every two months, believe me!

Thanks to all those who've kept sending messages and commenting on my blogs in spyte of my silence... Let me see if I can quickly brief you on my news!

• Learning with Computers  keeps doing great. Currently, we have 145 members (I can hardly believe it myself!) and have started going over topics again... Other members have started proposing group projects, so I hope we just keep growing strong!
• I've started training teachers on peer coaching for technology integration, in a blended programme run by Fundación Evolución (sponsored by Microsoft). It's exciting, and a bit step in my professional development.
• I've been making minor contributions to different projects at a local and international level, several of which might  eventually mean some publication of my work... Pity Sharon has left cyberspace, and I can't find a way to share all this means with her!
• For the first time in my lifetime, I've dropped out of an online course. Designing my own website using FrontPage was just too much for me at the moment, especially now I've gotten started without using that tool already (have you visited my website  yet? it's my baby pride! ). Anyway, what I learned has helped me a great deal in enhancing my skills to edit my blogs,  and the webpages at the course on a Moodle platform I should start teaching soon! It feels great to get to understand new tools...
• F2f teaching keeps bringing me great satisfactions... I should start and make a special blog entry for all my classes on Student's Day (next Sept 21)... they DO deserve it!

And now you know why I can't find time to post regularly!

Gladys (in a colourful mood, on a Friday evening!)

PS: the image illustrating this entry was generated with Montage-a-Google. Once again, thanks Claudia for another precious tip!

Once again, a full-of-achievements, enriching month has gone by ! Just have a look:

• F2f teaching couldn't be more pleasant... Concerned as I was about not being up to my students' expectations because of the bad moments I'd been going through just before classes started, all my courses seem happily working hard to learn and share... who can ask for more? Sometimes I wonder how reliable my perception can be, I feel they're all enjoying themselves learning and doing their best (not that they're finding that easy, but...).  I'll miss them all next week, as I'll be attending a 5-day full time training session, the second part of my training as a facilitator for "Entre Pares", the programme which will work to foster technology integration into Argentinian schools... At the same time, I'll be thinking all of the time of how much I owe each of them, especially considering they've all agreed to modify our usual timetables so I can take the week off!

• As regards technology integration into my teaching, my "Theory-of-Education" class is doing their best to contribute to our wiki, to which we've added a Webnote space  so that visitors can also leave a message... Even a teacher in Japan has contacted us!!!!My job now is to find them a larger audience, so that they keep enthusiastic! I've asked at dekita.org  whether this is the place to "advertise" our work, but haven't seen an answer from them yet (need to check my Bloglines more often!). My Ethics students (also at teachers' training college) were excited by the possibility on commenting on blog postings by Susana's students, and elated by the podcasts by Fernanda's class in Portugal,and are currently carrying out research to contribute to it... Best thing of all? One of my teacher trainees asked me how she could introduce her own students into podcasting... Yahoo!  Another circle the stone makes on the water"... And only yesterday I introduced my CAE class into team blogging: CAE Readers is an attempt to collect film and book reviews, aiming at encouraging reading and writing among this group... My first class blog, let's see what comes out of it! A previous attempt: taking part in the International Writing Exchange programme Ruth Vilmi  had kindly invited us in, fell utterly flat, with not even one student among 17 trying to take advantage of it...

MY CONCLUSION: I can't expect my students to carry out extensive work autonomously on the Web, not yet at least! On the bright side, every year I get more positive responses to technology integration, partly because students are better predisposed, partly because by learning more about it I can think of more suitable tasks for each case...

• "LearningwithComputers" keeps doing VERY well, we have nearly 90 members now, and over 600 messages have already got posted... To our Yahoo! group, we've now integrated a wiki, a blog, a del.icio.us and a Blinklist. We've also started a system of tutoring for members who feel they need more guidance. Soon we're adding a Webnote  space... In BAW06 this week I read about nuvvo  and would love to try it as a way of organising archives for newcomers, but that'll have to wait!
  

I keep "running" to cope with it all (besides, I do have a life "beyond education", I swear!). And I don't give up the hope of finding some time to give a final twist to my "third child", as I've come to see my 8-year-old thesis project!

Where there is a will, there is a way. (though sometimes it seems to be "a long and windy road", as the Beatles would sing!) ;-)

Gladys