Our Skype session with Steve Sherman and Sebastian Panakal about Black Friday and other interesting topics.

(unfortunatelly no pictures, sorry about that!)
December 3rd, 2013
This morning we started the conversation class as usual talking about what happened in the city or in our lives during the weekend and somehow the conversation boiled down to Black Friday and other imported practices and traditions that we manage to import from abroad and pop up in Santa Fe, Argentina without anyone actually knowing the origin or reason for it.  I asked my student what her background knowledge was about this, and she informed me that she had received an email invitation from the local huge supermarket branch to pay a visit and take advantage of the convenient offers due for last Friday.  She did not go, but added that later on some of her clients commented that lots of people gathered at the shop to buy.  To shed some light on the subject I decided to invite my friends from Hello Little World and received some written feedback such as this:
Black Friday = big sales.  Enough of them so that the businesses, which much of the year supposedly run negative profit balances (or are 'in the red') begin their biggest month of profit so that now they are in positive balance (or 'in the black'). Hence the name: Black Friday!, by Janet Barnstable;
and this by Joe Mc Nulty:
Black Friday is always the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US.
Did you know President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving in the 1930's to increase retail sales?  http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-about-black-friday-2011-11 during the great depression?
 We got a request to join in the discussion from our friend Sebastian Panakal, from Cochin, Kerala, India, who also wanted to learn about the subject and we were joined in the discussion by our friend Steve Sherman from Cape Town in South Africa.
Steve told us that crowds also gather in huge stores to take advantage of the sales in his country, he later commented that he does most of his purchases online and he introduced us to the term Cyber Monday which was coined by online stores to take advantage of this sales craze thing, so Cyber Monday would be the online version of Black Friday.  An amazing coincidence because my student is also into online shopping, which she uses  to find and purchase her antique tiles, a hobby she has pursued for a long time.  Steve then went on to recommend a site where my student will surely find bargains and the best thing is that that will be in English, so she will practice it without really noticing it!
We went on to talk about holidays and we learned that in South Africa the Summer holiday is shorter than in Argentina but they get several longish breaks during the year.  My student left the classroom happy to have met my friends Steve and Sebastian both of them friendly and ready to help.  Thank you for helping me bring the world into the classroom!  After the session we used Google Earth to visit both towns virtually by seeing some wonderful pictures of your cities.

The Future of Storytelling: Creative Task of the Week No.4/5

My inspirational books:

Casa Tomada, Julio Cortázar (Casa Tomada , here´s the story that gives the name to the book)
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges Ficciones

Why do I like these books?  They are short story books, the writers play with the language and different situations, the stories are original and contain twists or novel points of views, the settings are not only in Argentina but in other (sometimes imaginary or not) countries.  Surprinsingly as it is with most things in life, everything is connected and I like the fact that these writers had the capacity to use the language in a playful way to tell stories and that Cortázar´s novel Hopscotch is designed in a way which could resemble the mechanics of game design in the sense that you can "hop" from here to there and you would always get a different story.  To discover different things everytime you approach it, that is a good piece of art.

What fascinated or impressed me most after listening and watching the material about Digital Games contained in Unit 5

Reluctant at first got bored first chapters didn´t connect not much impressed or interested in the example games, mainly because I have never played online games, or bought my children any xbox or PS2,3, x because 1: too expensive, 2: I wasn´t fascinated by the idea of having a child or myself sitting at the computer screen for such a long time.  However things got better when we arrived at the podcast and the numerous suggestions below the page.  What I liked was the graphics of the Flower and The Legend of Zelda, perfect for children and the idea of having an application that helps parents put children to bed is something I would have LOVED to have but 16 years ago, (mine are all adolescents now!): Nighty Night
I found the soundtrack from The Last Door  particularly beautiful, but I don´t know if I will ever play that game, however I have listened to the first three songs several times, congratulations to Carlos Viola!  This also made me acknowledge the amount of artists involved in the creative process of such a complex thing as a game.
I have to say that before sitting down to write this I decided to take a look at how my fellow moocers had decided to answer this creative task.  What I first came across was a review of this game: Journey and as I read the review my own reflection was affected.  Now I wanted to try out a game, just because this one was nothing like the ones which had been shown so far.
It would be fair to say that the only reason why I did not directly skip this chapter was because I intended to attend The MachinEVO session next January, 2014 and I thought that this chapter would provide me with relevant materials for my future plan.  As it is usually the case, being able to approach the industry of games in this way provided me with many clues as to what makes a good game, how they are made and played, what´s in fashion and the future of games.

Global Ed conf day 5!

Tatyana Chernaya´s Session

Link to the slides

Another one

A video about the History of Russia

Michael Graffin´s Session

Global Classroom Wiki

http://rootsandshoots.org/

Malala Project

Minecraft Project

Olimpic Heroes

Global Community Instagram Project

Global Mock Newbery Blog

Edmodo Pen Pal project

Global Wonderings

Movie Making Challenge

Well, what to say...take your pick, there´s no excuse for NOT joining any of these amazing projects, there is surely one for you!

Again! what to say about this!

Charter for Compassion

I came across this in the FB site.

Partner Projects

Another instance of this initiative in action.

Educators-4-Care

Global Ed Conf, Day 4

My session!!
Well, what to say!  This has been an amazing experience, so much learning with people who helped me during each and every step of the process, from submitting the proposal to the very time of the session.  It was such a thrill to see all my friends in the participant´s box! I felt at home while at the same time I passed to other teachers all the good things I have gained out of being connected for such a short time.

Link to MP4 Recording
(you will have to download this to watch)
Link to MP3 Recording
(you have to download this too, to enjoy while driving to work, perhaps, :))

Antonio Delgado´s Session

Modelo DRAP

Diseño de Ecologías de Aprendizaje

http://escuelalab.com/2013/11/19/proyecto-una-semana-sin-clases-para-aprender-mejor/

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/lectures-didnt-work-in-1350-and-they-still-dont-work-today/281514/

http://gettingsmart.com/2013/11/10-trends-driving-future-education/

Global Ed Conference, Day 3

Emily Longenecker´s session

Complex World, Simple Strategies: Towards deeper global understanding in the classroom

I was drawn to the presentation of this session and found it so interesting that I will post the link to the recording because there´s just too much information and I want to have it handy!

Jennifer Russel, from IEarn USA.
The idea of video blogging is tempting and I have used it before with my friend Abby, a teacher of Spanish, but here the students examples were awesome!

Fabiana Casella´s Session
Fabiana talked about her experience as a teacher of Spanish in USA as an international exchange educator, and the challenges she had to face, how she overcame them and what she got from it.


Anne Mirtschin and Lorraine Leo´s session

Link to document with useful sites to get started with global projects.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/12359603/

An example of how collaboration works for the benefit of many. Key ingredients: enthusiasm, mutual support and respect. I´m so proud of these two ladies!

Global Ed Conf, Day 2.

Jorge Alberto Becerra

Academia de Tecnologías Libres y Social Media
Agenda de Conferencia Global en Español
http://twitdoc.com/view.asp?id=115417&sid=2H21&ext=PDF&lcl=AgendaEspa-olGEC2013.pdf&usr=ATELIS_&doc=185342622&key=key-2l2sam6v98bsglzh6xj0

Vance Steven´s Session
As usual my friend Vance amazed us by showing LIVE how to set up and run Google Hangout on Air, with all the possibilities of adding collaborative note taking and live broadcasting.  A daring enterprise which he successfully accomplished.

Recording of Vance´s Session, good to have as a tutorial reference.

Global Ed Conference, Day 1

Useful links to the conference day 1, Monday November 18th, 2013.

These are the links and brief notes I took while listening tot he sessions that I was able to attend, I couldn´t attend ALL of them but I will catch up with recording later on.

Todd Conaway

I arrived late to this session
 http://www.globaleducationconference.com/forum/topics/the-9x9x25-challenge" target=

http://www.telswebletter.com/2013/09/01/we-triple-dog-dare-you/

http://teaching.nmc.edu/

Mike Furdyk´s Session

Social network for social good.  Collaborative projects in over 13 languages created by educators and students.

Mike is someone who had to cope with something that was not taught at school.  Went to the web for help.

Highlight: "Speak up." Support for student´s ideas.  Grants for students´generated ideas to improve their schools.

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/our-friends/contributors/michael-furdyk

http://www.tigweb.org/youth-media/gg/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ9QzsbteNM

Kate Sutton Jones´Session
Tips for community learning.
Choose learning goals.
Build a network.
Importance of safe environment!
Adult learners´characteristics, ie learning styles, preferences, etc.
Provide multiple varieties of participation, experiences, not only one way to do things.
ENJOY! That´s precisely what I do when I attend these kind of PD!
Where to start networking and learning
http://www.educationbeyondborders.org/

Twitter, Google+Communities, Online courses

Students without borders academy : Dave Fehr, from BC, Canada, offered to help teachers who want to collaborate on Global Education.