Serendipity

ser·en·dip·i·ty

noun /ˌserənˈdipitē/ 
serendipities, plural

The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

Many wonderful opportunities lie latent in our connected world. 

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting two other educators (Tania Sheko from Australia and Sinikka Laakio-Whybrow from Finland) via the Flickr online community.  Participating in a daily photo submission, we were sharing perceptions and thoughts which eventually led to our own photography/writing project with students called Through Global Lenses. 

Once again, I stumbled upon a conversation in Facebook (yes, it can and is used professionally among some of us!) between my two global colleagues who were planning a blog post/comment interaction for their classes.  Since this class is also blogging and discussing in online groups, EME 2040 students will have the unique opportunity to experience this blogging project by participating in the comment role.  Serendipity at its best!

Photo Credit to Mario on Flickr

You will be visiting the students blogs via a central webpage for each school.  There you will find introductory and general informational posts from the respective teacher.  If you scroll down, you will get a history of the blogging project from each school.  On the right column, you will find a list of links that indicate the individual student blogs. 

• Kaarina Senior High School, Finland - Express Yourself in English
• Melbourne High School, Australia - Year 9 English MHS

Please provide a respectful and meaningful comment to the student blogs that you visit. The focus for them is peer interaction and the focus for you, as a prospective e-teacher, is to see how technology is seamlessly used to enhance learning in the traditional classroom...with the bonus of doing so across the world! 

However, since these high school students 'may' visit your blog as well, please post your introduction (with a high school visitor in mind) and include a photograph that is not of you, but represents you (using a Creative Commons licensed image with appropriate attribution).

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Introduction

Students from my EME 2040 - Introduction to Technology for Educators at Edison State College - Collier Campus will be using blogs to posts assigned chapter journals.  These journal posts will provide an avenue for reflecting upon and interacting with the required textbook, Transforming Learning with New Technologies by Robert W. Maloy, Ruth-Ellen Verock-O'Loughlin, Sharon Edwards, and Beverly Park Woolf.  In the process, students will learn about the art of creating a personalized web 2.0 website with enhancements such as hyperlinks, images, and videos...all of which will be transferred to future wiki and e-portfolio creations.  

A sample EME 2040 blog shows how to get started with the three required elements in the chapter reviews.  In addition, there are some short tutorials here to supplement the 'how to' demonstrations provided in class:
How to Hyperlink
How to Add a CC Image with Attribution
How to Insert a Video