Xanga - another blog of mine

As I've been involved with many blogging experiments over time, I've got more blogs than this one. My preferred one is at www.xanga.com/susnyrop - where I've been posting since 2002, about matters that relate to online culture learning and life in general. Things that I would like to remember myself, or comment.

That's why I decided to dedicate this one @ blogspot, named worldofwebheads, for more portfolio oriented blogging, show casing my work. This was opened in a workshop context. I am still looking for a poignant name for my presence. This is a VIP matter for me.

Quick Portfolio Blogging - samples from my online presence

For my professional development, I need a documentation page showing examples from my online experiences with learning and teaching with multimedia and interactive communication, and the fastest way I can think of just now, is to start blogging these as I find them in Google. There will not be a stringent chronology or soring of categories; this will be my next step ahead to get a more pro face to the world around me. I'm a playful person who likes to experiment and have fun while learning together with others, and I consider teaching as part of this, as we're always learning something new when working with students, this is even more true when it comes to the technical aspects of online interaction; we do need to find a shared vocabulary as well as developing a helpful spirit of easy going access to working with things.

My online presence started back in 1994 when I had my first modem and became an enthusiast participant in a Danish online community experiment, PolOnline, with about 4000 participants, using a First Class server solution to host our topic-oriented discussions about all and everything. Computer tips and tricks (of course:-), education, family matters, domestic animals, travels, reading books - you name it.

In 1995, I passed a bachelor exam at the Danish University of Education, in communication and Multimedia. My project was a digital, interactive book for young children with language difficulties, "The little house on the screen" using Hyper Card programming and the facility to let kids use a microphone for practising their vocal language.

In 1996 I was visiting 6 village schools in the south of France where they were pioneers in online communication on a penpal level, working with homepages, journals and collaborative multimedia projects.

In 1997 I went on a study travel to China. I visited a business school in Beijing and was introduced to an interesting pioneer project for young women.

(to be continued)

TLNCE 2000 Toronto: Emerging trends and needs

in 2000, I was invited to do a poster presentation together with Sylvia Currie from the Global Educators' network, for the TLNCE 2000 conference in Toronto, and I was lucky to get an internationalization grant from the Danish University of Education. TLNCE is for the Tele Learning Network Centres of Excellence, a Canadian state funded project under the direction of Linda Harasim , Lucio Teles (and others). Sylvia and I were collaborating online and met for the first time in the conference center when we were setting up our poster.

With Inspiration software, I created a mindmap, a diagram showing some trends in current e-learning, inspired by the ongoing moderated theme discussions taking place in the GEN, Global Educators' network.

Knowtips 2005 - Chaos and complexity

The first all online conference Knowtips 2005 - Tips and tricks for Thriving and Surviving online. We used Moodle for our conference homepage and discussions, and Elluminate for our synchronous sessions.

I - Susanne Nyrop - was engaged in the pre conference commitee as well as hosting a panel presentation of Webheads in Action, from a chaos and complexity viewpiont of learing in an online community of practice. In this panel were: Dafne Gonzalez, Sergei Grid, Vance Stevens and Susanne Nyrop.

TCC 2003 conference

TCC 2003: The Student Experience in Online and Hybrid Courses
Eighth Annual Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference (22-24 Apr. 2003
With an invited discussion panel of Webheads in Action leaders and students (Vance Stevens, Aiden Yeh, Dafne Gonzalez, Susanne Nyrop etc)

Teaching English as a World Language in the Information Age

6th international Belnate IATEFL conference, November 3-5, 2004
Minsk State Linguistic University - Minsk, Belarus
Teaching English as a World Language in the Information Age

This event was taking place in a computer lab, using an Elluminate classroom sponsored by the online Learning Times community. From my home office connection, I was co-moderating an all online Webheads workshop session with Dafne Gonzalez, Venezuela and Vance Stevens, UAE about Webheads in Action history and examples. We were also involved in the pre-conference planing commitee with Sergei Grid who is teaching at the University of Minsk and responsible for this succesful conference.
http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel/Teachers/onlinevents.htm

Invited guest teacher in TESOL classes

Using groupboard (with shared drawing tool), as a communication starter in a chat session with Buthaina Alothman's female students, Kuwait 2002 (from the archive)
http://alothman-b.tripod.com/sus_chat_090.htm
www.groupboard.com

Playing the Mystery guest online

From a Mystery guest in the virtual classroom

How many lives does a good olde Webhead have?

I had joined this workshop plus some other TESOL EVO workshops, well aware this was going to be a pretty tight schedule for me. I'm skimming, surfing and sometimes finding time to join a workshop live session or two. I'm working on Moodles, on blogs and now also soon on a TikiWiki, all of these projects would have been impossible for me to manage all on my own, but I flow around in cyberspace tinkering with tit & tat, grace to our amazing and inspiring Webheads community (that I joined back in 2001, hey, I'm a veteran) But I really wish to get on working seriously again with some older homepages that need updates. They were created with an outdated HTLM editor plastering lots of cryptic code strings into the HTML source code And I agree - to do so, careful reading is needed. At least, I swear I'm not as inactive as may seem from just reading this discussion. From that you might suspect some sort of web absence!

Just now I come from a joint fun project with Wendy - I'm a mystery guest in her EFL Grammar and composition class, encouraging her sutdents to ask all sorts of questions "about me". We got the inspiration from Bee but did not really know exactly how go come around this; would I post in the classroom blog directly, or what? I started a new account at Blogger as the Mystery guest, was reading their personal blogs and sent a few comments with invitations to my mystery blog, Wendy posted a message for her students, and then went sick and stayed away from school. This is a Blended learning class, but they're not yet familiar with blogging, Or were. Because they have really taken it now! As Wendy says, they all know where to find my blog, and how to post comments. They have asked all sorts of questions, and they know now that I live in Denmark, and it is just crazy how hard it was to figure out what to tell so they would become curious enough to ask, and what to hide so they would not know at once. And, even in Blogger (mac/Safari), I need to type in some code, to feed it with dollops of HTML, as Vance says. (over at the webpresence workshop - this is a semi-cross posting)

Keep smiling! We were just having some fun. The magic works. And hopefully they were forgetting all about grammar and style while communicating for getting to know someone unknown.
http://mysteryguest.blogspot.com and
Wendy's Advanced writing and grammar blog at http://ievcc.blogspot.com/ and
Wendy's meta-reflective, personal English Studies Blog at http://ievcc.blogspot.com/

Complicating or simplifying things with experimental blogs for online content and interaction?
Hmm, changing the tipping point perhaps!

virtual hugs,
yours ubiquitous
Serendipity Sus

(will cross post this to keep groups & blogs vibrant)

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Surviving and thriving online?
Meet the Webheads in Action - and 20 other presenters
in the knowtips 2005 online Tips & tricks conference
23-28 February 2005
@ http://www.knowtips.ca