Sunset

Sunset
Originally uploaded by netopNyrop.

This is from a sunset, travelling by train one week before winter solstice.

I' now trying to contribute this postcard to the Webheads Happy new year wiki, so I needed to track the correct URL - and found out I could do this by blogging it from my Flickr!

Nordic Voice conference update

The Nordic Voice online conference runs for two more days.

Tomorrow Fridayat 14:00 GMT will be my turn to let a hundred tongues speaking. I've invted a few virtual guests, Language teachers from Webheads in Action,We're going to share some stories about working with collaborative blogs and inviting guest teachersto create authentic learning situations. Sergei Grid from the University of Minsk in Belarus will join me, perhaps also Dafne Gonzalez, PhD, from Venezuela and Teresa d'Eca, Lisbon, Portugal, Rita Zeinstejer from Argentina, Wendy Seale-Bakes from North Vancouver - we will have to improvise, as there has been as well personal as technical constraints.

at 16:00 GMT we are expecting Arne Theo Schenk from Germany. He is going to share with us an intercultural project where students from six European countires were brought together to workwith the idea of a borrowed identity, taking different roles and playing in front of a camera, then producing a DVD with multimedia material for discussion and reflection.

I'm looking forward to this session as I will be participant in a project meeting later this month where Anne Fox and Theo will also be present.

We had to cancel last minute a session with Katarina Lundin Akesson from the university of Lund, as she has lost her voice. One of our most qualified Nordic Voices... hopefully whe will be able to share her research on Nordic youth and their understanding of neighbour languages, with our community of practice on a later occasion.

I wanted to show some Flickr badge, but...

apparently the Java flash code was not accepted by blogger.

Bundsgaard's contribution to Danish language ICT didactics -

The Danish language teacher is usually the primary home class teacher in our folkeskole (primary and lower secondary). And, information and communication technologies may foster a changed view on language literacy

Jeppe Bundsgaard, Ph.D defended his thesis on Friday 12, at the Danish University of Education (where I've been studying since 1994, a never ending love story) and I decided to attend the ceremonial event. His research and theory building seem to be extremely relevant to our work with the Nordic Voice online conference that we're preparing, so I decided to print the press release that was just ready, and bring it with me, just in case I met people who would like to know. I would like to dive deeper into this research study and find ways to introduce this to our Community of Practice, with an invitation to Jeppe and his research partner, Lisbet Kühn - for future collaboration. Their book and exemplary action research would make some good inspiration and discussion stuff as a contribution to our CoP (still under devleopment, not yet a reality).

The Nordic Voice conference and my proposal

We're almost ready with our homepage for the coming online conference & CoP, the Nordic Voice online http://www.nordiskestemme.dk (still need to fix some bugs and update content).

This is my proposal:

Let a hundred tongues speak online – virtual guest teachers encourage students to speak up
The language in function develops through authentic conversation, but many students find it difficult to engage in conversation using a language they aren’t good at. The net brings easy opportunities to invite a virtual guest teacher into the language classroom, to encourage authentic conversation.
Different ways of exchange among language educators has become a common practice among participants in Webheads in Action (WIA) – a virtual and international community of practice of language teachers and others sharing the interest of virtual learning environments and teaching strategies. The active WIA participants are collaborating since many years around their own professional development, peer teaching, experimenting with tools, and they have developed this collaboration style through informal meetings, mutual help and mentoring, and their experiences are often documented in articles, in public online conferences, and in education research.

Swedish blogosphere: kulturblog from the Book fair

Tomorrow opens the Swedish Bokmässan (Book fair) in Göteborg. A sign of the time is that a team of journliastbloggers are getting paid (apparently sponsored by the giant publisher, Bonniers, as well as the daily tabloid journal Expressen - to blog direct, on location.

As I'm not much into Swedish journalism. their names are not familiar to me - Isobel Hadley-Kamptz and Björn av Kleen. But now I can read what they read on their long travel by (train I suppose), whom they have made interview appointments with for the coming days, quite a lot of name dropping - and other minor reflections. They also try to make some ping pong with comments. Apparently sketchy styled, instant writing on the fly, but even the spontaneous looking could be prepared in advance. I like the idea of instant journalism as it is used here, although I don't know how much I would pay attention to this sort of blog myself - not unless I had the intention to go there myself. I used to go to the Danish Bogmesse for many years to get inspiration for my reading and to hear some of the authros tell stories about their books, but lately I have found this kind of mass venue to noisy and too crowded for my liking - and my tinnitus. So yes, perhaps a Danish Book fair blog would attract me and make me read day for day. After all I am Danish, I live here and this is where I would find the books that are published here; we only rarely see books translated from Swedish to Danish. Which does not matter to me as I read Swedish with ease; but it does matter because Swedish literature would not be exposed and discussed often here. Same goes of course for Norwegian, Finnish or Icelandic literature. And even less I know about Faroean authors from today. If there is any worth mentioning.

SO -I will keep an eye on the Swedish Bokmässan Kulturblog in the coming days and see if I get to know a bit more about what's shaking hinsidan- on the other side of Öresund - now that we do have the new Öresundsbron, the bridge connecting Sealand in Denmark and south Sweden, there should be access to a broader exchange of culture.

http://expressen.se/bloggen/kultur/