Exactly two years ago (really!) this blog began. My first blog post was about what I was cooking for dinner for my parents. Gritty stuff (yawn)
This blog began on the edublogs site (thank you James Farmer) and then lived for a little while with the Edtech talk guys and then eventually got housed closer to home. Yes we have been around. The blog began because we were two (and now we are four) language technologists feeling somewhat isolated in our respective academic ivory towers, each with dwindling conference and travel budgets (not to mention limited travel time… one of us is the father of 5 under the age of 10) and yet each with a keen interest to find out about new things that could help with the teaching and learning of languages.
Not surprisingly, the first ever commenter on this blog was Dave. Yes, that Dave. The Dave of Jeff and Dave and one of the EdtechTalk guys. Dave was a frequent visitor to this site and helped me through the initial steps of “oh dear how do I make –this– appear on my blog” as happens to all of us when we first start out with a new tool, lots of energy, and not a clue as to what you are doing.
I/ we have the EdTechTalk boys to thank for a number of things. First, thanks to a webcast they did with Barbara Ganley I learned about her work and have been following her (breathlessly trying to catch up!) ever since. Second, they introduced us to the fun of skypecalls with people from all around the world. Before that time I would not have believed there was this amazing world of really incredible strangers you may never meet but from whom you can learn extraordinary things. That knowledge has extended into my teaching and my work with faculty in more ways than I can possibly explain here. Third, they taught us what fun it is to care about something so passionately that you would launch off of the couch and hurl yourself into an argument about history and dates and facts and teaching. The “Edtech Talk Massacre” was one of those events. (And the blog post that I wrote about it is here ) Soon thereafter my posts for this blog went from “what does this button do?” to thinking about how technology cannot and should not mask bad or imprecise teaching, and other ed-tech-classroom-centric mumblings. And then, as they say, it was downhill from there…:-)
So yes, we have learned a lot and continue to learn and grow in our own ways in our separate little pieces of the blogosphere. HOWEVER! In the spirit of many pieces loosely joined, on December 6 at 8 p.m. EST we are hosting a reunion of sorts. Jeff of Edtech talk (and perhaps Dave???) will be joining us as we talk about using video and audio for meetings and reunions (like the one we hope to pull off this Thursday) but more important still also how it can be used for teaching. We will be experimenting with UStream as well as Flashmeeting.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE FLASHMEETING SITE we will also be broadcasting on skype…. you can listen to our broadcast here.
We may be two years older and wiser but I don’t think any of us are any mellower… so I hope it will be a fun night. Please join us!
