Agata's Two Cents

Fun with English nomination

2005-12-01T22:10:00.000+01:00

I have just decided to send a nomination of Teresa's "Have fun with English" blog. I believe it is a very inovative project, especially with such young learners. My kids were thrilled to be able to send and receive messages from their friends in Portugal and to see their emails and hear their voice messages online in the blog.

My Westie

2004-05-30T21:18:00.000+02:00

This is my puppy. It is 10 weeks old.Isn't it cute?

Opinions on my articles and English Quizzes website

2004-05-16T12:27:00.000+02:00

Dear Webheads and all,

I am currently collecting documents I need for my professional development. One of the requirements was publishing 2 or more articles and/or web pages. I have just learned that I also need opinions on the articles and evaluation of my website. And here goes my request: could you please have a look at my articles (links below) and write a few words giving your opinion on them? Do you think they are useful for an ESL teacher? The articles were written as tutorials for English teachers who are not familiar with new technology.
Also, I'd like to ask you if you have any evaluation rubrics for ESL/EFL websites? I need to create a survey about my website www.englishquizzes.prv.pl

My articles: Creating interactive ESL/EFL materials

How to teach writing on the Internet
How to create simple web pages

Talking to Babi - our first Polish lesson

2004-02-16T12:14:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I met Babi on the Yahoo Messenger. We wanted to have a voice chat in Polish. Babi is a very motivated beginner and she is really eager to learn Polish. I do admire her enthusiasm!
Anyway, we enabled voice messaging and... for some reasons Babi's microphone didn't work :-( So I was talking and she was listening and writing or sending smilies. It was a strange feeling to talk to the cyberspace and wait, wait for Babi's feedback. I was so sorry she wasn't able to talk to me!
I told her about my hometown, Przemyśl. Here you can see some pictures of my town - isn't it lovely?
You can visit Babi's blog - I love its title, Babi! - at The Polish Connection

Voice messages.

2004-02-12T22:06:00.000+01:00

Today my son and his cousin Wojtek received replies to their messages. They were waiting for them anxiously - actually Wojtek's first question after coming back from school was: Any messages for me?

Tommy is the braver one (probably because he is younger) and he didn't hesitate when I suggested recording his message for Tere's classes. Wojtek decided he would send just a text message (he typed it himself!). Wojtek didn't want to read the message at first but after Tommy read his he decided he could do it! I am proud of him :-)

I used "HandyBits VoiceMail" and I have just found a "for kids" version of the software. It is free of charge and easy to use :) . I'm also going to experiment with Wimba (yesterday I didn't even know anything like that exists ;-)))

You can listen to the recordings at Teresa's "Fun with English" blog.

Here are the messages from Portugal and Tommy's and Wojtek's replies:

Hi, Tommy!

Your fotos are cool!!!!!!
We are very excited!
Your foto of dinosaur is very cool!!!
Good bye, friend.
Your 5F friends!

From Tommy:

Hello, girls and boys!

You are cool, too!
Is it hot in Lisbon? Do you like computer games? Do you like animals?

Bye, bye!

Tommy

Hello Wojtek!

Your cousin and you are very cools!!!
Tommy's fotos are cools.
Goodbye, Wojtek. Good weekend!!!

Your 5F friends

Hello,friends from 5F!!

Do you like bicycles? I like to ride my bicycle all summer.
I like to ride with high speed.

Good weekend!
Your friend Wojtek.

Well, what do you think? Aren't they just great?

Tommy and his friends from Portugal.

2004-02-11T18:10:00.001+01:00

My son Tommy sent second voice message to his Portuguese friends. He was delighted and strongly motivated- can you imagine that he insisted on recording his message four times until he finally found it OK? I'd have sent the first recording - it was OK with me :-)

Teresa's students liked our snowy winter so we chose some more winter photos. All kids got really excited about this key-pal experience. What amazing things we are able to do thanks to the Internet! A few years ago we would wait for weeks for a letter from Portugal to Poland and now all you need to do is a couple of mouse-clicks!

And this is what Teresa told me about her students' reaction to Tommy's e-mail:

Hi, Agata!

You should have seen my 5F students' enthusiasm with the surprise! They started going crazy when I took the laptop from my case, because they didn't know what was going to happen. Then I told them about everything Tommy had sent yesterday.

They listened very silently and attentively to the message twice and understood a lot. However, the sound on my laptop is not loud enough for a classroom.

Then each row came over to my desk to read the message and see the picture. They loved Tommy, but went crazy over the snow!!! We don't get it in the Lisbon area, only further north.

Anyway, as I was leaving the classroom, I asked them what I could tell Tommy. They all smiled excitedly and said: "Tell him we loved everything and say 'thank you'!"

I'll try to take a picture of the classes tomorrow or Monday at the latest. And also experiment with voice mail.

I think this is going to be an experience they won't ever forget!

I did the same with the other class, 5G, and the reaction was identical. They wrote their message for Tommy that I've already sent you.

Thank you for Wojtek's text and sound messages! :-)

BaW kids in action!

2004-02-10T16:23:00.000+01:00

Today we started a very exciting project with Teresa's pupils and my two kids: my seven-year-old son Tommy and my 10-year-old nephew Wojtek.
Teresa's kids sent a message to Wojtek:

Subject: Hi, Wojtek!

Hi, friend! How are you?
We are students of 5F (5th grade), Escola de Sto. António (St. Anthony's School).
We are from Lisbon, Portugal. And you? Where are you from?

Bye, friend! See you!

My son Tommy got very interested and asked me if he could start sending e-mails to children in other countries. After talking to Tere we composed his message:

Subject: From Tommy

Hello, friends!

My name is Tommy Warcholak.
I am 7 years old. I like computer games.
I am from Przemysl, Poland.

Bye!
Tommy

Finally, we recorded the message - Tommy got very excited about it - and we sent it to Portugal.
I hope it is a good start for our BaW4kids project!

Winter in Poland

2004-02-10T10:10:00.000+01:00

It started snowing again two days ago and we had enough snow to build a snowman.
Weather is very capricious these days. Last week we had spring - I was surprised to see snowdrops in my garden! Today it is snowing again and it looks like winter is back to stay.

I finally managed to insert a photo in my blog.

Na zdjęciu widać śnieżnego smoka. Moje dzieciaki pomagają dzielnie w lepieniu bałwana.

Jokes in Polish

2004-02-09T15:29:00.000+01:00

For our Polish-speaking group I've got two jokes about colours:

1.
Co to jest : zielone, czerwone, niebieskie - a jak podskoczy białe??? - Nie wiecie? Ja też nie - ale fajnie zmienia kolory, prawda?...

2.
Tato, co to jest? (have a look at the picture)
To, synku, czarna jagoda.
A czemu taka czerwona?
Bo jeszcze zielona!

Experimenting with pictures

2004-02-07T18:43:00.000+01:00

Thanks everybody for all your kind words! I am still experimenting with the blog and I think I'll try if it is possible to insert picures here. I'd like an online journal where pictures could be published and where more than one person could post messages. It is possible here, if I am not mistaken :-)

I went to Bee's blog and I like the way she organized all useful links: it is very user-friendly and clear!

Porozmawiajmy po polsku :-)

2004-02-06T21:24:00.000+01:00

"Becoming a Webhead" course is really great! I have already learned a lot - just to mention Text and Voice (especially voice!) conferences on Yahoo Messenger (thank you so much, Bee, Babi, Anna, Antonia, Eva and Bob!!), chats on Windows Messenger ( thanks, Daf, for your help!), and finally blogging. At first I wasn't sure if I'd dare... But here I am!

And now: Attention, Polewebs!

Zaledwie od dwóch tygodni trwają zajęcia kursu "Becoming a Webhead" a już mogę powiedzieć, że wiele się tu nauczyłam. To, co mnie pociąga najbardziej, to serdeczna atmosfera podczas spotkań w cyberprzestrzeni i ogromne możliwości współpracy nauczycieli z różnych stron świata.

Szczególnie podoba mi się możliwość jednoczesnego rozmawiania z osobami tak bardzo oddalonymi od siebie, jak Anna w Australii, Bee w Brazylii, Bob w Teksasie itd.

Myślę też, że w przyszłości, jeśli uda mi się uzyskać dostęp do pracowni komputerowej w szkole, będę korzystać z Tapped In. Konferencje online ze studentami z innych krajów z pewnością spodobałyby się moim studentom :-)

2004-02-06T10:37:00.000+01:00

I have just created my first blog! I am very excited about it! I am going to publish some of my thoughts and interact with those of you who'd like to join me. That is: as soon as I learn how to enable adding comments to my posts :-)