Welcome 2010!
This is what the first day of 2010 looks like where I am. Impeccable weather to stay at home and reflect on the past and future decade and how to bring all this together to the present. Happy New Year everyone!
How do YOU connect online?
A quick brainstorm on Wordle generated this Word Cloud to answer D’Arcy Norman’s question.
How do you connect online?
Tedx São Paulo
About a month ago, I submitted my answers to the questions posed by Tedx São Paulo in order to watch the first event, which expects to gather more than 600 people. We have been asked to answer a number of questions in order to be selected to participate. I have just received confirmation and here are my answers in Portuguese. I suppose I was inspired over my first cup of coffee in the morning. The underlying theme will be “what Brazil has to offer to the world”, following the lead of the 2010 TED “what the world needs to know”.
Na sua opinião, o que o Brasil tem a oferecer ao mundo agora? *
O Brasil tem que mostrar sua cara, sua natureza e sua raça “que não tem medo de fumaça, e não se entrega não”. Tem a oferecer ao mundo um mundo de negócios, ciência e tecnologia, arte e literatura, beleza, talentos suculentos, tonalidades, musicalidades e paixão. Tem a oferecer o exemplo de um povo sofrido que da realidade fria na periferia, da alegria e do drama de todo o dia, dos progressos e regressos do samba da vida produz um carnaval; e no vendaval, no caminho longo e árduo da lida valida na esperança, a confiança de um futuro melhor.
E você, o que tem a oferecer ao mundo agora? *
Minhas real-idades: multi-culturalidade, criatividade, sinceridade e humildade
O que você espera ganhar ao participar do TEDx SP? *
Perspectivas de diversos contextos, realidades e texturas, encontros para compartilhar uma visão e possível ação para um mundo melhor.
O que você tem a contribuir com a comunidade TEDx SP? *
Com o que ela precisar e eu puder oferecer
Se outra pessoa fosse descrever suas maiores conquistas em até 3 sentenças, o que ela falaria? *
Ao longo desses anos, uma família sólida apesar das diferenças e uma rede heterogênea e querida de amigos, um trabalho perseverante e criativo e a alegria de simplesmente viver.
O que nós precisamos saber sobre você, que nós não perguntamos? *
Me convidem e descubram.
TED started by bringing together leaders from the Technology, Entertainment and Design but now invites people from all walks of life to contribute. TEDx is an initiative to stimulate encounters and conversations locally, following the motto: Ideas Worth Spreading.
Open Education and Open Educational Resources: Challenges and Perspectives
On behalf of Carolina Rossini, I’d like to invite you all to the Open Education and Open Educational Resources: Challenges and Perspectives Conference to take place on October 29th/30th at the Law school (Direito GV) in São Paulo.
Carolina, who is sponsored by the Open Society Institute, has written a Green Paper as part of the Brazilian Project on Open Educational Resources, which she will present at the opening of the conference. Once it is published, I will link it here. Download pdf file here: PaperOEROSI080909 and check some photos of the event here.
I hope there is a wifi connection and that the conference will be streamed / tweeted for those who will not be able to attend f2f and want to make comments or questions. You can always use the comment area below for pre-conference questions you want to field.
Invitation OER
OpenEd 2009: Crossing the Chasm
I have just come across the June 15th post on the Open Education Conference 2009 site and realized that I am one day late for the travel scholarship offered for the event. Although the deadline was yesterday, June 30th, I am writing this post in the hope the date will be postponed and that this application will be valid.
The title of the OpenEd conference 2009: Crossing the Chasm is very appropriate. First, because as an enthusiastic early adopter of innovation, my work with new technologies and Open Education has been mostly on the fringes of the secondary school system I work for, without any institutional, logistic or financial support to pursue my work /projects in this field. But then, I suppose that in secondary schools, the established idea is that teachers are not supposed to care about this because others will for them. Secondly, because as I have almost come to the end of my tether, I have not written a single post since April. The prospect of seeing some light at the end of the tunnel (thank you, Leigh) has somehow energized me and made me cross at least the blogging chasm…one step at a time.
I have been working openly and sharing my resources on the web over these past 12 years. I have joined several communities of open-minded people and various networks both locally and internationally, with whom I have collaborated and cooperated in participatory projects presentially and online – voluntarily in my free time. Among these, I can highlight:
1. co-creation and co-management of dekita.org, a project which advocates participatory uses of Web applications in EFL/ESL teaching, favoring open approaches to language learning in which students get to engage the public Web instead of being locked into narrowly circumscribed online spaces;
2. co-development and co-moderation of three 6-week online workshops for teacher professional development in participatory media:
- Using Weblogs in ESL/EFL Classes: New Developments, Uses, and Challenges
- Webpublishing in Open and Participatory Environments
- Social Media in ELT
3. publications and presentations in English, French and Portuguese
4. contributions to Wikieducator and this year’s NMC Horizon Report
5. participation in open projects to divulge the open culture in Portuguese;
- Para Entender a Internet (collective book)
- Adote um Parágrafo (collective translation from English to Portuguese)
6. participation in the FLNW unconferences, the Unesco and Brazilian OER list and growing involvement with different local actors , events and educational networks so as to establish OER and CC awareness among educators to foster an open culture in education in Brazil.
So to the questions:
What you would “bring” to the conference? What can you contribute, be it a willingness to volunteer to moderate a session, some special expertise or project, an already accepted proposal…
At the OpenEd conference, I’m willing to contribute with what I know, talk with participants and organizers about possible projects/partnerships involving the networks I belong to (inside and outside formal educational institutions) and help divulge the conference and its themes– before, during and after through my personal learning spaces and networks.
What you see as the most critical issue facing you in your efforts around Open Education, and how you think the conference can help you address it?
The fact that the Brazilian government officially embraced the open source movement and that our country’s culture is very much based on mix and remix does not mean the majority of educators and population understand how Open Ed can be used and the benefits it can bring to them and the population as a whole.
The most pressing and critical issue for me around Open Education is to establish logistic, technical and financial support to start sustainable projects with actors who are willing to make them work. Why is it so difficult to make this happen? I believe this conference will help me understand and learn how to cross the chasm.