Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning » My Learning Journey

Introduction

My Learning Journey

April 1st, 2008

Cristina Costa’s learning journey……..

My Learning Journey

Move!

July 4th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

Yesterday this link arrived at my twitter channel via @ewanmcintosh. (isn’t twitter fab? ) Another great talk by Sir Ken Robinson. I didn’t expect it to be less than true inspiration after the last talk I had watched from him as part of the TED conference.

Yesterday evening, I finally was able to play the talk on my laptop. It was not only inspiring, it was extremely encouraging and thought provoking. The main message was, in my opinion, not to change the educational system, but rather to come up with a new one that will actually meet this age’s essence: individuality and diversity; customization and creativity.

Sir Robinson speaks about us aiming at the wrong challenge. It is not how we can make something better, as it is not about constantly reforming a system that was designed for a different age; It is about forming a new, or rather, new ways of helping us discover our natural talents. Our “geniuses” are being oppressed by education – isn’t it a pure antithesis of what we think education should be granting us?

And this brilliant speaker goes on with a brilliant thought I truly believe in: people do their best when they do what they love… when they are in their element. Isn’t it so true? Does it happen to you too? It does to me and it has always been so in school, at work, in everything I do. For instance, I hated when I had to memorize things I didn’t understand. My head would spin just to think about the electrons, atoms and molecules that, according to the teacher, were there up the air but whose point I always missed to see …so abstract it was, and so little skill the teachers had to explain it in a way it would make sense to ME. And as apparently it made sense to the others, I felt I should just shut up and set my mind to spend boring weekends at my desk trying to memorize words and sentences I couldn’t make out, but which would grant me a passing mark. On the other hand, I liked languages. I tried to understand the grammatical structured, examine the exceptions, observe how people expressed themselves, analyze how language is cultural and experience related, how it also influences the way we think, etc. I was always fascinated by it. Learning languages is an ongoing challenge. And I always enjoyedit. As I did enjoy computer classes too. I therefore relate truly to the thought that when people discover what they can do, they become someone else, they transform, they bloom, they exceed what they thought to be their limits.

Trying to meet the future with ideas of the past is not the answer. We have to look at nature and learn from it. We need for once and for all to move from the industrial to an organic paradigm that will help provide the appropriate conditions to seed the right learning environments. Environments in which each learner will be valued and able to develop his/her genius in a creative way. And then I loved the way Sir Ken Robinson describes creativity: Original ideas with added value.

And he finishes with this amazing quote from Benjamin Franklin “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”

So, Let’s MOVE people! It’s about time.

Posted in My Learning Journey |

Are you twittering this?

June 26th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

Probably not…
However, twittering (links to) blog posts is only one of the many ways in which twitter has served me in the last months.

Twitter, a micro-blogging free online tool, has become incredibly popular among web users in the last few months. It has also entered the educational world and it is surprisingly bringing people together over 140 character messages. Is it a case to say less is more? Or is it just the way we have become?
The most amazing fact yet is not really the size of the messages, but how it enables information to flow and the narrative to grow. And oh boy, does it do so.

I must say I was a really bit sceptic about it at the beginning. I always am. I am never an early adopter. It takes time for me to get into things. It’s just a reflection of who I am, I guess. Rather than my finding the tool, I need the tool to find me [if this makes any sense at all...]. I will explain….
I can’t even remember when I first created my twitter account, but I do remember thinking about why I should have one. It was too limitative for someone like me who has very little synthesis capacity. It would just take me ages to write a 140 character message, and I wasn’t sure I was going to get much out of it. Furthermore, not many of my online friends were in twitter…yet! I immediately put twitter in my have-an-account-but-not-using-it-tool shelf. And it remained there for a while until Carla Arena and the Blogging 4 Educators team spiced up my curiosity about it once again.They were twittering and I started following them.I was fascinated by the amount of relevant information, bits of personal insights and also some trivial tweets that were arriving at my desktop in a twinkling of an eye. It was fun and most times relevant. I started seeing the point of it. Twitter had finally been able to reach out to me - or better said - the people who were using it. And so I decided to give it another try. I shyly started twittering, hoping no one would notice me (what could I actually offer in a 140 character message?). To my surprise, I started getting more used to it (you need to create online twitter habits!!). I got better at short messages. I have to use “short-cuts” most times - not very scholastic, but it does the trick!! I also started communicating with others via twitter. I noticed that there were also people who actually read my messages, as I was getting some @me tweets too. It is interesting how people communicate directly and indirectly with others by sharing links, responding to questions, providing additional insights and sometimes even guiding in alternative directions, which they also find useful. All of a sudden micro-communication was increasingly entering my world. Because I started following more people, more twitters also decided to follow me - I still haven’t figured out how selective people are about who they follow, but I have ended up even following some of those who my twitter-fellows follow because of the tweet-conversations they are following (confusing, ha?). In this sense twitter has enabled me to enlarge my connections and networks [even if in a rather lurking way, as I tend to communicate, not exclusively, but more often with those who I already knew from other venues]. Micro-blogging has largely contributed to my learning.

There is of course many questions that arise from this new practice and means of communication, sharing, networking…learning. Yes, Learning. That no one can deny! Many of the hot issues around twitter relate to the literacy theme. Are we becoming lazy at writing? Will this type of discourse ill-influence our essays? Will it give little-johnny bad writing habits? Are we destroying the language?, etc.

Well, I don’t think so. I believe that in learning everything counts. We don’t learn only from the most sophisticated prose [I am even tempted to say that it is where it has less chances to happen, although it can help refine it]. We don’t speak the way we write, and we obviously won’t be using a twitter register when applying for a job, for instance, although you might get to know about your future job through twitter!!
Different contexts call for different registers. It has always been like this, I don’t think it’s going to change now. So, I have a hard time understanding why we should be so concerned or see it as an evil practice which will ruin the kids’ writing capacity.

Okay, I am being quite ironic now, but the fact is that in our daily lives we all express ourselves differently from the way we develop an academic speech, for example. By the same token we adopt different speech tones according to our target audience.
It doesn’t mean however that we don’t gain something from all the different situations we get involved in. We just have to be flexible and understand the differences of the several contexts in which we have a presence. Twitter is just one more application to add to the panoply of others means of micro and instant communication which make us reinvent the way we get our ideas across and interact. Through sms, instant message and now twitter a new language register (or a sub-set of it) has emerged - it’s a pure reflection of the immediacy of such channels. Preventing learners from using such environments is a lost battle. They are using it already. They have started doing so way before we did. It’s a dialect they master and which they enjoy.It belongs to their generations.Hence, there’s a certain magic in it.
I truly believe it can be accommodated as part of the teaching and learning experience. It has great potential, and some educators are already doing so, as it has recently been reported here.

More about group twitter note taking soon!

Posted in My Learning Journey |

One Response to “Are you twittering this?”

Learning Journey » Blog Archive » Have Twitterers Changed your life? Says:
July 1st, 2008 at 10:19 pm
[...] This is the second blog post on twitter within days. This must mean something. [...]

blogging from the boat…

May 22nd, 2008 by Cristina Costa

it’s a journey into knowing.

I am at the digifolio seminar and blogging from the boat! connection: slooooooooooooooooow.

I wanted to twit live but there is no wireless and I’am not a mo-blogger YET .-(. BUt I am learning and micro-reflecting on the go. I jotted down some key ideas during today’s presentations, which I am now transcribing on to here.

I need you to help me develop them. Your comments are therefore invaluable. I want and need to ’pick’ your brain while I show you what’s going on in mine too.

Keynote speakers said teachers think that if they could turn off cell phones completely in schools the problems would be solved, and then he asked: would it be solved?

hmmm…. I immediatelly thought: is it really a problem? and if so, to whom?

I liked one of the keynote speaker’s remarks: To forbid our youngsters to use mobiles in schools is like having forbidden the older generations to use encyclopedias when they were in school. Cool thought, I wrote. That was for me the highlight of the 1st keynote. ,-)

On Maths eportfolios:

The speaker concludes students liked it better than regular assessment strategies. It was a fairer assessment, they said, because teachers were evaluating what they knew, not what they didn’t know. Listen to the kids, I say! It’s not about looking at failure, it is about emphasizing their strong areas and working with them on their weak ones.

They also reported they liked eportfolios because they were sharing it with others. Cool or what?

Then I got bored!!!!!!!!!!! Because someone was reading their presentation. I wrote” A prof. who reads and gives me data in percentage is not able to keep me focused for long. Maybe 2 minutes…maybe even less.

Another presenter starts by saying she is very interested in the results. I think to myself: I would like to focus more on the process. That is what I aspire people I work with will do too. The path we have to walk is far more important than the destination we have to reach.

Next presentation focuses on eportfolios and PLEs. My first note: I like it already :-).

They say: with web 2.0 tools, like netvibes, etc students can keep their digifolios even after they leave Uni. (And I am here thinking: just what I believe in….THANK YOU, it will make my presentation easier, although I think it might seem to be too ”out of the box” to some of the seminar delegates…according to what I have seen so far. They will think I am a nut case…well, I guess I am. Even the color and layout of my slides stnad out when compared with theirs…so academic and so structured. Mine looks like this. Colourful. Happy. Active. Pictorical. As learning should be, I would assume…

Last presentation is about eportfolio tool developed for Moodle by Portuguese Institut. I think I like it. I need to check it in more detail though. You can do it here: http://eportefolio.ese.ipsantarem/pt/repe_en

Will blog more tomorrow.

Can’t wait for your comments. Loads of them!

Posted in My Learning Journey |

6 Responses to “blogging from the boat…”

Graham Attwell Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:33 am
Sounds like a lot of presentations - is this the best way of learning in a connected world
Steve Wheeler Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
Mobile phones are the lingua franca of the net generation. Banning them from schools solves some problems such as ‘happy slapping’, cheeting and invasion of privacy, but creates others such as loss of the ability to communicate or access information in a way that is culturally relevant.

During a session I went to organised by FutureLab two years ago, one of the speakers said to the audience ‘please don’t turn your mobile phones off - simply switch them to silent’. Then he gave us a number to text our questions to during his talk. The questions appeared anonymously on the screen behind him and he addressed them as he spoke. How cool is that?
Pekka Kämäräinen Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Cristina, there was a typo in the link. The correct one is here:

http://eportefolio.ese.ipsantarem.pt/repe_en
Graham Attwell Says:
May 26th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Steve - I like the idea of using phones as a back channel - anyone any idea how to do this easily - perhaps with Twitter?
Cristina Costa Says:
May 26th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
what about with twemes? http://twemes.com/
But then it means you need to have your phone connected to the Internet. I wonder how they automatically got the SMSs to display on the screen. I would be interested in it. I would also be interested in being able to display them automatically on the web like twemes does.

Will blog later more about the digifolio experience. We definitely rocked the boat and it was a lot of fun and meaningful networking despite the huge amount of short presentations. We were really part of the boat community metaphor. Not having anywhere else to go (with water surrounding us from all sides), we did make the best of it. After the natural selection of people grouping with other people they thought more interesting, we were ready to learn about each other: we socialized, talked, shared info about other projects, made plans for future get-togethers. The Portuguese also laughed a lot, danced, sang…till the next day.

I liked the boat adventure! IT wasn’t really a voyage to knowldege, but it was a voyage into knowing a little bit more, and that was definitely fun! But I am a little tired now!
Cristina Costa Says:
May 26th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Thanks Pekka. My typing is full of typos…especially when on a Boat (can I used that as an Excuse?)
Still need to check that eportfolio tool. Have you? Is it any good?

Do you Twit?

May 19th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

It’s been a while since I last posted here. I kinda miss it.

Today seems a good day to post, especially because I have decided to take part of one more challenge: this time is twitter and I was wondering if you were interested in twittering or at least checking what it is going on there. The challenge page can be seen here and basically it all comes down to one thing: Twitter fun!

Let me tell you how I got so into twitter. I always start off being very suspicious and quite reluctant about the new fashionable tools to which you get invited almost on a daily basis. Twitter didn’t appeal that much to me at the beginning – I am never an early adopter… it seem to be quite vague and ineffective… to be honest …and so after signing up to one more account I didn’t give it much thought. However, during the preparation of the earth day event it became extremely useful as a way to get to know the other members of the project a little bit better. Along the way I started getting more and more involved in it as people were sharing resources, expressing opinions, talking a little bit more about what they were doing at that exact moment (how it is raining again, and Hurray … the football team scored again! – those little things that make daily life more bearable and also make you wear a smile on your face as you think to yourself…it’s not only me who has all this paper work to take care of!) Nothing like experiencing in context!

Then with diigo offering the possibility to twitter your bookmarks away and igoogle allowing me to add my twitter friends’ feeds to my home page, twitter has become part of my daily wanders in cyberspace. I got convinced about its potential. Finally!

I have linked to so many useful resources my twitter friends have twittered about, I have followed other interesting people who otherwise I would probably not have come across, and I have benefited loads from what other people bother to share. The twitter-land is indeed a GREAT micro-world.

The learning with computers community has recognized that and is now promoting the Microblogging challenge. I hope you can join us!

More info about twitter can be found here.

Text originally posted here.

Posted in My Learning Journey |

“How does your blog relate to your business?”

May 11th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

This is a challenge my friend’s friend posed on to her and which she decided to pose on to me. Actually, the question was asked on my friend’s friend’s friend’s blog. In the blogsphere news travel fast, one single question can suit many and so the challenge was up. I learned through my google reader I had been tagged to respond to this challenge the day Carla Arena posted her answer (RSS feeds travel even faster!), but somehow I was having trouble finding the right words for my answer-post. I don’t think I have come up with the right ones, but I can’t delay it any longer.

So, “How does my blog relate to my business?”

Well, my blog is me… or part of me. It is my thinking-aloud corner, where I jot down some random ideas, try to answer some queries, and most times end up raising even more questions than actually answers, which was the purpose of the blog post in the first place. Blogging is like this joint and at the same time personal never ending journey, which “forces” you to relentlessly examine your practice, (re)evaluate your believes and be prepared to new challenges [to change, adopt, adapt and re-adapt to a world in a ceaseless (r)evolution] .
None of this would ever be possible without the networks I have cultivated around me, or better, the people (those are the key) with whom, in one way or another, I have bonded in this cyber-world, and who have offered me diverse and relevant perspectives of a landscape always in motion.

My blog - or my blogs, if you want - completely relates to all my businesses. I have grown professionally through my blog. Blogging on a regular basis is my own reminder of how much I still have to learn (B. Brecht once wrote (something like this) : “let’s try and reduce our ignorance even if only 1mm” - as long as I keep blogging, I know I am still working at achieving it!)
I have also developed better inter-personal skills through the multi-blogging interactions. They are fun, they are interesting, they bring out the best of me…the best I can…I mean!

On personal and professional levels (and yes, the two dimensions intertwine Big Time, and I am not complaining, because that’s who I am), I think I have been able to develop a “voice” - an identity. Not that I have any presumptions of being an authority in the field or anything of the kind, but by blogging I have been able to grow more confident about what I do and try to pass on, and somehow I have been able to speak my mind out: for the better and for the worse too… .

In short, my blog is a continuous update of who I am, what I do, what and how I think, and what and how other people make me perceive the world around me. And this last part is the most important bit: because without the “other people” - my friends (and I have made really good friends online) - none of this would ever have been possible.

I blog, because they blog… because they comment, because I comment…because there is a conversation going on. I can hear the sound of voices. I enjoy it.
I don’t like the disturbing silence of thinking.

And if I wanted a mono(b)log I would have started a paper based journal…or maybe not (just remembered I attempted it several times and never got past the second or third page of those perfumed note books from my teen years).

And now it’s time to pass on the challenge. To answer “How does your blog relate to your business?” I am tagging: Anne Fox, Dennis Oliver, Hala Fawzi, Graham Attwell, Joao Alves, Nina Lyulkun and Ramona Dietrich, and anyone else that reads this blog (just let me know through the comment feature and I will tag you too! )

Looking forward to reading your answers. And don’t forget to pass the challenge on to other bloggers . Thinking about the answer to this question is actually a very good exercise.

Posted in My Learning Journey |

6 Responses to ““How does your blog relate to your business?””

News » “How does your blog relate to your business?” Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 1:07 am
[...] G Dan Mitchell | Photography wrote an interesting post today on â
“How does your blog relate to your business?” Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 3:05 am
[...] rnordman wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptMy blog - or my blogs if you want - completely relates to all my businesses. I have grown professionally through my blog. Blogging on a regular basis is my own reminder of how much I still have to learn (B. Brecht once wrote (something … [...]
carla arena Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Dear Cris,

The reasons why you blog are the same why I blog. If it weren’t for all those voices around us, maybe I’d have missed the chance to learn as much as I’m learning now. Just like you said, blogging is about me, my practices, beliefs and the ones around me. I post what I learn from others, what I see around, and I have friends like you who gives me feedback, who feeds my desire to move forward. I guess we’re all trying that 1 mm of knowledge, and I do my best to keep what I learn recorded, re-evaluating it every single day.

Fun chain of thoughts going on, right?

Thanks for taking the challenge and passing it on! I’m sure it will go unexpected paths!
Hala Says:
May 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I am blogging because I am a life-long learner. I am willing to share what I have learned. I need to learn with/from others. I love to read/watch others’ contribution to knowledge . I like to track how knowledge is distributed. Isn’t this what is all about? Sharing knowledge, experience, feelings, networking collaboratively with local and international communities. Although I hate writing, here I am, blogging about everything. I blog because I NEED to be inside the blogosphere which is created by bloggers, the real people with whom we live and interact. I guess it is also about communicating with people. Can I call it peo-blogging ( people-blogging)? I don’t have many blogs, five at Blogger and two at Wordpres! When I started to blog, which is the way how to learn the blogging process, I wasn’t aware of the dozens of the world-wide-windows that keep on opening with every blog post I add, or every post I read. I blog because blogging have changed my life and it will keep on giving me a better life, with other bloggers!!
carla arena Says:
May 20th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Dear Hala,

So true that we have no idea on how many windows we’re opening through blogging in figurative and literal language!
Blog Money Says:
May 21st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
The ongoing conversation in a blog where everybody gets a chance to participate and share ideas is the best thing a Blog provides.

Loads of New Challenges!

May 1st, 2008 by Cristina Costa

Today is Labor day and it does seem that people have been working on ideas to keep us busy, busy, busy!

Or maybe it was the Spring which brought a new wave of imagination and creativity.

Be as it may, the fact is that the challenges are here and there is no way passionate people about education, the blogsphere or simply cyber-fans will ignore these two challenges that arrived to me through twitter

The Comment Challenge: From today on and for a period of one month (1st - 31st May) Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and Kim Cofino are challenging you to be a better blog citizen. For more information link to the wiki.

Meanwhile, you can invite your students and/or gather inspiration while wandering around the blogsphere to apply to this mega cool contest: The Sparky Awards

What a shame I don’t have students right now, otherwise we would already be cooking up something for this challenge too. (the process is more fun than the prize itself. It is also a cool way to get the learners involved)

So, the question is: Are you up for the challenges? I really hope so.

If you still have some reservations, do listen to this video and read some of the comments that were stimulated by this master piece by blog experts! Isn’t this exciting! I am just thrilled!!!;-)

Posted in My Learning Journey |

3 Responses to “Loads of New Challenges!”

Kim Cofino Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:18 am
Thanks for promoting the Comment Challenge! I hope you’ll join us too!
Cristina Costa Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:13 am
Kim,
I have! In my other blog (http://knowmansland.com/learningpath) you can see me all happy blogging for the challenge.
What a great idea!
Kim Cofino Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Excellent! Thanks for participating Christina!

Blogging from earthday webcasthon

April 22nd, 2008 by Cristina Costa

As I sit here writing this quick blog post, I am listening to Sheila and Rye Junior High school.

We already had the pleasure to listen to this incredible live song on earthday, we now have pupils giving us advice and talking about their initiatives to make a world a better place.

My morning started today at 6am, like any other day. The only change is that, instead of heading out of the door to go and accomplish my daily mission, I instantaneously connected to the people I was going to work with. They were already there. Jose Rodriguez (California, USA), Elderbob (Texas, USA) and Doug Symington (Victoria, Canada) had already started the unconference session when I got there. We chatted away for about 3 hours about issues that worry us and compared issues in the different countries we are in. Dennis Newnson (Germany) also joined us and it was a great talk.

Before I could notice the time was up - time online flies by. Ramona was skyping me. Her students were ready to come online. Ok, off we go, we said. And we did! The students skyped in and explained what they have been doing. They explained why they are an Eco-school, and that they are a green flag school. Meanwhile, Joao and his students were also ready to interact. OK, A little bit of Portuguese this time.

After that, we still had some more time for unconference. We welcomed more people into the skype chat…until we realized it was time for Andreas’ session.

Oh My God!! It was my time to host the webcast. I encountered some problems at the beginning. My skype played a trick on me and froze. I took a deep breathe and restarted the application. Off we went again. Andreas’ session was highly professional. A full program in German Language. How cool is that?

Once again, the time just seemed to be running away. It was almost 1200 BST and I had to rush to the university. I kicked the webcast to Doug (thanks again for all the collaboration and support!) and left for a while.

But I couldn’t get my mind of it. I am back now and happy to be able to participate actively again. This is just a great experience. This is true collaboration. This is doing exactly what we preach - enabling the students to develop a voice ; educators and students working side by side, experts and different perspectives coming together in spite of time and space differences, and above all makeing this a meaningful and FUN experience for everyone.

what else can we ask for?

….back to Earthcast08 webcasthon written chat now!

Posted in My Learning Journey |

What do you do…?

April 20th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

What do you do when have a techy question and your friends aren’t online?

A year or two a go I would tell you that my first reaction would be to try to find a discussion forum where I could post my queries and get answers from different individuals within a short period of time. These days this has however become my second option.

First I check youtube to see if there are some good video tutorials out there which may help me solve my problem. And the truth is that many times I succeed to find exactly what I am looking for. It’s just happened today when I was trying to figure out why on earth the podpress plugin of my other blog wasn’t working. [ and yes, it was because of the earth day event ] I youtube-d and found this awesome video, which helped me solve the problem. Well, it was actually thanks to “Blogtatics“, who bothered to create and share the tutorial. I am delighted with all the generosity of these people who enable others to learn because they share what they create… just like that!
So, in short, what I do when I need to solve a techy problem and my friends aren’t online is very simple! I just “youtube”. If that doesn’t work, then I google to link to other sites where I can find some answers. If that doesn’t work either, I will probably wait till my friends come online or I come across them somewhere. I hardly ever used a hand-book when it comes to solve techy problems. Actually, I don’t use technical handbooks at all.

Posted in My Learning Journey |

VLE? What do you exactly mean by a VLE?

April 14th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

Have you ever been asked the odd question about “your VLE”: What VLE you use, or what VLE your institution has. Odder than that might be my expression of amazement every time someone asks me that.

Don’t take me wrong, but I have a feeling what people imply with VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) is what I understand as being a piece of software/application, a platform as we call it back home, or merely a CMS, as the techies have named it.
That is what Blackboard is; that is what I call Moodle too, and obviously I wouldn’t define DOKEOS in any other way.

But the software, no matter which one you choose to use is never the environment you might be able to create, develop and maintain. It doesn’t come in the package!
It is almost like buying a house. Just because you bought four walls and a roof, it doesn’t mean they are automatically converted into a home. It’s just a house! That is what you get when you sign the contract and pay that big bill. How you develop it into a home is up to you and to those who share that space with you.
A home is more than a building. It is the result of an ongoing effort which one puts in to construct a comfortable zone with the right atmosphere. A home, just like a learning environment, conveys a deeper meaning than that of a house. Those walls, which are mechanically put together, can simply provide you with a physical shelter, but will never be able to replace the human and the personal touch. Attached to the meaning of ‘home’ is a feeling of warmth and cosiness, a roll of interactions and shared memories which are constructed overtime. It’s those shared moments, and, of course, the people involved in it, that help transform a house into a home.

The same happens to a CMS or any other application which might be adopted to “host education”. The learning environment doesn’t come with the software, that much I can assure you. The learning environment is the world the moderator creates together with the learners, while engaging (with) them in a relevant way. The environment is thus affected by the human activity, and depends on the way educators connect to learners and learners feel touched by their guides and peers as part of multiple interactions and ways of Communicating, Collaborating and Caring (as Prof. Carneiro stated in an OEB 2007 interview)
It is how one sets the atmosphere and maintains it that makes a CMS into a effective VLE. In the end, it is how we - educators - make the difference and enable the learning relationship to work. Like in any other relationship, it is hard work, but it can be a lot of FUN too.

Posted in My Learning Journey |

5 Responses to “VLE? What do you exactly mean by a VLE?”

Blogging IT and EDucation » Blog Archive » VLE? What do you exactly mean by a VLE? Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 11:48 am
[...] Costa has a guest posting on Graham Atwell’s blog: VLE? What do you exactly mean by a VLE? She says: The learning environment doesn’t come with the software, that much I can assure you. [...]
The evolution of the VLE | BPP College Virtual Learning News Says:
April 21st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
[...] this interesting post on how the VLE is more about what we do online than the software it uses. addthis_url = [...]
Rebecca Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
A house is not a home… a vle is not a learning environment.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
This is so true.
LMS to nie e-learning | Edukacja-Online.pl Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 pm
[...] Costa napisała niedawno na blogu Grahama Attwella ciekawy post na temat tego, dlaczego uważa, że platformy e-learningowe takie jak Blackboard czy Moodle nie [...]
new software Says:
May 19th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
thanks nice text.

1,2,3…Testing

April 9th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

I know, I know….You are already thinking… what the heck is she doing there too??!!

Like a friend of mine says: my-self is all over the (Internet) place!

Well… it’s true, but what can I do? It kinda goes with my digital personality!

Graham Attwell and his team have invited me to join their spot. I am not really sure if they are well aware of what this may mean : a lot of Portuglish, quotes from Fernando Pessoa - The Poet, music once in a while, some random reflections about my humble existence and activity, and, of course, lots of web 2.0 (non)sense in between! … That’s me. I guess!

Ok, I am quite nervous to be able to publish along side with the Pontydysgu Team and the Mentor, but I am also very proud to be able to do so.

This is going to be GREAT FUN!

And in the end, that is all that really matters!

Posted in My Learning Journey |

One Response to “1,2,3…Testing”

Graham Attwell Says:
April 13th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Welcome to the Pontydysgu site, Cristina. Its going to be a lot of fun for us too, having you here. Looking forward to the poetry!