// Langwitches Blog

Every time I read about Globalization, my “eyes” perk up. I immediately was hooked wondering what others are doing on a day to day basis to connect and network world wide, when I saw on Vicki Davis’ del.icio.us account the link to Julie Lindsay’s post of “A Day in the Life of a Global, Connected Educator“.

I believe we can all benefit from each other reading about real life, personal examples how we are incorporating the technology, tools and gadgets into our daily life. Maybe it strikes a cord with another teacher and they can start using these tools too to automate repetitive tasks, stay current, and grow in their own time and space in their profession.
Just today I was listening to one of Wes Fryers’ podcast (Episode 120: Using Flickr and Bubbleshare for Digital Storytelling ) and Collaborative Projects) where he talks about the importance of transmitting and teaching educators the PERSONAL value of these tools, before we can expect them to apply them into the classroom.

(12:30)

Teachers need to invest themselves in technology that they are personally motivated to use. Use that as a way, a hook, to see the value in it, how professionally it can benefit them. [...] When you use a tool for your personal processing of the world, taking picture, carries over into your professional practice.

So here goes:

MY DAY IN THE LIFE OF A GLOBAL CONNECTED EDUCATOR

The day in Florida/USA starts with me waking up before the alarm clock goes off at 5:20 am. Still with my eyes closed I walk across the house into a dark office and find the power button on my desktop PC. I first check my e-mails in Outlook Express, separating the professional e-mails from my private ones and the large amount of junk mail that still makes it into my Inbox, despite the filters that I have applied to incoming mail.

I then fish for my iPod Photo in my purse to connect it via USB cable to my computer. Once iTunes pops up automatically and the newest episodes to Podcasts that I am subscribed to are beginning to download, I am off to shower and get dressed. By the time that I return to my desk in the office, the podcasts are downloaded and I am manually transferring the episodes that I am interested in to my iPod’s playlists. Among these Podcasts are shows that take me on sound seeing tours around the world, like Frommers, or keep me up to date with news reports and highlights from Argentina (Clarin.com) and Germany (Tagesschau.de). Not only is is important for me to stay updated, but also vital to keep my language skills from rusting. I then move on to scan over my feeds in my Bloglines account. I read blog posts from around the world from Kim Cofino from Malaysia, Julie Lindsay from Bangladesh, Jeff Utecht from China, Ben & Marina Curtis from Spain, Joe Dale from England, Ewan Mcintosh from Scotland and Vicki Davis, Wes Fryer, Will Richardson from the United States.

By 6:30 a.m., I am heading out to work. Before I drive off, I plug my iPod with a cable into the AUX jack of my car CD player and get the podcast playlist started. I then place the bluetooth on my ear and turn it on and I am off on my commute to school about 30 minutes away. On some days, I also schedule a call on my computer before I leave home with JaJah. It calls my cell phone number and then calls my mother’s land line number in Argentina at the scheduled time. Calls are only 3 cents a minute or free, if both numbers that are called belong to a JaJah member. By the time I arrive at school, I already have gotten a good dose of Professional Development on topics that interest me as well as listened to three languages.

Once I arrive at school, I check my internal e-mails and attend to any urgent website updates that were sent to me by colleagues. I then check my upcoming lesson plans and grade levels, that will be coming to see me today for Spanish class. I will make sure that my digital camera and MP3 recorder are ready and charged in case I want to record audio or video of students or take images that will be placed on my Spanish class website.

5th and 6th grade students’ Spanish curriculum includes the study of all Spanish speaking countries of the world (all 21 of them!). The beginning of each class is spent to talk about and explore a different aspect of one of these countries. Not only do I have a personal collection of photos arranged in a PowerPoint slideshow, I also search country and culture specific images on Flickr, which are licensed under the creative commons copyright. Each time I present a new country to the class, I open up Google Earth for them. There I placed a placemarker in the parking lot of our school, where we start our flight. We then zoom out slowly away from our school to the neighborhood, to the city, the county, the state and then we zoom out of the United States and fly towards the new country we will be studying. Most of the time we make a stop in the previous countries to review as well.

In between classes and during downtime, I check my internal and external e-mail accounts and take peeks into my Bloglines account. During lunchtime, you can sometimes find me on Skype, where I video conference with friends and family from Argentina and/or Germany. In the background my iPod plays and charges up in the iSonic.

School is over at 3:30 pm and if there is no faculty meeting or I don’t teach an evening class, I am heading home. Again I will plug my iPod into the car stereo and continue listening to my podcasts. On some days, when I don’t want to think anything anymore, I “treat” myself to just listen to my favorite songs from Alejandro Lerner and Diego Torres (from Argentina), Ricardo Arjona ( from Guatemala) or Alejandro Sanz (from Spain).

How are you connected globally during the day?

I would love to hear from Kim Cofino (bouncing partner in this meme business , Dan Schmit, Hollye from the TechTeachers, Joe Dale, Chris Craft, and Miss Profe.