In an attempt to document the trials and errors of using a classroom set of 20 iPads in our K-8 school, I am adding a new post to the collection of iPads in the Classroom:

• Transliteracy- QR Codes and Art
• Working on iPad Fluency with Lower Elementary Students
• Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook
• Students Create ePub iPad Book for the World
• Finally! A Book Creator App
• Plan, Do and Review iPad Exploration (by Andrea Hernandez)
• ShowMe App for the iPad- Good Tutorial Designer App?

5th Grade- Storykit- Creating a story in Hebrew

One of the Hebrew teachers approached me with an interest in having her students create a story book in the target language on the iPads.

We chose to test the free app Storykit with this project.

Students read a poem by Leah Goldberg called: (That’s Not Me). Based on the poem, students wrote their own story and created a storyboard how they could illustrate their story.

We had the Hebrew letters added to the iPad keyboard by going into: Settings> General>  Keyboard> International Keyboards>Add New Keyboard> Choose Hebrew

Once the International keyboard is added, a globe appears on your keyboard. Tap the button to cycle through all the different keyboards you have installed.

Once the storyboards were finished, students were ready to work with the iPads. The app allowed users to create their own illustrations, import images from elsewhere or take photos with the built in iPad2 camera and insert them into their story. Students could also add audio recordings to their story.

I showed students how to go to Microsoft Office ClipArt, search for images and download or take a screenshot and edit the image.

Students also used each other to stage scenes from their story to take a photo.

Problems we found along the way:

• students could not re-order the pages of their story in order to imitate leafing/swiping through a book from “right to left” (opposite from the way we turn pages in books in English).
• students were not able to place punctuation at the end of a sentence, since the Hebrew keyboard in Storykit (maybe because it is an iPhone, not an iPad app) does not include a period.

Once the stories were completed, students

• shared (tap share button) their story
• emailed themselves the story link
• went to their emails to click on the generated URL
• took a screenshot of their story pages
• wrote a blog post about their experience
• inserted the story pages into their blog post

I will probably not use the Storykit again, since I want to be able to easily embed the stories on the student blogfolios, as well as export them into our school iBook library.

Take a look at some student samples.

Sarah’s Story

A blog post from Sarah, one of the 5th grade students:

Today in Hebrew class we made a story on an app called StoryKit. We made this on the IPads. My story is called , or in English the name is: It’s Not Me. Our Fifth Grade Hebrew teacher, Morah Liat read us a story about a boy who is acting bad, but is usually a good child. Everyone had to make a story based on that one. Typing in Hebrew on the IPads is very tricky. In English the words go left to right, but in Hebrew the words go right to left. That makes deleting letters difficult. I  spent a lot of time on this Story.

Sydney’s Story

Rachel’s Story

As a former World Language teacher, I know of the importance of hearing the target language as much as possible. In order to internalize a new vocabulary word, you have to hear it at least 70+ times. By hearing I mean not only the sounds of the letters that make up the word, but also the context the word is embedded in… the melody of the sentence that embraces that word… the words that lead up to it and the words that follow it to make meaning and conclude the sentence.

When learning a language, it is especially important to attach a feeling to a word in order to make meaning of how it will be used in the future with maybe other words surrounding it than the ones originally learned. It is equally important to give language learners the opportunity to practice using the words, sentences and melodies and help them be comfortable in pronouncing them and feeling and hearing them come out of their mouth.

Recording a podcast and the EDITING of the podcast is a great tool, especially for language learners to play with the mechanics of the language. It gives the learners the opportunity to see their voices, read the sounds, manipulate the sequence of sentences, sounds can be deleted, edited, emphasized and re-arranged similar than a word processing program can do this with the written word.

Our second graders were learning the story of Purim a few weeks ago. Their teacher and I planned to have the students record the story as a podcast to be shared with their parents on their classroom blog. Students had had experience with podcasting the previous year as they produced Flat Stanley and a Magic Tree House podcast as first graders.

Their Jewish Studies teacher worked with each of them to write individual parts in Hebrew to create a script of the Purim Story. Collaboratively the class had to make sure that the entire story was told between them.

Then we started recording them in Garageband. We recorded each student’s sentence, but were careful to record the sentences completely out of order.

The children loved listening to their recordings over and over again. Once all the parts were recorded it was time for the students to edit the podcast file and move each clip into the correct order to tell the story of Purim.

Putting audio clips into order

We connected the computer to the SmartBoard which allowed students to come up to the board to use their fingers in order to find a certain place in the recording, play, pause, start, listen and decide to which position the clip should be moved to.

Listening Comprehension

Again, I would like to emphasize that this project was NOT about using Garageband (the tool). It was NOT about producing a podcast (the genre) . This lesson was about writing a script, listening, comprehension, collaboration, speaking skills, and fluency in the target language. The tool allowed us to manipulate sounds, re-listen, think critically and logically about the best way to present the story- all in the target language. The genre allowed us to share our work, amplify our reach, gain an authentic audience and motivate students to create and be creative.

Even if you don’t speak Hebrew, take a moment and listen to  these 7 and 8 year olds. Listen to their fluency, melody and motivation in their voices. Maybe you want to leave them a comment to let them know you “heard” them.

If a teacher is lucky enough to have a SmartBoard at their disposal, it is their responsibility to use it beyond a “glorified projector screen”. It requires a shift in thinking from the teacher’s part to see a SmartBoard not “only” as a teaching tool, but as a learning tool.

I am taking a particular look at best practices of using a SmartBoard in the World Language classroom. My interest lies in how to best teach language teachers to go beyond a “drill and kill” vocabulary-translation type exercise and to use the SmartBoard in a way that allows students to experience the target language. In order to be able to use a SmartBoard with more than lower level thinking skills (remembering) involved, the teacher will have to have basic skills in order to manipulate and existing notebook file  or create new personalized ones.

While there are many notebook files being shared for commonly taught languages such as Spanish and French, there is a lack of examples for languages such as Hebrew, Chinese, Russian or Arabic. Partly because of difficulty with the non-latin alphabet, partly because the are just “less commonly taught” languages.

Learning to Tweak SmartBoard Files

What are the most important SmartBoard skills for these ‘less commonly taught” world language teachers to learn? What are the basic skills so they can tweak notebook files that don’t work perfectly for their students? What are the skills they need to ultimately create their own files ?

1. Take a look at the main toolbar.

Become familiar with

• moving between pages (slides)
• creating new pages (slides)
• opening and saving notebook files
• copying slides or objects
• undo/redo
• deleting
• screenshade
• full screen/split screen
• screenshot

• tables
• selection pointer
• pens
• eraser
• arrows
• shapes
• bucket fill
• text

2. Organizing Content in slides/pages and groups

3. Gallery-

• searching
• Interactive and multimedia
• Pictures
• Notebook files and pages
• Background and themes

4. Object manipulation

• drag and drop
• selecting
• rotating
• resizing
• cloning
• locking
• grouping
• order

5. Screen Capture Tool

Drag the cross hair across the area of the screen that you would like to capture.

• write in your target language in another program and insert into notebook to use as any other object
• capture an image of text in your target language and insert into notebook to manipulate further

6. Video Capture Tool

Click on red button to start recording.

• record in your target language
• share and review lessons or recorded stories with your students

7. Download  and open someone else’s notebook file

• SmartBoard Jewish Educational Database
• SmartBoard Exchange- Search for the name of your target language to see if any pre-made notebooks are available
• Make sure that your downloaded file has the “.notebook” extension. If it doesn’t try to rename the file by adding the extension manually in Finder or Explorer
• Tweak individual pages to customize learning for your student

8. Share your created notebook files with other teachers of your target languages

• Upload the file to your blog
• Send file as e-mail attachment to colleagues or listserve
• Offer to share files as you participate in conferences, workshops or webinars
• Submit the notebook file to a database -
  • SmartBoard Jewish Educational Database
  • SmartBoard Exchange-

What are some skills you would consider important for a World Language teacher to learn in order to create, tweak and use the SmartBoard software to bring their target language to life.

I have written about 21st Century Skills, Literacies and Fluency before. I listed a definition and differences between being literate and fluent.

Fluency is defined by Free Dictionary as:

Ability to express oneself readily and effortlessly

The term is usually used in a language context, but I like how it was used at the 21st Century Fluency Project:

The 21st Century Fluencies are not about technical prowess, they are critical thinking skills, and they are essential to living in this multimedia world. We call them fluencies for a reason. To be literate means to have knowledge or competence. To be fluent is something a little more, it is to demonstrate mastery and to do so unconsciously and smoothly.

Wes Fryer blogged about a presentation by Ian Jukes of the same title and described the difference between literacy and fluency:

- when you are literate, you still have to think about what you are going to do next
- fluencies are unconscious skills, you just know what to do next

I am continuing to be intrigued by the relationship between illiteracy, literacy and fluency.

• How do we define each stage? What are its characteristics and milestones?
• How does each stage look like at the end of 2010?
• How does one progress from one stage to another?
• What happens to the ones who do not move forward and stay illiterate?

As I am asking myself these questions I am reminded of the stages one goes through as you learn a foreign language. From being illiterate as you are not able to read nor write in the new language to becoming literate and (hopefully) fluent in speaking and interacting with other speakers of that same language. As I am exploring the analogy, I am asking myself:

• What does it mean to be fluent in a language?
• What is the difference between being able to read and write a language and being able to speak it? Are you fluent if you can speak but not read or write?
• Are you considered fluent if you know “a lot of vocabulary words”, but are not able to put them in the grammatically correct order?
• Are you fluent, if you can participate in a rehearsed conversation: “How are you?”, “Fine and you?”, “Good, how is your family?”, etc.
• Do you speak fluently, if you need to translate in your mind before you are able to form and utter a sentence?

Language Fluency

I was reminded of a story, I had heard at a TPRS workshop for Word Language teachers years ago. The story by Jack Engelhard titled “His French Comes our Greek” (.doc) describes well what fluency means. It is quite humorous too.

Speaking up and down versus sideways

An American, with High School French education, travels to French Canada and is surprised when native speakers do not understand his “conjugated” French. Although he knows the words and even the grammar rules of conjugating (speaking up and down) , he is incapable of making himself understood nor understand (communicating with) the natives (who speak sideways).

The analogy lies in the fact that learning or teaching tools, such as Skype, PowerPoint, Twitter, wikis, blogs or VoiceThread, will not make the user capable of knowing when it is appropriate to use each one of these tools nor will they be used unconsciously. When every step of using a tool or program becomes an effort (formatting, recording, dragging & dropping, editing, saving, inserting, posting, etc.) or when obstacles become insurmountable stumbling blocks then the objective of expressing oneself or communicating has not been achieved. The tools become the vocabulary words one needs to know in order to be able to start forming sentences. If you are at a “loss of words”or stutter, conversation stalls or becomes cumbersome. Standalone words are not considered a language. We just use them in order to create meaning.

Once you have mastered vocabulary and grammatical rules you might be able to read and write in the new language which gives you basic literacy…but are you able to fluently speak the language? Grammar rules tell you where to place a word inside a phrase and how to “format” it in the right tense, conjugate for the right person, but will you be able to speak without having to translate from your native language? Will it feel intuitive, smooth and fluid to express yourself, communicate and connect to others in more ways than just “using the same words”?

Language connects more than words and phrases

Should we not strive to learn 21st Century skills by using tools (vocabulary words) in order to become skilled? From possessing skills should we not push further in order to become (basic, information, media, network, globally) literate (stringing words together according to grammatical rules to form sentences and eventually to create meaning)?

As we immerse ourselves in the culture of others who communicate as we do (speak the same language) would we then not, by osmosis become fluent (speaking without translating or hesitations, smooth and unconscious of grammatical rules)? Being fluent means that the language will “just sound right” to your ears. It will just sound right to contact and skype in an expert to help your students learn about a specific subject. It will just feel right to use Google Docs (or whatever tool)  in order to collaborate intuitively. Fluency will come when you just know what to do next, when you don’t have to think about your next step or how you used to do it before.

I am interested in other analogies for 21st Century Fluency. It was natural for me to make the connection to speaking a language fluently. What connections are you making?

I received a great email this morning. Yuri Eelma from St. Petersburg, Russia contacted me to let me know that he read my “Blogging With Elementary School Students” unit with interest. In order to help out teachers in his country, he decided to translate the unit into Russian.

My name is Yuri Eelmaa (Estonian surname), I`m 34 years old and I`m working in municipal IT-education center in St.Petersburg (Russia). My professional interests and activities: using presentations in education, school site and school`s informational politics, IT-tools in the work of literature teachers and Web 2.0 in education (it`s the main interest). I teach school`s head-masters, their assistents and, sure, teachers. I work in this sphere for 5 years.
I`m glad to write you this letter. And I want to thank you for your book “Blogging with Elementary School Students”. This material is very-very useful for our teachers! When I read it, I saw the generated methodology for elementary school and I decide to translate it in Russian for our teachers. The announcement of the translation you can read in my professional blog: http://eelmaa.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post_9769.html And it is the link to the translation of your material: http://rcokoit.ru/dld/metodsupport/blogging_elementary.doc
For this translation I`ve got many thanks from teachers from different Russian cities and towns. Many educational sites, forums and blogs relinked this translation.

Langwitches' Blogging Unit Translation into Russion

My response to Yuri was:

Thank you for contacting me. I am honored that you read my blog and translated the “Blogging with Elementary School”  into Russian. That is exactly why I love our collaborative and connected bloggersphere. It is all about sharing and working together in order to benefit our students. No matter if they are in the USA, in Russia or in another country.

If you are reading this blog, you probably understand my reaction. If you are reading this blog, you probably have already experienced the value of a networking, learning and collaborating through blogs and maybe even Twitter. I firmly believe in our responsibility of sharing among educators. I know that that is a huge shift for some, especially the ones who are isolated in their schools and classrooms without this increasingly important network (to us).

Yuri reaffirmed for me the reason WHY I blog and share under Creative Commons my work on Langwitches. It is all about collaboration. In a globally connected world, we don’t just teach students who are in the same physical building that is being called school. We go beyond that… By sharing best practices, ideas, and projects, we support teachers who we might never know and meet, but who in turn will impact the lives of their students.

Students from Jacksonville, Florida/USA and Binyamina, Israel recently celebrated Jerusalem Day together. A true opportunity to share Language, Culture & History via Skype.

A grandfather in Israel shared his memories of the Six Day War (1967) of liberating Jerusalem. The Rabbi from Florida explained what Jerusalem means to Jews outside of Israel. Students sang songs, played instruments and practiced English and Hebrew.

Jerusalem Day- Yom Yerushalaim from langwitches on Vimeo.

The title of this post “Use Experience to Reach Others” is from a blog post one of our 7th grade (Jewish) students wrote after skyping with (Muslim) students from Minnesota. (Thanks Micah!)

Last month, out Middle School students became the Experts as they were talking bout Judaism to 7th grade classes from Michigan, who were studying World Religions. Our students asked the class from Michigan if they had any Jewish students (which they didn’t) and if they knew any Jews personally (which they didn’t). There was one Muslim student in their class and our students immediately asked her questions about Islam. After the Skype call was over, our students expressed interest in contacting and connecting with other Muslim students in order to learn more about their religion.

A quick tweet out put me in contact with the Banadiir Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the American School of Khartoum, Sudan. Thank you Trey Wodele and Damianne for making the connection !

The first Skype call was set up with Minnesota. During the call, which lasted almost an hour, I witnessed what I am defining as a transformative learning experience. Students had a list of questions prepared about Islam. In the beginning (first 20-30 minutes),  the conversations felt very scripted as students read and answered the questions off their list. That changed when students from Minnesota asked “Do you want to see how we pray?” There was an enthusiastic “Yes” on the Florida end of the screen. As they were watching  and listening to the explanation, one student ran to get his Tallit (prayer shawl) and Tefillin to show and demonstrate how Jews dress while they pray.

From that moment on, students truly interacted with each other on both sides of the screen. It was the moment that questions came off the list they had prepared and curiosity took over, connections and articulation of their own experiences reached a new level. Skype made it a transformative learning experience by:

• making it a conversation… a back and forth
• personalizing the questions and answers
• connecting it to their own experiences
• making learning go far beyond what a static text book page can provide

I could tell that the wheels in the students’ minds were still turning as the Skype call ended. After leaving the “Social Studies” class and heading over to their next period, the 7th grade “Language Arts”teacher jumped on the opportunity to build on this learning experience of her students. She asked them to take the notes they had taken during the Skype call and write a reflective blog post about their experience.

Find an excerpt of their posts below with links to their classroom blog and a short 90 second video of the Skype connection.

An Eye-Opening Experience

I believe that not only should we Skype with people of different religions, we should want to Skype with them. The experience is eye opening and very informative. I now understand many things about Muslims that I did not before, and they probably learned things about us that they did not know before. This was fun and a great learning experience. If you are someone who is ready to learn about new things and people, you should try Skyping, too!

Reflection on this Morning

Hopefully, technology can bring us together so we can see the good and the similarities in each other, instead of the differences.

Skyping with Muslims in Minneapolis

There are so many disagreements with our cultures. Those disagreements break the chains of our friendships. We need to take a stand and connect the chains back together. They are great people; some other religions like Catholic and Hindu, and not just us, need to Skype with them.

What I Learned

I want to write letters to the Somalian Muslim students that my class and I skyped with, like “Pen Pals”; and maybe, just maybe, we can become close friends – you never know.

Using our Experience to Reach others

I am Jewish and I just skyped with kids who are Muslims. From this experience, I realized that we have more similarities than differences. We, and people of all religions, need to put our differences aside and look at our similarities.[...] If we take the time to get to know religions other than our own we will understand, just like I did, that we can get along. So, my one wish for the world, is that one day we will have peace – it is up to every one of us, and can begin with a single conversation.

Skyping with Muslims in Minnesota

Rational hate would be us Americans hating the people who were behind 9/11. Irrational hate would be us hating every Muslim we see, just because they are Muslim. What is the reason behind it? It’s the same as saying you never want to speak to a German again because of the Holocaust. That person could be totally against Hitler. Never judge a book by its cover; those who do may miss the best read of their life.

7th Grade + Modern Technology = An Endless World of Learning

It was just a normal morning in March. I walked through the school doors ready for my daily classes: Hebrew, math, science, English, and history. Today, though, I learned so much more than those subjects. At 10:00 A.M., we dived into the beliefs and traditions of a different religion, Islam…via our modern technology, Skype. [...] Over all, this was a fantastic experience that many people would probably never get to have. We shared information about ourselves and learned about a different religion. Hopefully, one friendly interaction at a time, more and more people will begin to realize the similarities connecting people around the world.

I subscribe to the RSS feed of the Flickr group Great Quotes about Learning and Change. The following image by Scott McLeod popped up in my reader a few days ago.

by Scott McLeod

As a former World Language teacher (Spanish & German) and being passionate about bringing global awareness to colleagues and students, I know HOW true Scott’s image rings and what the reality in most schools look like.

Going over the colors of the flag, having kids read about or listen to the story of the Aztecs and the legend of how Tenochtitlan was founded, then thrown in a few tacos and burritos and voila the global studies unit about Mexico has been covered.  Teachers and students are suddenly “aware” of hispanic culture.

There is so much more to global awareness in today’s interconnected world, as Scott points out:

In an era of ubiquitous interconnection, global awareness does not mean simply learning about other cultures’ foods and holidays.

Awareness as defined on Wikipedia:

is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding.

I want to emphasize the last part of the definition:

“…conscious WITHOUT necessarily implying understanding.”

While understanding (knowledge) would, of course, be preferred, awareness is a first step.

• Aware that there are cultural nuances that could change perception of one and the same event
• Aware that differences could affect relationships and the way one communicates with another.
• Aware that translation of words does not equal translation of perception or meaning.
• Aware that language and culture are intrinsically linked.

Since being “aware” of cultural differences does not necessarily mean that you understand the difference, I want to bring up one question I have wondered about in the last few weeks. Maybe some of you would know how to turn my awareness into understanding or maybe Jason Mraz even reads blogs and can enlighten me.

There are two versions of Jason Mraz’s song:  “Lucky” (English) and “Suerte” (Spanish). Although there are verses in both versions that are sung in English and are identical, the other verses are not the same.

When I listen to each song on my iPod, I even feel that they are two different songs (with similarities of course).  The music videos brings both of them together as the settings are in the city of Prague and on a tropical beach.

Here are three examples of verses and “their translation”.

As a fluent speaker of both languages, I wonder WHY I get such a distinct feeling from both songs? Some of the lyrics from each version even seem to contradict each other. Ex. “Lucky to have stayed where we have stayed” versus ” Lucky that with you I will grow” (translated).

Is this a cultural difference, that “staying” and “growing” in each language would have been perceived differently by the listeners?

Do the individual words evoke different perceptions? Was that done on purpose or just because a direct translation would not have rhymed?

What do you think? Let me know?

English version “Lucky” by Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat

Here is the Spanish version “Suerte” by Jason Mraz & Ximena Sariñana

I have been blogging for over three years now. I use my blog to:

• document my thoughts about educational technology and my journey as a connected teacher
• share  educational resources, lesson plans, How-To guides, web 2.0 tools, experiences in the classroom
• develop professional development workshops
• sprinkle awareness about cultural, country and language specific differences among us

This blog is written in English, since it is  the language of the country I have studied, live and work in. 99.9% of the comments left by my readers are in English.

Why does it still not seem natural to me? Why do I  feel (and have always felt) that something is missing? I am the product of three languages, histories and cultures that are ALWAYS present in me. It feels unnatural to be confined to one language. I feel disconnected to the German and Spanish voices of educators that are and should be in my PLN.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian philospher

“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”

We have to understand that NOT everyone is comfortable in reading, learning and participating in English. There are many different levels of English learners. Some will read comfortably in English, but will not feel they are able to join the conversations on Twitter, a blog or a Wiki in writing. Others simply might not even join, because of the language barrier.

What can we do? What can we do to invite and include the voices of Non-English speakers?

First, we should recognize that the “global” part is missing in global network if we are excluding non-English speakers. I am not saying that we  are intentionally excluding them, but I feel it is important to recognize that VOICES ARE MISSING!

I am also not saying that EVERYONE should learn another language (although that would be great!), but maybe the edtechies among us who already know another language chould make an effort to include their “other than English” language and facilitate an interchange between the English speaking world and “your other language” world.

Maybe I should start to blog or twitter more in Spanish or German to invite these voices to participate in this amazing network that has changed my own learning forever?

While pondering HOW I can invite teachers around the world to the conversation of the English speaking edusphere, I revisited Alec Courosa’s graphic of The Networked Teacher. I started looking at what makes a teacher a networked teacher, a connected teacher? BUT…

• Does that mean the same thing in different countries?
• Are we all there yet?
• Are we talking about the same issues?
• How does culture influence (support/hinder) our issues?
• Are (and why) certain areas of connections preferred and others not popular?

How will I find out, if only English speakers read my thoughts, only the ones who feel comfortable in written English will respond?

Maybe it is time to open the dialogue further.

If you are a speaker of another language, will you be the one to bring non-English speaking voices in? Maybe you can take the time to blog or twitter (in the other language) about some of the issues that are floating around in the twitter- and bloggersphere? Bring those voices back and share with the English speaking monolingual world.

We can’t talk about global connections, if that only includes English speaking connections and leave it at that. The power of collaboration should take all of our contributions, creations and voices across languages and cultures.

No podemos hablar de conexiones mundiales, si solamente están incluídes las conexiones del habla inglés. El poder de la colaboracion debería llevar todas nuestras contribuciones, creaciones y voces encima de idiomas y culturas.

Wir koennen nicht ueber globale Verbindungen reden, wenn diese nur Englisch sprechende Verbindungen bedeuten. Die Staerke der Zusammenarbeit muesste alle unsere Beitraege, Gestaltungen und Stimmen ueber Sprache und Kulturen hinweg tragen.

Here is my first effort of opening up the dialogue across languages.

Aca está mi primer esfuerzo de abrir un diálogo encima de idiomas.

Hier ist mein erster Versuch einen Dialog ueber Sprachen hinweg zu oeffnen.

What is a networked teacher? ¿Cómo es un docente enchufado? Was is ein vernetzter Lehrer?

Please feel free to comment in the language you feel most comfortable in. Let me know if you feel that your culture or language is not represented correctly? What will you share with (and from) the non-English speaking twitter- and blogging world?

Por favor, deja tu comentario en el idioma en que te sentís más cómodo. ¿Tu cultura o idioma está representado bien? ¿Qué vas a compartir con (o desde) el mundo de los blogs o twitter de habla hispana?

Bitte hinterlasse ein Kommentar in der Sprache, in der du dich am sichersten fuehlst. Ist deine Kultur oder Sprache richtig representiert? Was wirst du mit (und aus) der Blog oder Twitter Welt des deutschsprachigen Raumes teilen?

The Networked Teacher based on Alec Courosa’s graphic.

El Docente Enchufado, based on Alec Courosa’s graphic.

Der Vernetzte Lehrer, based on Alec Courosa’s graphic.

I fell in love with Mafalda when I was 15 and just started learning Spanish.

On Wikipedia you can read:

Mafalda is a comic strip written and drawn by the Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado (pen name Quino). The strip features a girl named Mafalda (5 years old at the time of the comic’s creation) who is deeply concerned about humanity and world peace and rebels against the world as it is.

Although written in the 1960′s, Mafalda was and is timeless. I can just imagine her commentary she would make today about the state of affairs in  schools and her opinion on integrating technology .

Mafalda “rebels against the world as it is”. Why was I surprised then to find a tweaked Mafalda slide in a slideshare presentation ?

“Before…it was school, books and a good acordeon”

“Today with ICT, project method and more”

“With the learning, with the teaching, with the strategies, the resources, cooperative groups, meaningful knowledge…

NOTHING is like it used to be in Kindergarten!!!”

Image by Nelson Piedra (nopiedra)

“To the only president capable of demonstrating to us that everything we learn in school could be true!!”

This was dedicated by Quino to Argentina’s ex-president, Raul Alfonsin, who died a few weeks ago (March 2009)

Check out some other cartoon strips that have been translated into English on Google Images to get a taste of Mafalda.