Drawing Robin Williams by Heather Rooney

In Memory of Robin Williams (his appearance in Chicago by EllenLDegeneres)

We lost such a talent and an extraordinary human being, Robin Williams. I was so upset about this piece of news as if I lost somebody close from my family!
I created a playlist on my Youtube with Robin Willams' performances: interviews, TV programs, fragments from his movies, to enjoy his wit, humor, hear his reflections on  the ups and downs of his life and acting.

Intense September

I will have a very intense and full of events September. Beginning of the new semester, starting teaching a new graduate course "Reading and Literature," supervising student teachers, and the list can go on and on. One of the most exciting events in September will be Healthy and Sustainable Living MOOC, that I will be moderating together with my husband and my friend-colleague, Dr. Nellie Deutsch. Here is the information about the MOOC:

Whoever reads my blog, please join and spread the word about this amazing program!

the Violin scene from ep 6 season 4 of LOUIE on FX 2 new eps every Monday at 10pm set by Louis C.K.

Teacher Channel, Twitter Widget and a Summer Book Club

I have just come across with an interesting piece of information for teachers who would like to have free professional development during the summer months with the Teaching Channel.

The Teacher Laureate and promoter of the channel, Sarah Brown, invited educators to view videos about the innovative teaching approaches and also to participate in the first ever held Teacher Channel reading club held on on Twitter - the hashtag is #tchLIVE.

The Teaching Channel team sent out a poll to see what teachers wanted to read and the winner is: Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. 
Mark your calendar for a #TchLIVE chat with Sarah on July 31st, 7PM EST. 
The details are all here.
Here is the Twitter club widget: #TchLIVE Tweets

Three Reasons to Take the ThingLink Teacher Challenge This Summer | ThingLink Blog

Summer is the time for exploring new things and getting up to date with new developments in education and learning technologies.

Here is a great opportunity for your Professional development. Grab it!

The ThingLink Teacher Challenge is a free, self-paced, online summer professional development opportunity designed to help teachers transform classroom teaching and e-learning with ThingLink, an easy-to-use interactive image and video platform.

This challenge invites teachers to learn to use interactive images to redefine learning in the classroom. Learn how to connect audio, video, images, and text in one cohesive presentation during this self-paced professional development opportunity. Here are three reasons to participate:

Read more on ThingLink Blog.
3 Reasons to Take the ThingLink Teacher Challenge This Summer | ThingLink Blog:



'via Blog this'

New Summer Global Adventures

This summer is rich in my virtual and face-to-face presentations about an engaged learning and teaching. In the beginning of June, I present at Moodle MOOC 4 on WizIQ.

My presentation will be about The Value and Process of Creating Collaborative Learning Communities in Technology-enhanced Teacher-training Courses.

Each year I start a new semester and inform my classes that the major format of my courses will be cooperative and collaborative learning. I always notice the change of expression in a number of faces. As a rule, those teacher candidates that expressed disappointment, had a bad experience during their schools years with "cooperative" group work. From further conversations and discussions, they share that they were completing all work in the assigned group projects but everybody in the group would get the same high grade. Unfair! This confession happens each year. It takes a while, almost a semester, to convince these students to start appreciating the value of cooperative/collaborative learning. If done correctly, cooperative/collaborative learning is a powerful and meaningful method.  That's what my session will be about. I will share the research findings, best practices and my personal experience on how to create positive collaborative learning communities.

I will be presenting my talk via WizIQ, a web-based platform. I have been using WizIQ since 2008. First, in my online classes when I was assigned to teach classes in the summer or during winter interim but was traveling abroad. I was also using WizIQ when I was asked to share my experience with the Web 2.0 tools. In 2009, when I started closely collaborating with Dr. Nellie Deutsch on a variety of projects, we were using WizIQ for coordinating Moodle workshops, IWE global projects, or moderating Connected Online conferences, Spring Blog festival, and now Moodle MOOCs. It is such a rewarding experience! WizIQ is a space where talented, creative and skillful educators meet, collaborate and exchange ideas and most importantly generously share their mastership with each other and the learners from all over the world.