Rita Zeinstejer on Google Applications in the Classroom

Today, Rita Zeinstejer was our wonderful grand finale guest speaker at Webheads in Action Elluminate virtual room hosted by Learning Times.
Rita is a resourceful EFL teacher at the Association Rosarina de Cultura Inglesa in Argentina where she set up both the Self Access and the Multimedia Centre eight years ago.

In her usual sparkly manner she led us through several ways to use Google applications and sites in the classroom giving us examples of her own work, tips and great ideas to use those applications with our students. The presentation looked at all the applications that Google has created to use for free with our students.

She took us from Google Docs  to Google Sites, iGoogle and Google Tours passing by Google Earth, Google Reader, Google Knol, as well as Google Sketch Up, Google Scholar, Google Around  and even  Google Goggles and Google Body Browser, giving examples of the use of the tools to enhance course content, create a warm learning environment and engage the students.

Her ideas are so brilliant, versatile and challenging that  all participants felt time simply flew away.

Thank you Rita, it’s BaW tradition to have you closing this session. To all participants... a big round of applause. You’re on the last 100 meters of Becoming a Webhead! We’d love to read your comments about the session, they have great value for us.

Rubena St.Louis's Presentation

Rubena St.Louis shared wonderful "materials creation" tips and resources based on a "cooking recipes" theme on Friday, February 4. Her presentation made all of us to be involved into the world of “cooking” activities. Rubena started by giving us a general overview why we may need to create our own materials. Then she shared the process of materials creation step by step by introducing what good materials are and what opportunities they provide. Then we moved to examining what authentic resources and what Web 2.0 tools we can use. All these steps were introduced in a wonderful and very practical table. Finally, Rubena answered the participant’s questions how to deal with students who have learning problems (Juan), how to deal with individual and group interest (Wen Jun/Jasmine), and how to organize groups according to learning abilities or language levels (Ayat). We were more than fortunate with technical issues; however, some participants couldn’t enter the room or couldn’t have audio. For information on participants, chat log, and slides to the presentation, please visits our wiki page. We have recorded the session and will also make it available for those who could not attend or would like to listen to recording. We would love to know your impressions and opinions about the session through your comments on this blog.