English Virtual Community

We had a chat on RSS and Bloglines today. Unfortunatelly, I did not record it. So, I will try to summarize what we said. What is RSS? It is an acronym that stand for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Sindication. An RSS "feed" is a type of electronic file written in the XML formatting language (similar to HMTL, but with user-defined parameters), which contains information about content on a website or weblog. Weblogs and news sites are the most common use of RSS feeds. When new content is added to a blog or website, that contect is automatically updated to every subscriber of that RSS feed. Advantages? 1-Most aggresgator programs are free and can be easily obtained on the Internet. Example: Bloglines , Google Reader , Mozilla Thunderbird 2-RSS is one of the most timely and cost-effective forms of professional development. 3- It is time saving. You can track more information in a short period of time. 4- If you are subscribed to different parts of the news world , you will be...

How can you find others using the same tags you've placed in your posts? Well, open an account in Technorati What is Technorati? It is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. (More Info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati ) Go to Tecnorati at http://www.technorati.com/ Open an account Go to "My Account" Click on the "Blogs" tab Go to "Claim a Blog" and write your blog url You'll see "Begin Claim" and will get a choice for next step, just pick the simpler, "Post Claim". Activate the claim using "post claim". Follow Instructions. Once you have successfully claimed your blog, complete the Edit Blog Settings form, where you'll need to write the tags that will describe yours, and HERE, include wrtingmatrix. When done, you'll see "My Claimed Blogs". Click on "Ping". You can now check for your blog's new content. There's no need to ...

From May 5th to 9th, the University of El Salvador (Argentina) held online Wokshops in Spanish on different topics related to EAD ( Distance Education). I presented Writing Matrix Project in Spanish on May 7th... and received some very good comments: Hola al grupo! Hola Nelba: Leí tu presentación. Me pareció interesantísima y narrada además con mucho entusiasmo.Cuando concluya el evento visitaré sitios sugeridos por vos y haré una nueva lectura con tranquilidad.(Al menos es lo que deseo!) Reitero: el proyecto de ustedes es genial! ...Quedamos en diálogo.Un saludo afectuoso. Graciela Lima Silvain. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Argentina. Nelba, he "disfrutado" de tu ponencia y accedido al blog. Es realmente una experiencia destacada desde el planteo pedagógico y disciplinar, el grado de interacción con los alumnos... impresionante!!! Un ejemplo en la utilización de todos los recursos de la "red social", gracias por compartirlo... !!!! Un cordial saludo desde Mend...

Last Saturday we had our first chat session of Writing Matrix Reloaded. Writing Matrix Reloaded group is pretty different from the one we had last year. Matías, Barbara, Joao and María Luján are still with us - LUCKILY- , the new participants are all teachers: Beyza from Turkey , Berta from Venezuela, José Da Silva from Brazil and Liliana from Argentina . The chat lasted and hour and it was about tags and tagging , their use and purpose. Some teachers found it interesting and clarifying. Writing Matrix Tagging in Youtube by Vance at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHjlCY0BCNo

Hello, everybody! Fasten your seatbelts becauseWriting Matrix Reloaded 2008 is about to take off! Welcome on board, I hope you will enjoy this new ride on the Web 2.0.

I am very happy to announce that an article about Writing Matrix - EVC group will be published soon in TESOL magazine. Thanks to all EVC members who have participated, WM colleagues, Catherine Beck and TESOL magazine who made this possible :) There is another article written by all the facilitators which will be published in TESL-EJ March 2008 . Enjoy the reading!

I am very proud to tell you that I have been awarded for a scholarship to the congress WorldCALL 2008 To make things even better, Jennifer Vershoor is another of the awardees, so we are going to meet our Webheads friends in Fukuoka!!! We are looking foward to meeting our Webheads mates.