Valeria Palladino

By the way...

2012-01-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

...you may have stumbled upon this page in search of contact information from a session I presented, or support I provided around uses of technology tools for teaching. I am humbling grateful for your visit and wish you the best in all your endeavours.

I have set for myself a serious personal journey for the year - 365 days (or times) to sit down and reflect and be in the company of inspiring voices and minds, through TED Talks, which you may all be familiar with (if not I highly recommend them to you! www.ted.com). These reflections are not hosted in this specific blog, but in my recent blog creation and they are my own way to try, one small talk and bunch of reflections at a time, to grasp and make sense of everything that happens around us, in this world, on a personal and professional note.

http://365dayswithted.blogspot.com/

This blog is the hub to all my other spaces, and I have decided, now more officially than before, that my presence online will be, through here, as official as I will ever make it. It is liberating and exciting at the same time. I know I will have to work at it each day, and I certainly don't imagine doing this for any sense of fame. I just have reconnected with a part of self that used to write journals and essays just about everything. Some days more than others, but the reflective self was always there.

I hope that some of the spaces you will come across through here, through me, will inspire you as a teacher or an educator. But believe me when I say I don't do it holding by breath that each visit will be life changing. It will not. As they say...it sis the drop that carves the stone, but only with consistent, incessant and steady pulse, falling, second after second on the same spot. These words are the drops and they fall inside me, even if the tools are external and open to the world.

Nice to meet you!

A "Non-Blogger" Blogger!

2011-12-15T16:20:00.000-08:00

I really think this definition, if not a label, kind of indicates my online presence in this blog and the many more (45 to date) I have started, used, managed, run, update and what have you! I love the opportunity to live online, and what potential and horizon this new dimension in our lives has opened for us all.

I watch TED talks on a regular basis, where I have the chance to hear inspirational discussions and reflect on everything humankind has imagined and worked on for the past few thousand years. I tweet - but not much, just to keep up with my professional endeavours, whenever I see or read something great online, or attend a phenomenal keynote presentation.

I write wikis - many. Just discovered they are the best tool for PD sessions and workshops preparation and follow up. They seem to work so well with all the community building potential one presenter can set up for those who are willing to participate in the conversation. Really think this online dimension gives us the best chance we have ever had to actually create the real learning environments we can thrive through.

I am on Flickr and on Linked-In, but not Facebook yet. You will find me on You Tube and of course I podcast whenever I can. It takes time, commitment and passion, but I think language teachers and any teacher/educator in the world, can use these channels to build the connections and the community and make the best of the resources at hand to support their students.

...and yes: I blog a bit. But not in the official and more traditional sense. I use blogs as instruments of research and specifically as basis for lesson and unit design, finding resources online I can connect to, point out to students and teachers and set models for learning possibilities. I also blog when I travel - and I travel a bit, I would say. The experience of seeing bits of the world, most of the time for work reasons, let me discover and reflect how different people are and yet how close we all are to being one race and one mind. Photography fascinates me and, for the last little while, some media production (using videos and such) has also opened new creative channels in my mind. I'd say I am trying things out.

And yes: I was not trained to do this. When I came to Canada I had never seen a computer in my life, so there is hope for many of us, educator, who had not signed up to teach or plan in these new dimensions, but can take the best advantage of all that these online world has to offer, not only to be closer to our learners, but especially to live on our skins and in our minds, the true core beliefs of social constructivism and communities of inquiry.

Just finished to write my last paper for my course work for a masters I am completing. Feels good to have all courses behind me and one project ahead. Hope to find the enthusiasm for this last stretch and get down with the project. I have so much still to share and create...stick around if you like. Maybe there is something in here that will inspire you too!

Setting Examples Online

2011-11-30T09:25:00.001-08:00

Good morning everyone,

This short entry today is about an article that a colleague of mine sent my way, about Skills 2.0 - the skills professionals are called to embrace and be empowered by in today's world. A world of technologies and collaboration opportunities.

I took a few minutes to read the article (really great read by the way - you should check it out here) and I did something with it that I normally do when I discover and learn something new, these days. First I saved a copy on my desktop (it is a pdf) so I can review it off line when I need to. Then I added it to my Diigo account (www.diigo.com) - my social bookmarking space where I place all my interesting bookmarks these days. That lets me feel confident that I can always retrieve great information when I need to, regardless of the desktop I saved a favourite to.

With my personal pdf copy I can also work out highlighting and review stuff on the digital copy, and save it to a wiki page of mine, so it becomes digital content with comments I can now share with my colleagues (which I will actually do during the Pro-D Pro-T sessions coming up next week and through winter 2012.)

See the commented version of the article here.

I love the content and ideas I found in this little article - so I also grabbed the blog author's link and subscribed to his updates. In short, I tried everything I know how to do to stay connected. Which is the heart of the message in the article. Staying connected through Web 2.0 technologies is about attitudes and enthusiasm for one's profession and goals. Remaining a life-long learner at heart is the crucial ingredient for Web 2.0 stuff to work - not the magic code that is behind the engines of this or that widget!

And maybe that is why a lot of changes, especially in education, around the use of these technologies, are happening at a slower pace than the rest of the world is already going at. Changing attitudes and dispositions, from the idea of being the "experts" on something and being in control of the learning, versus embracing the fact that no-one is an expert in something for a long time any more, and that connectivity and connections, collaboration and exchange of ideas are the new "expertise" in any area, is really hard to do.

Well: I like to think of myself as the contributor, in my little, to enhancing this connectivity and increasing the network communication amongst the instructors, teachers and educational professionals that I work with and learn from, every single day!

BTW....I did one more think about the article I encountered: I added my blog entry here! So you can all see it, comment upon it and share it with your own networks!

Harold Jarche Blog
Diigo - Social Bookmarking Site

Just a brief note: I have also posted this blog entry in my other blog space on a really cool network of teachers I belong to. You can check that community network at: http://bestmbteachers.ning.com/

Design in My Life

2011-09-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

A reflective entryfor a communication and design course

With little noticeand a bit of trepidation around the idea of putting into words what designmeans in my life, I approach the task and decide to just “go with it”. I do know by now that design is part ofeverything I do, consciously and unconsciously, and it has been, as I set tolook back at what brought me this far, always, in more than one language andmore than one culture.

What I now defineas peculiar aspects of my need to be, at work or in my private life, isprobably this need to clearly be aware of what surrounds me, as far as spaces Ioccupy or visit, smells and sounds I experience while working or enjoying awalk and objects I use, look at, reflect upon or create, to work on a project,design a new plan or simply prepare and enjoy the plans for a familyhome-cooked dinner.

I am an avid userof Ted Talks and I lean on them almost daily, to get inspiration, find rolemodels that open my horizons to humanity’s best achievements and ideas, andconnect everything around me with an innate reflective modus operandi that I have been nurturing since the days of juniorhigh, in private schools back in Rome (in the presence of Dominican nuns,nonetheless!)

The ideas ofconnectivity and creativity and the fundamental element of cyclical movementare probably the center pillars of my way of thinking of design and applying itto my life. I will try to consider these elements in a bit more depth with thefollowing few paragraphs.

One of the firstepiphanies about my passion for design came about a few years back, as I wasworking on a digital learning object project, on behalf of the provincialeducational ministry in my province. The task at hand, after numerous activityideas had been generated together and we were trying to step back and considerstrategies to approach next steps in the project with a more consistent hand,was to lay down in front of us, all that we had created and designed, andobserve it, trying to capture the patterns and the values that emerged from thedecisions taken behind each activity. So we did.

We literallyprinted off the design docs and plastered them all over the wall of thismeeting room, so that we could literally see them all and identify the keyelements we instinctively used in each of the activity, while following themore creative mode at that particular stage of the game.

The act ofstepping back and discovering the categories of our design choices was truly avisceral positive experience. It dawned on me, at that point, that looking forpatterns and connections in everything around me is a fundamental pleasure Iengage in with passion, that helps me makes sense of absolutely every thoughtthat comes to mind during the working day. What I challenge myself as often asI take part in this natural task is the principle of seeing and experiencingthe patterns across everything. And here is where TED comes to play.

In hispresentation in 2003, Don Norman talked about his new approach to understandingdesign. We all function at three levels, as he described, and these are: thevisceral and more instinctive one, the behavioural level, where emotions helpus and guide us to making connections with actions, and the reflective level,where the mind consciously directs our decisions, in a balanced attempt to makesense of what is in front of us (or inside us), what the occasion may requireus to consider, societal pressures and implications and the “greater good” orideals we strive to follow in our lives. Well, maybe Norman did not say it inthese exact ways, but the points are there, one way or the other. (I wouldhighly recommend watching this talk).

Ultimately, Normanspeaks of the idea that happiness makes us appreciate the design of things – ifwhat surround us makes us happy, we like it, instinctively or consciously. Andhappiness affects our lives and our ability to work towards our goals. Seeingand making connections makes me very happy. J

The other aspectof design that I find intriguing is the creativity element that is embedded inthe act of design (which is in my mind never done). Generating new ideas,seeing how different uses of same objects or processes, different ways toapproach “wicked problems” and learning from opposite dimensions andperspectives is the second most enjoyable act of design that I also live and thrivein. Seeing creative ideas, whether they be pictures, descriptions of events,stories, dynamics in action is also an extremely present activity in myprofessional and personal life, and it inspires me to seek new channels, workon building new bridges between the present need and future destinations, andadmire the work of others.

These creativemoments show themselves in an ever present need to doodle while I listen tolectures, paint or draw new images, write blog entries and share podcasts, takephotographs of beautiful things I see around me, and reflect on life moments.Once again, the spectrum of reference to drink from is practically limitless: apicture, a concept, a poem, a quote, music notes or making music, a traditionalcustom in an exotic space, colours on a wall and the smell of a good espresso…

My finalfoundational element of design in my life is not an element but a process – orbetter yet the realization of a process. Design is fundamentally cyclical. Itcannot be boxed in a set of guidelines or steps, it cannot be forced but it cancertainly be nurtured and supported. Coming back, stepping out and lookingover, closing in and connecting are all cyclical aspects of design, and theolder I get the more significant it becomes for me to realize what helps me(and others around me) make it happen, so I continually strive to create theright space, the right time and the right length of time for it to flourish.

This brings me todecisions like picking the right office space or the right person to work for,and if that does not happen, creating those conditions around me one way or theother (i. e. working on my own or on specific projects/contracts – which soundsa lot like the abductive thinker modesin Martin’s latest book; and working only in the optimal conditions, even ifthese mean working from home or somewhere on the planet during my regulartravels). Ultimately it is a matter of knowing and accepting that not all goodideas will come at step one of any given process, humbling embracing therealization that sometimes good ideas do not come at all, and moving forwardanyhow, following good leads when they come around and taking the leadsometimes but never imposing one’s presence or perspective as the ultimatesolution or greatest design.

“The mostinnovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivatean appetite for thinking wrong.” — MARTY NEUMEIER

A Personal Knowledge System

2011-08-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

Just finished to read The Design of Business, Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, by Roger Martin (2009) and the read got me thinking. In more than one direction, actually, which is often a very confusing experience as I try to make sense of the new ideas shared by the author. And even more so when I actually try to decide which one I like best, and there are so many in this book I cannot begin to put them down before I forget.

The read is suggested for my next design and communication class for my MACT program - last elective before I dig into the new project for this master. In the meantime I am uploading ideas and resources, activities and links to my podcast channel and in the middle of the design process of a framework for a set of tools we are preparing at the college. I let you imagine how busy things are at this corner. But this is good.

About the book - which I am sure I will explore even in more detail in the next few weeks...The key message is the decision, from the reader's perspective, to chose between being an inductive or deductive thinker or an ABDUCTIVE THINKER. The thinker that takes inspiration from the heuristic stages of the knowledge fan and works through solving "wicked problems" looking and imagining the future, more than relying on past successes and predictable paths. I am all for intuition and design, imagination and possibilities and I had the epiphany of finding out, finally, why I am more of a project-based inclined professional rather than an operationally-driven individual. Nothing wrong with the latter - just not fitting my style and my approaches to the field of expertise I begin to feel part of.

So what does the abductive thinker do exactly? Still need time to digest the ideas and ponder, but I gather it is the person who sees opportunities everywhere, looks for patters in the more unusual places (such as outliers and highly-context specific cases) and thrives in facing paradoxes and challenges, creating new solutions that do not often fit within set boxes and check marks of companies and institutions.

The clear and simple idea of the knowledge fan, from hunches, to heuristics to algorithms and possible code makes a lot of sense to me. Nothing that a nice simple model cannot address. This one, with practically only three elements made sense and worded ideas and feelings I had began to consider after a lot of reflection on a variety of research, in my educational filed. At a point it almost felt like considering the area of language education as a run towards the formulas and the rules that support predictable effects, outcomes, to streamline resource access and ideas, and make the whole learning set up more efficient and reliable.

Especially with the use of online learning tools. But the variables are too many and the factors to be included too diverse to be able to ever consider the experience of learning a potential reliable business. Validity seems to be at the heart of what drives good learning experiences, at their core. The idea that if we can find ways to enable the goals to be a reality in the experience of the learners, maybe following hunches and trying out heuristic models, rather than strict, uniform and predictable algorithms, we are all better off. Right now I am focusing on the two key players: instructors and learners, and see what I can continue on to observe and notice.

Shall keep you all posted...

So Much Learning Going On!

2011-08-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

and welcome to my main blog page. I refer to this one each time I create something new I wish to share online with my friends and colleagues. It is important to stay connected right? And since I do not live on social media sites, this remains my preferred channel to communicate.

Feel free to peruse around. The links are many and I stopped counting them a long time ago.

However, I do want to share with you all some new pieces of info on things I have worked on lately. As you may have read before, I was in Rome to study last month. We completed some assignments for that course, and I of course placed all I do online. The links I propose to you below may interest Italian language teachers but also SL teachers in general, as the examples show the use of a webquest, a blog and a wiki page. All channels I find very useful to share my crazy language teaching ideas.

These are:

At the college I have also completed my work on the ESL project, and I just published online a short article about the project. It talks about ideas for reflection about online learning. You can view it at the link below. I have also submitted the article to a couple of journals - maybe it will be published on paper...maybe not. I still hope people will be inspired by the ideas.

The ESl Article on the Wiki Page

Hope everyone enjoys the last days of summer.

Rome Stop...to Study This Time!

2011-06-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

I am off again, on a plane or two, across the world. This has been a year of travels I should say.

I am going home for a while, to complete an elective course in Rome, at the American University of Rome, which happens to be very close to my mom's place - so we spend some time together. Kill to birds with one stone, I guess.

I will create an actual blog of the experience, and place the link below (soon) - just in case you want to see the latest pics of my home town (although there are many in my previous travel blogs). I can never take enough pictures of that place - I highly recumbent it to everyone to visit it at least once before you put away your travel luggage!

I will also continue to work on all my stuff at the office - which is the beauty of the nature of the work I do - the place where I do it really matters little! Additionally I can combine the learnings across all the things I do with my professional tasks, and I truly feel that enriches the experience and my ability to complete work that is innovative and reflective at the same time.

Anyhow - I thought I would update this page about my whereabouts.....gotta love the Internet and the ability to stay connected. Not sure how I did things before 1994!

Talk to you all soon!

Valeria

Freshly Update

2011-06-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

So I just read this piece of research that indicates one who uses blogs, should really try to stay fresh with the blogs. It occurred to me that the very nature of blogs is to update people who read you on a regular basis, but since I was using this blog as my go-to-place when I forget where I am on the net and what I have done in terms of digital resources, I left this home page stale a bit too long, so here I am with something new.

I successfully made it to Mexico for a second time - in an exciting adventure to discover a new city and lovely people running of their top public universities. The way I was treated and the opportunity to discover these beautiful places was absolutely one of a kind. You can always check my latest picture albums on my page on flicker.: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperella/ I find that pictures ultimately speak louder than anything else I try to write down. So I make sure I take many wherever I go.

I am about to finish a series of seminars on instructional design for technology tasks in Alberta - Calgary, Edmonton and tomorrow - Lethbridge.

I finished my spring institute number two for the MACT degree - and I am abbot to leave for Rome - this time to study for an elective in that program.

This in a nutshell - all is well as you may imagine.

Talk to you soon

V

The Problem with Tips!

2011-03-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

So here I am.

A seasoned teacher, a master of many trades. How I ended up on this road on the passion for technology and instruction I really don't know. But I do know there is a calling on these steps and I figured as long as I share what I am blessed to discover, appreciate and invent with as my passion grows, I will keep the balance going, between receiving and giving.

In all the sessions I attended in the past, and a few of the ones I have also presented, I feel the pressure and the tension of teachers and instructors who crave the help and support, and sometimes envy the creativity of presenters, and feel often left out of the magical circle of knowing what to do with technology tools, digital interfaces and Web 2.0 gadgets!

So I stopped and paused and reflected on one point. Tips and techniques, strategies and guiding lists of best practices and working formulas are great! And yet they never seem to be enough.

What's the problem with tips?

On the good side of tips (at least tips for technology and teaching, specifically in language learning) I reflected on the following.

They are quick and easy to follow along and even relatively easy to find online, or through experienced colleagues. When presented by upbeat speakers in keynote sessions or all day workshops these tips inspire us and fill us with a sense of optimism and endless opportunities. Since tips are so small and manageable, they can be carried in our brains for a long time and may come in handy if we get a chance to apply them for the right problem that is bound to come up on that last block lab session of the day, when "...I really thought the audio and video tools were going to work!"

And since tips are small by definition, I can focus my attention on them without compromising too many other items on my endless 'to do' list of the day. Like post-it notes, they constantly remind me of how much is out there to help me with my challenges, and like the colourful gluey small papers that come in all shapes and sizes, they are there when I need them, ready to be plucked in the right spot at the right time!

On the difficult side of things however, tips do carry along a few negatives that one can easily feel overwhelmed by, even in the tight and condensed versions tips usually meet us during PD sessions or reading articles online, or sharing moments with colleagues...

Small things get lost easily! Lost in the space of everything I have to manage during an instructional day, let alone a week! The ideas of tips are often great, but "... where are my assessment sample and template tools?" Super new ways to do things will come and bite me if I cannot make sense of them in my lesson plan and pedagogical objectives, right?

Small things, especially when they come in groups of many, get forgotten easily. And who has time to start a database of new tools to implement with my second language classes? (I would probably need a tip to set one up anyways!)

And for some mysterious reason, when I get back to class and try that simple tip from the cool speaker at the last session I attended, it never works for me. I can guarantee it!

Another downsize of tips is all the planning and approaches, and beliefs and methods that are left unsaid when someone uses them in the right way and comes to sessions to share. And even when they try to tell me the story of what happened when it worked, shared the project and the steps to make it happen, I feel excited, that is true. But that lesson is not mine. Those students are not mine. The tools I can work with are always different...So the "big picture" did not come in the session and is nowhere to be found, nor do I have the time to go and chase it to make the tip work for me....

So tips can cause more harm than good if used without precautions. Like the side effects of an over-the-counter drug that I would love to use to fix all maladies in my classes, or better yet - enhance what has been working so fine for the last few decades, and all of a sudden seems to be so outdated so fast!

But they are not. And there are not such remedies to ongoing challenges, in the body or in the classroom! Not the ones that address the problem and not mask the symptoms!

Maybe...

Quick fixes work best when the solution meets the problem on the spot. If it is something technical I can learn to deal with the issue or ask for help. That is probably something I can plan for without too much trouble.

Quick fixes to planning problems, to good approaches to implementing technology at its best in second language education probably do not exist. They are a shortcut to nowhere! They are a shortcut to disaster!

I believe in the power of commitment and spending time and energy in understanding things deeply, working hard and placing faith in solid knowledge building tasks. And to date I have always received back tenfold from all my endeavours to learn more about the complexities of technology implementation and language education.

"Learn from everyone; follow no one; look for patterns and work like hell!" I heard someone say at a Ted Talk session a while ago. A good motto to follow. The patterns that tips form and belong to may just be the answer to the many challenges they seem to create instead of resolving. And looking for patterns takes time.

I am only at the beginning of the journey of course.

And for now my mission is to share! Happy trails!