I really treasure this space, not only because it witnesses my learning adventures and my professional development, but also because it allows me to connect with EFL colleagues all over the world and build virtual networks of collaboration. However, at a certain point, I also feel the need and the responsibility to help spread those networks f2f. I know that there are still very few EFL teachers in my area that would commit to such a venture, but what if we invited other (foreign) language teachers, of Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.? Then, the network would be stronger, allowing diversity while focusing on the special interest of language teachers, and in our mother tongue, letting us also become a part of the general educational community.

So I thought a team blog would be a good starting point. I contacted Griselda Sassola, a teacher of French who’s been working with ICT for a long time. We’ve started a blog called TICs y Lenguas (ICT and Languages), which intends to be an open space for discussion and interaction. We are going to invite teachers to publish their posts as authors and we have also set up static pages for announcements and resources.

I know this is going to be a long path, but we’ve already set the ball rolling!

A spin-off of RosarioBlogDay, MateyBlogs, the first collaborative blogging workshop in Rosario, took place today at CEC combining one of our dearest Argentinian traditions with the 2.0 spirit.

After three brief presentations conducted by Fernanda Rubio, Francisco Sanguinetti on how to integrate mutimedia content, and Federico Aikawa, who shared some practical blogging tips, we divided ourselves into three groups to share experiences and discuss questions with the coordinators. Surprisingly enough, I was in a group full of teachers! I was especially glad to meet Gabriela Spadoni and María Sabina Codarín, Edublogger Argento members, after our failed f2f meeting last night.

The wrap up presentation was in charge of Federico Picone who discussed the importance of social networks and other Web 2.0 tools.

Some tools that were mentioned:
Gickr
Luna Pic
Photoshop Express
Twitxr
Alianzo

Once again, it was great to meet such an enthusiastic and diverse community of ArgenBloggers face to face.

See you all at the next MateyBlogs!