Hello and welcome to our virtual Graduation ceremony and party! Hope you have fun! Before we get on with the show, have you ever wondered about the meaning of Hello, probably one of the most used words in the English language?! I'm almost sure you've taken it for granted... so had I till I got this in an email.
A "mini UN"
Baw 2008, with its 261 participants from 64 countries spanning the 5 continents - Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, England, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo (the most recent country in the world!), Kuwait, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sudan, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkey, UAE, Uruguay, USA, and Venezuela - is truly a global community or, as I put it early on, a mini UN. I just wish the authentic UN worked as well and as collaboratively as we do!
All about BaW 08
"My Gift for the BaW08 Graduation Ceremony" is a FA-BU-LOUS slidecast that Daf made for us to remind us of the high tech and human touch involved in this edition of BaW that made it such a success and, hopefully, professional and life-changing experience for many of you!
Sorry, the sound is not good, but I am having serious problems with my old laptop and the new one is almost dead :-(
The sound is great Daf as is your narrated text. Kudos to you!!! Beijinhos, Teresa
Coping with stress!
No Becoming a Webhead workshop has ever lacked a 'must' ingredient - stress -, because a lot of activity, collaboration, participation and commitment are involved, together with many other things in our professional and personal lives. You can take a look at two Pixton comic strips created by Ronaldo and Marina.
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BaW 08 was no exception. About halfway through we were all stressed out and still had 3 more weeks to go, so we needed a booster. I sent my favorite disco song, Gloria Gaynor's "I will survive", which always makes me jump off my chair, dance and unwind. I hoped it helped you.
Let's party!
It's time for the party to start. No virtual Graduation party would be complete without a virtual cake to celebrate "not the end of a workshop, but the beginning of a new era... life after BaW 2008"! João, my husband, baked this BaW 2008 cake with eight candles, each one with its own very special meaning! Have a slice!
Gifts
And no Graduation party is complete without gifts, food and drinks. Here's what some of our participants sent to make this celebration even more special.
Moira
Hi all,
I'd like to offer a Graduation Gift in advance before all the delicious food arrives and this is in particular for our Excel Queen (aka Tere).
Blist is a lovely looking modern spreadsheet and you can do wonders with it and very quickly. I've been setting up different ones for my learners and it really is intuitive. Uploading of images is great and you just move your mouse over it in the speadsheet and the whole image appears. It's in beta and other features are coming but it already rocks for me :-))
I'd like to take a very special dish from the northeast of Brazil to our party. It's called "bobó de camarão" (shrimp bobó) and the reason I would like to take is that, besides being a typical Brazilian dish and my favorite shrimp dish, it is pronounced "Shrimp baw-baw"! My mother makes the best one...
And to drink, of course, our famous "caipirinha", made of "cachaça" (an alcoholic beverage made from sugar cane), lime and sugar. Even though I don't drink alcohol, many people love caipirinhas.
There are pictures attached!
Ronaldo (Brazil)
Thank you, Ronaldo! I had both when I visited Brazil in 1980 and experienced a BIG hangover from too many caipirinhas. I even left the restaurant with my sandals in my hand!!! ;-)
Congratulations to all BaWers, mods, co-mods and participants who have made it through the past six weeks with their curiosity and desire to learn and use new technologies intact!
Here's my favorite dessert: hot fudge sundae! Enjoy it!
Cyberhugs from Maryland!
Nina Liakos (USA)
Thanks, dear Nina! It's one of my favotite American desserts together with apple pie.
Beijinhos, Teresa
BTW, Nina and I have made plans to have a hot fudge sundae together in New York! :-)
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Carlos Ferreira
Dear Dafne,
As requested, I spent the whole afternoon cooking these recipes for next sunday. Please keep them in the fridge until next sunday as they were carefully
cooked and wrapped to be consumed. You'll find a full meal from starters to dessert. Don't you dare to taste them before sunday!
Going to take care of my tuxedo now, as it needs to be ironed!
See you on Sunday
Carlos (Portugal)
Hi, Carlos!
Thanks for the great typical Portuguese recipes. I love them all! :-)
Beijinhos, Teresa
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Sasha
Ahoj Bawers,
I'm not much of a cook... so be happy I'm not sending you guys food for
tomorrow ;-). Instead, I'm sending you some fresh air and a waterfall
splash from the Sunny side of the Alps, some strawberries from my
father in law's backyard and some violets from mine, some wine from a
cellar near my home and some smiling faces of kids here and there, but
I'd love to visit your country. What beautiful landscape and set of photos you put together! Thank you!! :-)
Beijinhos, Teresa
Sharon
Here's my graduation gift! Sharon
Yummyyyyyy, Sharon!! Thanks!!!
Hugs, Teresa
Teresa
Once again, I (Teresa) present you with my cyber famous oven-baked codfish together with great Portuguese red wine. The recipe is included in a cooking lesson page that I created as a Webhead back in Jul. 2002 together with Dafne and Susanne Nyrop, who had their own recipes. Links at the bottom of the page). Enjoy!
Silvia Colombo
Hi everybody!
Here's my modest gift for our graduation ceremony. I've uploaded some sites and recipes to my blog for you to learn about my hometown and country.
I bring you from Brazil, our favorite snack and breafast food. This is our cheese bread. It is delicious and all Brazilians really love it. Hope you like it. You can have it with black coffee.
Marina
Hi Bawers,
I've included a video with tourist attractions of my country. Hope you enjoy it.
See you tomorrow,
Marina (Argentina)
Thanks, Marina!
Hugs, Teresa
Claudia
Hi everybody,
I added some images from my country to share with you all.
It was great to share with this group. There are so many technological
tools to work in class that sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but things
are clearing up and I'll continue trying during the year.
Thanks to the moderators, (you're great) and to the other 'students'
for this fantastic session, I learnt a lot from all of you.
Claudia (Uruguay)
Lovely, Claudia!
Hugs, Teresa
Sus
Daf, Tere and I made a tasty collaboration project for the Tapped In
carnival 2002 celebrating Webheads in Action We cooked our favorite dishes
and took pictures, and made homepages, linking to each other. And, chatting
a lot in between with help and advice for the process. We did not have smart
Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, or wikis, or Flickr and slideshare albums by
then, just plain HTML and digital photos, uploaded by FTP. More cumbersome,
For tomorrow, I'll put on my best silk dress, lipstick and perfume - you
never know what will happen after a few caipirinha drinks:-)
yours,
Sus in Denmark
What a F.U.Ntastic session that was, Sus!
Beijinhos, Teresa
Zsofi
Dear Teresa, Dafne, and all of you,
Iam sorry but can not attend the ceremony tonight, so I would like to say MILLION and more thanks that I could be here. Thank you Teresa for invited me!!
Thank you all for your support, help, and even I still have a gap, so I still have to catch up, but the world you opened for me is wonderful.
I can not say enough time: THANK YOU
As I have introduced to you my project created by me and two ladies, Sanja and Alfia, I would like to keep you informed about it:
we already have some signed up students who created their blog and made the quest:-)
we will continue this project, and as step by step exploring new tools I will add there
we created a voice thread to present our project. Take a look!
What an appropriate gift considering that TESOL 2008 will be held in New York City in five weeks' time and that many Webheads will be meeting f2f. "The Big Apple" rocks! And os does your project!! Our thanks to you, Alfia (Russi) and Sanja (Croatia) for a wonderful project already carried out by two students. Bravo! :-)
Hugs, Teresa
Alfia
Hello!
I'm Alfia from Russia. I've been a lurker most of the time, but I did learn a lot . Different tools which were used by participants are familiar to me now, because I followed the discussions. I wish I had done more. But still I am glad I've been a part of this wonderful group... Here the link to my small blog as a small graduation gift.
Alfia
Wonderful, Alfia! Thank you!
Hugs, Teresa
Liliana Mihalachi
Here's Liliana's gift, a tour of her hometown, Suceava, in Romania!
It's beautiful! Thank you, Liliana!
Hugs, Teresa
Mary Ziller
This is my graduation gift, a powerpoint of my city, Philadelphia. I submitted my gift before the party, but it got lost in the shuffle. lol
Mary
This is a beautiful .ppt presentation of Philadelphia! There's a picture for each letter of the alphabet. It may take a couple of minutes to download, but it's worth the wait. Enjoy!
Thanks, Mary.
Hugs, Teresa
Certificates
Finally, no BaW workshop would be complete without a symbolic Certificate of Participation.
Families - neglected husbands, wives and children - weren't forgotten! Here's our token of appreciation for your patience and understanding!
Time to join WiA
Six weeks ago many of you probably didn't have a clue about what you were getting into. Six weeks later you have come of age and are "full-fledged Webheads", ready to join the Webheads in Action community of practice (CoP). On behalf of Vance Stevens, our Webheads coordinator, Daf and I now invite you to join our "mother group", the Webheads in Action (WiA). Welcome! We hope you feel part of a big cyberfamily and as fulfilled and challenged as Daf and I have been for 6 years!
As Webheads, you are now entitled to the "Proud to be a Webhead" badge that Ibrahim Rustamov from Tajikistan created for us, his special gift to BaW08. It's very cute! You can embed it in your Web pages, blogs or wikis. I have. And Daf immediately embedded it in our wiki Sidebar.
Two BaW classics
Before we call it "a Graduation ceremony and party", maybe you'd like to reflect a little about the meaning of BaW through the lenses of two BaW classics.
Geese is a presentation about togetherness, collaboration and community spirit - some of the basic ingredients that are a big part of any "Becoming a Webhead" workshop!
(Please click the image below and enjoy!)
Becoming a Teacher is a curious and surprising text with "food for thought". Do read it. You won't regret it!
Once there was a man named Nathan. He wanted very much to be a teacher. So
he went to seek the advice of the wisest, most highly respected counselor
in the land.
"Wise counselor," Nathan began, "it has always been my dream to be a
teacher. I want to stimulate the minds of the young people of our land. I
want to lead them down the road of knowledge. Please tell me the secret of
becoming a teacher."
"Your goal is a commendable one, Nathan. However, it is also a very
difficult one to achieve. First you must overcome three major obstacles."
"I am ready to meet the challenge," answered Nathan bravely. "First you
must swim the Sea of Children," directed the knowing counselor.
Nathan started off to swim the Sea of Children. First he had to learn
their 38 names. He had to send the line cutters to the end of the line. He
made the paper throwers stay after school to clean the room. He commanded the
name callers, pushers, and punchers to apologize to their victims. He gave
candy to those who finished assignments and stars to those who were
sitting in their seats quietly. Nathan checked passes to see how many
children were in the bathroom. And he tracked down students who were gone longer
than was necessary. He arranged the desks in alphabetical order, then boy-girl,
boy-girl, and finally into small groups of four. He lined his children up
for physical education and music and library and lunch. Then stifled a cry
when the secretary came into the room with number 39.
Tired and shaken but still undefeated, Nathan returned to the counselor
for his second task.
"You are a very determined lad," said the advisor. "However, now you must
climb the Mountain of Paperwork."
Nathan set out at once. He wrote objectives and drew up lesson plans. He
made out report cards and graded papers. He filled out accident reports,
attendance reports and withdrawal reports. He completed inventories,
evaluations, surveys, and request forms. Finally, he made dittos and more
dittos. He ran them off until he was purple in the face.
But the courageous boy's resolve never dwindled. He went to the wise
counselor for his third task.
"You are indeed very strong, Nathan. But this third task will take all the
courage you can muster. You must now cross the country of Duties and
Committees."
At first Nathan was hesitant. But his convictions remained steadfast. He
began his long journey across the country of Duties and Committees. Nathan
took lunch duty, bus duty, and recess duty. He was on the social
committee, patrol committee, and the faculty advisory committee. He was the
adult supervisor of the student government and ran the United Fund and Easter
Seal drives. He went to PTA meetings, AEA meetings, SST meetings, School
Site meetings, and in-service workshops. He organized bicentennial programs,
talent shows, and book drives. Finally, he was elected the building
representative of the union. At last Nathan reached the outskirts of
Duties and Committees.
Exhausted but happy, he returned to the knowledgeable counselor.
"I swam the Sea of Children. I climbed the Mountain of Paperwork. I
crossed the country of Duties and Committees," Nathan proclaimed. "Am I not
worthy of the title of Teacher?"
"Why, Nathan," began the counselor, "you have been a teacher all along."
Nathan protested, "But I have not stimulated any minds. I have not guided
anyone down the road to knowledge, I have not had any time to teach."
"Oh, you say you want to TEACH! I thought you said you wanted to be a
teacher. That is a completely different story!!
Surprised?! I was the first time I read it.
Thank you!
Before we turn this page and start another one tomorrow, Daf and I (Teresa) would like to thank all our fabulous guest speakers, moderators, and participants for a fantastic job and perseverance to the last day, and for having made this fifth round of the Becoming a Webhead workshop the success and life-changing event it was. Without you all, none of this would have happened.
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