Balance of School Online Activities

The beautiful Santana Hospital

Inner terrace at the beautiful Santana Hospital

Well, as it has turned out to be already a classical excuse for being away from blogging activities: I underwent knee surgery once again.

Since Easter I had to return to physiotherapy and finally got operated the 1st July, this time to the right patella, so that I’m back to walking with crutches again, waiting for the inflammation  to go away – and it will, for my doctors are great!

Hopefully, I’ll be ready to face the brand new school year – starting the 8th September – but meanwhile, all along these last months I barely had time to perform my duties regarding school, let alone be creative online. I really just used our wikis in a very plain way.

However, I was happy to see my kids creating their own pages on our 5th grade wiki to study maths or sharing a glossary; Mariana, a 6th grade student, took charge of our classblog almost by herself,  posting her own writings and profusely commenting all her colleagues posts; 5th grade Joana also revealed to be a heartwarming writer and 6th grade Max, although with no patience to fiction, offered some practical instructions about how to build a wooden box or to settle an aquarium, for instance.

As for the great Mars 2010  Challenge we couldn’t possibly participate, as our students still don’t have access to our internet connexion and teachers are still not allowed to share blogging activities in the classroom. However, some 6th grade students accepted to be in charge of our international blog Bringing Us Together, for about a month, as Andreia and Francisca did.

As Sue Waters and Sue Wyatt included me in the Google Wave created to organize the Challenge, I could subscribe to be a helper, getting thus to know young students abroad, like Yummy, an enthusiastic  ballet dancer and Soccergirl, that revealed to be a great writer. Some time in June, I was amazed to hear from Sue Waters herself that I was one of the helpers that had won a prize: a whole year subscription to my primary blog!

Now I’m very excited about translating Sue Waters great post about Online Jargon, but I’ll leave my short term projects for an upcoming post.