By Inge Ignatia de Waard. Y.L. Teresa Ting from the Universitá della Calabria (Italy) has an Italian charm and looks fabulous as she takes the stage.  Today she focused on the question on how the CLIL format can answer the many challenges of educating pupils in a foreign language, especially if one takes into account that the outcomes of native language courses keep having flaws. She is also clearly a teacher, narrating, yet paying attention at our focus, and she makes us do things (takes me back to the classroom).I was following with pleasure, until the sentence "students need good textbooks more then ever, as you never know what they will find on the internet" - okay, just imagine my face when hearing that sentence! Fun though, and the full keynote was definitely of interest. Read more...

By Inge Ignatia de Waard. Great initiative to combine digital writing and creativity all through the month of November 2015. I learn by writing. It always feels like the movement of my fingers on my keyboard makes me think more clearly, and even pushes thoughts right into the open. So this Digital Writing Month initiative (#DigiWriMo), organised by the Hybrid Pedagogy bloggers (Maha Bali, Sarah Honeychurch, and Kevin Hogdson), is right up my alley. The #DigiWriMo will push people to engage in digital writing and creativity during the month of November. Read more...

By Inge Ignatia de Waard. Live notes from a great workshop on basic and easy Mendeley use by my OU/PhD colleague Janesh Sanzgiri. In this workshop Janesh highlighted the most useful Mendeley functions, and how to use them in Word. He likes Mendeley as the files are stored in the Cloud, which allows you to access your account across all your devices as well as access it from internet-connected computers wherever they are.  And Mendeley is also seen as intuitive. Read more...

By Inge Ignatia de Waard. Most of the people who are passionate about computing know Ada Lovelace. Born 200 years ago (1815) her family background provided a mix of poetry (father) and mathematics (mother). An interesting mix, and I feel a necessary mix for great achievers. Being able to feel the dream-state of creativity, allows a different interpretation of the material, realistic world. I truly believe that there is no great invention without great creative vision, and to me Ada Lovelace had both traits which resulted in a magnificent addition to history, even today. There is a lovely FindingAda blog which celebrates the achievements of women in STEM. Read more...