Another school year begins

Welcome new students! And hello again old ones, if you're still around! I wish you all a good start and good luck.

A little about this blog for those new to our English course - and a little about the writingmatrix project it's been part of from the start.

Our last year adult informatics group experimentally created this blog in April simply to reach out into the cyberworld beyond our classroom and meet new friends online. We soon learned about the writingmatrix project, where international students and teachers collaboratively explore tools such as blogs, RSS technology and social bookmarking sites, and we decided to join it. We started blogging, tagging and connecting and it's been fun! Check out the Technorati feed and our last year students' blogs - the links are on the right side of this blog.
I hope to see you join as well. It's very simple! Once you have your blog, label your post 'writingmatrix' and you are in. The more, the merrier. See you online.:-)

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Another great video from Common Craft explaining Del.icio.us 'in plain English'

A chat with students from Venezuela

Today I had a YM chat with Diego, David, and Irving - 3 writingmatrix students from Venezuela. We talked a bit about weather, travelling and what we do. It's hot here these days, isn't it? So is there - about 39 degrees C and up. They have 2 seasons there - a dry and a rainy one. Needless to say, both hot.

Back from holidays

I spent a long time away from computer on two beautiful Croatian islands, Hvar and Pag. Hvar is covered in lush greenery while Pag is a stony desert.

It took me a while to get used to life without the Internet. I kept wondering about the online events I was missing, tons of email, things to do... But fooling around with my 3 boys time flew and I pretty much soon stopped thinking about anything; we were swimming, fishing, playing in the sand, watching beautiful sunsets and starry nights, and eating and sleeping a lot. It's been some time since I was last disconnected for such a long time and although it seemed challenging to endure at first, proved a very relaxing experience. Now that I'm back home, I have problems turning off my vacation mode :-).

This was our beach on Hvar.

I hope you are all fully enjoying these summer days. What are your holidays like? Post some pics, tell us where you have been or where you plan to go.

Hi, I have made my first blog today. You can find it on this link: http://damijanlikar.blogspot.com/

PS. Saša, can you add me to students blogs list. Thanks.

Have a nice summer... Bye

Global warming

Monkey, originally uploaded by Saša Sirk.

It's getting hot, isn't it? Air conditioners hum all around and we linger by our firmly shut windows observing the world outside like tropical fish from a fish tank. Progress, huh?
Taiwanese students created very interesting propaganda materials to promote fight against global warming . Check it out at http://multienglishes.blogspot.com/ .

How to follow writingmatrix posts even more easily

We've mostly been using Bloglines now, right? We've subscribed to individual blogs of interest, explored various widgets, played around with templates and page elements, etc.
To pull all the writingmatrix posts together, we had a look at Technorati awhile ago (if we enter 'writingmatrix' in the search box, Technorati generates a page with a chronological list of blog posts tagged writingmatrix ).
Vance discovered it is also possible to subscribe to the RSS feed of this Technorati page. Following writingmatrix posts 'globally' is much simpler and more effective this way because everything tagged 'writingmatrix' is simply pooled to our Bloglines account and regularly updated.
How do we subscribe to the Technorati 'writingmatrix' page?
Go to Technorati homepage - enter 'writingmatrix' in the search box - click 'Search' - click 'View all' below the hit list - an orange RSS 'Subscribe' button should appear on top of the newly generated page - right-click the button - copy shortcut - and create a new Bloglines feed for the Technorati writingmatrix page.
I did it and now feel much more comfortable following what's going on in the writingmatrix world. Thank you Vance.
I decided to share the most recent writingmatrix posts from this feed in the side bar of our Roštilj. I did this in Blogger Dashboard - Manage Layout - Add a page element - Feed. I know many of you figured this out before I have - I'm catching up slowly and documenting my progress ;-).