Social Networks: the Future of Internet Arrives at the Virtual Campus

From its beginning, the Web 2.0 – especially blogs and wikis- was characterized as the “Social Web”. As Michael Wesch said: “the Web 2.0 is connecting people”. A year ago, we mentioned the main discussions that were being carried out at ORT’s web of blogs, both inside and outside the school, with other people and communities (courtesy of the Web).

Last year, social networks settled in our society in a remarkable way. We have incorporated, as part of our everyday vocabulary, terms such as links, profiles, groups and messages, either at LinkedIn, Sonico, Facebook, or MySpace.

There is a new service available at the Virtual Campus -service which maybe shows more clearly the innovative spirit of ORT: “Friends” is a horizontal and open space, thought to continue building these bonds among the different members of the educational community (though in the future the idea is to articulate it with other social networks from outside). Its first inhabitants, who seem to have come to stay, are our students.

Evidently, innumerable questions related to the implementation of ‘Friends’ arise. Can the real communities of practice that constitute the projects develop at this new space of “social networks”? Is it possible to generate new strategies to intervene through these new ways of emerging social organization? Can this communication space become a learning environment? Can this work as ‘support’ for team work, which is so common in our schools?

As in the classroom, there is a public space here and the possibility to get together according to interests or issues in common. In our everyday life, we will have to rethink of what is ephemeral and long-lasting, what is public or private, of curricular and non-curricular issues, which are also at stake here.

It is said that one of the biggest challenges that blogs and the new spaces for content production in the Web have to face is the creation of communities around contents. Within this framework, the “aggregation” (that essential practice of “social networks”) gets fundamental importance. We invite you to continue experimenting, to share findings, but above all, to keep on being pioneers.

To use “Friends”, you need to log in at the Campus with a user’s name and a personal password. Once at the Campus, next to the editing permissions, there is an orange icon from which you can have access.

ORT Virtual Campus Offers Students Remote Access to their Works

ORT students can use from their homes a new service provided by the Virtual Campus, which is in beta version: the file administrator.

When entering the Campus, students will have access to their personal folders and files stored at the schools’ servers. Students will have to log in at the internal network (usually with their ID number) and their password. Once they have finished this step, they will be able to get to their files through the highlighted icon of the image.

The file administrator contains all the functions that are usually provided by virtual storage servers, such as file uploading and downloading, folder creation, documents previewing, etc. By using this service, students will be able to continue their homework at home or at school without having the need to forward it by e-mail or copy it on a pendrive or a CD. In some weeks, the file administrator will also be available for the students of the Institutes and for all the teachers.

The Virtual Campus aims at improving the services provided to our students, and keeps on working on one of its fundamental ideas which is to “constantly accompany students”, since their works will be permanently at their own disposal, from any computer, cell phone or PDA connected to the Internet.

Interactive Painting at the Museum of the Cabildo

The project consists of a software which reproduces the picture painted in oil in 1909 by Pedro Subercasseaux. Those who visit the Cabildo will be able to ‘have a conversation’ with the painting by clicking on a close plasma screen TV. In this way, when clicking the mouse, you’ll be able to learn about the names and biographies of all the people who participated that day, the expenditures of the event, how they voted, what was the average age, and what was happening in Europe and in the Spanish Viceroyalties towards 1810.

This article was written by Clarín newspaper on Sunday, August 17th.

ORT Virtual Campus Website Available on the Internet

In the last weeks, there have been important advances in the development of ORT Virtual Campus project and its appropriation by the different actors of the educational community. One of the accomplishments has to do with the adoption of the Virtual Campus as the starting page in all the computers of the school, instead of the Intranet. So far, the Intranet has been the place where teaching materials were stored as a guide for practical assignments, tutorials, works carried out by students, etc.

Such implementation is very important, not only because it widens the access to these contents from any computer which has connection to the Internet, but also –and fundamentally- because it implies the creation of new spaces for production and publication of contents, and deepens the line of work initiated in the blogs, wikis, and other tools of the Web 2.0.

Articles, news, videos, links, news of the web of weblogs… Contents in various formats, combined on the site or the ‘page’ of each area, track, or project. The idea is to bring together a ‘personalized’ offer of services and teaching materials. These new spaces ‘expand’ the classroom, thus reinventing the school as a place in which the skills of the “Information Society” are developed.

We would like to invite you to navigate these sites in construction. Soon we’ll have more news. Welcome to the last version of ORT Virtual Campus!

Did you know...?

ORT Virtual Campus at Parents’ School Meetings

In the last weeks, several parents' meetings for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd–year were held. This year, the teachers showed parents the works their children had posted on the blogs: works on English, Language, Social Sciences, Productive Processes Workshop, and Natural Sciences.

ORT Virtual Campus also showed the web of weblogs and various institutional videos. These are some of the pictures taken at yesterday’s meeting.

Award for the Use of Technology in the Classroom

This is for teachers of any level, either regular teachers or substitute ones.

The deadline is August 18th

The National Ministry of Education invites all the teachers to participate in “Educ.ar-Intel” award for Educational Quality, with the aim of fostering innovation in the use of technology in the classroom.

The call is open to teachers of any level, either regular or substitute teachers who work at private or public institutions. The best initiatives will get an award in cash for the teacher and the school. The deadline to get enrolled is August 18th.

The details of the call, the terms and conditions, and the enrolment form are available at http://www.educ.ar/.

The works will have to reflect pedagogical experience, and relevant application of the use of technology with students in the classroom (related to natural or exact sciences).

Those projects -already in process or finished- which reflect the relationship between different institutions or which involve other members of the educational community will be appreciated.

Visit of the Israeli Musical Band "Lehaka Tzvait"

On June 4th, ORT Technical School, Belgrano campus, had the great pleasure of welcoming "Lehaka Tzvait", the musical band from Israel Defence Army (Najal unit).

Visit of the Israeli Musical Band "Lehaka Tzvait"

News Online

This year we have incorporated two new Webs of Weblogs: one of them belongs to the English Department; and the other, to the Language Department. We also have ORT Argentina’s Virtual Campus Web of Weblogs.

We invite you to learn more about ORT VIRTUAL CAMPUS

A TAG CLOUD TO PUT THE UNIVERSE OF BLOGS IN ORDER

With the growth of blogs and the so-called Web 2.0, the traditional categories used to put the available information in order have become more limited. Instead, new ways to organize such "digital disorder" have emerged, such as the "tag cloud", which we have incorporated to ORT Virtual Campus’ Web of Weblogs.

Unlike the categories that integrate the catalogue of a library, for instance, which are generally elaborated by experts in classification, these "tag clouds" are created by users communities. This new way to organize the information has other special features such as:

• The categories are not in hierarchical order, but they are presented in a more horizontal, ‘chaotic’ way. The former are general, whereas the latter tend to be more specific (in our case, some of them are: Services, Design, Final Project, Campus, Technology, 1st year Almagro campus, 3rd year Belgrano campus, etc.).

• A "tag cloud" is associated to a new type of navigation on the Internet, which is known as "faceted navigation", where depending on the users’ choices, searching options narrow down. In this way, when selecting a label, we will be able to see all the information that is associated to that theme and can specify other future searches.

These new ways to organize the information follow the increasingly evident tendency towards mobility and permanent reordering of the information. In this context, in which we have to handle large amounts of information, textual galaxies or content nebulas, organizers like "tag clouds" will be fundamental tools.

Here's an independent documentary on the relatives and victims of the Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires.

PART I

PART II

PART III

ORT Virtual Campus at LA NACION Newspaper

From the School to the Internet and from the Internet to the School

ORT Argentina has included in its Virtual Campus a web of weblogs through which the school community is interconnected. Each course, workshop, extracurricular activity, special event, class, track, etc., has its own blog. At each of them -and in special subjects- students produce, organize and edit what they did with their classmates from their ‘subblog’ and then share it with the rest of the school. In this way, the classroom is no longer a closed room, where the teacher dictates and students copy. "Now, teachers and students work all together", explains Guillermo Lutzky, Director of the Virtual Campus. Prof. Lutzky now wants to carry out a digital literacy training: "Not only does everybody have to learn to handle the tools, but also to find and process the information in the best possible way; they have to network. It is important that students understand that everything they ‘upload’ on the Internet is their responsibility".

To read the whole article in Spanish, click here.

ORT Virtual Campus at LA RAZON

The Blog at School: A Tool that Grows and Motivates Children

The web offers tools for projects, links, and communication, and also to send practical works. The students, happy.

Students open a blog, choose a template, post texts, upload photos, leave comments, add a visits counter, change background colours, etc... They start classes and after the first breaks, they handle those terms. With the beginning of the school year, teachers have a new challenge: how to exploit that energy, which is applied to the use of the Internet, for the benefit of the school curriculum. In order to achieve so, blogs are a valid alternative in classroom projects.

Among the schools that include technological tools in the syllabus of some subjects, we can mention ORT, with more than 140 blogs running from the two campuses. The Director of the Virtual Campus, Guillermo Lutzky, makes emphasis on the idea that blogs are useful for ‘communication and production’: "Some children upload their poems, instead of handing in a sheet of paper; or in the case of the Mass Media track, students upload videos. But there are also blogs to monitor students, and even a medical department blog for prevention. Some teachers use them as weblogs: two students take turns to register the class, the activities, the tasks and then post them for the rest".

In turn, the Geography teacher Eugenia Alonso from the Liceo N° 1 José Figueroa Alcorta María, says that the school has a blog where the information on the different activities (such as ceremonies, excursions, championships, celebrations of last year’s hundredth anniversary, etc.) is constantly updated. "Besides, I give students guides, links to search for information, and work proposals. At another blog, I include information on courses of study for 5th and 6th-year students, enrolment dates, scholarships, syllabuses, and different university sites", adds Alonso, who has been working with weblogs since 2005.

Teachers agree on the fact that students get hooked on blogs, which are useful to hand in practical works or as a means of communication in the classroom. "It is like a blackboard that accompanies us. It is a network tool, which is part of the future. Therefore, the idea is that children can produce works they can keep for them and which they can show", emphasizes Lutzky. “Above all - he explains- it is interesting to go and look for children in that virtual environment: students spend more time on line than with the TV”.

“Many times, teachers are afraid of using a new tool, which the student knows better, but that can be from the instrumental point of view because the one who knows about the subject is the teacher. And it is ok that the student can share what he/she knows with the teacher.", indicates Laura Rodriguez, from Programa Red, Department of Education of the City of Buenos Aires.

The Blog: A New Educational Tool

Clarín newspaper published yesterday, at the Education supplement, an article on ORT Virtual Campus Web of Weblogs titled “The Blog: A New Educational Tool”. It narrates some experiences and general concepts of this project, which aims at establishing a different relationship between students, teacher and parents and the school.

Here's the translation of the article:


Twitter, Flickr, Podcast, You Tube… The vocabulary and the IT skills of the “digital natives” (term used by specialists to refer to those kids who have had cell phones and Internet at home since they were born) have put in check anyone who is not familiarized with the information technologies. Unlike their parents, teachers or other children, these kids grew up in environments where doing many things at the same time and being connected to their friends’ network is something very common. We usually see them chatting, watching TV, talking on the cell phone with their parents and receiving messages… everything at the same time. That is why catching their attention and teaching them with a blackboard and a chalk becomes such a difficult task.

Hence, both ORT Technical School campuses in Buenos Aires have decided to renew their educational philosophy, and in April 2007 incorporated the element that revolutionized the Internet and the adolescent’s life: the blog. And they made it big: they created a Virtual Campus - http://redblogs.ort.edu.ar - which consists of a network of these free, easy-to-use blogs. They started with 17 blogs, in September there were 90, and in February 2008 they got to 120 blogs, with up to 20 thousand visits per day (external visits, not from the school).

What does this digital spiderweb have to attract Internet surfers? Almost everything. Apart from the blogs updated by the courses or teachers related to the project, it offers blogs to document travels, to write about football or to listen to the contents broadcast by the school radio, called La Corneta. It also offers a channel at You Tube with more than 90 own videos, a job placement area, or access to the medical department. The icing on the cake is that any Internet surfer can receive alerts through Twitter – an Internet instant messaging channel – on the updates there are.

To understand the success of the project, it is enough to cross this ocean of information for a while. What is there? Adolescents who post the analysis of Pablo Neruda, for instance, which they wrote to pass the Language subject, or Natural Sciences teachers who upload videos in English on breathing. You can even read how some parents thank the school for rebroadcasting live –through the Internet- an activity where their kids participated. Just as Guillermo Lutzky explains, Director of ORT Virtual Campus, the idea is to finish with the exhausting phrase “What have you done today?”. In this way, students, teachers and parents can establish a different relationship with the school.

This is possible because this initiative has an impact on two basic aspects: public documentation of the learning process and the expansion of the audience that students have for their practical assignments. Thanks to this synergy between technology and teaching, any cybernaut can surf the 5IA blog of Image and Communication, for instance, click the label ‘pueblo’ (peoples), and search for the exercise “Produce a web for peoples of less than 10 thousand inhabitants”, and see how Federico Snieg and Maximiliano González prepared http://www.chos-malal.4to.com/, a non-official website devoted to Chos Malal (Neuquén). Besides, if readers want to and agree on the teacher moderating the comments, they can give their opinion. Therefore, “native digitals” claim for a revolution of the traditional teaching system.

Some of the IT words – which students use so naturally- might be translated as Interaction, Simultaneousness, Personalization, shared Creativity…. As Guillermo Lutzky explains, the positive chemistry between adolescents and blogs lies in the fact that “this tool allows them to integrate knowledge and everyday skills, and also allows them to share the outcome with others. That makes students feel they contribute with something of their own, thus getting emotionally involved”.

By Rubén A. Arribas, Clarín.
Sunday, February 10th, 2008.

Caminos de Tiza – ORT Virtual Campus on TV Channel 7

TV program broadcasted on Saturday 26, January 2008, by Channel 7 on the main criterion for the creation of ORT Virtual Campus.

There are also testimonies of teachers and students who show and talk about their works with weblogs.

-Part 1-

-Part 2-

-Part 3-

Blogs to Create Networks around Projects

We usually say that blogs are students and teachers’ collaborative production sites, with a physical environment which is the classroom. In this sense, blogs become an “expansion of the classroom”. But can these sites network if their authors are not physically in the same place? Are blogs tools to build such remote bridges “in the air”?

These thoughts derive from a concrete, remote, and collaborative experience: the ARCA Project, which is carried out by Laura Benadiba, from ORT Technical School, Tomás Biosca Esteve, from the El Morell de Tarragona Institute (Catalonia), and their students. This project, based on Oral History work, was awarded towards the end of last year by the Institute of Educational Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona for its innovative methodology and for being a student-centered experience (See video of the awards’ ceremony).

Laura Benadiba narrated in the Oral History and Education blog that the project applies the methodology of Oral History to analyze how people remember the last military dictatorship – Franco’s regime in Spain and the 1976 dictatorship in Argentina- and the silence that still remains in both cases. The Oral History is a useful tool to think about the individual and collective past, and to promote the dialogue among different generations.

During the first phase of the work, there was training in the use of this methodology; the second phase, which will be carried out this year, will deal with the comparative history in both cases and the analysis of the interviews. Therefore, it will be very helpful to have a space for exchange and collaborative network production as the blog, which in turn enables the analysis of the progress attained in the work.

Tomás Biosca Esteve fostered this type of remote, collaborative work, which was facilitated by the new technologies: “an attractive project, a clear goal, and willingness to work are the only things necessary”, he said.

Related post: Videoconference among students from both campuses.

ORT Virtual Campus Videos at YouTube

ORT Virtual Campus has a video channel at YouTube, where not only some practical works of the students can be seen, but also other videos on projects (such as the Model of United Nations), celebrations (as the Graduation Ceremony), trips or other school activities. A report in images -based on the aggregation of different people’s works- of everything that happened in 2007, which we hope to enlarge this year…

This video channel is also a new space for communication and exchange, which is added to the ones that already exist within the framework of the Virtual Campus, such as the Web of Weblogs and Twitter. We invite you to visit it and to subscribe to the channel so as to receive the new videos: http://es.youtube.com/CampusVirtualORT

ORT Argentina Graduation Ceremony

Graduation Ceremony

A Day at ORT

Insitutional video of a day at ORT Argentina

Status Report of the Virtual Campus: Blogs

During the second part of the meeting, the teachers who used blogs as a working tool in the classrooms talked about the experience, how students welcomed blogs and how these activities contributed to the learning process. We will now present some of their observations:

“Working with blogs brought new issues to the classroom (such as intertextuality), which are not included in the curriculum of the subject”. Débora Wainschenker talked about the beginning of the Language 1º E blog: (the first blog they had, after sharing the 2º G blog). She stood out an activity they did on The Wizard of Oz: they worked with the images of the play, which led to a discussion of more complex issues. Débora presented her work with blogs at a congress on the Promotion of Reading and Writing, which was carried out in La Habana, Cuba, and was very welcomed.

“With the blog we were able to show what the United Nations Model is about”. Daniel Plotinsky presented the UN Model blog and mentioned that - once it was adopted by teachers and students- the access to the materials and their consultation improved significantly through the comment area. The first live broadcast was presented by this blog from Almagro campus, “so we were able to show parents and other people what the Model is about”, he said.

“Blogs enabled us to generate another kind of approach with contents”. Jimena Castellión went through her work with blogs, from We are reading Matilda to Our personal profiles, and Frankenstien is visiting us. Jimena contrasted the first blog, where she posted a series of resources about the play, and the last ones, where students posted their own texts and commented on other classmates’ posts.

“We are looking for new ways to organize information, to prevent the blog from becoming a modern parchment”. Analía Fukelman presented the blog Navegate with Sciences, of the Natural Sciences Department, which she described as a reservoir of different resources of interest to students: guides, sites and complementary materials (many of the audio-visual). Analía also said that the News of the World… blog emerged from the previous blog, and stood out the way in which information is organized at the blog.

“The students themselves write the chronicle of each class, and it remains in the blog”. Javier Jamui referred to the use of the blog as a students’ production context, by considering his experience at the blog de Naturales de 2º I, where an abstract of the contents seen in class is posted. “In this way, I know that at least two students are paying attention”, added Javier as a joke to stand out the enthusiasm that this activity generates in students.

At the presentation, there were also other important experiences, such as the blogs of the proyectos Finales de Electrónica CANSat, where students documented their research work; el blog de ExpoConstrucciones, where the activities carried out at the exhibition were registered; and the blog de la radio, where the podcasts produced by the students along the year were published.

We invite you to visit these blogs and others at the Virtual Campus Weblogs Net: http://redblogs.ort.edu.ar/

Status Report of the Virtual Campus

Last Monday and Wednesday, the status report of ORT Virtual Campus was presented at Almagro campus. Following Diana Grimbe’s welcome words (Principal of this campus), Guillermo Lutzky, Director of the project, presented the different areas that constitute the Virtual Campus: the Intranet, the e-learning platform, and the weblogs net, and talked about the objectives accomplished at each of them.

Mario Cwi had a conversation with the teachers of the English, Social Sciences, Mathematics, and Jewish Education department about their work experience with the e-learning platform, and about the teaching materials they produced with other colleagues of the area, and with the collaboration of Cintia Plotkin and Nora Quaglia.

Jimena Castellión, Andrea Levin and Geraldine Kahan, from the English Department, showed a material called “Traveling abroad”, where –as far as they said- “knowing English is the excuse to carry out a series of activities that one would normally do when traveling abroad, and to develop other competences”.

Then, Fabián Beremblum and Jorge Wozniak, of the Social Sciences area, presented material on the French Revolution, which combines a variety of sources and audio-visual formats.

Ariel Blatman and Mauro Rey, of the Mathematics area, showed material which suggests approaching the theme of the infinite through different philosophy and literature works, comic strips and other graphic resources.

Finally, Aliza Berman and Ruthy Szewach, of the Jewish Education area, told their work experience with the platform, and stood out the motivation and enthusiasm that students felt by working with images, maps and other audio-visual formats.

In the second part of the meeting, the teachers that used blogs as a tool to work in their classrooms talked about the experience, how students welcomed blogs, and how these contributed to the learning process.

Presentation: Status Report of ORT Virtual Campus Project

On Tuesday 11th and Thursday 13th of December, the first status report on ORT Virtual Campus Project was presented at Belgrano campus. Following Viviana Jasid’s welcome words (Principal of this campus), Guillermo Lutzky presented the different areas that constitute the Virtual Campus: the Intranet, the e-learning platform, and the weblogs net; and talked about the objectives accomplished at each of them.

Later on, the teachers of the Biology, Physics, and Jewish Education areas had a talk with Marcelo Dal Molin and Sandra Borenstein about their work experiences with the e-learning plataform, and showed some of the works done.

After that, the teachers who used blogs as a tool to work in their classrooms talked about the work they carried out, how students welcomed blogs, and how they contributed to the learning process.

These are some pictures from Thursday 13th…

Alejandro Schneider, presented a new blog: Puntos de Encuentro (Meeting Points). This is a joint institutional blog of the different activities carried out on ‘solidarity’ at ORT.

Status Report of the Virtual Campus

Yesterday -Tuesday 11th of December 2007- a status report on the Virtual Campus project was presented. Viviana Jasid, the School Principal of Belgrano campus, opened the meeting and addressed the audience.

Status Report of the Virtual Campus

After Viviana Jasid’s words, Guillermo Lutzky, Director of the Virtual Campus, presented the different areas that constitute the Virtual Campus: the Intranet, the e-learning platform, and the weblogs net; and talked about the objectives accomplished at each of them.

Some of the blogs presented were ORT Argentina Weblogs Net, ORT Media, Medical Department , Hebrew High Level, Virtual Campus, Football, Passion and Identity, Puntos de Encuentro, Cuarto de la Mancha.

Status Report of the Virtual Campus

Later on, Marcelo Dal Molin and Sandra Borenstein talked about the work of the CREA.

The teachers who presented their projects were:

From the Biology area: Javier Jamuí and Patricia Antokolec.

From the Jewish Education area: Silvia Shapiro and Batia Lipovetzky.

From the Physics area: Claudia Fresnedo and Yamile Bohorquez.

Status Report of the Virtual Campus

The last to speak was Guillermo Lutzky, Director of the Virtual Campus. Some teachers also presented their blogs.

• First, it was the turn of Paula Luna, teacher of the Language area. She worked with different groups individually on each blog (some of them were: Segundo Hache 2007, Cuarto de la Mancha, Segundo E Lengua 2007, Primero B Lengua 2007, Cuaderno de Lengua, Primero D Lengua 2007). She talked about her experience with her students and with the community at large.
• Then, it was the turn of Martín Leguizamon and Juan Pablo Todaro, teachers of the Social Sciences area, who started the project Fútbol, Pasión e Identidad (Football, Passion and Identity), where students tell their stories, homages to different personalities of the field are paid, etc.
• Later on came Silvia Shapiro, teacher of the Jewish Education area, who created the blog Hebreo 3F Nivel Alto, where she worked with her Jewish-language students through music. This has helped her to encourage her students more and also their learning process.
• At the end, Javier Jamuí, teacher of the Natural Sciences area, shared his experience with the blogs Ciencias Naturales 1 B, Ciencias Naturales 1 C, and Videos with his students.

ORT Virtual Campus Status Report

Draft of the Project’s status report for the teachers’ meetings, which will be carried out from December 10th to 13th, 2007.