Childhood friends

After a few days of getting back into your school mode, you should be ready to deal with a new blogging task:
From what I hear most of you have already found childhood pictures for your blogs. I would like you to use this opportunity and let your memory take you back into your childhood for a bit longer. Together with the picture, I would like you to post a description of your school-time friend, someone you spent a lot of time with and remember well. Apart from describing your friend, tell us what sort of person he/she was back then, how you spent time together, and what brought you together in the first place. Do you still keep in touch? If not, have you tried to re-connect with them through "Nasza Klasa", Facebook or other social networking sites?
Don't worry if you don't have a picture of your friend to post on the blog. It doesn't matter. What's important is that YOU should be in it.
To make it fair, I also posted my picture from long ago
in a post from 2006. :)

Christmas time

To all my current and former students, a very warm MERRY CHRISTMAS! May those moments around the Christmas table with your loved ones give you hope, strength and confidence in what you choose or have already chosen to do in the year to come.
All the best!

Blogging again!

Hi! It's been ages since I wrote something here, but now it's going to change. There will be tasks again and some more life. Most importantly, watch out for the new blogs that are to arrive any minute. I would like everyone to make the best of the project and use it not only to work on your English in a bit different way than you normally do, but also to get to know other students before you all graduate and disperse to different towns and schools. Your blog may be a place where you can share your interests, big and small discoveries, your sense of humor and perhaps some plans for the future.
To begin with, please write your opening post, where you introduce yourself and welcome your readers. Make clear what kind of blog you will be writing and invite people to follow your posts. It should sound encouraging. :)

Blogs and Websites Poll Results!

TOP TEN BLOGS 2009
	Blog	Rating Average (1-5)	Response Count	TOTAL POINTS
1	Elwajra's blog	4,22	23	97
2	Pixel's Bottomless Pit of Stupid Ideas	4,29	14	60
3	beti's blog	3,87	15	58
4	perfect transparency	3,5	10	35
5	Cherryland	1,94	16	31
6	Darth Goder	3	10	30
7	The Blog of The Beast	2,63	8	21
8	niech wam muzy będą spoko	3	7	21
9	Welcome home (Sanitarium)	2,5	8	20
10	Dżastina's blog :)	3,6	5	18

TOP TEN WEBSITES 2009
	Website	Rating Average (1-5)	Response Count	TOTAL POINTS
1	cherrychoco	3,28	18	59
2	everybodylies	4,33	12	52
3	greysi	4,25	12	51
4	allaboutkofi	2,93	14	41
5	stephenking1	3,09	11	34
6	gilmoregirls8	2,9	10	29
7	mydoggoldensite	3	9	27
8	ifeellikedancing	2,78	9	25
9	pixeluzny	3,33	6	20
10	dominicana	3,8	5	19

Congratulations to the winners!
Also, thanks to everyone for all the interesting posts, for sharing your opinions and interests with us, and for all the "fun" things, too. I hope your blogs will stay alive, so I'll keep watching them, just in case. :)

Happy birthday Hugh Laurie!

Something for quite a few House-addicts among our third-year crowd.

Goodbye!

I've been planning to write my farewell post at your graduation time, but since quite a few of you have written your goodbyes on your blogs now, I will follow suit.
I would like to let you see how this feels from the point of view of a teacher. Perhaps it is not very real for you yet, but most of you will be going through this sooner or later (just another aspect of being a teacher still there for you to discover). In short: it's tough. Year by year you form a certain bond with a bunch of interesting and unique individuals, who you see develop, and then a time comes when you need to let them go. You want them to go, because that means you've done your job. Still, it's not easy. One would have thought that after so many years a teacher would be used to this. Well, you will see :)


Best of luck for whatever you're up to guys. It's been great working with you.

Recommendation

Here is a new blogging assignment for you:
I would like everybody to recommend to us a writer, artist, musician, film director or any other person whose creativity you find worth other people's attention. I would like you to give good grounds for making your choice, say what fascinates you in that person's work, and place links to websites where that work is either presented or discussed (other than Wikipedia, which everyone can find).
There is one reservation: please do not write about groups/bands/teams. The focus is on individuals and their achievements.
I hope this time there will be no complaints about the task being too difficult. :)

Note:
If you do not get many comments on your blog, the best thing to do is start writing comments on other people's blogs. That's how it works - try.

Marc Prensky speaks at Cardiff

An interesting interview on using technology in ELT and on teaching in general. Food for thought for all of us, I guess. :)

Invitation to IATEFL Cardiff Online 2009

Online coverage of the 43rd Annual International IATEFL Conference 31st March to 4th April 2009

Cardiff Online is now live at http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009
Join us for interactive web coverage of this year's IATEFL Conference in Cardiff.
Watch keynote sessions and presentations live or on-demand and share ideas with teachers all over the world.
Follow all the action as it happens on the Cardiff Online website.

Future

It seems spring is having a hard time finding its way to us this year, but we may make an effort and start thinking in a bit more positive way. Here is your new task:
So far you have looked into your past: childhood memories, past Christmases, the place where you grew up, etc. Now I want you to see the future: please give a relatively detailed account of a day in your life five years from now, from dawn to dusk. Let it be a weekday rather than a weekend, so that we would get a glimpse of what you do for a living, for example. You may address your hopes, ambitions, plans or fears here - it's up to you. To be honest, I'm hoping for a lot of optimistic stories. Remember, though, that five years is not such a long time, so don't overdo it. You should be creative of course, but do make it sound realistic. Enjoy!