Welcome to Escenarios Regionales!

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Welcome to all students following the Escenarios Regionales Del Mundo course over this next semester until December 2009. This blog will be one of the online mediums through which we will communicate this semester, but the primary purpose of it is to keep a record of events that we can all follow as the semester progresses. There will be ups, there will be downs, but that is also all part of the fun! The other purpose is to act as a central place to post ideas, comments and reflections on the topics we look at. In the process you will learn how to blog too.......and this blog will form part of your partial grades!! More specific details about the requirements later........

Please now allow me to introduce myself as this is the first time I have taught you. My name is John Read (although you will address me as Maestro/Teacher/Mr Read or Sir) and I am from the United Kingdom. This of course is the land of Her Majesty the Queen, red telephone boxes and rolling green hills, but no longer the land of tea at exactly 5pm in the afternoon. Many students ask me why exactly I am in Hermosillo and the answer is that I wanted to live and experience a completely different part of the world to what I knew - and that's why I chose the desert! 50 degrees celsius, millions of insects, and regular sandstorms, are all certainly different.

As a teacher, I give this class in prepa, and I also give other classes when necessary. I am also a fully qualified teacher of British English, having taught in Spain and Mexico previously. I have taught economics, management and English in the TEC, as well as Escenarios Regionales. I have a British/French education in finance and international business, and a postgraduate education in European Studies, from where I derive my knowledge of international affairs. I speak English and French and continue to learn the occasional word or syllable in your language every other day. My history with Hermosillo goes back five years.

In the hope that I have satisfied your questions, let me continue with our class! My aim through this blog is to keep you up-to-date with what is going on outside of class. We will meet twice a week but you can rest assured that world events move much more rapidly, so I intend to use the blog to post news items and any other resource that is of shared interest to the entire generation taking this class. You in turn, will be enthusiastic (I hope) to also write to this blog and help to make it a community reflection of news events, adding to what we will do with our "wikis." (more later)

You will find that this blog is linked to a dedicated netvibes page for our class (http://www.netvibes.com/johnread) but you can of course check yourself on a regular basis as well as add an additional RSS feed to whatever email client or reader you currently may use. Either way, I encourage you to keep up-to-date, because so much of your learning is solidified outside of the classroom, and your active participation at all times will ensure a richer, more diverse classroom and learning experience for all.

As I will come to explain to you in person, we will be using a lot of online technology to enhance the potential learning opportunities of this class, of which this blog is just one. These are:

Netvibes
Wetpaint Wikis
YouTube Channels
Other blogs

Netvibes

These are five netvibes pages, one for each group. Netvibes has been designed as a CENTRAL place to give you ispiration for news articles, as well as a summary of all the activities of your group's wiki. It is a fast place to check for updates and to monitor this blog. YouTube uploads are also linked to netvibes. Any suggestions for how I may be able to improve this page for you please tell me!

You should be able to see an example of one of the netvibes pages (Group 1) below:





YouTube

All students will make extensive use of a dedicated YouTube channel this semester. I will be giving each group their username and password in due course. I ask that we act with HONOUR at all times when given the responsibility to access an account and make modifications. This means that you keep your access secret, respect what others upload, and do not vandalise or delete other's work. Only through cooperation will we be able to make this class a true success and model to follow for future classes.

Wetpaint Wikis

A wiki is a site where the users have total control over its design and content. Every group this semester is asked to use a wiki to extend the classroom into the online world. This will be our official online space, where we can collaborate, discuss, post comments, share resources and ideas, as well as link in other elements such as our youtube videos. Remember that wikis are only as successful as their members make them!

A feed of this blog can be accessed from the wiki.

You will receive an invitation in your ITESM email box inviting you to join the wiki as writers. You will be able to create, edit and delete pages as well as post discussions, photos, links, resources, and RSS feeds.

You will also receive an invitation to join the blog as a writer........this is crucial to be able to post and for me to be able to find your entries!

To conclude, you can see therefore the great extent to which this class has an online presence. I encourage you to seize all opportunities, and just as importantly, capitalise upon them to get the very best for your education and your future. I am here throughout to guide you.

Welcome to Escenarios Regionales!

Warm wishes,



Maestro.
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