By Barbara Dieu · April 30, 2006
We would like to invite you to stop by for a recap while we drink together a glass of virtual champagne to celebrate Dekita’s first anniversary!
On April 30th, the site was launched during Vance Stevens’ presentation “Blogging in online communities of practice: Impact on language learning and teacher professional development” held in Doha, Quatar.
I remember a long and afflicting moment before the presentation scheduled at 7 am GMT – 4 am for me in Brazil and 4pm for Rudolf and Aaron in Japan . At 3, I signalled to Rudolf, who was still working on some code, that the Dekita server had gone down. After a flurry of sulky emails, connection was fortunately re-established just before the event and the rest is history.
The ship sailed off to the open sea and anchored in some ports along the way. One of the first was an activity at the Dekita Flickr group, where EFL students from Brazil and Japan chose colorful Joseph Stufer photos as headers for our site. Around the same time we kicked off the Dekita Exchange in an effort to keep people informed of EFL/ESL courses around the world in which students are encouraged to engage in conversations outside the classroom setting by publishing on the read/write Web. From there, we went to work on writing a review on Elgg over the summer, presenting some of our ideas at the first ever Webheads in Action Online Convergence in November, and following up with a paper for the proceeds, to be published in June. At the end of the year, we accepted an Edublog award for Best Group Blog 2005.
Recently we’ve been exploring the idea of Language Learning Ecologies, and are now currently discussing how best to use RSS/Atom feeds to enhance access to student voices and make finding the right conversation partners more likely. As more classes participate in the Exchange, we hope to find more effective ways of facilitating P2P interaction.
As always, we most appreciate the support, feedback, and comments of teachers and students from around the world. It is your increasing input and participation that has allowed Dekita.org to steadily grow. We thank you from the bottoms of our hearts and look forward to our second year. Full speed ahead!
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Previous: Fostering Social Writing
Next: Welcome to the Dekita Orchard
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Rudolf
wrote on May 01, 2006:
Happy birthday, baby!
I gathered up a few bits and pieces from the early days and put them in a gallery.
Those monkeys should have gotten a bit more play. =)
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Aaron
wrote on May 01, 2006:
Thanks for sharing these, Rudolf. It really is amazing how quickly we forget all this. Cheers!
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Cristina Costa
wrote on May 01, 2006:
Happy Birthday!
Thank you for the inspiring posts!
beijinhos from Portugal
cris
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angeles
wrote on May 01, 2006:
Happy First anniversary!!!
I hope you can blog for a looooooong time in this site :)
A BIG hug from Mexico
angeles
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Sus in Cyberspace
wrote on May 01, 2006:
Hello sweet Dekita, amazing how fast times are moving! Wish you all the best for the years to come :-)
yours, Sus
PS We were most grateful to bring along your expertise and inspiration for our TESOL evonline course in Collaborative Blogging 06
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MarÃa Irene Albers
wrote on May 02, 2006:
Happy birthday!! I hope success continues for maaaany more years.
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Isabel
wrote on May 02, 2006:
Happy birthday!I wish you all the best and many more years of great work!
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Sarolta
wrote on May 02, 2006:
Happy birthday, Dekita! And congratulations to you Bee, Aaron and Rudolf for the excellent work done. Best wishes for the future.
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Teresa Almeida dEca
wrote on May 02, 2006:
A ‘belated’ Happy Anniversary!
Great work this team is doing. Keep it up!
Hugs all, Teresa
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Jane in Canada
wrote on May 03, 2006:
Happy Birthday Dekita….You’re looking terrific. May you have many more terrific birthdays in the coming years.
Jane in Canada
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