iblog2 Summit

I was there at the iblog2:The Second Philippine Blogging Summit held last Tuesday, April 18, 2006 at the U.P. College of Law, Diliman, Quezon City. To sum up the activities in one word it was a "blast"! Not to miss this rare opportunity for my ever dependable web team members , I brought along Mike Ong, Austell Tumampos, Miguel Qujano, Gerard and Pagsu. It was a little too late to ask for transportation allowance from the school so I told them its KKB. But in the end , Mrs Nicdao my co-teacher and I shoulder all their expenses. It's good that the organizers thought of providing free snacks and lunch for all the participants. Wheew! that saved the day for us. Can you just imagine feeding growing boys, especially Pagsu who weights in at 200 pounds.
We came in late as usual, I still have to give last minute instructions to my Robotics class in school on what they are supposed to do.

When we arrived at the crime scene, I mean the venue, there were people milling around at the lobby. Were just in time for the snacks!! Ok boys dig-in! After the boys have been fully recharged, we went inside the Sta. Ana Room. Wow! this building was built in 1911. And just take a look at those massive walls. I guess back then, the cost of materials were cheap and less corruption, he he. The room was impressive, its like a small AVR with the chairs arranged like your in the balcony of a theatre. At least for a day I experienced how it felt to be a law student here at U.P.
Back to the topic. The current speaker on the floor was Dr. Ronald Meinardus of the Fredrich Naumann Foundation. Too bad, they were already giving him the certificate for being their guest speaker. So i can't comment on what he said except that he is blond!

The next speaker was Joel Yuviencio, from De La Salle University-Canlubang his topic was about "Blogging for mere mortals" Well, he narrated how he got into blogging, moving from the basic blog to a more sophisticated blog. I love the name of his blog http://joelogs.blogspot.com.

We then moved on to Anton de Leon http://antonisat.blogspot.com, his topic is the one closest to my heart, its about "how to make your blog funny and humorous". His looks is already funny, so he immediately got the attention of his audience, including my high school boys. Hey, they are one of the most hard to please crowd in the audience!. Here are his 3 tips to writing humorously.

1. Be witty- it's not the joke, its how you say it.
2. Humor makes whatever subject looks like your joking. Meaning people tend to take things
at a lighter perspective.
3. The readers reaction are limited. Not all people will laugh at your jokes, some will laugh at it at a later time (delayed reaction) and some may not even laugh at all. But don't get offended by it otherwise don't try to attempt to crack a joke if you're "pikon yourself".

Well, those words were the best sound advice for the day.

Here are two other worthy speakers worth mentioning on my blog, first is Dean Alfar http://deanalfar.blogspot.com , wow man! he is really way ahead of the pack. Imagine writing a novel in 30 days and using the blog as a medium to write it. His presentation was terrific. He is just one of those guys that will inspire you to continue blogging. Well let's see if he has enough convincing powers to make me continue writing for more than a week.

The last one which I told my students to wait until she was able to make her presentation was Ms. Sarah Gagatiga , a fellow member of the Pinoy Teacher's Network. She was introduced as a Librarian of Xavier and finishing her masters at the University of the Philippines. Her first salvo was to make a correction on a typographical error on the program and asked the audience if there were educators around. I saw several hands raised. Her topic was about blogging in education. She was very scholarly, lots of facts and figures came out of the LCD screen. The one that I could recall was that, that the latest survey showed that 51.5 % of bloggers are in the 13-19 age group. So now I know that I belong to the minority! I'm glad she mentioned about Pinoy Teacher's Network and Marisol Angala, I guess what was

lacking in her presentation was the way she delivered it. If you may allow me to use one of the tips of Anton de leon, -its not the joke, its how you say it. It would have been more effective if she have shared some anecdotes or actual experiences that she had in the course of blogging in education. And maybe sprinkle it with a few humorous stories. Like what was the first reaction of her students when somebody posted a comment on his/her own blog and stuff like that then she would have a more lively audience.

Well that's all folks. Hey Janet I've done my homework! Hope this blog get's updated before our next seminar. He he.

Blog Sense

Today's weather is really hot. Just like our workshop on blogging which begins early this morning at Microsoft's headquarters at 6750 Ayala Avenue. After making several wrong turns and passing through several labyrinths and underpasses in Ayala we finally made it to the 16th floor were Microsoft's office is located. We saw the familiar warm smile of Janet and that erased all our anxiousness of what's in store for today with our summer workshop. The main topic for this three day workshop is all about blogging. The style that I'm going to use is "Breathe" Because that's exactly what I need to do in this class. "Breathe all I can" cuz, Janet is at my back hounding like a hot momma making sure that everybody will get it right!!! We'll good luck everybody. I'm glad to see new faces at last. That means there were new schools who have joined this exclusive circle of Cyberfair Philippines 2006 winners. I view this workshop as a gift for us from Janet for us teachers for doing our jobs well. And just like in the previous workshops that we had in the past. I'm sure we will learn a lot so that we can share it to our students when we get back to our classrooms in June.