Long time no see

I am in the middle of 8 months journey that started in front of a glass of red wine with my dear friend Antonio, who believed with me that we can bring together a little bit more of Italian Culture here in Oulu area.
Today we will have - God bless internet and adobe connect! - an evening called "Serate Culturali" where a researcher in History of Science from Univeristy of Milano Bicocca will speak about Galileo Galilei and his revolution.

During the arrangements of the event I could refresh my memory and I found myself again passioned about the history, the science and the philosophy. Again I found the same enthusiasm what I had when I started university.

Why Galileo?  and why Galileo was convicted and Copernico wasn´t?
During the years when Copernico started his work, probably the Church had so many other things to think about it. Martin Luther started already speak about his theories and Copernico used the math - the exact science by definition. The Church had bigger problem (Lutheranism) than Copernico...
Copernico was in one way lucky but he brought up so many ethical problems than even Michelangelo in his masterpiece of the Last Judgement could present.

Galileo instead was using the methods of Platone - the dialogue. This way to present the things were so vulnerable and could easily be destroyed from those who didn´t want to understand. To admit that the Earth wasn´t in the middle of everything couldn´t justify anymore what was written in the Bible.

Galileo was a man from the future and this evening I cannot wait to hear more about it!

My will to bring to kansalaisopisto more...

Lately I have been thinking to use Skype to practice Italian with my intermediate group of students.
I found 3 hours ago through Pinterest this address https://education.skype.com/projects  and I contacted one Italian teacher in Honduras University. I hope we can arrange a lesson when the students can break the ice and introducing themselves in Italian. In fact the Italian will be the only language that they are going to use. It will be a big step for them in order to win the shyness. I have been thinking also to (re)motivate myself using more technology in my job. I think in kansalaisopisto the language learning is still too much in old fashion way. We have talented and devoted teachers. They are smart, they master their subjects (like languages) but they are not using enough other learning methods than book and games. In my opinion, to use platform as skype as a learning resource is one  of the most useful way to learn a language, a culture and built a net.
I have heard comments from my colleagues like this "The students in kansalaisopisto are there just for the company and fun not for real learning, especially languages. They want to learn how to order a beer or buy a postcards". Maybe for most of them this is true. But I know that there are others (maybe a minority) that they want to learn more than that. I know that I need to give them always something new and different. I can propose them stories, games, videos and much more learning exercises. However - to be a teacher means for me to give my students the best opportunities at the moment available. Why? because they deserve that. They choose to take part to my course and I want to give them the best service that they can have it. This includes all learning methods and resources that can be used to improve their language skills and build their self confident to use the language.
I think that - as a kansalaisopisto teacher -I should honor my students just for fact that they choose me as their facilitator. That´s the reason why I want to give them the best service as possible, 360 degrees way of learning Italian language, culture,food, people.Using all the material out there, having always in mind 2 things:
1) what is the best for their learning
2) having fun during the learning
Amen.  

My first lesson as an on line teacher

To be honest my first time went pretty well. I could manage to do everything what I planned and I could interact quite smoothly with the people who were in Nivala. In Haapajärvi the mics didn´t work, they could hear me but I couldn´t hear them.They were anyway using the chat (which is also good tool).We reviewed verbs with the help of the music and some videos. I used Prezi but not the dynamic way (AnyMeeting won´t allowed me): share the screen will make the system too slow. I used normal word documents and shared the screen.
I used some polls too. 3 people on 15 said that it was difficult. 12 said it was fun.
Let´s keep this on positive way. Receiving good feedback is stimulating to continue and do better. I knew the students before hand. All of them studied italian with me from the past 3-5 years and their level it´s different. However I think that this new contest made them quite egual: all of them were experience the online learning. The course was longer than usual: 3 hours. Technologies take time. I tried to cover different kind of learners and I hope the learning went through.