nelbaq

=__Welcome to Writing Matrix in La Plata, Argentina!__=

Hello, my name is Nelba Quintana. I am a teacher of English and have been teaching English for more than 10 years. I am really interested in Computing and Internet.

When Vance invited me to participate in the Webmatrix project, I sent an invitation to my e-group:[|**English Virtual Community**] or **EVC.** The participants I have presented to this project are not students of mine. They belong to this e-group. Five members accepted the proposal: They are **Matías, María Luján ( from Mar del Plata), Eugenia, Jorge, Bárbara ( from Bahía Blanca) and Rosaura ( from Magadlena).**

They are young adults with different occupations and interests. They also have different level of English- their level ranges between pre-intermediate and intermediate level. Two of them work with computers, so they are familiar with Internet tools and topics.

English Virtual Community participants joined the project because they want to practise the English language.

This group is different from the others(Rita's, Sasha's and Doris'). As I have said before, they are not students of mine, but members of a virtual community, so we do not have f2f meetings. This may be considered a **disadvantage** because there is no body language or that visual-physical contact we are used to in common classes. But on the other hand, this is an **advantage** because we are, in a way, forced to develop our Internet abilities, and the only way to communicate among ourselves has been by means of Internet tools: chat and e-mail.

I send participants instructions about what to do in the blogs, and they ask me doubts by mail. On Fridays, we meet at Yahoo Messenger and chat about our posts in the blogs, visit all together other participants' blogs and make comments on them.

The group this year is a bit different. Participants are not only from EVC but also from Webheads e-group. The new members are Stella (Argentina),Berta (Venzuela), Joao (Portugal), Beyza (Turkey), Minhaaj (Pakistán) José and Ana María(Brazil). Luckily, María Luján, Matías and Bárbara continue in the group.
 * 2008**

Our aims, as Vance has pointed out, are:
 * To learn how to open blogs. (We opened blogs in Blogger)
 * To explore social bookmarking tools: delicious and Technorati

For this purpose I sent participants instructions every week: OUR WORK Tags RSS Pingback and Trackback Published Articles about our Work