Claudio M. Rojas

In this opportunity I will like to share a video about something that just blowed my mind. It is incredible the type of technologies that are bein developped around the world. It is simply amazing, and this time it is about the Xbox 360. I just can stop thinking and dreaming about the bunch of things that we will be able to do with this in the classroom. Can you imagine yourself being able to explore a human cell, or reviving a famous battle, or exploring space? and what about the Virtual Learning Environments? The possibilities are endless.

I am almost over, finally I am getting to the last part of the program, and I am still here sitting down, looking for things to write about, the whole time pressure is over me, I feel tired and I can think anymore, but I am still here giving myself to this. I see people come and go, while everybody else is at their homes resting, I am still in my office writing. My girlfriend comes online, she wants to speak with me, but I tell her that I am busy, that I need to finish my assingments for the university. She says that it doesn't matter, that she will stay online giving me company, that she will not distract me, that she understands. I feel sorry because I would like to share sometime with her, but my obbligations are first, after all I am just a few weeks away to finally get my degree. Now she is reading my notes, she says that she liked the one about us, that it is good, that almost make her cry, so I feel happy about that.  But now I must continue with my assingments, so I will l...

There is one rule that I have established to myself this year: to become a spark to lit others. I am already puting this into practice into my classes. It is very easy to get overwhelmed by a mountain of problems that we face day by day, but we must forget about all that as soon as we step into the classroom. There are many students that could be facing worst problems than the ones we are dealing with, and still they make the effort to get to class to receive anything that we can give them, so it is not fair for them that we receive them with a long face and with a low energy. We must do our biggest effort to be energized everyday and to transmit our energy to them. We can spark the light of knowledge in their hearts and minds, qne when we are able to achieve that, then there are not limits to what we can achieve in our classrooms, as they say the universe is the limit, and the universe of possibilities will be open to us.

When I began using the internet back in 1995, I never imagined how this new media would affect my life. It rapidly became my favorite hobbie, and later an important piece in my life. I must admit that during the 90's I became an Internet addict, I used to spend hours and hours connected online, talking to people by bulletin boards and sending and receiving e-mails. It was also my first source of information about my favorite computer platform at the time: the Commodore Amiga 3000. As I grew up and the Internet became faster and easier to use I began to explore other areas of the online communities. Since in my personal life being single and available was a constant becaus of the lack of time to go to bars or other social activities then I decided to get a few subscriptions to a couple of sites where it it supposed that you can get a match. One of the sites that I joined was Seat for Two, a site created by a Costa Rican journalist who got divorced herself. This was the site where I...

It is that time of the year again. A new school year is starting, students are getting back from their vacations, many smily faces are seeing throught the hallways of the school. Teachers are rushing to have the new materials ready, workers are finishing to paint the walls and fixing th desks and chairs that were damaged before the break. Many of us come with a lot of expectations, hopes and goals that we have established as our priority this year. If all of us could just keep that feeling alive through the whole year, then we could have different results than before. We must not forget our promises and we should keep something that reminds us evreyday about it, so we could continue developping the new process that we are staring today. We have to remember that education is a process that it is built step by step, for some people this process is longer than others.

"The Way things are" is the title of chapter seven in the book "The Art of Possibility" by Benjamin Zander and his wife Rosamund Stone Zander. It reminds us that many times we are disconnected from reality, and we get trapped in conceptions and ideas that do not really exists. If we are able to scape from this fake reality, then we can find good alternatives to solve the common problems that we suffer in our daily lifes. I know that it is not easy to see new alternatives when you are acustomed to do things in a particular way, but we need to have an open mind, try new things, get out of the routine. If we keep this way of thinking we will be able to look at the positive side of everyday hard situation, and we will be able to keep our creativity going.

A couple of days ago Apple introduce another marvel that I am sure will have an impact on Education. A lot of people are calling the Ipad the big brother of the Iphone, but the Ipad is much more than that. This new gadget is capable of doing many things that a laptop will do but in a fancier and easier way. What I like the most about this new machine is the simplicity and neatness of the operatng system that it contains. It includes many of the applications that the iphone has but there also some new ones that were created especifically for this tablet. I remeber reading an article in magazine a month ago about some predictions of what the Apple Tablet could have, and I must say that the differences between what it was predicted and the actual machine are minimum. I am already saving money to be able to get one as soon as they become available here in Costa Rica. I am sure that I will be able to find multiple applications for this machine in the classroom, and if everything goes lik...

It seems like yesterday when I started my classes at Full Sail, and now the end is near. As I begin to write the final words of my thesis's final draft, I am doing a mental review of all the books, discussions, projects and assingments that we have gone through this year. I have not been able to settle down and analyze everything that we have learned during this time until now. Going through the pages of my thesis I can see how all this information starts to make sense. A few things that were not clear for me a few months ago are now an important part of my new school life. I have started to put into practice many of the things that I am mentioning in my thesis, so for me these ideas are not longer something that you just think or write about, they are now part of the experiences that I live everyday. I am really looking foward to see the results that my students will have this trimester after they become familiar with the new tools that I am putting in their hands to help them c...

How many times do we take ourselves so seriously? How many times do we think that we are the center of the universe? How many times do we forget about our neighbors? If we think about it seriously we will find out that this happens more often than what we think. Many times we get so centered in our own problems that we forget that there might be others that are in a worst situation than ours. A few days ago we witnessed one of the worst devastations by an earthquake in recent years. Every day we see the new images that are comming from Haiti, and how the people who survive the catastrophe are trying to make it day by day. It will take a lot of time, effort and support from the international community for Haiti to recover from this situation. Everyone of us now have the opportunity to apply the rule number 6 and give a new possibility to Haiti to become a different country.