Memories from Spring Blog Festival 2015

Spring Blog Festival (SBF) is a one day event that takes place every March 21. 

SBF15 took place on Saturday March 21, 2015.

The aim of the festival is to showcase bloggers and their work. This year, the event gathered speakers from various fields: Steven Downes, Norman Vaughan, Joanna Norton, Mary Hricko, Anita Zijdemans Boudreau, Karen Blumberg, Nancy Zingrone, Halina Ostańkowicz-Bazan, Janet Salmons, Janet Bianchini, Vance Stevens, Dr Ebba Ossiannilsson, and myself.

For me, it was a special Spring Blog Festival this year, as I was co-moderating the event with Dr. Nellie Deutsch. I had taken part in Dr. Deutch's Blog Festivals before as a presenter, but being at the heart of it all was a real honour, and I do thank Dr. Nellie Deutch for that.

Besides, it was the first time I was going to present in front of the pre-service teachers I am supporting this year at the Master's Degree Module 'The Use of ICT and Web Resources for Primary Bilingual Education' at URJC in Madrid, so I must confess that I was panicking at the beginning of it all, but looking forward to sharing their work at the Festival and making them aware of the importance of these live events, the importance of interacting and connecting with all these important speakers, who, if it were not for Internet and technologies, they would most surely not have the chance to meet.

After 15 exhausting but happy hours, keeping our fingers crossed for everything to go well, for every speaker to be comfortable and relaxed in the event conference area, for all the clips to work properly, for all the chats to be copied at the right time and the recordings to be screencasted at the exact minute each sessions started, following how well the #springblogfestival hashtag was doing at Twitter and hoping for it to become trending topic, I was absolutedly knocked out but ever so proud of having had such a wonderful webathon, having learned so much from other educators, having grabbed so many ideas to put into practice in class, having seen my students magnificently rising up to the challenge of attending live educational sessions on a Saturday, and having enjoyed every minute of it with Dr. Nellie, with whom I was connected in the back stage chatting real time, sorting issues out, sharing viewpoints, and, above all, having a wonderful personal relationship with a generous educator and warm peer.

So, I just hope all those who attended had such a great time as I did, enjoyed the sessions, and I am looking forward to meeting you all in the next Blog Festival.

Here you are the links to the webinars, recordings and content of the presentations, at the conference area, and below, you can view your favourite bits and pieces whenevery you like, as the Spring Blog Festival has its own YouTube playlist: