Send a girl to secondary school

Secondary school in Zimbabwe is not obligatory. As the few secondary schools in the region are often located
too far from the children’s home villages, students need to pay for room and board, a costly sacrifice for most
parents and caretakers. Thus the majority of teenage girls, stop their formal schooling after primary school, as this privilege is
cutomarily reserved for male children. Therefore, an extension to the ETAS Matopo project was launched at the ETAS AGM in Lucerne in January 2011, and a fund was created to enable female primary school graduates to continue their education.

Three years of secondary school costs about CHF600.00 per year, or CHF1,800.00 in total, which covers school fees, room
and board and school materials.

 

Now we are trying to raise enough money this month to send at least one girl to secondary school. This will be done together with the on-line course on blogging described in the previous post. If you want to help, contact me at learning-tech@e-tas.ch.

On-line course – educational blogging

These on-line courses are beginning to become a regular part of the ETAS program, albeit with a certian irregularity.

This time it will be not just Jenny from Argentina, but Barbara in Japan (JELT) bringing her group of teachers in on the fun during the entire month of June (4 weeks)

In addition, we will be focussing on the young learners (widely defined!). This means that we will have a chance for some real collaboration and I’m sure there will be eye-opening experiences for all.

This time, however, we in Switzerland are not just blogging for ourselves and our classes, there is now an added dimension.

The ETAS has been supporting the Matopo School Project for some time now as you can see on the Matopo blog. It’s been a success and is now supported by the Roger Federer Foundation- Now how cool is that!!!

And so the project has been expanded to help the weekest chain in the link- the girls. Although they may be sent to primary school, generally their school career is finished at the end of this time. Girls- education a girl and you educate a family. Now the aims of the project have increased. It is now to send 10 girls to secondary school for 3 years. It takes 600 US$ per girl per year.

All proceeds from this on-line course will go to the project- Send a girl to secondary school.

How long can we send one girl to school on this course? It is totally up to the participants as all fees (excluding ETAS membership) will go straight to this project.

I will keep you up to date as to how much money has been collected.

Take a course, learn something new, give a girl an education!

I leave you with a moving video from Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee — of her own life’s transformation, and of the untapped potential of girls around the world. Can we transform the world by unlocking the greatness of girls?

Keeping on top of it all

A while ago wrote about e-books. Since then I’ve reached out and discovered enhanced e-books.Enhanced by sound, video, links, etc. The first I saw of this when I went digging was a book which had been filmed. Clips of the film had been added to the book as had background information in print and in the form of interviews.

In a matter of months I no longer had to dig. These enhanced books were being developed, not just for enjoyment, but for learning. You can find them in the form of apps for your i-devices, your smartphone or tablet. And the prognosis is that they will find their way into the classroom within the next 5 years. This means that every learner will have access to one or bring their own to class.

This means we will have a steep learning curve, especially for those teachers who previously have avoided the issue of technology in the classroom. However, we already have a similar situation. In my classes with adults there is no sinlge participant without a cell phone. Most of these are smartphones, therefore, technically cabable of most of what a tablet can do, such as displaying e-books, enhanced books, playing videos, recording voice, showing links, etc.

You can see where this might go by watching the video below. If we don’t want to fall behind, we need to be aware of the developments and overcome our fears of technology.

An update on the webinar scene and further professional development

I’ve just been contacted by Pearson ELT with another place for webinars, and so I’m passing on this information. Just in case you’ve forgotten, in a previous postI wrote about webinars and where you can find them.

To access Pearson ELT webinars, Teachers simply need to register on the global website www.pearsonelt.com Great Teachers‘ Primary Place, Great Teachers‘ Teen Space, Great Teachers’ Tertiary Place and Great Teachers‘ Exam Place (colourful boxes on the right):

www.pearsonelt.com

These webinars are free of charge, some of them are also recorded so you can watch them anytime, and usually the participants also receive a certificate of attendance for live webinars a couple of weeks later. (I know that at least some teachers have already used these certificates when applying for jobs). They can interact with well-known teacher trainers and authors, as well as with the other participants from all around the world.

And don’t forget 2 important events to start the New Year!

The 5 week EVO sessions from the 9th January until the 12th February (signing up now) and the ETAS AGM in Yverdon- a wonderful opportunity to network, get up-to-date input for your teaching and professional develoment, to see old friends and make new ones!

I hope to see you soon, be it on-line or face to face!!

Have a great start to 2012!!

Happy learning in the new year!!

The year 2011 is slowly coming to a close and the holidays will soon begin.  I hope this year was a good one for all of you readers.

And for the new year, I’d like to give you a head start!

Hopefully all of you ETAS members have already added a very important weekend to your diaries: the 28-29 January when the AGM weekend takes place in Yverdon.

If you haven’t registered yet, then head on over to e-tas.ch and do so before 30th December.

You will find the complete program here, and you can register here. It looks like a great weekend ahead of us!!

But wait, there’s more!

The Electronic Village On-line (EVO) sessions will be from the 9th January until the 12the February- 5 great weeks of on-line (and free!) learning.

If you’ve never heard of EVO, then you should look into it. Basically, it’s a group of very dedicated teachers and trainers working for nothing to bring people across the glode together in learning. Here’s the blurb:

For five weeks in January-February, participants and ESOL experts can engage in collaborative, online discussion or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions will bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by the land-based convention and will allow a fuller development of ideas than is otherwise possible.

There’s a wide variety of sessions to choose from, not all specifically to do with technology (such as Drama, a longstanding session!)

I speak from experience when I say that it can make a big difference to the way you look at teaching and learning. I certainly have learned at least as much at any EVO session as any face to face course I’ve ever attended.

And now I wish you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS / HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND A GREAT NEW YEAR!!!

 

 

Continuous development with webinars

As teachers we often find ourselves working alone, too tired to even look at the pile of literature stacking up next to our bed.
Keeping on top of the newest development in teaching and keeping a fresh outlook of how to teach requires time and work we often just don’t have.

One way to get around this is to spend time listening to webinars. A webinar is a ‘seminar’ given over the ‘web’- hence the word webinar.

These webinars are being offered more and more often and they are a cheap (free) and interesting way to gain input to keep your teaching lively.   Unfortunately, they are often at times when you may be teaching. However, even this is no problem since they are generally saved for future listening.

Here are a couple of links to webinars for English teachers:

Macmillan has organized some great speakers for their webinars: Macmillan Webinars

The Learning Technologies SIG over at IATEFL has also begun with Nicky Hockly organizing some excellent topics: LTSIG webinars  (you will need to be an IATEFL member and sign in to listen)

The British Council has also just recently started offering webinars: BBC teacher development

And finally, one more I found through Google: webinars teaching english:

Embassy of the USA in Lima! worth looking into: http://lima.usembassy.gov/web-2011.html

So, a final question to ETAS members:

Would you be interested in ETAS offering Webinars? If yes, what topics would interest you? Please leave your answers by using the comments function.

PS: The newest addition to the list of webinars comes from Oxford University Press!  First webinar coming 12. and 14. December, and of course with recordings: OUP webinars

on-line courses

I’ve just finished giving a second on-line course in collaboration with ESSARP Argentina. This time it was dedicated to learning about how to use Web 2.0 tools and add them to wikis.
It was a fruitful, if intensive, 4 weeks of on-line time dedicated to troubleshooting, advising, looking for links, and making tutorials.
This is a tradition I’d definitely like to keep up in ETAS.

The trials of blogging and how to water the plants

Hi Folks
I’ve sadly been neglecting this blog, but hope that once summer is over I can dust it off and be a bit more regular in posting.
But that’s just it, isn’t it. The reason so many blogs fail to take off is the amount of time necessary to keep it updated and the motivation to continue posting . Blogging does require time, and quite often time seems to be scarce for even the very wonderful delights in life, such as family, travel, or relaxation. So it can tend to slip to the end of the priority list. I’m now trying to set it a bit higher.

On the other hand, blogging can be inspiring and a window to other cultures, ways of thoughts and points of views. This, together with the potential I found through blogging for teaching adults, is indeed why I took to it. You blog to be read, to communicate, to shout out the the world, not to recieve and echo, but differences of opinions, another side to the coin, and yes, confirmation.

So now, my dear reader, and I know you are out there by the statistics WordPress kindly reveals to me, I set you a task to keep this blog spiffy and shiny. It doesn’t take a lot of time, nor energy on your part, but it might take a moment of reflection.

(c) Damon Hart-Davis

Click on the “comment” button at the end of this post and say hi. Respond to this post with your own thoughts- be they ever so short. Read the comments before yours and reply to them in addition to or instead of to the post. You will find me joining in the discussion and the blog blossoming with ever more posts in shorter intervals, like a slumbering flower with a bit of water the shine of the sun.

If you want to respond to The Techy Column in the ETAS Journal, then this is also the place to do it. I’m looking forward to reading and responding to your comments!

What do you want from the Learning technologies SIG?

Dear Learning Technologies SIG members,

Here is your chance to say what you want from this SIG group!

Feel free to answer via the polls below or with a comment.

A further idea is to offer webinars, which are short on-line seminars.

Thank you for those of you who have already answered.

 

Would you be interested in taking an on-line course through ETAS?
(polls)

What topics would interest you for an on-line course?
(polls)

New Years ETAS packages

Christmas time is peaking around the corner and all you teachers and your students, young and old, will hopefully be settling down for a pleasant Christmas soon.

And suddenly it’s another year again!

Well, ETAS has something to start the year off with a bang.

The end of January will be the next ETAS AGM in Lucerne and we’ve got some surprises lined up from Central Switzerland and the Lucerne area. What I can tell you, though, is that we’ve organised some great workshops and a wonderful Friday evening event.

On Friday there will be a tour of the Glacier Gardens in Lucerne with an Indian dinner afterwards.

If you’re interested in joining for the tour and dinner, or even just the dinner, then you should sign up at the etas website by January 14 at the latest.

Patsy Martin Lightbown will be giving the Keynote on vocabulary and Rod Bolitho has the questions questioning in the closing plenary on Saturday. Lyndsay Clandfield will open Sunday with a talk about the m-revolution and Duncan Foord will tell us about feedback at the  Sunday closing plenary.

 

The raffle, which gives the money to Cindy’s successful school project in Zimbabwe, has not one but two grand prizes! The Matopo Project has been supported by the ETAS for several years now and the efforts are successful thanks to all you ETAS members who have donated, bought raffle tickets and become a member of the teacher to teacher project, so a big THANK YOU to you all!

So I hope to see many of you soon in Lucerne and in the meanwhile