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

Getting on-line feedback

Since the ETAS first on-line course has ended and we have received sme feedback from the participants, I’ll use this chance to show how feedback can be given on-line.

We asked for feedback by using a tool called wallwisher, which is much like using post-its in a classroom. Here you will see it in use!

Another great way to get feedback has been used by the ETAS after the AGMs, a short survey with surveymonkey, which is a very simple survey tool to use. The link can be sent by e-mail to the participants or embedded on a website.
Of course, if you are using a blog, wiki or other website, you could also use a poll like the two in the previous post.

Finally, if you are using a blog like this, then you can request participants to leave a comment under the concluding post.

These are just a couple of ways, but I’m sure that if you looked around, you’d find many more. If you have any ideas or ways you get feedback on-line, leave a comment to this post and let us know about it!

Follow-up SIG day Matopo Project

The SIG day was a success, I think everyone will agree.

Two  special highlights of the day were related to the Matopo Primary School project run by Cindy Hauert.

From Teacher training in Zimbabwe 2008

The first highlight was to hear the wondeful news that the Roger Federer Foundation has decided to support this project. This is extremely important news as it means that the support can take new dimensions. It’s the children who are the future of any country, and at the current state the future of Simbabwe looks dismal.

Then at the end  the amount of money contributed through the raffle and donations for Matopo School was announced. It was a high figure worthy of the charitable and helpful nature of ETAS and its members.

Several presenters have generously donated their payment to the school. I don’t know many names, but I do know that Peter Travis and Fiona Joseph from flo-joe and splendid speaking websites (see below) were two such people. I would gladly recognize others if I have their names.

Another such presenter was Ian McMaster, from Business Spotlight, who also blogged about the SIG day and the Matopo project. I do invite you to read what he had to say in his post “A penny for their thoughts.”

You can keep informed by reading the Matopo blog, and please do leave a comment. Comments can be very motivating, especially when the prospects seem particularly bleak and the hurdles high (such as getting materials across the border!) and why not become an official follower? This is very easy to do if you already have a google account. Just click on the follower button in the column on the right and help make the group fo supporters grow!

If you know of other such noble acts, please leave a comment so they can be recognized and thanked!

Do good things and talk about it!

Follow-up of ETAS SIG day Reading into writing workshop

FIrst of all, a big thanks to Fiona Joseph, who gave us an excellent workshop.

It was the second of two to be given through Skype and with a pre-recorded presentation.

You can find the pre-recorded part below, but you will need Flash installed to ensure it works properly. There are also all the links mentioned during the workshop.

Flo-joe for ETAS

One of the links that we looked at is LibraryThing but there is another social network for books at Shelfari.

We discused how to include literature in the classroom and agreed to share any experiences, problems and ideas as comments to this post. I am looking forward to your input!

Follow-up of ETAS SIG day Skype workshop

ETAS’ very first on-line presenter gave an excellent workshop on skype. Technology went well with everything except the couple of computers that were down. Thank you, Peter Travis!

As ETAS is concerned about the environment and wants to save trees, there were no handouts. However, the presentation (not including live talks) and all the links which were mentioned are included in the website below.

Splendid speaking for ETAS

You will need Flash for the presentation to work, but all the other links should by fine.

We would love to hear from you about your experiences with teaching and learning with Skype, so please do leave a comment here if you have had any- good or bad.

Surveys from the Peanuts for Monkeys Workshop

Here are the surveys that were made during the workshop:

interest in swine flu vaccine

Taking additional English courses at TS

CLIL in Primary

Shopping strategies

and one more:

Working across cultures

Twitter again

If you’ve been reading here, you’ll see that my tweets seem pretty disconnected,but if you begin following others, you will see conversations, information, news, music, and of course, a lot of noise mixed in.

And now, some of the experiences I’ve had with twitter:

While on a trip to the States, I was tweeting for my students. When I mentioned my visit to South Carolina, I got a tweet about the local culture of Gullah, which I naturally shared with my class.

A friend wished me a good time during my trip.

Others welcomed me back home (on twitter??)

I found a great link to a lesson plan about Susan Boyle just as I was contemplating what to do in the next lesson.

And I’ve found many a relevant link about other topics.

Graham Stanley and I negotiated his workshop at the last SIG day.

There was a discussion about the appropriacy of twitter for primary school, and a better tool for this purpose was mentioned (edmodo.com)

I have completed a survey for someone writing a paper, linked and thanked for through twitter.

Last night I went onto Twitter and learned that Farrah Fawcett had died only a couple hours before. Of course, she was an icon in my youth, not just because of Charlie’s Angles. Shortly after, it was on the news, but I’d heard it before!

and I JUST read that Micheal Jackson has also died. That makes 2 icons in 2 days. I don’t know exactly when he did, but I just saw the news on twitter.

So here are just a few ways. You have to get used to the noise, but you do get a feel for what’s going on in the world if you are prepared to listen.

New task if you are on twitter: On the right there is a box that says ‘Direct messages’. Click on it and send me a private message (illyac). Only I’ll be able to see it, so you can see there is room for privacy as well.

Oh, and here’s a song from one of my fellow twitterers – fresh off the press!

What the tweet is twitter?

Twitter

In the months of June/July I will spend a bit of time looking at twitter, what can be done with it, and maybe even encourage a couple of you readers to join the club if you haven’t already.

There have been several articles in the newspapers recently which mention twitter and question whether it is the next big thing or just another passing hype. Reason enough to have a closer look!

First, what is it? It is a web-based tool in which you can share up to 140 characters (including spaces) with your followers. And you can follow other people and see what they write. I’ve added my own rss feed on the side and will try to be consciencious and update regularly (also known as to tweet), showing the different ways of use.

How is it used? Well, one of the reasons for all the headshaking as to why it is so popular is that many people use it simply to inform the world of what they are doing at any single moment. It seems to many that this is very voyeuristic and more like a public diary. Probably the most oftenly asked question concerning twitter is :

WHAT’S THE POINT?

I asked this myself and thought this is certainly a bandwagon I’m NOT jumping on. However, curiosity got the better of me and now I too am on twitter.

Here are some of the ways it can be used:

• to find relevant websites that others are tweeting or to share websites with others
• to give live summaries (using a cell phone) during conferences or other such events. – this is becoming more and more frequent, even among politicians in meetings or during football games!
• to get advice and information. You can send out a call for help and if there are many people following you, the chances are pretty big that someone will be able to help out.
• to share bits of information with others. You can make groups and share information within these groups, but more on how to do that later.
• to keep in touch with colleagues from all over the city/country/world, forming an occupational network. An example of what a great resource this is can be seen when Susan Boyle was in Britain’s got talent. Within a week there were lesson plans for how the youtube video and her experience could be used for language lessons!
• to share what you are doing while you are on holiday. If you have a blog or website, you can add the rss feed (see blogging 101) and your students, friends and family can be informed – a continuous postcard!
• to get your students to write. 140 characters aren’t many and a certain amount of skill is needed for language learners to be eable to express themselves clearly in so few words. It can be used for creative writing or for summaries. Obviously, they need to be on twitter too, but you can do twitter virtually (in this case, on paper )

I’m not the only one who has written about twitter. A very good article is on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. He also goes into depth, and I’m sure there will be quite a bit of overlap, but I’ll also try to give examples in the next couple of posts.

If you’ve decided to join and check it out, feel free to follow me too. I’m illyac. Let me know that you are from ETAS so I don’t end up blocking you, and I’ll gladly follow you too! If there are enough ETAS members on twitter, then I’ll set up a twitter group later on. And remember, the more people you follow, the more useful it will become to you.

Tweet tweet