EVO Sessions 2010

The 2010 edition of the excellent TESOL EVO sessions has just been announced.

Session topics include video, online games, teaching with interactive whiteboards and teaching languages in virtual worlds (including Second Life).

The six-week sessions start January 11th, are free and open to all and do not require TESOL membership. They tend to be a little over-subscribed, but are run by volunteers and are well worth attending.

Registration starts January 4th.

OneStopCLIL: resources and courses for CLIL teachers

Onestopclil: The Resource Bank for CLIL Teachers

You're probably already familiar with OneStopEnglish.com, the Macmillan resources site (lesson plans, worksheets, flashcards, etc...), which modestly claims to be "the world's number one resource site for English language teachers" (though you'll need to subscribe for full access, which costs €52 pa for individual membership).

OneStopEnglish has a younger sibling, one year old this month, OneStopCLIL, which also requires subscription for full access, but has sufficient free resources on it to be useful, and to tempt you (or your school) to make a small, worthwhile investment.

If you are teaching or going to be teaching CLIL [define], you may also be interested in our online CLIL course, the first edition of which starts October 19.

Social Networking Conference

November 5-8, we have the Social Networking 2009 Conference. It's free, completely online and its objective is "elluminating ELT practitioners to grow in the use of social networks as learning development tools". The event is run by AVEALMEC and ARCALL, two Latin-American associations interested in promoting the use of ICT in the language classroom.

If you're interested in social networking and wonder how it could be used in ELT, it's one that definitely looks interesting.

Welcome to our July courses!

Now there's a digital native...!

Welcome to those of you who are coming to take a course with us in July, particularly those of you who are taking a Departament d'Ensenyament technology course.

Both the technology courses, Technologies for Project Work in the English Classroom and the Blogs and Blogging for Language Teachers, will in fact have their own blogs, but pre-course I've suggested you visit this site -- so welcome to it ,-) !

I've asked you to do three things pre-course:

• Complete a pre-course needs analysis form, which I emailed to you
• Set up a Gmail account, and e-mail me your address
• Read this article by Mark Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
  

The kid in the photograph amused me: that's definitely a digital native! I'm definitely a digital immigrant and if you read the article, you'll find out which you are...

Electronic Village Online (EVO) sessions 2009

The excellent EVO sessions are with us again...

The official announcement:

The CALL Interest Section of the international TESOL professional association is pleased to offer the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2009 sessions. This is a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2009 Convention in Denver, CO. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL 2009 participants and those who can participate only virtually.

You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate in a free, six-week, wholly online session of the EVO, Jan 12 -Feb 22, 2009. Please visit our Announcement Web page to select one among the various offerings.

If you want to learn more about using technology with your language learners (Internet for Beginners, Collaborative Writing, Digital Storytelling in ELT Classrooms...), these sessions are an excellent place to go.

Registration is January 1-12, with the sessions taking place January 12-February 22.

Online courses for English teachers

Online learning: to get the most out of it, you need to enjoy participating in (and learning from) the discussion...

Someone on our support group for our ex-CELTA course trainees asked me the other day about one of our online ELT courses, particularly about the teaching young learners course: "How do they work?" and "Do you need experience or to actually be teaching young learners?" were two of the doubts.

In the case of these particular IH courses, you don't have to have any experience of teaching young learners or actually be teaching them at the time -- though both will help. In a number of the modules there are things for you to "try out" with your learners and then "report back" to the online forum. So, if you do have some experience and can do that, then you'll probably get more out of our courses.

On these and just about any other online course worth the name, the forums are important. The more you (and your classmates) participate in them, the more you learn...

Is online learning for you...?
Online learning probably isn't for everyone (I've done online learning myself as a student, and loved it -- but I certainly had classmates who hated the experience).

You've probably got to be the sort of person who prefers not to be spoon-fed in ordered fashion by a teacher, who enjoys arguing a point and feels that you can actually learn from that process...

Welcome to today's seminar

Spring in Barcelona...

Hello, and welcome to you if you have come to our "Easy projects with easy technology" seminar today, our first this spring.

We'll be emailing you a handout with the links from the seminar and here on this blog you'll find more on the things we'll be talking about this morning:

• Creative writing
• Blogging
• Webquests
• Podcasting

We will also be talking about using technology in the classroom in general terms, and if you are not that confident that you are computer-literate, here's a Technology 101 that you might find useful.

Let me also highlight the following post. It refers to young learners, but I think the same applies to your adult learners: if you are posting your students' work on the Internet, the issue of privacy is a big one.

See also this post for bibliography.

This session is one of eight in our annual teacher development seminar series.

Online: IATEFL Annual Conference

IATEFL's 42nd Annual Conference takes place in Exeter shortly (7th–11th April 2008). If you're not going to be there, there is an Exeter Online website, which allows you to take part (IATEFL membership not required, though registration is).

Resources include video and/or recordings of selected sessions, live streamed plenaries and other events, and moderated special interest discussion forums, among other things, and there is also an Exeter blog.

IATEFL's special interest groups are well worth joining, particularly for their discussion groups (active throughout the year, some requiring IATEFL membership).

>> IATEFL.org

EVO 2008 sessions

Information on the EVO 2008 sessions is now available, with enrolment beginning January 1st.

The six-week sessions (which are free), run from January 14 to February 24 and provide for online discussion and hands-on virtual workshops, and are an off-shoot of the face-to-face annual TESOL convention. TESOL membership is not required.

The 2008 sessions include:

• Becoming a webhead ("a hands-on workshop on how to use Web communication tools for language teaching and learning")
• Blogging for educators
• Video Slide Shows and Vlogging
• Getting the Most out of Web 2.0 for ESP

There are also other "non-technology" sessions -- also online -- including such things as drama and music.

Run by volunteers, the sessions tend to be a little over-subscribed (expect them to fill your mailbox!) but all the ones I've attended have been truly excellent.

You want to learn more about technology for language teaching, these are highly recommended...

IATEFL Conference 2007

The 2007 IATEFL conference takes place in Aberdeen (Scotland) next week (April 18-22).

For those unable to attend, the conference also has its own Moodle space, and will also have a Second Life, both of which anyone can attend.

IATEFL [website] is one of the leading organizations in ELT with, among other things, some excellent special interest groups (SIGs).

What is Moodle | Second Life

Electronic Village Online (EVO) sessions

A reminder that the 2007 TESOL Electronic Village Online (EVO) sessions are about to begin. They run January 15 to February 25.

For anyone wanting to learn more about the uses that can be made of technology in the language classroom, I can strongly recommend them.

Further details in a previous post.

Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2007

If you don't know a lot about technology and how it might be used in language teaching, check out the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2007 sessions.

A "virtual extension" of the Seattle TESOL 2007 Convention, you can join it and participate wholly online, without attending the face-to-face convention, and without being a member of TESOL.

There are 13 different sessions, which include:

• Beginning Internet Activities
• Becoming a Webhead ("A hands-on workshop on how to use Web communication tools for language teaching and learning")
• Blogging for Beginners
• Digital Gaming and Language Learning
  

Participation is free of charge.

Highly recommended...