ELTMentor News
Here’s our weekly digest of forum comments, upcoming dates and other snippets of useful information.
Welcome to Joanna our latest member of the programme. Welcome Joanna I hope that you will post some information about yourself and your teaching on the forum.
Webinars – March
As you know this was scheduled for this Monday and will be on young learners. I asked Marcia, who is a lot more experienced in this area than I am, to do the lion’s share of this presentation and give you the benefit of all her experience.
While we were discussing this we thought about the fact that Sunday April 1st is our half-day training and decided that we would, instead incorporate the session into Sunday’s meeting.
So, we’ll have a session on young learners, talk about motivating students (and ourselves too!) and I’d like you all to prepare something about your favourite teaching level (this might be a general English level or it could be an exam preparation group).
I’ll send out a full timetable for Sunday’s session next week.
Don’t forget Sunday April 1st (not sure it’s the best day! We’ll try not to be too foolish!) at 2.00 we’ll be in WIZIQ and we’ll kick off with young learners.
Future sessions
Here are the dates for the sessions for the next month. Don’t forget that everything (including all the previous sessions) are now on Gapfillers under the ELTMentor section on the Home Page.
April 16th our final technology workshop in the first year – building your PLN, forming professional partnerships online, getting PD online that really does ‘continue’
April 30th is the next webinar on assessment
Please make a note of the days and I hope that you will all try and come along!
Of course this is not the end as ELTMentor keeps going and there will be new ideas and new areas to discover!
Forum:
I have posted some new threads on the forum these are mostly to do with taking stock as we have got to this point in the programme..
I’ve also asked you to suggest alternative times for the webinars (unless you are happy just to view/listen after the event).
Thank you to all those who have given suggested times – they are all different!
After May I have a few ideas for improving the programme so we can address the time issue then and I’ll leave the session times as they are for the time-being.
Here’s the link again:
If you haven’t managed to find the forum yet let me know.
#eltmentor
Don’t forget this hashtag on twitter is for us to post anything we find of interest for the rest of the group.
(Sign up to twitter, then sign up to tweetdeck and post a comment there).
If you need help with this let me know.
IATEFL
I managed to attend two days of the conference it was busy, packed with information and great to see many people I know from the online space.
I hope that some of you managed to attend some of the online streamed sessions. I plan to do a cascade session of some if the workshops I attended. There was a particularly good one about authentic listening, I also went to the Swan/Walter one on grammar and one of the Plenaries gave interesting research about the teaching community and progress and about communities like ours for shaping the future. I’d like to include these in my cascade/Q&A session
More about that later. I’ll try and do it soon and set up a time.
For those of you who haven’t come across it here is a link to further information. There will be lots available to view and learn.
and the conference:
http://www.iatefl.org/glasgow-2012/46th-annual-conference-and-exhibition
Virtual Round Table
This is being held very soon (April 21st)
Now IATEFL is over I will be involved in organising this with Heike and Shelly. I know that there is a call out for presentations.
This is a REALLY good opportunity for any of you to put forward a proposal for a short Presentation (30 minutes) or PechaKucha ( 6 minutes) even a Presto (3 minutes)
If you want to speak about this let me know. If you have an idea but aren’t sure then also let me know and we can speak about it. The presentations have to be related to the use of technology in language teaching.
Here is the link to the site and you will be able to find information about previous topics and you can also watch previous presentations.
http://www.virtual-round-table.com/
Useful articles
I’ve chosen some on our Sunday themes:
Young learners
Lots of resources here from EFL Classroom
http://community.eflclassroom.com/group/teachingyounglearners?xg_source=activity
Shelly’s edition of the blog carnival also on Young learners
Motivation
A favourite topic of mine. I’ve included a couple of my own posts as well as other reading
This one is from the English Attack blog
http://blog.english-attack.com/news/unlocking-learner-motivation-in-the-age-of-the-digital-native/
Two of mine
http://rliberni.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/is-learning-english-becoming-overwhelming/
And the BBC
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/alexenoamen/ways-motivating-efl-esl-students-classroom
Presenting online
Here is some advice on online conference presentations from Shelly (this is part of a series you can find other posts in her blog)
http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/2010/11/21/sharing-our-voices-reaching-our-audience/
Gapfillers
Don’t forget to give me feedback if you use the site for yourself or with students. Also if you have suggestions they’re always welcome 🙂
Just a reminder that we do offer a school licence so if your school has advanced students (if wants to use it for teachers) this is possible – just let me know.
We can also syndicate content which means we can deliver straight to your school site or intranet.
Need help with anything?
If anybody else needs help with anything just post in the forum, or on twitter or email me or send a message in Gapfillers. I am really pleased that you are using the forum – let’s get more things posted to discuss.
Don’t forget to put any suggestions in the forum, this is your space to share ideas or experiences and to ask questions.
Until next week
Berni