A Weekend of CPD!!

Put the following dates in your diary right now, and you can look forward to a weekend full of fantastic talks, workshops and plenaries!

The Virtual Round Table will host its 6th free e-conference on the weekend of 17th - 19th May.
You can read the schedule and programme at this link here. 

I am delighted to be presenting at the conference again, and I will be talking about Apps and Tools to Spice Up Your Teaching.  

My talk is on Sunday 19th May. 

I am really looking forward to attending the conference, as it promises to be action-packed.

The following information was written by the event organizers, and reproduced in full as follows:

Event Description:
Twitter hashtag: #vrtwebcon
Come join us for the 6th Virtual Round Table Web Conference, 17-19 May 2013 for language educators held entirely online in a web conferencing solution called Adobe Connect, with the main sessions being live-streamed on facebook.
Some 60 guest-speakers look forward to presenting in 48 hours over a period of 3 days the latest in this field on teaching and learning a language with

• educational tools
• video
• learner resources
• mobile learning
• young learners
• virtual worlds
• online testing
• songs

and much more.

Keynote speakers are Nicky Hockly and Gavin Dudeney, Thomas Strasser, Sirin Soyoz, Angelika Guettl-Strahlhofer, Evelyn Izquierdo, Miguel Mendoza, Joe Dale, Steven Herder, Paul Driver and Shelly Terrell.
Highlights of the conference are...

• a Southamerican Symposium organised by Jennifer Verschoor
• a panel discussion on CEFR 'Is your B1 my B1?'
• a presentation by EAQUALS (pending)
• two presentation by NGOs: the Disabled Friendly Access Campaign and the NO Human Trafficking project
• the Asian symposium (pending)
• the LT SIG event with Paul Driver
• an unconference/ barcamp hosted by Vance Stevens
• a musical performance (pending)

The program overview has been published:
http://www.virtual-round-table.com/page/6-vrtwebcon-conference-program

The web conference is free of charge and we thank our sponsors for making this possible.
If you wish to participate, please sign up on our main website www.virtual-round-table.com.

The room links to the sessions are posted on the program and all you need to be is early, because the rooms have a capacity of 100 seats each. We will also live-stream all of the main plenaries and keynotes on facebook, so you do not need to miss out.

https://www.facebook.com/vrtwebcon

Motivating our learners: actualising the vision, by Jill Hadfield

 The title of this particular session from IATEFL Liverpool Online caught my eye, and so I decided to view the video embedded below.  I was not disappointed.

I would like to share a few of my thoughts on Motivating our learners: actualising the vision. Before I continue, however, many apologies for the delay in posting this, but I had a very busy time whilst in the UK, so am now going to make up for lost time!

 Jill Hadfield is well known for many  ELT publications including Intermediate Vocabulary Games (Photocopiable ELT Games and Activities), which is one of my favourite teaching resources.  I knew her talk would be dynamic and practical.  I was not disappointed at all.

The following extract is a synopsis of the talk, taken from the Liverpool Online Session Presenter site:

'A vivid vision of their future L2 self is highly motivating for students. Vision alone is not enough however: this practical workshop, based on ideas in Motivation (Hadfield and Dornyei, 2013), will explore four ways to help students turn vision into reality: translating vision into goals; translating goals into plans; translating plans into strategies; and translating strategies into achievement.'

I was intrigued about the thought of actualising the vision of motivating our learners to do their best. This is something which always plays on my mind, when starting out with a new group of students.  How do they view the course?  What preconceptions do they have of their teacher, and how they will learn effectively? How can their expectations be met by their teacher?.  What steps can be taken to ensure that both parties come away from the experience feeling happy and satisfied?


My Thoughts
The talk was a mix of theory and sound practical applications, and I enjoyed it very much, viewing it from the comfort of my armchair.

I learned about operationalising the vision -  setting goals and making plans are key to motivating our learners. A 'routemap' can be provided to our learners to ensure they get done on 'the journey'.
Jill Hadfield outlined  how to map THE JOURNEY –

4 Steps to achieve this vision:

From Vision to Goals

From Goals to Plans

From Plans to Strategies

From Strategies to Achievement

 I highly recommend you view the 40 minutes of video from the conference. Please also view the Powerpoint presentation which charts the various activities that teachers can set up to maximise motivation in their learners.

Please note: I will embed the video as soon as I can.

Liverpool Online Registered Blogger!

This week from 8th - 12th April, all the IATEFL conference action is happening in Liverpool, home of the Fab Four. Sadly I won't be there in person, due to work commitments. The next best thing therefore is that I hope to attend the conference online, whenever possible!

I'm proud to announce that I am an IATEFL Online Registered Blogger for the second year running.  Last year I had fun attending Glasgow Online.
 
There are many other Registered Bloggers writing on what is happening in Liverpool at the moment.  You can view their posts to get a really good insight into all the exciting events happening this week!

 I do hope you will take a look at what is being shared worldwide via the Liverpool Online site.  You can read the full programme in this Pdf format.

Watch this space over the next few days......

E-Moderation Skills' Training with The Consultants-E

Working with educators online is always a great pleasure. I have recently finished moderating a four-week E-Moderation Skills' course for The Consultants-E and I enjoyed this particular session very much. Some of the teachers and teacher trainers in the March group expressed a particular interest in integrating apps and tools.  As a result, I set myself the challenge of trying to incorporate a few apps and tools that I personally like using on face to face blended online courses.  Each of them had to have a practical pedagogical value, and should not detract or take over from the basic premise of what the whole course entails, eg teaching the core skills of emoderation.
 
I was lucky to have had a bit more 'free' time during March to enjoy experimenting.  I therefore would like to point out, that all these tools included in the ebooklet would NOT necessarily be included in every itineration of the course. Each itineration is tailored as much as is practically possible, around the needs / interests of the group as a whole, so basically each tutor is free to add their own personal touch as and when required.

I would like to say a particular thanks to the wonderful group of March participants, who made it such a special and memorable course for me. Time simply flew past!! The four weeks' of training culminated in an amazing final group collaborative project, which will be useful as a guide for the future.

Below is a summary of some of the tools used.  I have placed them in Issuu, a nice site where you can easily publish your writing projects in an e-booklet form.

You can click on the link here to be taken directly to the issuu site..

 
May EModeration Course
The next Emoderation skills course begins on May 1st, so please do have a look at the website page to read more about what the course entails.

'This course is aimed at teachers, trainers, tutors, facilitators, lecturers and mentors from any discipline and any level of education, who are interested in developing the skills necessary to become an effective e-moderator in online courses.'

10th Anniversary Celebrations
As The Consultants-E is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year, you may be interested in finding out more about the special offers, book giveaways, free mini-courses, and many other exciting promotions on offer!

ELT Experiences - March Teacher Interview

I am delighted to announce that I am featured in the March Teacher Interview on Martin Sketchley's very informative blog ELT Experiences! It is a great honour to share this platform with his other ELT guests.

I have known Martin ever since he first started on his blogging path.  It has been a pleasure to follow his posts, and see how he has developed into a very successful and influential teacher and ELT blogger.  His posts always contain a lot of very useful and pertinent information regarding ELT methodology, and you can find many of his great lesson plans and viewpoints on his website. 

The questions provided a great opportunity to review my past,  present and future in my lifelong career in ELT.

Please do go over to the post called March Teacher Interview: Janet Bianchini

Whilst there you can also read the previous insightful interviews for 2013, which include:

January Teacher Interview: Adam Simpson

February Teacher Interview: Lusine Avetisyan
  
If you have time, please do look through the 2012 interviews as well - you will find out a lot more about some very prominent ELT Bloggers.

Many thanks, Martin for the interview :-)