British Council IATEFL Blog
-
Kara-NOT-oke
Well just so you don’t think that IATEFL is all work and no play, I thought I’d fill you in on one of the many great evening events at IATEFL.
Last night Sirin, Leo and I braved the IATEFL crowd and picked our mics not to present but to sing! Yes, that’s right: Karaoke! Think about it; mix up a pub full of exhibitionists (English teachers), a long list of cheesy hits and a mic and you’re asking for trouble.
I have to say Leo made us proud with his rendition of ‘Alive and Kicking’ and others. However, Sirin and I (it could possibly have been my fault) chose a song in which we thought we knew how to sing but it turns out we only knew the chorus. Very embarrassing! Ah well, a fun night was had and I have already chosen my song for next year for karaoke in Glasgow!!! :)
It was great fun, meeting lots of interesting people and sharing ideas at the conference and I liked blogging too. Hopefully I’ll get to do it for IATEFL next year in Glasgow too!
Blog post by: Nikola Crowley
-
Time to say “goodbye” but also “see you soon”
The IATEFL Conference centre is slightly less busy today and you can feel that it is ending. I walked to the exhibition area and saw what some more experienced people told me before - wait for the final day because the publishers offer significant discounts. It is so true and this area is full of teachers getting the latest editions and subsequently increasing their luggage weight! Just passing through I was offered different freebies, including couple of notepads.
One of the best things is when you find an available seat in the corridors between the sessions (and today is much easier to locate one) you can see people from around the world talking in so many different languages. IATEFL is truly global and international.
Last night all of us from our little blog team went for a dinner. It was really great meeting all of them in person and we had loads of fun last night. Most of us went to see Leo’s presentation on alliteration before that and, although no one had any doubts, he had his eye on the ball all the time and everyone enjoyed it. I really recommend that you visit the IATEFL online website and download his presentation file.
Our IATEFL blog was more successful than we dreamed of. With around 500 unique visitors per day, loads of reposts and retweets (thank you BC colleagues!), many teachers were following it. One interesting fact that fascinated me and shows how good we were: if you go to Google and type “IATEFL blog”, guess which one is ranked first out of 40,000 results? Oh yes, that’s us! This to thank everyone who supported us and this wou D not have been possible without you. Nevertheless, next year we will be even better, I promise you that :)
So, this is my last entry for this year but I will continue uploading an entry or two I expect from our team members. I really hope you enjoyed our IATEFL coverage and see you online soon!
Blog post by: Željko Jovanović
-
Eva’s last blog post in her IATEFL Chronicles
This is my last post from the conference. It was great to be here. I enjoyed the every bit of the conference. I’m tired and sleepless but I know it is worth it.
After blogging and twitter, many things changed in my life. I sleep less, I watch television less but I still can manage. Apart from the disadvantages of being online, I must admit there are thousands of advantages. One of them is you get informed about what’s going on around you and then have chance to attend it, the other is when you attend these events you are surrounded by your PLN even in a totally foreign environment. As far as I know IATEFL 2011 is hosting more than 2000 delegates and it is quite normal that we can even find time to chit chat as we keep losing friend. However, the best thing about is we keep finding the others. So a great tip for you. Before you go to your next conference, make sure you have built your PLN.
(Sunny Brighton, photo by Eva Buyuksimkesyan)Right now here comes the summary:
In the morning I attended Bethany Cagnol’s session called, ‘Ruling the Unruly’. Although my reality and Bethany’s reality are completely different, I came up with ideas for classroom management. And plus, I had the privilidge of listening to her. If you happen to be at a conference where she speaks, don’t miss her. She was fabulous.
The next one was Jeremy Harmer’s talk. Last year at IATEFL, he asked some teachers to explain the best lesson they’d taught and the talk was around those people and their best taught lessons. We discussed why the lessons went well and even we had great lesson ideas from those teachers.
Jeremy Harmer pointed out that when teachers talk about a successful lesson they smile and they always say what the students have done.
The next one was a great kinesthetic spelling session by Johanna Sterling. The games she used during the session were very useful.
All about Alliterations was the title of Leo Selivan’s session and it was very good and in the end we even had ideas how and when to use alliterations in our classroms. Above all, to end the session with a song was great. It was one of my favourites She by Elvis Costello.
Almost around six we were ready and eager to listen to Maris Constantinides. She was right. Trainers train teachers and they have to teach how to integrate technology into teaching before the new teachers arrive to their own classrooms and this actually should be done befoe they have graduated to become teachers, I guess.
My plan for tomorrow:
Ann Foreman ‘Helping your students to develop their personal learning environment:’
Sirin Soyoz, Suzanne Mordue, ‘Using E-tivities to create online communities’
Blog post by:
Eva Buyuksimkesyan -
Magical Moodle Moments
Although many of the teachers I have met at this conference use ready madeMoodle courses with their students, very few of them seem to actually be involved in setting a course up or creating (or even adding) content to their online Moodle courses. They’ve been handed Moodle in the same way as they would a workbook. To them it’s just a (good) resource.
Unfortunately, Moodle is not as well known in Turkey as in the rest of Europe, and many schools are far from ready to even consider blended learning. I guess that’s why publishers don’t offer “moodle packages” to go with their coursebooks yet? I really wish they’d start doing that soon because that would save moodlers like myself – who has had to create every bit of their course content from scratch – a lot of work and worry.
(Barbara Gardner, photo by Karin Tirasin)
By “from scratch” I don’t mean html code or anything like that of course. I’ve been using Hot Potatoes a lot in addition to the modules Moodle (9.1) offers. I’ve also (quite recently) found out about CourseLab. However, yesterday at Barbara Gardener’s amazing presentation “Creating and Delivering Online Professional Development using Moodle” several wonderful thingshappened. One was Barbara sharing her knowledge and experience of how to set up a course and what sorts of features make a Moodle course more successful and rewarding for the course participants, another was my chance meeting with José Louis G. Belderrain, a programmer actively involved in creating “moodle packages” (SCORM) to go with Cambridge course books!
Can you believe my luck? Both Barbara and José Louis stayed after Barbara’s presentation and discussed Moodle and moodling and content with me and seriously made my day! I am now literally bursting with new ideas for how to improve my own Moodle courses! In true “techno-freak-fashion” – we exchanged twitter handles and facebook account information and will (I hope to God) keep in touch so that I can learn more from them!
Ah! Happy day!!!
Blog post by:
Karin Tirasin -
Leo gives his audience a task during his extremely interesting presentation on alliteration
-
-
