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Showing posts from January, 2010

APLaNet - Exciting New Professional Development Opportunity for Language Teachers

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APLANet is a new European Union project proposal which aims to help language teachers to develop their own  Personal Learning Network (PLN)  . We are looking for two types of people/organisations at the moment:  Educators who are skilled in using social networking tools and who would be interested in helping other teachers create their own  Personal Learning Network   using tools such as Twitter , Facebook , Ning , etc. Teachers who would like to build their own PLN  and would be interested in being mentored, piloting materials, etc. as part of  their professional development. Both of these would be recognised on the project documents as 'Associate Partners' (EU project trerminology which sounds more formal than it actually is) and would receive recognition in the form of a certificate of participation as well as a great opportunity to form part of an exciting new community of language professionals. Think you're interested? Or know of anyone who may be interest

2010 - the year of the Personal Learning Network?

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One of the things I'll remember 2009 for is it was the first year that mainstream ELT teachers really took to using social media. This is something that Lindsay Clandfield mentions in a recent blog post on language teaching trends of the 00s ). It was particularly interesting to be able to see blogs being set up by educators such as Ken Wilson , Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury . Of all the internet memes that emerged in 2009, it was surely  PLN ( Personal Learning Network ) that caught the attention of  the blogging educators . The Twittering Classes  This was mainly due to the emergence of  Twitter  as an essential tool for the connected teacher, although there are still many teachers who have decided it's not for them. Some have been put off by its  trendiness  (in the UK it became much talked-about because of  Stephen Fry  and other celebrities - the same seems to have been true in other places too) and others don't see the point of the 140 character limitation

TESOL EVO 2010

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Happy New Year everyone! Why not start 2010 with some professional development courtesy of TESOL's Electronic village Online ? The best place for educators to start, especially if they are new to teaching and learning languages with technology is the Becoming a Webhead (BaW2010) session . Run every year, this is the perfect introduction to the Webheads community of practice and it's specially suitable for those teachers who are interested in using technology but who are unsure of where to start. After joining the BaW2010 Yahoo group , you'll be introduced to a dazzling array of possibilities and will be helped every step of the way by experienced and friendly mentors. By the end of the six week session, teachers will have a much better idea of how they can start to introduce technology into their classroom to enhance their lessons and will also be part of a supportive community of like-minded teachers they can draw on for inspiration and help. For those of you with more exp