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Jennifer Francois
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Maria
Tomeho-Palermino
| This past year, needless to say, was eventful from reviewing
presentations and planning for the Denver conference to innovative
initiatives for the Electronic Village (EV) to managing and preparing
for the virtual conference during this pandemic. The presentation review
took place as usual during the summer and early fall, and the
leadership team discussed and chose some cutting-edge presentations for
Denver. Subsequently, we sent out acceptance letters to those presenters
selected, some of whose topics included teaching online, user-friendly
apps for speaking, writing, and other skills. What’s more, some Hot
Topics presentations focused on digital citizenship, TESOL’s The 6 Principles Through the Lens of Technology,
gaming, and others.
We are proud of some important accomplishments this year
including fine tuning leadership roles, examining the evolution of our
communication within and outside of the interest section, and
reconsidering the Electronic Village (EV), Tech Showcase and other
sessions to engage our community better and entice newcomers more
effectively. First, we needed to clarify definitions and
responsibilities of the leadership within CALL so that we could be more
efficient in resolving issues. Moreover, the ad hoc committee to
streamline our media outlets was able to consolidate multiple sites for
more direct communication within our community and outside of the
interest section as well. Finally, probably, one of most significant
feats was to brainstorm and analyze novel designs for the Electronic
Village.
To appeal to a much broader audience to the Electronic Village
and Tech Showcase, the CALL-IS was tasked with redefining our mission
and concept. Therefore, the Electronic Village Planning team along with
Jennifer, myself and the incoming chairs conducted meetings and
discussed how to come up with potential transformations to put in place
in the EV in 2020-2021 under the new leadership team. This team proposed
a new exciting space with a “Tech Guru bar” to showcase apps and
websites designed for 21st century technology use
and learning. In addition, “Makerspaces” formerly known as workshops
have evolved into shorter, hands-on interactive sessions in which
participants can use and explore some widely used tools. We are looking
forward to implementing these exciting changes this coming
year.
Another very meaningful endeavor for us was determining how to
participate in the virtual conference as soon as TESOL cancelled the
Denver conference. Jennifer, myself, and the incoming-chairs had to turn
on a dime to determine how our interest section could best contribute
to the virtual conference. Our direction became focusing on online
instruction presentations that we had already evaluated and accepted. As
a result, we contacted numerous presenters whose topics aligned with
this goal; we ended up with approximately ¼ of the presentations in the
virtual conference. Therefore, CALL was well represented this year. We
would also like to note that we have kept all acceptances originally
slated for the Denver conference and that we will reach out to those
presenters soon for TESOL Houston, 2021.
In 2020-2021, the leadership team is enthusiastic about our
initiatives that we will implement in TESOL Houston including the new
space design, the Tech Guru bar and Makerspaces in the Electronic
Village. What’s more, with the streamlining of our media sites, we
sincerely hope to reach out not only to our dedicated community but also
newcomers who are curious about using technology in the
21st century classroom and how they can exploit
some tools easily to facilitate interactive learning. For TESOL Houston,
we encourage the community to watch for new initiatives for the CALL-IS
and for next year’s conference.
Sincerely,
Jennifer François, EdS
TESOL CALL-IS Past CoChair
Literacy Studies PhD Student, MTSU
Mariat Tomeho-Palermino
TESOL CALL-IS Past CoChair
Adjunct Professor
Northeastern University
Boston, MA. 02115 |
