CALL Newsletter - March 2014 (Plain Text Version)
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CALL-IS-LTSIG JOINT ONLINE CONFERENCE
When and where did the conference take place? The joint conference was a 7-hour webinar which took place October 12, 2013. It started at 7 am Pacific/1400 GMT and ended at 2 pm Pacific/2100 GMT. There were brief introductory remarks by conference organizers Paul Sweeney (Learning Technologies Special Interest Group of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) and Deborah Healey (CALL Interest Section of TESOL), then seven 50-minute sessions. The final session was an open Q&A with closing remarks by Paul and Deborah. Who/what organizations/people were involved? This started 4 years ago when Michael Carrier of the British Council (and a founding member of the CALL-IS) wanted to enable closer ties between IATEFL in Britain and TESOL in the United States. The British Council has funded one person from the LT SIG to go to the TESOL Convention and one person from the CALL Interest Section to go to the IATEFL Conference each of the past 3 years. To extend the relationship, representatives from the LT SIG and the CALL-IS decided to hold a full-day series of webinars as an online conference. Paul Sweeney and Deborah Healey served as overall organizers. The title, after some discussion, was set as “Using Technology in Teaching: Principles in Practice.” Heike Philp was the overall technical director of the webinar, with Ellen Dougherty, Jack Watson, Dawn Bikowski, and Sophia Mavridi as moderators and helpers during the series of sessions. The CALL-IS organizers: The IATEFL LT SIG team: Below are the titles and the links to the recordings. Heike Philp deserves great credit for making sure all of the recordings were saved and published. Special Event: TESOL CALL-IS and IATEFL LT SIG Welcome Address Opening Plenary The Role of Online Tools in Teacher Development Designer Learning TESOL Technology Standards: Why, How, and for Whom Digital Literacies The Sky Is not the Limit: Connecting With Elementary Makers in the Cloud Joint Closing Session and Open Q&A Recordings have been published on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LTSIG and https://www.facebook.com/ TESOLCALLIS What were the highlights of the conference? There were 252 unique visitors in Adobe Connect during the online conference from all over the world. As the first-ever joint IATEFL-TESOL webinar, one highlight was that it actually took place and had so much global interest. Each presenter brought interesting insights, and the simultaneous chat throughout the webinar added another layer of interaction among participants. The recordings allow others a chance to take a look at what happened, providing an ongoing benefit to teachers with an interest in effective use of technology in language teaching. What future collaborations do you see? Nicky Hockly from the LT SIG will be coming to TESOL in March, and Elizabeth Hanson-Smith from the CALL-IS will be attending IATEFL. She’ll be part of the preconference LT SIG day, talking about TESOL’s Technology Standards and how they fit with CALL in practice. We are planning another joint online conference/extended webinar in May, perhaps on the topic of gaming and gamification. |
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