My name is not Teacher

Although the TEFL Conference ended last week, I haven’t posted on the final day. I desperately needed a break to think about everything. So after 6 days of thinking, here I go.

On the last morning, I was shocked by Barbara Dieu’s workshop on Blogging. I shouldn’t have been so shocked, since Barbara is well known for her class blogging. She had some really great tips and insights as to how to make a blog project possible. Many thanks go to her for a wonderful experience. We actually created blogs here in wordpress and posted messages and created a page. Very important for teachers! I would like to continue this training for teachers at Alumni as a way to get more familiar with this possibility. You can see some of the things here:

www.alumni07.wikispaces.com
www.dekita.org
www.43places.com

After this workshop, it was on to Tony and Marilena and the second half of their 4 hour workshop “Going Cyber: Without Going Bananas”. Our group created a blog project for high intermediate students to work on critical thinking. It was a great experience to get together and actually plan a project. Even though we didn’t have a lot of time to plan everything, it was a chance to start the planning process, which got some of us thinking. Hopefully this wave will continue for others, as I am sure it will continue with me.

Yesterday, I was impressed with the images shown by Ben Goldstein in his talk on…just that…images.  Although it was somewhat commercial, I liked some of his ideas such as using famous logos, maps and Adbusters. 

Here  is a fun challenge where you have to guess which companies use the shown logos.  Some of them are from Brazil, so they might not make too much sense if you aren’t aware of the Brazilian consumer market, but most are international. 

Have fun and let me know how many you get!

Before the 2007 TEFL, I was asking myself if I could use podcasts with my classes.  I have come to the conclusion that I could, but would it be worth the time.  One thing that I saw today with Anamaria Camargo was that there are various ways to use them.  I most likely won’t be recording my own in the near future, but I might post some links to some on my classes’ blogs for the students to comment.  This could be tasty, if done properly.  I will ponder that one for a few weeks.

But anyway, the session was great and it was good to get some hands-on (the computer) at a conference.  Hopefully this will continue for the rest of this week, especially with Barbara Dieu on Friday.  Let’s see!

After finishing Claire Siskin’s workshop, Options in CALL, I would like to say that it is always good to see a critical view of the ICT from someone who works in the field.  The main points discussed were:

- A general overview of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
- Exploration and evaluation of authentic sites and instructional sites
- Common applications for classroom activities
- Synchronous and asynchronous uses of the Net
- Wikis and Blogs

Although Claire no longer teaches languagues, her past experiences in the field were able to shed some light on the often confusing issues surrounding computers and teaching.  What I enjoyed the most about her workshop was her “soapbox” speech which warned that if educators do not contribute to the Net, it will end up like TV, full of trashy content. 

Thanks a million, Claire!  It was a very fun two days.

Today I had the honor to participate in 2 seminars given by Claire Siskin.  The first being an overview of CALL as she sees it and the second, the first part of a two-day workshop focused on the options available to teachers and students within the realm of CALL. 

Claire is a very witty person, full of humorous anecdotes about her life and experiences in CALL.  I will be posting more about her workshop in the days to come.