RSCON5: Maxis and Minis

This year, the free Reform Symposium Conference will be held over the weekend of 11th to 13th July. The interesting addition is that prior to the marathon event, there are 2 mini half-day conferences, one of which was held on 6th April. Unfortunately, that coincided with the IATEFL in Harrogate but recordings are available here. If you'd missed that, you might want to get involved with the next one, to be held on Sun 6th May. Take a look here to see the exact time in your city.

What’s happening in this MiniCon?

For starters, we have teacher-poet Chaouki M'kaddem to open the event for us.

Chaouki will hand the mic over to super tech guru Steve Wheeler, more famously, perhaps, known as @timbuckteeth. Needless to say, we’re over the moon to have Steve as our keynote.

Following this, we’ll have 7 inspirers who will give a 3-5 minute sneak peek at their forthcoming presentations in RSCON5. We had 8 in April’s MiniCon and we ran a little over time, so we’re reducing it to the magical number of seven. These speakers have yet to be decided. If you’d like to be one of them, go here.

To wind up the half-day event, and leave you wanting more ;) tech smackdown comes on. Here, in just 2 minutes (per person), enthusiasts introduce us to their favourite app or web tool and tell us what’s so good about it. If you’re passionate about a tool, why don’t you tell the world? Fill in the form here.

For all other information, please visit Future of Education.

See you there!

RSCON never sleeps...

For most people RSCON has come and gone. The weekend of 11-13th October 2013 might have been a mind-opener for some, a disappointment for others, but there can be no denying that it was a special event. It was completely online, completely free, and completely run by a group of dedicated unpaid volunteers. Unpaid in kind, but paid  in the knowledge that someone somewhere in the world would have been inspired enough to start the reform ball rolling in their community, their network.

I'd played a small part in helping the team in RSCON3, but as circumstances would have it, I found myself involved in a far greater scale than the previous event. Even while RSCON4 was still going on, we were already discussing the improvements we would like to see for the next event. Those who have continued to follow us in the social network would have noticed some of the groundwork being laid for RSCON5.

Here are some of the things that have been going on:

RSCON on Flipboard

We have created a magazine on Flipboard to display posts that RSCONers have written regarding their experience of RSCON4.

If you wish to be included, fill in the form here: I want to be included!




When's the next RSCON?

The Reform Symposium has always been for the people, so we want to make that even truer by inviting everyone to have a say as to when they would like to have the next conference. Each day, it gets more complicated as more and more organizations (especially the professional ones with a significant budget as opposed to volunteer organizations such as ours with zero budget) jump into the bandwagon with the result that on any one day, you are bound to find a free webinar of one form or another.

Since a party is useless if no-one comes, we want the biggest audience possible, and we want to know which month gets the majority of votes. Have your say here: I want to vote!

I want to help!

We have started collecting names of people who wish to be part of the Reform Symposium community. Experience is not necessary; passion is! That's our motto. There are many ways in which you can be of help: design, promotion, presenting, moderating, training, etc. So, if you can spare some time to help others help themselves, fill in this form: I want to help!

RSCON on Facebook

Since we want to reach the maximum number of people possible and even the most non-techie person is using Facebook, we decided that it is the best platform for us to use to keep our followers up to date. So, if you want the latest juiciest information, be sure to "like" us!

In addition, we have also created an RSCON group as groups seem to be more user-friendly than pages! Join us:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RSCON/

I would like to propose a presenter

Now you can! Just fill in this form: propose a presenter. Remember passion is more important to experience for us!

Thanks for sharing our passion!

#RSCON4 Reform Symposium 11-13 Oct 2013: Useful links

I won't say much as I'm sure you must have read plenty about RSCON, the Reform Symposium. Instead, I'll place some useful links here because I know how, sometimes, it's difficult to find what you're looking for. If you are still in doubt regarding any aspect of this incredible e-conference, just get in touch with me.

 

Twitter Lists

Apart from following the hashtag #RSCON4, you may like to follow the people who are making it all possible. Subscribing to the lists is best because names may be added from time to time.

Keynotes & Panellists

Presenters

EdInspire Nominees

Organisers

Spread the Word

Write about it in your blog. Wear a badge. Tweet it. Tell everyone in the social media scene.

Attendee badge - click here for instructions on how to embed it on your blog.

If you've written a blog post, have it included here: http://goo.gl/KvplSP

If you're a presenter or an EdInspire nominee, you should have got a personal message about where to get the badge. Otherwise, get in touch with me.

If you know someone who deserves to be nominated for the EdInspire award, here's the form.

Main website: 

www.reformsymposium.com

Prezi (courtesy of Chris Smith @shamblesguru): 

Pinterest:

http://www.pinterest.com/reformsymposium/

Volunteers

Join up as a volunteer. Help us moderate. To make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible, we need more MODERATORS from all the time zones! Go here for more details: http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/call-for-rscon4-volunteer-moderators

Remember that even though you're a presenter, you can still moderate the other sessions!

Practice:

You can practise by signing up for a free WeCollaborate room: http://try.bbcollaborate.com/trial/register.go

Training sessions

Go here for details: http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/2013-rscon-training

The 2 official training sessions are over, but you can watch the recordings.

There are two - they are similar. The links are given at the end of this post.

When you click on either link, you'll be asked to save a file called nativeplayback.jnlp
Save it where you can find it easily, on your desktop, for example.
When it's finished saving, open it.
This will start the recording. It may take a few minutes to load.
Click on play to begin the playback.

The whole recording lasts for 76 minutes although you can fast forward or rewind it.

http://goo.gl/TSgd3I
http://goo.gl/fTv8zM

If you're still unsure about participating in webinars and need extra training, feel free to contact me for a private session.

Bookmark this page. If there's anything else that I think may be useful, I'll come back here and edit.

I look forward to meeting you all in a week's time!

Schedule

http://www.futureofeducation.com/page/attending-rscon-2013

Scroll down and click on your time zone.

Saturday Special for teachers by teachers

Today was a special day. Special for many reasons. Special because the world is full of dedicated teachers willing to give up their time to share their experience and expertise with others. Their willingness would not have come to anything if there wasn't anyone to give them a platform from which to shout. And all the shouting would not have come to any good if there wasn't anyone out there to listen.

So, Saturday, 28th of April, morning for some, evening for others, was special. A hundred or so educators sacrificed part of their weekend to listen to five dedicated females, Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, Özge Karaoglu, Ann Mayeda, Penny Ur and Kate Cory-Wright, discuss "What do we know about language teaching and learning?".

I'm sure most, if not all, felt it was well worth their time. Were you there? What did you take away from the webinar? If you weren't, watch out for the next iTDi event!

We were missing some fast tweeps (Twitter users); I tried my best, but I was moderating at the same time. Here is a collection of the back-channelling going on. Many thanks to these back-channellers, the participants, the speakers, and all the organising team, including the generous Heike Philp of The Virtual Round Table fame.

 

To watch on full screen, click as shown in the image below.

Opportunity keeps on knocking!

Last month, iTDi (International Teacher Development Institute) held its first webinar and some of you might have been lucky to get in...or not. I myself had trouble obtaining entry because I had a class before and couldn't get back home early. I kept on trying and I eventually succeeded when some people had to leave the room early. By then, I'd missed the first half of it. Fortunately, there was a recording I could watch.

On 28th April, they are holding their second webinar entitled "What do we know about language teaching and learning?" Speakers are the glamorous five, six, if you include the omnipresent Shelly Terrell as the moderator. Barbara Sakamoto will start the session off with The Fashions of ELT. She's accompanied by Özge Karaoglu, Ann Mayeda, Penny Ur, and Kate Cory-Wright.

For more details and registration, visit iTDi's webinar page.

Please be aware that registration does not guarantee you an automatic entry; it will however, provide you with the "key" to the room before the doors are open to the general public. It's always advisable to be early, just in case there is software to be installed or updated, or you encounter audio-visual hiccups; in any case, it's good to be present before the start so you can soak up the atmosphere and chat with other attendees. Learning occurs before, during and after!

See you there!

Other links you may be interested in:

Continuing Teacher Development Scoop.It
Lonely Teacher Blues

From Twitter to Glasgow (IATEFL 2012)

Barbara Sakamoto may be a familiar name in the international social media but she isn't usually present in the European conference circuit, so I was curious to hear what actually brought her over.

Barbara, in her interview with Nik Peachey and Kirsteen Donaghy, recalls how Twitter had brought her to Glasgow and how she got into Twitter in the first place. She believes that it is important to do things that makes us feel really stupid just to remind us of the feeling so that we know how it is to feel lost in a language learning class. According to her, she knew doing anything related to technology will make her feel stupid! Who would have guessed, right?

So, she got into Second Life and learned to become a webhead, got into Twitter, and to cut a long story short, Glasgow here she is!

You can watch her interview here:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/sessions/2012-03-22/interview-barbara-sakamoto

Also, don't miss her interview in iasku:
http://iasku.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/barbara-hoskins-sakamoto

IATEFL 2012 Glasgow

James E Zull on Friday morning's plenary

It's been a fast week, and Glasgow is preparing to say goodbye to those fortunate enough to be there. I must admit that I haven't been able to follow much of what's been happening this year although I hope to go through some of the archives in the next few weeks. You can see the interviews here and the recorded sessions here.

I did manage, however to watch (on and off, although I had my wireless headphones on) yesterday's opening plenary by Steven Thorne entitled "Awareness, appropriacy, and living language use". What I kept saying during his talk was "Hell, I can't even think this fast! How can this guy speak at this speed... and without notes, too?" You can watch it here. His presentation  examined out-of-school L2 digital engagement in environments such as social media, fan fiction communities, and online gaming.

The highlight of the evening was, undoubtedly, as it was last year, the Pecha Kucha. If you still haven't heard of it, it's basically a presentation of 20 slides of 20 seconds each. These evenings tend to be rather light-hearted, so a lot of us were waiting anxiously for it. The eight presenters, led by the always-funny Jeremy Harmer, including such PLN favourites as Shelly Terrell and Barbara Sakamoto, didn't disappoint us. You can watch it here:

Part One:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/sessions/2012-03-22/pecha-kucha-part-1
Part Two:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/sessions/2012-03-22/pecha-kucha-part-2

I won't say much so as not to ruin your fun!

46th Annual IATEFL Conference aka Lonely Teacher Blues Part 3

Unless you're living in the woods - but even the woods are "connected" now - you must have heard about the IATEFL conference currently going on in Glasgow (19-23 March). We ought to be thankful that we're living in the age of miracles. Conferences are no longer the domain of the rich and the privileged - poor people like you and me need not miss out on what's going on in them.

If you've read my Lonely Teacher Blues Parts One and Two, you will have read that I strongly recommend conferences as part of the cure. I "attended" Brighton last year and I was hooked. Thanks to Brighton, I got to know people such as Anthony Gaughan and Dale Coulther, who, of course, later appeared in iAskU interviews.

This year, I'm a little busier, but still can't afford to go to Glasgow, and I can be seen running around the house with my wireless headphones on. Today, I managed to get a glimpse of Andi White, Nik Peachey and Kirsteen Donaghy (I fell in love with Kirsteen last year...her accent, I mean!); I also managed to catch Andi & Rob interviewing Chia Suan live. Chia was asked about her talk on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the BESIG pre-conference event.

You might want to catch up on some spicy talk on ELF here and if you don't know Chia, I'd suggest you watch her iAskU interview.

The Glasgow IATEFL Conference will be broadcasting live each day (09:00-17:00 GMT) from the Glasgow Online studio. They'll be showing interviews with presenters and visitors, and general coffee talk. There's also a back-channel (or side-channel, more like it) chat going on at the same time. Interviews can be watched again later. Unfortunately, we can't watch the presentations live, but they'll be showing some plenaries and the Pecha Kucha!

After several days of waiting, I'm still unable to embed the video, so here's the link to watch Chia's interview:

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2012/sessions/2012-03-19/interview-chia-suan 

Error correction: a free webinar, aka Lonely Teacher Blues, Part 2

Image by C. Pang. More like this here.

A couple of months ago, I posted about the loneliness of teachers and how this can be overcome in Lonely Teacher Blues. One of the easiest ways, I said, was to attend webinars, which are becoming, unsurprisingly, increasingly popular. Attending it is easy - all you need is a computer with internet connection, and a little time.

Error correction seems to be the topic on everyone's lips lately. If you've been missing a lot, be sure to follow my Scoop.it on Continuing Teacher Development, where the latest news regarding conferences, webinars, etc. are posted, and follow me on Twitter, too. It's also apt that iTDi (International Teacher Development Institute) will be hosting its own free webinar on error correction next month.

Their directors Scott Thornbury, Steven Herder, and Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto will be presenting on this webinar to be held on Saturday, 3rd March 2012 starting at 12:00 GMT. See what time it is for you here.

Steven Herder will be asking ,"Why correct ESL errors in an EFL class?", Scott Thornbury will be provoking your thoughts in "Does error correction really work?" while Barbara, in her usual affectionate way, will encourage you to "Embrace mistakes!"

Note it down on your diary, don't miss it. To avoid disappointment, register here.

Two For The Price Of None

Where were you last Saturday 17th December 2011 from about 09:00 until 15:00 GMT? Seriously, if you were not doing anything you couldn't postpone such as looking after the sick or the young, or earning your daily bread, and you're a so-called educator, unless you are already a top-notch guru, I really don't understand why you weren't present at one, if not both, of the two free webinars held that day. Did you miss my post on The Lonely Teacher Blues? Oh, all right, include being in the "wrong" time zone as a good excuse, too, although there were a few dedicated attendees from the other side of the ocean, such as Ecuador and Brazil, where even the birds and the roosters were still asleep.

This is apart from the omnipresent Shelly Terrell, who was moderating the iTDi webinar in spite of it starting at 4am, her time! She has trouble saying 'no' at the best of times, but I guess it would have been even more difficult to refuse the chance of moderating such great thinkers and motivators as Luke Meddings, Chuck Sandy, Marcos Benevides, Scott Thornbury, John F. Fanselow, and Steven Herder, who was also co-moderator.

So, if you weren't there, and have no valid excuse, I repeat, I really don't understand you. However, there just might exist the possibility for you to redeem yourself, and learn something in the process - take a look here for a link to the recording of what you missed.

Right after the iTDi, which stands for the International Teacher Development Institute, came the first ever online version of Teach Meet. A total of 27 teachers (including a significant number of iTDi associates) from all around the globe spoke for about 3 minutes each, sharing their ideas, their projects, and their passion, with those present. Again, I don't understand how you could let such an opportunity pass you by. But, since these educators are so generous and selfless, visit the site for the chance of seeing the recording.

For a taste of what happened that day, watch this super summary compiled by Bart Verswijvel.

My presentation was basically a potpourri of ideas for using Wordle in the classroom, quite difficult to do in 3 minutes, but the bicycle arrived unscathed...I think. The tutorial on how to do what I did, and parts of the slides I used, can be found here. In any case, especially for Marijana Smolcec, I'm sharing the full presentation here.

There is sound, so turn your speakers on! Unfortunately, there is a slight problem - the world isn't perfect, is it? The version you see below is from Author Stream - you can simply press play, and the presentation starts with my voice-over plus you get to see the animations. However, the synchronization is not as it ought to be and some layering effect is lost.

The version below the Author Stream's is on Slideshare - there's no play option, no animations, no sound, but you get to see the background effect as it was meant to be seen! :-)

Were you there? What did you learn from the two webinars? Weren't you there? Why not?

Wordle: Your imagination's the limit!

More PowerPoint presentations from Chiew Pang

Wordle: Your imagination's the limit!

View more presentations from Chiew Pang

   

How to overcome the Lonely Teacher Blues

Image by @ij64 on ELTPics;

Teaching is, often, a lonely job. If you're lucky, you get to talk about your problems, exchange ideas, or periodically receive some level of motivation in the staff room. Most of the time, however, you get thrown in the deep end, with only a marker and the coursebook to clutch.

Some seek to fight this problem by attending conferences, and others do courses, but these tend to be costly, and teaching is not noted for a generous pay scale. So, unless some form of backing is available, most of us can't do either of those.

However, the situation has improved tremendously in the past decade or so. As Barbara Sakamoto said in my interview with her, "Get online!" There's a bewildering amount of information and resources available on the Internet, so much so that one can easily get lost. If you're reading this, you're probably among those who are already fairly knowledgeable about the world of blogging, Twitter, and webinars. It is our duty, then, to enlighten the uninitiated.

If you want to know which blogs to read, a good place to start is my recommended blogs list. This list is, naturally, constantly updated. Twitter is an incredible world, but I'd probably need a few hours to explain its ins and outs - why don't you get your school to call me and I could give a talk? ;-) Alternatively, read the articles which I've scooped here.

If you're interested in personal professional development, follow my scoops here, and if you're in need of some motivation, why don't you check out some of the teachers here.

As for webinars... these are getting more and more popular, and it's easy to see why. Most of them are FREE, and you can attend them from the comforts of your own home. Don't you know what webinars are? They are basically online conferences. To attend them, you are sometimes required to register. You will be given a url (the address of a web page) to go to. When you enter this page, you'll be asked to download a small Java file. Follow the instructions from there and before you could get comfortable, you'd be 'apparated' (to borrow a word from J K Rowlings) to the conference room!

Talking of webinars, next Saturday, 17th December is a very special day. Two free webinars are taking place, practically one after another; here's a terrific chance to experience first hand what many other teachers around the world are doing!

iTDi (International Teacher Development Institute) will be running, very shortly, online courses, designed by teachers, for teachers. Their free webinar has already attracted 300 teachers from 57 countries, but they are still accepting people for their waiting list, so don't wait any longer. It's free, isn't it? The webinar is titled "What is a teacher?" For the full line-up of internationally-acclaimed presenters, schedule and registration, go to:  http://itdi.pro/webinar.html
It runs from 09:00 to 13:00 UTC.

Right after that, from 14:00 CET onwards, TeachMeet International start their own exciting event. This promises to be a truly dynamic affair, each presenter being given 3 minutes of "floor" time. Don't miss that either!

For those who are not able to attend either of these conferences, there is a good possibility that the recordings will be made available, but you'd need to be in touch with "us" to know where and when they are released!