Did I say I had had too much to do last week? Well… I guess this week I`m running out of time to complete all of our tasks! But at least there is a good reason for that! This weekend (Friday through Sunday) is the 24th APPI (English teachers Portuguese association) Congress under the topic - "Highlighting key skills in language learning", in Guimarães, a city 50km from where I live! Here is the link to the blog!!This means travelling a lot during these 3 days! Being there all day long and having little time left…
I have been lucky to hear Key-note speaker Prof. David Crystal, yesterday! It was an amazing lecture, as well a great plenary session by Rod Bolitho!
Afterwards, it was very rewarding for me to meet Abigail Dressel, the representative of the Department of State from the American Embassy here in Lisbon, together with Gergo Santha who made a presentation about the American English teaching arena, where I discovered all the potential of practices and products the American Department of State has available for teachers and even students through their embassies and Regional English language offices throughout the world. I advise you to check on your American embassy`s website!
Besides this I was also able to speak a little about my experience up until now here with you this Spring in Oregon, and of course I had to tell them the time I was spending there at the conference was preventing me from being able to finish this week`s tasks in time! I guess it is for a good cause, and I think I’m still going to finish everything!
As for today at the conference I was present at the excellent communication entitled “,Challenges, trends, and aspirations for the TESOL Profession” presented by the president of TESOL, Brock Brady, with whom I had the opportunity of talking for quite some time about our e-course and the work we are doing here this Spring together with Deborah! Then, later on I once again had the pleasure und luck to listen to Professor David Chrystal, a true speaker, fantastic! At the end of the day it was time to hear Scott Thornbury and his “Six things beginning with R”, very good, indeed!
Now comes the part about my week here in the course…
The articles on writing and reading were very interesting and the lesson plans very useful, I got some very good ideas with Decoder (making small flash movies) and Quandary, a free software to build on-line challenging quests or mazes (from the same author as Hotpotatoes), these were the ones that appealed to me the most and I’ll probably use them with my classes. The lesson plans the colleagues have been presenting on Nicenet have given me lots of ideas for my classes and now I’m thinking about what I’m going to do with my students in the project!!
I must go now and have some rest… tomorrow will be the last conference day, and I still have to travel there!
Susana
Hi Susana,
ReplyDeleteYou actually have a lot of opportunities to upgrade and share your experiences. (I don't have that luck, I live in the remote area of Vietnam and seem to have no chance for an internation conference or a national one; even when I want to open some conferences about TESOL at my school, people think that I want to do something very big and they cannot follow me). I understand how hard it is for you when you are spending most of your time for the conference.
I have the same problem with you - the power has been out for many long and hot day, but not attending any conferences. I prefer being busy to join the conference like you do to being busy finding a cooler place to sit down.
It is interesting when you share Quandary with us. It is similar to Hot Potatoes and your action follow very well one of the tasks from Deborah a few weeks ago - try not to use google, another search engines.
I highly appreciate your work and devotion to this course, please just continue doing that in the coming weeks.
Sincerely,
Khang
KGCC
Hi Evelin!
ReplyDeleteEven if you complain about the hard work and lack of time, you are able to keep up with all the work involved in this course. At the same time, please do not complain! As Khang said, it's better to be busy and attend such conferences (what a great opportunity you've got), instead of doing nothing :)
I am in love with the international conferences, as it's a real opportunity for teacher to find out more. Every time I attend such an event, I feel better and my I find out many new things.
Best wishes,
Nadina
Hello to you both! Thank you for your comments.
ReplyDeleteI didn`t want people to feel I`m complaining! In fact I know I`m very lucky and above all, I`m there because I want to! But that doesn`t erase the fact that I`m really overwhelmed with work! Writing it here is just a way of letting some stress out, sharing and feeling a little bit lighter...
Keep up the good work,
Susana