Worked fine for me, Dennis - everything I hashtagged ended up in the IATEFL twitstream - though with the numbers of posts coming in hashtagged like that they did tend to disappear quickly off the bottom....

Gavin

Gavin, Mmmm. Perhaps mine just flowed through and disappeared. Now that the traffic has faded away, or slowed down, I'll try again.

Dennis

Well,

The tweet I just wrote got through to #IATEFL so the chances are that I simply missed or overlooked the others.

Cheers, Gavin

Hi

My vocaulary is expanding here - 'to hashtag' - and 'twitstream' - and I'm still getting to terms with 'blogosphere'!

Now there's an interesting discussion - new vocabulary in learning technology! And more words for students to learn when they are still having problems with 'pen, paper, book, pencil'. Mind you, I have to say that it does help when students are used to using a computer and are familiar with terms from a Windows environment which can help them understand things elsewhere... The other day we did a class on paintings - and students figured out themed vocabulary like portrait, landscape, border, shading, patterns, etc from computer use... But I don't know if they would make those connections on their own!

Oh dear - here I go again - off at a tangent on the YL forum! Sorry!

Heather

PS: Maybe we need a 'Misc' Forum!

Heather and other remaining forumites,

Years ago I tried a year away from teaching and worked for a large examination body, City and Guilds. On the first day my boss showed me around and explained, amongst other things, the filing system. "And this," he said melodramatically open a drawer at ground level, "is for miscellaneous...This is a drawer you must never, never use."

Heather. as a discussion moderator I am very fond of tangents. Tangents are frequntly close to life and vibrant. Sticking rigidly to the point can mean dreariness creeps in.

Dennis

Gosh! Absolutely! I really value .misc' and it doesn't mean 'rubbish' - and no matter how organised you are, there's always room for 'misc' - but it can sometimes be later categorised. Tangents are great - everyone has their own agenda and experience and spin on things and, as a moderator, you have to cater to what takes off and in what way.

Organisational systems and logic systems are not universal - I am so conscious daily that my ways of organising are not the ways my students would prefer and they do not coincide - I mean, here I am a middle-aged, Western, female suggesting ways of organising to Arab, male 20 year olds - so long as they can efficiently access stuff in a timely fashion, what should it matter how it's organised? People have to develop a system that works for them - all I can do is discuss a need for some sort of system - we are all individuals!

See how far we have gone from Twitter - does it matter????

Heather

Heather,

You are right. Especially for those of us dealing with knowledge and opinions and appointments and lists of thigs to do, we are all searching for structures and systems that make our worlds manageable. How is your multi-tasking? When do you make a note on paper and when in Google Notebook on your laptop or PC? How do you decide what shall become a wiki and what a blog? And Twitter? I love Twitter but use it for stand-alone comments or references.

Now that was a tangent if ever there was one.

Dennis

Dennis!

Wow - impressive - an absolute master-stroke ... you have deftly brought the discussion back to Twitter! 

Heather

Heather,  One of the nice things on forums like this is that you meet such friendly people. Thank you for being such a good conversational partner.

And now, folks, just back from Twitter - I mean Twitter Twitter as opposed to Twitter IATEFL and Gavin Dudeney's new EFL Twitter - back to IATEFL's very own YLTSIG - the Young Learners and Teenagers Yahoogroups SIG  list - for details go to our homepage:

YLTSIG

Tomorrow a week-long discussion start there on CLIL, led by Keith Kelly, John Clegg and  Jean Brewster entitled CLIL Revisited.

(CLIL, to remind you, stands for content and language integrated learning). It is called  'CLIL Revisited' because the same trio led a discussion with that title 4 years ago. And CLIL came up spontaneously amongst members of YLTSIG during a recent discussion on TEFL in China led by three colleagues from the Normal University of Beijing.

Let's see how many people take part. Unbelievably, through lists, I have notified just under 10,000 people of tomorrow's fielded discussion!!!  (Just 2 guests applied to join the list as a result).

You need to be a member of that list to take part, but it costs nothing to join. All you need to do is send a mail marked:

CLIL GUEST

to:

djn@dennisnewson.de

You might recognise the name.   :-)

--------

Whispering..... Heather. Have you noticed? It's only us here.

Dennis

Shucks, Diana. We thought we were alone. Now what did we say? Seriously, or more seriously, especially when there are various subjects or threads running, as here, it is all too possible to wander from one subject to another. I'm sure you would agree, though, that the discussion, the exchanging of experience, information and opinion is the thing. To become over-concerned with whether one is in the right place can be inhibiting. (I'm thinking less of this forum when I make thsi comment than of online discussions in general)

 As  for the abbreviations, I always warn people to take a deep breath before they attempt to say what IATEFL stands for:

International Association of English as a Foreign Language

YLTSIG

 isn't any better:  Young Learners and Teenagers special interest group

British Council (BC) is easier:

The b. cow

Sorry. It's Sunday, the sun is shining and inside every older man there is a cheeky shoolboy trying to get out.

And please do, all of you, enroll for the discussion on CLIL, content and language orientated learning. I know this is blatant advertising,  but YLTSIG is part of IATEFL and this forum is IATEFL BC. Right?

Dennis

Thanks, Diana. I'll look straight away.

Dennis