Hello everyone,

I am Sirin. I will be one of the moderators of this forum. I have taught English to young adults for three years and for the last two years I have been working at the British Council Turkey, ELT Department as English Language Projects Assistant. At this post, I have been an online moderator for our online courses, such as ETTO (English Teacher Training Online), TeachingEnglish TKT Essentials and Learning Technologies Online.

I am also interested in all web 2.0 tools. I worked as web editor of a youth portal for community outreach of the UNDP national human development report in 2007 by use of media, information and communicaion technologies. I have recently started developing an online course on Moodle for newly qualified English teachers, been a global moderator for the project http://www.year3009.com and created a new blog http://24minutesenglishaday.blogspot.com :0)

Looking forward to meeting you all...

Sirin

My name is Rania Jabr, a senior English language instructor at the English Language Institute at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. I started my work at AUC in 1990 and have been an English language instructor since then. My main interests are teaching reading and writing, materials development, and testing.

A conference presenter since 1990, I attend and present at international English language teaching conferences. I am also a teacher educator with a particular interest in testing and materials development.

 I am a native of Jordan and hold an MA in TEFL and an RSA certificate. I have regularly attended and presented at IATEFL conferences since 1990. I had one article published in IATEFL's Voices and two other articles published in the Teacher Development SIG newsletter. I present annually at both Egyptesol international conference and CACE skills conference held in Egypt. I have been doing so since 1999. I have also attended and presented at IATEFL conferences since 1990. In addition, I mentor new teaching fellows in my department and train them to teach skill areas, such as reading, grammar, and writing. During last year’s IATEFL Conference in Exeter, I was an online moderator for the Global Issues interest area section, where I shared my experiences in teaching and knowledge of the current trends in the field. It is not a matter of quoting references, but it is sharing real life practical experiences from the classroom and from training and working with young teachers. I am currently also a Volunteer Reader for the Teaching English website of the BBC and the British Council. My duties include responding to articles and making comments and suggestions for any activities or lesson plans contributed to the site. I draw on my extensive experiences in both teacher training and teaching. I have greatly enjoyed taking part in this project, as I have the chance to share what knowledge I have acquired thought my long years of teaching, but I also continue to learn about innovative techniques. 

I am very interested in becoming once again an IATEFL online moderator, and I am most interested in Learner Autonomy. Rania

Hi Sirin and Rania. My name is Tom Longstaff and I live and work in Korea where I teach at a middle school and a local university. I have been teaching in Korea for a little over 5 years. I’m part way through my Masters in TEFL and have become interested in the subject of learner autonomy and its relationship to: motivation, engagement, learner strategies and, cross cultural issues. I’m looking forward to exploring these and other issues over the next few weeks.

Hi Rania and Thomas, nice to meet you. It's great to see people around having similar interests.

Sirin

Hi Leigh,

Welcome to our discussion forum. It is really great to meet colleagues online. Your background information is also very interesting to read. Did you create your last name?

Sirin

Hi,

 I'm really interested in using new tecnology creatively, encouraging leanrer autonomy and moving towards more collaborative forms of learning, so I hope to meet up with all of you during the conference.

I'm giving a presentation Using fun web publishing resources for project and task-based work and maintain a blog, Encouraging learner autonomy

Cheers,

Ann

Hi Ann,

Welcome to our discussion forum. I have just looked at your presentation page, it is amazing! You have also created guides to use these tools. I won't be able to see your presentation alive but I am sure this forum will give us a taste of it.

Sirin

Thanks, Sirin. Never mind that you can't make my talk but I hope to have the chance to catch up with you at Cardiff. Will you be giving a talk?

Cheers,

Ann

Hi

I work in the UAE. I have planned/organised/operated several self-access facilities. Until recently (and for 8 years) I was on the TESOL Arabia Learner Independence SIG Leadership Team. I was a co-moderator of this forum last year - so 'Hi' to any returnees!

Heather

Hello Heather,

Nice to meet you here. What did you bring us from last year? :)

Best to all,

Sirin

Hi, I'm Richard. I'm from the UK and I've been teaching English for around 6 years. I currently teach in Andalucia in Spain. I did the new Cambridge Delta last autumn and I'm interested in doing an MA in Tesol soon. I've recently become interested in the possibilities offered by online learning and I'm actually having weekly classes in Spanish myself over the internet, mainly in order to appreciate what it's like as an online language student. I attended the TESOL-Spain conference in Seville last week, where I saw many very interesting sessions and would love to go to Cardiff, but I can't! So I shall enthusiastically follow it online as best I can. I look forward to learning some interesting things from the conference itself and from the discussions that take place here.

Cheers

Hello Richard,

Welcome to our discussion forum. Being an online language student would be a rewarding experience for you. I also couldn't go to Cardiff but this mode of learning is very convenient for me. Hope to speak to you in the discussion forums.

Sirin

My name is Jessica Driscoll and I work for Languagelab.com who teach English in Second Life. My background is in Social Anthropology, Digital Culture and Technology and Digital Consultancy and I have taught EFL in the UK, Indonesia and Chile.

I will be attending and presenting at IATEFL with Iffaf Khan and am looking forward to meeting many of you and viewing other conference sessions online. We have been looking at learner autonomy and multiple intelligences in Second Life. 

We will have stand at the conference so do come and visit us if you would like to know more about our virtual city  - "English City" and how we teach there. 

Best wishes to everyone and look forward to meeting you at the conference, in SL or here in the forum!

Jessica 

Hi Jessica,

Welcome to our discussion forum! I have tried SL a few times but have not actively engaged in this virtual world so far but I am really curious about it partly because it is about online learning and education; also because it looks really fun. Maybe you would like to share a couple of useful links with us?

Best to all,

Sirin

 Hello from Kazakhstan!

My name is Fazira Kakzhanova,I am from State University.

 I am interested in four skills ,especially in developing of their activities.

I participated in different projects concerning methods of teaching .

My scientific work is  devoted to  the problems of Grammar Theory .

I'm Shiv from http://www.Languagelab.com.

Much of the work we have been doing involves looking at the factors that make computer games engaging and motivating and applying them to our online classes.

Web Space:

My Blog: http://www.shv.me
My Mailing list: http://bit.ly/shiv
Second Life: Kingsbury Yeats / Shiv Teacher
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/shiv53

Hi Fazira and Shiv,

how nice to meet colleagues from all around the globe on here. That's exciting, don't you think?

By the way, Shiv, your blog is shining! 

Sirin