Introductory Messages - say 'hi'

H Everyone,

I’m Shaun and am currently based between Oxford and Prague (long story) though I work all over Europe as a teacher trainer. I am the teacher training coordinator for the International House World Organisation where one of my main roles is to run our online teacher training site. I also work as freelance trainer for OUP often speaking on matters related to technology and teaching, which is some what of an obsession of mine.

I look forward to meeting you on this forum and exchanging and sharing ideas.

Shaun

Hi Janet,

Yes small world is just what i said when I found out we were both moderating this - nice to be working with someone I 'know' though. Am not from Oxford just moving here to live :-)

Shaun

Folks,

Top choice of moderators, I'd say - looking forward to some good discussions over the next four weeks.

Gavin

Hi everybody,
I'm from Uruguay, South America. I won't be able to attend this conference so I'm happy to participate online here and in the ning groups.
Mercedes

hi

Harrogate calling! It's indeed a thrilling experience to be an online participant.
I am a teacher trainer from India. I have been imparting in-service training to teachers teaching English at the primary and the secondary levels. Looking forward to sharing and exchanging ideas with teachers teaching English in various parts of our global village. Hope the Harrogate experience will help us to look at ELT from a new perspective.
Greetings to all the online participants.

Hi Gavin, Mercedes and Perth,

Great to have you on board. I look forward to the discussions to come.

Hi All
I´m another Shaun (nice to see it is spelt the right way) but I´m in Brazil. I teach, train and mentor. I was the President of my local teacher´s association and have promoted online and collaborate learning both locally and with my collegues where I work. I am a member of the Brazilian Education Technology SIG and use Interactive Boards everyday in my classroom. I´m originally from Liverpool, England but am now totally Brazilianised.
I hope I can contribute and share my own learning experience with each of you.

Hi! This is one area which I am keen on following. Looking forward to learning from all.

Hi all! I'm moderating the ESOL area, but I'll be poking my nose here a lot! I would especially be interested in a thread about job opportunities in elearning for teachers of English. What are the areas/places where a teacher of English is welcome to work online? Is teaching English online a rewarding experience? Was it for you? Is it effective? I'd love to hear about everyone's experience! Looking forward to it :) !
Best,
Silvia

Good morning and hi to newcomers to this forum, from sunny Civitaquana! Nice to meet you all!

In answer to your question Silvia, I have some experience in teaching conversational English via Skype and it's proven to be very effective. I feel this is a very interesting thread for a discussion and so I will create one specially for this topic, if that's ok? I hope we will learn and share lots about teaching English online!

Thanks so much Janet for opening the thread! I'll see you there!
Best,
Silvia

Hi Everyone,

I'm Pete and I'm another of the co-moderators of the Learning Technologies thread.

I am based in Thessaloniki in northern Greece. These days I work mainly on-line, mostly using Moodle and Second Life for my teaching. I am involved in supporting a teacher networking project, SEETA:- http://www.seeta.eu and I am also the webmaster for the Learning Technologies SIG website:- http://www.ltsig.org.uk.

Looking forward to an interesting time :-)

Pete

Hi everyone

I'll be working on the site during the conference, but looking forward to following and joining in with the discussions here in the meantime!

Rob

So Janet was in Greece, Pete is in Greece and I lived in Athens for five years that's where I started teaching :-)

Wow! That's a pretty interesting common thread we have among us!! Did you enjoy your time in Athens, Shaun? How is your knowledge of Greek? Mine is all but gone, unfortunately.

Dear all,

I'll be at Harrogate but will follow this area closely as it's my favourite.

Great moderators! Nice to be part of the fun!

PS: Looking forward to meeting webheads f2f.
Vicky

Hi to all,
as my pen name implies, I'm in France - where I teach Physics students, so I'm also a member of the ESP SIG.

Vicki, fellow webhead, I looked for you first in the Virtual Pre-Conference Ning

Hi everyone, nice to see so many familiar faces in here!

I'm Nicky Hockly, based in Barcelona Spain (lucky me!). I´m interested in all thing tech, and especially how they can be applied (well!) to the f2f classroom.

I work 90% online, teacher training in Moodle,and 10% f2f running training courses and short sessions for teachers on how to use technology. I must say there has been a noticeable skilling up of the average EFL teacher in the last 2 or so years, although it seems to me we still have a ways to go until technology in integrated as it should be into most initial training courses such as the CELTA, or even the DELTA...

Look forward to participating in the discussions in this forum!
Nicky

Hi Everyone,

I'll be working on Harrogate Online during the conference, but i'll also be reading and hopefully sharing ideas. I am not a teacher, but i do like to see what tools, ideas and practices educatos use.  I always enjoy reading what technoligies are being used, what works well and what can be imporved.

Happy Conferenceing

Martin

Hi to all,

I'm Adam and I'm a teacher based in Moscow, Russia. I'm a big fan of technology and a strong believer in its positive role in TEFL (if used in moderation) and although the options of using technology in my current classes are a bit limited, I'm looking forward to learning and sharing some ideas here.

Hi Folks,

My name's Gavin and I've been involved in the use of technology in teaching and training for quite some years. I live in Barcelona, and work with Nicky Hockly designing and delivering e-learning and training courses in the use of ICT in language teaching and training.

I've been involved with the IATEFL Online project right fron the start over three years ago and am delighted to be here again this year. In IATEFL I've been Journal Editor and Coordinator of the Learning Technologies SIG, and am currently Honorary Secretary and Chair of ElCom (the technology committee of IATEFL).

When I'm not working, I keep a blog at http://slife.dudeney.com and tweet ( @dudeneyge ). I've also written a few publications on the subject of technology in teaching and training, notably 'How to Teach English with Technology', with Nicky Hockly.

Great to see the forums getting off to a good start, my thanks to all the moderators who are involved and I look forward to getting in to the discussions over the period of the live conference.

Hope to see some of you there!

Gavin

Hi All,

My name is Abdelmajid Bouziane (you can call me Majid). I am based in Casablanca, Morocco. I have been training teachers in both TEFL and ICT in ELT for some years. I was in Cardiff last year but I cannot make it to Harrogate this year. This forum and others will definitely give us (people who cannot attend the IATEFL Conference like me!) an opportunity to "be in Harrogate" and "see" what is going on.

Look forward to discussing issues related to ICT on the forums in this SIG.

Majid

Hello to you all.
I live and teach in Portugal, Lisbon and am working on a Masters in English Teaching at a University in Lisbon. I use Moodle to privide a blended learning (sort-of) environment for the course.

Am particulalry interested in designing for blended learning - to help engagement in deeper thinking and learning through sharing/doing. What are the good tasks and questions which result in deeper learning?

All for now. Looking forward very much to this opportunity to share ideas and experiences.
Allyson

Hi all.

Great to join you. My name's Pete Sharma and I'm a self-confessed technophile. I can only get to Harrogate for the first day (there's already so many great tech sessions to choose from!) so looking forward to visiting these pages and joining you all from afar...

Pete

Hello everyone,

My name’s Bruno Cesar. I’m a public sector teacher (of English) in Brazil. Although I’m now living in the countryside, I’m what can be called a true “carioca” – born and raised in the lovely and sunny city of Rio de Janeiro. I’m also interested in teaching/learning technology and have long been trying to keep up with the latest tools available. Looking forward to being actively involved in this group borrowing and sharing information,
Bruno Cesar
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I've worked for the British Council for over 10 years, at least 7 of which were spent in Asia teaching and training with IWBs (both in-house and state sector) and training in ICT integration in general. I don't consider myself to be a real "techie", my main area of interest is in designing teaching and training materials to exploit the LTs and I have to confess to being that nagging voice in background mentioning the "P-word", "but what about the pedagogy, but what about the language aims?" when it comes to teacher training and planning lessons with ICT. My favourite all time quote about ICT and teaching is from Dr Vince Ham, who gave a great session in Singapore a few years back on ICT and teacher training, who said "When we all stop thinking and talking about integrating ICT, we'll all know we've got there - integration is a state of mind". From the activity on this forum so far, it sounds like we're all on the right path ...
I'm taking a back seat from teaching with technology this year, working with a couple of publishers in Spain on teacher training and creating digital teaching materials, as there's been a kind of "big bang" in the state system here with a project called Escuela 2.0, where they're chucking whiteboards and laptops into classrooms as fast as they can go coupled with the mushrooming of state "bilingual schools" . Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten about the training and the teaching materials, so that's keeping me busy!
I'm really looking forward to following this forum, and to meeting as many of you as possible f-2-f in Harrogate - train strikes permitting!
Sarah

Hi everybody

My name is Albert P'Rayan. I teach ESP courses at the tertiary level in Chennai, India. I'm a technophile and I have experimented blended learning with my engineering students. The Internet tools are amazing and once we start tasting their potential we will get addicted to them. For the past three years I have been following this technology forum of IATEFL online.

I look forward to sharing my views and learning from others.

Albert

Hello everyone

Nice to see so many familiar faces from Twitter here.

My name is Jamie Keddie. I am a European-based teacher, teacher trainer and writer.

I would never describe myself as a fan of technology - I just love the opportunities that it opens up to us all. As a teacher, it is the explosion of new materials and the accessibility to them that has influenced me the most.

Most of all I love online video. I am a self-confessed YouTube potato.

Looking forward to meeting you all in Harrogate

Jamie :-)

Hello all,

I am Ismail, an ESL Instructor in UAE and TESOL Arabia Webmaster. I completed my MA in TESOL & Ed. Tech from the University of Manchester 2009. I have been into the field of Ed. tech for the last ten years or so. I have recently co-edited a book on 'Computers for ELT' that was published in UAE. I also chaired the newly established conference online, TESOL Arabia Conference Online, that was introduced for the first time in the UAE this year.

Look forward to hearing from you all,
Ismail

Nice to see so many familiar and not so familiar faces :) My name is Nergiz Kern. I've been teaching English for ten years, the last two mainly online. I've always liked everything tech but have used technology for language teaching and learning more intensively in the past three years. I like integrating web 2.0 tools and the Internet in general in my classes but enjoy teaching without any tech just as much. I also teach and do teacher training in Second Life in combination with Moodle. Currently I am doing my MA in Educational Technology and TESOL at Manchester University.

Nergiz

Hi everyone!

This is Ana, in Recife, northeast Brazil, but soon off to the airport to meet you all in lovely Harrogate next week.

I've been in ELT for many many years, as a teacher and academic coordinator at several language schools, plus short stints at university.

Technology has always played a very strong role in my career, so much so that I now work fully online - tutoring, designing courses, and doing quite a bit of admin work these days. I love it all but find it difficult to answer what has become a perennial question: '..but what is it that you really do?' :)

Congratulations to Janet and Shaun on the ever exciting LT area!

And happy conference to everyone!

ana

Hi Ana

Very nice to meet you. Thank you for your kind words of encouragement! Sadly I won't be in Harrogate in person to meet you and everyone else, but I will be there "virtually" and looking forward to it very much.

I can feel the excitement building up already!

Janet

Hi everybody,

Have a nice conference!
I won't be there physically but I'll try to attend some parts of it via Harrogate online.
It will be my first IATEFL conference online.

Michel

Hi.

I'm Iffaf and I work for Languagelab.com and the International Academy at the University of Essex. I'm the Moodle and Virtual Learning Coordinator for my department.

At the moment I'm working in Moodle and Second Life but I am also developing some ideas with Flash.

I have spent several years developing material for IWBs and for distance courses. I am also a teacher trainer.

I met Nergiz when she participated in one of the sessions that I was leading on and Pete Mackichan when I line-managed teachers at Languagelab.com.

I am at present writing a text book and developing some new courses.

Hi everyone!
I've been teaching in Italy for the past 20 years and teacher training for the past 8. I also work "now and then" with a local publisher and at the moment I'm preparing a workshop for Pimary school teachers sponsored by them!
This is my third IATEFL online, I love it but I do hope to get to next year's conference in Brighton in person - "where there's life, there's hope" I'll keep my fingers crossed!
Anyway, great to meet all of you! I'll be connecting as much as I can
to the conference, to all you lucky ones who are there in person...Enjoy!
Bye for now
Elizabeth ;-)))

I'm Mbarek Akaddar from Beni Melall , Morocco . EFL teacher for 22 years . ICT teacher trainer and a Webhead . I joined IATEFL forum last year and I hope to participate this year as well . This is a good opportunity for people like me who can't make it to f2f conference to get updated with innovations in ELT .

Hi
I've been posted merrily but haven't introduced myself.
I work at a college in the UAE. I am also involved in our local TESOL organisation, TESOL Arabia. For many years I was a Co-Chair of the Learner Independence SIG, but now I am the SIGs Coordinator. I have previously planned and set up several ILCs and a tutorial centre. I run a couple of discussion groups and have moderated for IATEFL Online. I am absolutely fascinated by the LT forum and I love hearing tales and experiences far removed from my reality.
Heather