Brighton Online live transmission to teachers in Rwanda
You may have read about a British Council initiative to take last year's IATEFL Harrogate conference coverage to teachers in DRC.
You can read the report on last year's Harrogate Online site at:
http://bit.ly/cA0hL1
This year it seems the focus was on Rwanda
Posted on behalf of Michael Bibby, British Council Manager Programmes Rwanda and DRC
Linking up with the Global ELT community
Sitting in Kigali, Rwanda, watching a live IATEFL session over the internet, the Rwandan teachers did not expect to get a special mention from the presenter who was four thousand miles away, but they did, and it made the distance seem insignificant.
60 secondary and tertiary teachers of English, Peace Corps Volunteers, British Council teachers, and English Language Fellows, gathered at the US Embassy to take part on-line in IATEFL through a live steamed plenary session by Dr Catherine Walter. The project was run jointly by British Council in Rwanda, the US Embassy’s Public Affairs team, and the Association of English Teachers in Rwanda (ATER). The Rwandan teachers had come from across the country to take part in the session, the first in a series of English Forums that the British Council will be running in conjunction with the US State Department both in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Following the live session there was an hour of discussion of the relevance of the content to teachers in Rwanda, led by Michael Bibby, Programme Manager for British Council in Rwanda, with the participation of members of ATER, and Dr John Simpson, British Council’s Adviser to the Ministry of Education in Rwanda.
The subject of teaching grammar was one that struck a chord with Rwandan teachers, who all had strong opinions on the subject and enjoyed the opportunity to debate ideas and took away ideas on how to experiment with their teaching practice.
The Brighton online opportunity allowed teachers not only to feel that they are part of the global community of English Teachers, and to get access to the latest in ELT thinking in a way that has not been possible before, but also gave an opportunity to develop a network of like-minded teachers in Rwanda.
