Share this..... 
Announcement for members and non-members.
Come join our LTSIG Fridays webinars on this important topic during the Coronavirus crisis. A weekly webinar specialising on How to teach English online.
SCROLL DOWN FOR UPCOMING WEBINARS AND ALL THE RECORDINGS SO FAR
When: Every Friday from 3pm – 4pm UK time
Where: https://zoom.us/j/885028983
Meeting room ID: 885-028-983
This is the designated LTSIG Fridays meeting / webinar room. Note: There will be no event on Friday 17 April nor 29 May.
Who is invited? The invitation is sent to LTSIG members but the event is open to everyone. Feel free to invite your teacher communities and friends.
The IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG warmly invites you to join us in a series of weekly meetings which will be held from Friday 27 March onwards, which are designed to help English teachers around the world cope with the Corona crisis.
In future webinars, we will share tips and tools and engage in discussions as to the burning issues we are all facing right now. Look out for announcements about guest speakers on our social media channels.
We will share tips and tools and engage in discussions as to the burning issues we are all facing right now:
Learn:
● How to teach English live online in 1:1 and 1:many classes
● How to use tools like Zoom/ Skype / MS Teams
● How to engage your students
● How to provide listening and reading tasks
● How to encourage learners to speak and to role-play online
● How to teach grammar online
● How to deal with error correction using the text chat
● How to encourage your learners to produce language by means of recordings.
There will also be regular free and open discussions where you can voice what kind of help you need right now and what tools you would like to know. If you have any questions, please get in touch with LTSIG online event organiser at[email protected].
Webinar #1 on 27 March: In the first very practical session, Joe Dale, an independent languages consultant from the U.K. gave some timely advice on how to get started with remote teaching as a language teacher. Joe has collated a comprehensive resource including advice and tutorials to support you during the Coronavirus pandemic. You can watch the recording below or full screen on our YouTube channel:
Webinar #2 on 3 April: Our Online Events Committee member, Heike Philp, led a session on ‘Pair and group work’. This is vital during language lessons and it can greatly add to class dynamics and learner agency. How though can this be done in an online session? What kind of activities can be performed in break-out groups and how long should these take? Is it better to set-up automatically shuffled groups and how can one organize to set-up interest groups? We invited all language educators to join us in an experimental workshop scenario and to actively contribute towards producing guidelines for conducting pair and group work in an online class. You can watch an edited 30 minute version of the recording with the links shared on our YouTube channel:
Webinar #3 on 10 April: Newsletter editor and former LTSIG Coordinator, Graham Stanley delivered a session entitled ‘Motivating and Engaging students online.’ Do you want to communicate effectively during a live online lesson? How do you keep learners’ attention? During this session on effective remote teaching, we’ll be sharing ideas on use of voice and body language; building screen presence; how best to manage the technology (especially the camera); and how you can play with virtual backgrounds in Zoom. You can watch the cloud recording with chat and audio transcript by clicking here.
or you can watch this version of the recording on YouTube, while the slides are available here.
Webinar #4 on 24 April: Digital Resources to foster collaboration in synchronous or asynchronous instruction with Raquel Ribeiro.
When we think of online classes,video streaming tools are the first ones that come to mind. What about teaching contexts where the live video classes are not feasible because the teachers’ device is solely a mobile phone and an unstable internet connection?
In this webinar Raquel shared some mobile-friendly tools and ideas to encourage the communication and engagement with the groups in the context of teaching during a pandemic.
Raquel’s digital handout from the session:
http://bit.ly/DigitalTools_Raquel
Click here for the slides from this session
The recording is available below and on the YouTube channel.
Webinar #5 on 1 May: ‘SOFLA – Synchronous Online Flipped Learning Approach’ with Helaine W. Marshall, Ph.D., LIU Hudson, Purchase, NY.
Abstract: The Synchronous Online Flipped Learning Approach (SOFLA) closely replicates actual classroom teaching and provides dynamic, interactive, spaces both asynchronously and synchronously to create fertile spaces for learning. In this session, the presenter takes the group through the eight steps of the SOFLA Model: Synchronous Online Flipped Learning Approach (Marshall, 2017). These steps, which are presented for both teachers and professional developers, include the following: (1) Pre-Work; (2) Sign-in Activity; (3) Whole Group Application; (4) Breakout Group Activities; (5) Share-out Time; (6) Preview and Discovery; (7) Assignment/Follow-up; and (8) Reflections. Samples of actual student learning experiences are demonstrated and/or shared with participants. Participants are encouraged to rethink their approach to a lesson, project, or training that they are planning to deliver and to reflect on the session.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Pre-Work – This is flipped professional development, so there were a few short tasks that participants were invited to complete prior to the session. Click here for the Pre-work tasks.
Helaine W. Marshall
Bio: Helaine W. Marshall, Ph.D. is professor of education and director of language education programs at Long Island University Hudson Campus, where she teaches courses in TESOL and multicultural education, primarily online, using the SOFLA model (Synchronous Online Flipped Learning Approach. Her research interests include leveraging instructional technology in education, culturally responsive and sustaining education, and non-traditional approaches to grammar instruction. Her most recent book, just published, is Meeting the Needs of SLIFE: A Guide for Educators. Contact her at [email protected]
A recording of this webinar is available below and on the YouTube channel:
Webinar #6 on 8 May: What we can learn about teaching online from organisations and teachers working in challenging contexts? with Gary Motteram.
What we can learn about teaching online from organisations and teachers working in challenging contexts?
In the field of learning technologies we are usually pushing the boundaries, trying to see what is the next ‘big thing’, to find the perfect tool to support our teaching. At the same time worrying that tools like AI and robots will remove the need for language teachers. There are, at the same time, many places in the world where people are teaching languages in classes where there might be 80-90-150 learners (and more) where even the technology of the textbook is not normalised.
While I am very interested in the next ‘big thing’ and the future of technology supported language teaching, I have also always believed we should be much more mindful of the contexts we are working and the teachers and learners and what they know and understand about technology and use this as a starting point for anything we do.
Over the last few years, I have been working to support teacher development in a range of challenging contexts including Pakistan, refugee camps in Jordan and under-resourced contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. We have been exploring what might be considered low tech tools like WhatsApp and Zoom (before it became the synchronous technology of choice). This talk will then present some of what we have learned from these projects and will place this within the context of the field of education for emergencies which I believe has a lot to tell us in our Covid-19 afflicted world.
This webinar was included as part of The Virtual Round Table.
Bio: Gary Motteram is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the Manchester Institute of Education where he teaches on MAs in TESOL and Digital Technology in Education and the PGCert in Higher Education. His research interests lie in the area of language teacher education at a distance (see recent publications). He is currently working on a GCRF funded project on teacher professional development through practitioner research: https://tateproject.wordpress.com/.
A recording can be watched below or on YouTube. It is also available via the Virtual Round Table website. Gary’s slides can be found here.
Webinar #7 on 15 May: ‘Fostering social learning in times of social distancing ‘ with Elen Le Foll
This webinar exemplifies the benefits of collaborative learning in online learning. We look into how we can facilitate group learning processes, knowledge sharing and the co-construction of new skills and knowledge outside of the traditional classroom setting. Drawing on the results of a range of studies and meta-analyses comparing computer-supported learning with and without aspects of peer collaboration, we focus on how collaborative learning in online settings can positively impact students’ learning outcomes. Finally, we explore a range of existing web-based tools that can help foster effective collaborative learning.
Elen’s OLLReN paper on Collaboration in Online Learning
Bio:
Elen Le Foll is a Research Associate and English Education Lecturer at Osnabrück University in Germany. With over ten years’ experience as a French and English teacher in adult education, she has now been teaching on the university’s teacher training programme since 2016. She teaches English pedagogy to future English teachers for primary, secondary and vocational schools. She is currently in the final year of her PhD, exploring the language of school EFL textbooks. Her primary research interests are applications of corpus linguistics in language education, materials development and evaluation, learner phraseology, and language learners’ use of online resources. She has recently co-developed an online Introduction to Cognitive Science course for Ains Shams University in Cairo. She is also a fully-qualified conference interpreter and regularly works in the booth as a freelance interpreter. Her working languages are English, French and German. She tweets at @ElenLeFoll.
A link to the cloud recording of Elen’s webinar. Or watch a recording below or on YouTube:
Webinar #8 on 22 May: ‘Teaching grammar online’ with Jo Gakonga
Learners often feel that they ‘need’ to learn grammar but the ‘groan’ factor (Oh no, grammar!) can loom large. However, learning and practising the systems of the language can be really empowering for learners and in this interactive webinar, we’ll be considering the principles underlying communicative grammar teaching and how these map onto the online environment. Come prepared with your favourite online grammar activities to share!
Bio: Jo Gakonga is a senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick, where she works on the MA TESOL, BA in English Language and runs CELTA courses. She has been a CELTA trainer since 2001 and she is also an assessor and Joint Chief Assessor. She is studying for a PhD in teacher education in the field of mentor training, is the co-author of coursebook IELTS Foundation (publ published by Macmillan) and founded and runs ELT-Training.com, a website that has video-based training support for English language teachers and trainees. She likes baking and is currently doing quite a bit of this!
You can view the cloud recording of this webinar here. Or you can watch it below or on YouTube:
Webinar #9 on 5 June: ‘Reflections on video remote teaching in challenging circumstances’ with MariCarmen Gamero
Reflections on video remote teaching in challenging circumstances.
During this pandemic crisis, video has become one of the most used resources to emulate teacher physical presence. Whether as an asynchronous resource or as part of online conferencing, video becomes a window to other contexts in which language is just one element of the teaching and learning situation we are trying to recreate. In this webinar, Maricarmen will share some of her insights as a remote language teacher and researcher on the importance of rapport, learner autonomy, challenges to teacher identity, team teaching and the teacher as a resource under the current circumstances.
Bio: Maricarmen Gamero is a PhD candidate and Associate Tutor at the University of Warwick, where she also teaches Spanish and English language courses to undergraduate and graduate students and short training courses to visiting language teachers. She has worked as an online and onsite teacher trainer and language teacher in Venezuela since 2008. Her main research interest is teacher education in video remote teaching. She runs her own Facebook Page (https://bit.ly/2YzmE8v) and Youtube Channel (https://bit.ly/2YBdpo6) titled @E-Educritical in which she shares online tools, reflections and interviews on online language teaching and learning.
A recording of this webinar is below and on YouTube:
On behalf of the LTSIG committee
Sophia Mavridi
IATEFL LTSIG Coordinator
No comments yet.