Your Name and Title: Your Name and Title: Tatyana Chernaya, Teacher
School or Organization Name: State Secondary School «ICT in Education»
Co-Presenter Name(s): None
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Russia
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): EFL teachers, school teachers, teachers of students with disabilities
Short Session Description (one line): Sharing my experiences of a connected EFL teacher
Full Session Description:
I am an EFL teacher. More than eight years ago I started teaching English at a distance school in Moscow, Russia. All the students in my class had different disabilities and some of them could not leave their home at all. They lived in different parts of Moscow and first learned only offline, so I decided to organize their communication using technology. I am going to share the ideas and tools I used for that.
As the students grew older, I engaged them in collaborative projects and activities with other classes in Russia. But my dream was to give them more opportunities to learn about the world with the means of a foreign language they were learning.
Now my first distance students are in 9-11 forms. They are blogging, have participated in lots of international projects and activities and have made virtual tours to more than 10 countries via Skype and Google Hangout. The students benefit from this collaboration in many ways. One of my students said that before these connections she felt her learning and real life were separated.
I am going to give examples of our connections, to share the tools I use and to show the impact these connections make on my students’ lives.
Collaboration with educators from other countries during the Student Blogging Challenge, on Facebook and in HLWSkypers group has helped me to turn my group of students into a class with unlimited abilities and continues to inspire us to meet other challenges and to make my students’ lives happier.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: My class blog http://kidblog.org/WellDone201213/
My e-teaching experiences http://myeteachingexperience.wordpress.com/
Replies
Tatyana, what you need to add is the fact that although you started local, you are now connecting yourself and students with teachers and students across the world and making them globally connected, aware and the fact that you and they are learning together with others across the world. State that you will share some classroom stories or global connections, successes, the tools you use to connect and communicate globally etc.
Please elaborate in your proposal on how it aligns to our mission. This is not a general education conference, and we need to see more description relating to global collaboration and connecting classrooms globally. Edit your proposal by going to the OPTIONS button in the upper righthand corner and then save your changes. Then, let me know when you are ready for me to review your proposal.
Thanks,
Lucy Gray
Conference Co-Chair