Your Name and Title: Mrs Maria del Carmen Colussa
School or Organization Name: Freelance EFL Teacher
Co-Presenter Name(s): Mr. Vance Stevens, English Faculty, (coordinator of CoPs) HCT/CERT/KBZAC (Webheads in Action, Learning2gether)
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Argentina/ Al Ain, UAE
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): Educators in general and teachers of English
Short Session Description (one line): Educators who met regularly online join up to discuss how they and others can keep their batteries charged and learn together by connecting globally with other educators.
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
Gone are the days when teaching meant to follow the textbook. Nowadays teachers who don’t want to bore their students to death embrace global connectivity. However we should familiarize ourselves with the territory by connecting with other teachers whose experience is similar to ours before we embark on our journey in order to be able to filter and utilize what is useful from what can easily become information overload. .
In this session you’ll meet Maria, from Argentina, an impassioned teacher who works freelance and can make her own rules when it comes to teaching in her particular context. She says, “Connectivity made me change my frame of mind through exposure to different practices which I would not have dared to use in the past. Learning online with other educators can be customized, it is often free, self paced and presents a great opportunity to hang out with other enthusiastic teachers from across the world.”
Maria has discovered numerous communities to connect with, and you’ll meet Vance, from Al Ain in UAE, the coordinator of one of those communities. You’ll also meet Maha, a teaching entrepreneur from Egypt who is exploring connected learning as a means of leveraging the effectiveness of online training. From them you’ll learn what other communities they connect with, for linking teachers and students on a global scale as well.
These colleagues all met online and have recently found themselves turning up regularly but spontaneously in the same synchronous online spaces. For the GEC conference, they have decided to explore what attracts them to these spaces, what they gain from frequenting them, and how what they learn there makes them better teachers and teacher trainers.
This presentation will mix brief formal deliveries with less formal discussion among the presenters, with sharing of insights and stories from their multiple perspectives. Thus we hope to offer participants an overview of some of the different possibilities the web offers to educators today who wants to connect themselves and their students with other teachers and students to learn together.From kindergarten to teacher training college teachers, many are joining forces to explore the many affordances offered by social networks and web 2.0 tools. Examples of these ventures will be shown as well as practical suggestions on where to begin making them happen.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#Nextupcomingevents
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