August 20, 2012

#ELTChat – The Loss of ELTChat – Plan B

 


Reposted from  Vicky Loras‘ blog 

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.
Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.
And that is how #ELTchat was created.  
The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.
Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.
A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011,  he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.
We never found out for sure.
We never received a single word of response to our emails.
eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.
And yesterday we lost it.
On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.
The news is really upsetting.
The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment
We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.
But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org
It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet.
And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations.
We will be back with a vengeance.
We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!
We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!
Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden
Vicky Loras
Marijana Smolcec (I can't always participate in every Wednesday #ELTchat's but I do support it a lot. I have learned so much, got lot of  ideas, links, met some great collegues, so I can only say #go, go ELTchat!)

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers,  teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers,  reposted this on your blog.
If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.

May 23, 2012

Google search

Every day google changes the picture on its google search button. Today they put a synthesizer in the honour of Robert Mooge. Since there is also an option to record your own music and sharethe  link on your website, I took the liberty to do so. My sons were trying to create their own interesting sounds.

Screenshot of google search from 23 May 2012


Here is the link to my younger son's recording:  http://g.co/doodle/3s56xn

This is the link to my older son's recording: http://g.co/doodle/xap5gv

Should my hubby and I think of buying them synthesizers?


April 25, 2012

Second Studentsmeet - wonderful experience

European students got together in another wonderful studentsmeet that took place online on 24 April in Adobe Connect Pro which was sponsored by Croatian CARNET. Our wonderful hosts were again Bart from Belgium and Arjana from Croatia. This time there were students from 6 countries Italy, Hungary, Poland, UK, Turkey and Croatia, and 9 schools. It is great to mention that Croatia was represented by 3 schools; IX. Gimnazija from Zagreb, Gimnazija Bernardina Frankopana from Ogulin and Primary School from Cakovec.
Our school Gimnazija Bernardina Frankopana took part for the second time. Check out the video.
If you want to read more about the first studentsmeet you can find the post on our school page here.



The main topics were about  students' countries and volunterism. We learned a lot about Italy, Hungary,Poland, Polish school system, but we also learned that in order to get together and live in peace and harmony we should break down the walls. Presentations varied from a video, power point or even a song. It was a great experience for both students and their teachers.
Read older post about studentsmeet by Arjana or simply visit http://www.studentsmeet.org

April 12, 2012

Zondle games

My son loves Zondle. He saw his mummy attending an online webinar about creating Zondle games and posibility of creating interesting quizzes.
I am still trying to figure this tool out, but if my 6 year old likes it, it must be good.

I will write more about it later, so far here is the simple vocabulary quiz I created so he can play with eggs and chickens.



zondle - games to support learning

March 23, 2012

IATEFL Conference! Where,how, who?



Following online!

Today is the last day of the IATEFL Conference which started on 19th March in Scotland, Glasgow. The IATEFL team is really doing an excellent job this year making it easy for all of us who are not there to at least be present online and to try and follow some Live sessions and livestreamed interviews with the presenters and wonderful ELT members. All the interviews are recorded and can be found here.
It's great to see ELT members having a talk about their work or presentations. There are some really inspiring interviews. The first one that really made an impact on me was the interview with Chia Suan. The name was very familiar from the ELT world. I know I have seen the name on Twitter or Facebook, have heard the PLN mentioning her, so I finally got the opportunity to see her on the IATEFL Live Stream Channell. She is so interesting, amusing and to the point.
 I am glad to be able to share her interview with you.  

She has done a talk at BESIG PCE about the topic of Politeness and Pragmatics.  So, check it out  and also don't miss her blog where you can find another of her interviews talking about the same topic.
I mustn't forget to mention that after her short IATEFL interview I visited Chiew's IASKU site. He did a short interview with Chia about how she became a teacher. What I realised from that interview is that teachers can be anything in the class. We are actors, dramatist, bosses and sometimes even friends. I can finally tell my students who told me so many times that I should have become an actress and not a teacher; well I can do both now at the same time :)))

Due to illness I wasn't able to write more posts before but will make it up, so stay tuned because more stories about IATEFL and the Power of Twitter coming soon.