This is my last post from the conference. It was great to be here. I enjoyed the every bit of the conference. I’m tired and sleepless but I know it is worth it.
After blogging and twitter, many things changed in my life. I sleep less, I watch television less but I still can manage. Apart from the disadvantages of being online, I must admit there are thousands of advantages. One of them is you get informed about what’s going on around you and then have chance to attend it, the other is when you attend these events you are surrounded by your PLN even in a totally foreign environment. As far as I know IATEFL 2011 is hosting more than 2000 delegates and it is quite normal that we can even find time to chit chat as we keep losing friend. However, the best thing about is we keep finding the others. So a great tip for you. Before you go to your next conference, make sure you have built your PLN.
Sunny Brighton
Right now here comes the summary:
In the morning I attended Bethany Cagnol’s session called, ‘Ruling the Unruly’. Although my reality and Bethany’s reality are completely different, I came up with ideas for classroom management. And plus, I had the privilidge of listening to her. If you happen to be at a conference where she speaks, don’t miss her. She was fabulous.
The next one was Jeremy Harmer’s talk. Last year at IATEFL, he asked some teachers to explain the best lesson they’d taught and the talk was around those people and their best taught lessons. We discussed why the lessons went well and even we had great lesson ideas from those teachers.
Jeremy Harmer pointed out that when teachers talk about a successful lesson they smile and they always say what the students have done.
The next one was a great kinesthetic spelling session by Johanna Sterling. The games she used during the session were very useful.
All about Alliterations was the title of Leo Selivan’s session and it was very good and in the end we even had ideas how and when to use alliterations in our classroms. Above all, to end the session with a song was great. It was one of my favourites She by Elvis Costello.
Almost around six we were ready and eager to listen to Maris Constantinides. She was right. Trainers train teachers and they have to teach how to integrate technology into teaching before the new teachers arrive to their own classrooms and this actually should be done befoe they have graduated to become teachers, I guess.
My plan for tomorrow:
Ann Foreman ‘Helping your students to develop their personal learning environment:’
Sirin Soyoz, Suzanne Mordue, ‘Using E-tivities to create online communities’