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POSSIBILITIES OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH IN THE FIELD OF ICT

SVĚTLANA OBENAUSOVÁ

Abstract – The aim of this paper is to present two platforms offered for free to teachers of English. The first one is an international Professional Development workshop, Becoming a Webhead (BaW), and other online workshops that are part of the Electronic Village Online. These five-week online projects are free and take place online every year. The second one is DOTS, published online in 2011 by the ECML.  

Key words – ICT, BAW, Becoming a Webhead, Web2.0, EFL, e-learning, online professional development, DOTS, Developing Online Teaching Skills

There are teachers who say that all they need for their teaching is a blackboard and a piece of chalk. There are others who cannot imagine their teaching without computers – as a tool for their teaching as well as their professional development. And then there are students. The younger they are, the more they expect their teachers to keep pace with modern technologies and use them in their teaching. However strong the resistance of some teachers to technology is, progress cannot be stopped. In fact, it is not enough for teachers to know how to prepare PowerPoint presentations for their lessons; it is Web 2.0 technologies[1] that have started helping the teaching community from all over the world. Although these tools serve best in distance and blended learning, they are becoming increasingly more significant in presence-based forms of teaching, serving as additional ways of communication outside the classroom, so that we are witnessing a transformation of pedagogy, especially in language education.

This text is not meant as a paper on different Web 2.0 tools and their possibilities; it is rather a recommendation of courses where teachers can learn about all these tools and share their experience with colleagues from all over the world, who create a very culturally diverse learning environment. They can experience collaborative learning with the gentle support of moderators and their peers, who form a real intercultural community. The main features of this type of learning are the same as those of Web 2.0 communication tools – they are based on active participation and cooperation, interactivity and, mainly, sharing whatever you know and helping others.

ELECTRONIC VILLAGE ONLINE

EVO (Electronic Village Online) offers a range of 5-week online professional development courses sponsored by the CALL[2] Interest Section of TESOL[3]. Sponsoring in this case is on the level of promoting the courses and enabling them to use online conferencing platforms. All the moderators in all the EVO courses are volunteers who work without any financial reward, which makes it possible for the workshops to offer free education to hundreds of teachers every year. And hundreds there are, from all over the world. Very few from the Czech Republic, though. That is one of the reasons why I would like to publicise this event more.

EVO sessions[4] take place annually in January and February; participants can choose their session and enrol in it in the first week of January. Every year there is a choice of more than ten sessions; in 2012 there are 15 different sessions. Some will repeat in future years and new ones will surely appear. Here is a short list of the 2012 sessions[5]:

• Becoming a Webhead 2012
• TESOL-Drama Workshop: Implementing and Evaluating the Facilitation of English Language Learning through Drama
• Digital Storytelling for Young Learners
• Digital Tools with Purpose in the Classroom
• PLEs and PLNs for Lifelong Learning
• Creating and Manipulating Audio
• Teaching and Language Learning Through Gamification
• Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments
• MachinEVO – Video Productions of Language Learning Conversations
• Teaching English to Young Learners and Teens
• Developing our Mentoring Skills
• MOODLE for Teachers
• Podcasting for the EFL/ESL Classroom
• Social Networking: Making it Work for You and Your Students!
• Tutoring with Web 2.0 Tools – Designing for Social Presence

Most teachers start with the first one as it teaches basic skills of using Web communication tools, and come back in further years to learn more in that session and many others. So let me briefly introduce at least the first session.

BECOMING A WEBHEAD

Becoming a Webhead (BaW) is one of the many courses of EVO; it is actually the longest-running of the EVO sessions. This acclaimed workshop is offered annually, always slightly changed and with updated contents. Its target audience are ESL/EFL teachers interested in using Web communication tools in their teaching. The “founding mothers” of this course were Teresa Almeida d’Eça and Dafne Gonzales. Over the years the team of moderators has grown and changed, yet one thing remains – the cordial, helping and caring BaW spirit.

Just like other EVO sessions, it contains both synchronous and asynchronous learning, with lots of hands-on practice. The moderators are enthusiastic former BaW members who remember well what it was like to be a newbie, so they can easily put themselves in the shoes of participants and help them with advice and encouragement. They are willing to help even long after the 5-week workshop as many participants “digest” the newly acquired knowledge over a longer period and need more input even after the course is over. Quite a number of participants stay in touch during the following months and many return to the new round of BaW in the following year to meet new people and to learn more, share their own ideas and tools explored in their teaching, find partners for future projects and much more.

During the 5-week course participants explore and learn to use these tools:

• synchronous and asynchronous communication tools
• text tools
• audio tools
• video tools
• authoring tools – interactive exercises and quizzes
• virtual classrooms, online and blended learning

All these tools are Web 2.0 communication tools and help language learners enormously. Every year new international intercultural student projects are born as a result of the BaW community of enthusiastic teachers.

DEVELOPING ONLINE TEACHING SKILLS

The second online course I would like to recommend was launched by the European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz in September 2011 and is the product of a team of experts. It is called “Developing Online Teaching Skills” (DOTS[6]) and it exists in two language versions – in English and in German. It is based on the Moodle platform and contains detailed tutorials on different Web 2.0 tools such as Audacity, Audio conferencing, Blogs, Forums, Podcasting, Quizzes, Wikis, YouTube and more additional material. The course deals not only with the technical side of the tools but also the methodological aspects; there are detailed explanations of why and how to use these tools in language teaching. These pedagogical considerations are always accompanied by sample activities.

This course is open to teachers from all over the world, it is free, and they only need to register. The disadvantage of this course is the fact that there are no moderators and no immediate online support. There are self-help forums where participants can share their views. However, the success of these forums really depends on the activity of participants. After half a year of the existence of the course the forums do not seem very lively places.

CONCLUSION

I would strongly recommend both types of courses. The first one is very hectic and intensive as it takes place only over a period of 5 weeks in January and February. However, for the rest of the year, participants can slowly digest what they learnt and can experiment with the tools on their own. The support of the moderators is available all through the year if participants wish to contact them. The EVO people are a very helpful community of real enthusiasts.

The DOTS course is aimed at slow self-study at your own pace, with occasional, irregular contact with other participants through the forums. It surely serves as a good back-up bank of information and tutorials. Yet it is a finished product and since this one was not prepared by volunteers, its updating depends totally on further funding. And we all know that ICT develops so quickly that without updating the course will soon become obsolete. So use it now, do not postpone it.

As for the EVO courses, these are updated every year, so you can recommend them to your students and colleagues with the certainty that they will find there the latest and best tools they can use for their teaching. So why not spread the word and enlarge the EVO community?

A list of websites of interest:

http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/48511306/BaW2012

http://www.scribd.com/doc/69421046/Proceedings-of-ICVL-2011-ISSN-1844-8933-ISI-Proceedings

http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/48510148/Call_for_Participation2012

http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/10708587/What-is-EVO

http://moodle.dots.ecml.at/

http://blog.tesol.org/blog/electronic-village-online-is-for-newbies-and-techies-alike

http://www.call-is.org/info/