Sunday, March 31, 2013

Liverpool Online Registered Bloggers: The 47th Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition




    I am so delighted to announce that I have become a registered blogger for Liverpool online. Here is the email testifying this. I will try my best to keep you posted. Stay tuned. 
     
         Dear Faten
Thank you for your interest in becoming a registered blogger for Liverpool Online.


We have now added you to the list of registered bloggers for Liverpool Online.

As a Registered Blogger, you will now be able to embed and display any video material found on Liverpool online on your blog.

We are also attaching a Liverpool Online Registered Blogger banner for you to use on your blog. If you use this banner please make sure it links back to http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013

Please remember that only the url of the blog you provided will be whitelisted to display our materials. If you have any problem displaying video please let us know and will check your permissions.

Happy Blogging!

Liverpool Online Team


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Webinars

Webinars, or web conferencing as defined by Wikipedia : ".... refers to a service that allows conferencing events to be shared with remote locations. These are sometimes referred to as webinars or, for interactive conferences, online workshops. In general the service is made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections. The service allows real-time point-to-point communications as well asmulticast communications from one sender to many receivers. It offers information of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations. Applications for web conferencing include meetings, training events, lectures, or short presentations from any computer."
No one denies the fact that webinars are growing fashionable these days and experts are  trying to disseminate information to a wider audience and letting teachers from many countries connect and share ideas. These virtual meetings add a lot to teachers around the world, especially us (ie those who do not have the luxury to travel and attend those conferences and workshops everywhere in the world). Thanks to technology, and webinars more sepecifically, we can connect with other teachers, learn from their experiences, exchange ideas and gauge to what extent we can apply the best of these ideas in our context. It's true that my experience with webinars started with our MOOC course, and it's grown as an addiction. I have attended many so far and I long for attending more. What I can confirm to my fellow colleagues is that the first step is always the most dreadful. The word webinar used to fall on my ears as magic does, something unattainable and mixed with a lot of ambiguity. I was wondering how I could attend one and I was  thinking it would be long before I could attend one, because I was crippled to some extent with a blocking astonishment and fear of failure. But once we start, we are keen on attending more and more webinars. One message I would like to convey by this blog post is to urge  every teacher who has not the chance to attend one webinar.  Please do not let your fear cripple you! You can do it because the benefits of attending such events are countless. COUNT on yourself to continue developing as a teacher and you will certainly find tremendous opportunities waiting for you to self-develop and learn more ideas every day. Now, when I go back to the very moment I was doubtful I would be able to attend a webinar one day, I laugh at myself. It's always good to hope for the better and think positively no matter how crippling the conditions are in our ELT world.
Eventually, I wish some renowned linguists, and ELT experts would think of a regular meeting via webinars with teachers from all over the world and hear from them. That would be very noble ! Nonetheless, youtube is a wonderfully abundant with past conferences and presenting a wealth of materials, instructions, discussions and opportunities to learn more. 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

A project on Bullying- By: Ben Hassine Amira

Amira presented this project with a lovely poem she wrote.Here is her poem: 
Here I sit at a desk on my own
Wish the bell would ring so I could go home
I don't want to be the highlight of every joke
Laughing for every word I spoke
My world is starting to die
And I slowly start to cry
They're throwing snacks
Right behind my back
The childlish games they play
Need to end just for a day
They laugh at me
They call me names
I couldn't even make a sound
When they pushed me around
I wish I could hit them back
But I was scared they could make another attack
People just don't understand who I am
I'm the person living alone with her fears
I'm the person destroyed by her peers
I hope the pain would go away
Be left alone,just for one day
Save me from the darkness
Take me away far from loneliness
Then my nightmares will be gone
And everything will be well-done!


Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Language garden

The garden fills our life with hope, beauty and creativity. The full spectrum adds much love to nature and spurs a lot of creativity in gardeners.This applies to the language garden website and its wonderful plant maker. I have been addicted to this tool because of many reasons that relate mainly to my thirst for creativity.
I have had a lovely experience with the language plant maker and personally it has  

  • helped me be more patient and increased my flexibility
  • incited me to release more creativity ,often without realizing this
  • helped me reduce stress 
  • made me think more closely of the structure of any statement or quote
  • pushed me to ponder more on how to use this tool effectively in our classes, one day! 
Thiniking of ways to implement using the language plant maker in our classes, I'd like to share my ideas with you all and I hope you can add your thoughts and add to the list : 
  • We can use the language plant maker to review, introduce new vocabulary: We can make a word cloud with the tool , and add appropriate pictures to it, and this depends much on the level of the learners. We can also list some words that have a strong collocation or connection with a secret word, then ask the learners to guess the word related to this list of words or the word that strongly collocates with all of these words. We can also introduce a theme or a topic by presenting a quote or a proverb.In addition, we can focus on forming adjectives using  -ful or -less suffixes to some adjectives.
  • We can also use the plant maker to review a grammatical structure . Honestly, I think the plant maker is perfect for learners to focus deeply on a structure of a sentence by thinking on what is repeated in the sentence , or what is missing, etc.. A huge array of questions and exercises are possible to devise.
  • Teaching writing is possible,too, by using pictures with quotes as prompts for a writing exercise.
  • More importantly, the language garden urges learners to be more creative and imaginative. Asking them to sum up some lessons in the form of a language plant would add much beauty, interest to the language experience they are living. 
Here is the link to the language garden: http://www.languagegarden.org/ and the plant maker: http://www.languagegarden.com/PlantMaker2/index.html ! Give it a try and you will certainly be addicted to this online tool 
Let me just mention that mixing the language with pictures and sound is very awesome and inspiring as well . We wish David Warr more success with this tool.And as a member of his facebook group Language Garden, we are waiting for more updates to the tool. 
Below are some of my attempts with the tool. Hope you find them useful !
Complete the proverb....

What is the word that collocates with all these words?


Taste poetry in a different shape! 

Shape your proverbs differently!

Let your creativity take you  magic places !


Amaze your students and let them elicit proverbs on their own!
Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to David Warr  for his assistance and help. 

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Inhale training ... Exhale Creativity

  Teachers , wherever they are, need more training sessions and more caring mentors to satisfy their professional needs. It is obvious to everyone that attending training sessions, workshops, seminars  is so beneficial to teachers as well as mentors, especially if teachers do express their willingness to attend and express  their urgent need to find some solutions to  the problems they are facing. 
Such live, energetic encounters do help teachers cooperate and enrich their own experience by listening to other teachers and learning from their experiences. More than this, the fact of attending more training sessions boosts teacher confidence and spurs their creativity. Undoubtedly, these professional meetings make teachers more and more aware of their professional profile and what do they aspire to achieve within their classroom framework or even on a larger scale, such as collaborating on some projects and sharing the outcomes with a larger audience. Personally, I think one important right of educationalists, teachers, trainers is to attend as many training sessions, seminars, conferences as they want to. It's always been a very rewarding experience for me, whether virtual or face-to-face. Wish you all Happy Training Days.