Showing posts with label moocs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moocs. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Flying Higher with the iTDI Summer School MOOC for English Teachers

At the end of July (July 20th - August 17th), the iTDI (International Teachers Development Institute) Summer School MOOC for English Teachers offered  four weeks of daily on-line immersion in TEFL teacher development training, delivering one session at a time by the faculty, mentors, associates, and leading community members of iTDI.

This MOOC was my first step on an exciting journey taken with teachers from over 90 countries, learning to be better teachers together.  In the beginning, I felt lost getting started, especially when downloading the course program into my iPAD (Thank you so much, Cláudio Fleury and Danny Lyra, for your precious help!) and handling the initial session details, especially the necessary audio adjustments. Sometimes, I felt as if I were drowning while I was watching the live discussions and struggled to follow the different types of information I’d get on the screen: listening to the presenters who were usually shown in the right upper corner of the screen; viewing the slides display in a larger portion of the screen; and following the comments in the chat room in the lower right corner of the screen. That seemed too demanding for me! I felt like my brain would go out of orbit and burn! But it didn’t.  Thank god, experiencing the so much celebrated plasticity of brain became a concrete reality to me – sometimes at a high energy cost, I must admit.  However, I’ve learned some strategies and now I know I can do it faster and more comfortably next summer.

All sessions were one hour long, live, conducted in a virtual classroom in Wiziq, and included a pre-session task and a post-session quiz. In accordance with the number of sessions one attended, different certificate participation credits were available.  This year’s program included a wide range of topics such as ‘Teaching English Through Art’, ‘Preflective Lesson Prep: Ideas and Inspirations’, and some curiosity-raising ones, such as ‘#Flashmob ELT’. A variety of inspiring teaching specialists - such as Michael Griffin, Anna Loseva, Matthew Noble, Vicky Loras, Rosely Serra and Ana Menezes - were invited to present in one of the 29 daily sessions in this year’s program.

Experiencing doing this MOOC course was certainly a turning point in my career.  Actually, I’m looking forward to watching the recording of the sessions I’ve missed due to the natural rush and usual demands with coachees and related issues in the beginning of the semester. The fact that the sessions were on a daily basis forced me to miss some of them. The good point about this MOOC is that I can catch up and do the rest of the viewing and tasks at my own pace now at the end of our school semester. Yes.  I highly recommend this MOOC for English Teachers. Fly high with iTDI!


Eneida Coaracy

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

IATEFL 2013 - The Future is Now – What Tomorrow’s Schools Will Look Like




International conferences are a great opportunity to learn new things, debate controversial ideas, and check if you are doing a good job at your school. The IATEFL annual conference is especially exciting because you have teachers from all over the world sharing information on teaching English as a foreign language. So there I was, ready to take part in this international exchange of ideas.

Being a tech-savvy teacher who blogs and reasonably up-to-date on technological advances, I was quite curious by the title of this presentation by Peter Davidson (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates) on Thursday, April 11th 2013. After all, he was asking questions such as, “What will classrooms look like in the 21st century?”, “Will there be classrooms?”, “Will there be schools?”, “Will there be teachers?”. Looking for answers and for new ideas, in I went.

Peter Davidson started talking about the factors shaping education at the moment, some of which are economics, globalization, research, and technology. Going on to the topic of curriculum and tools, He mentioned blended learning, online learning (MOOC), laptops, tablets, and phones. After cruising through web tools, he got the audience to discuss the role of the teacher in the future. Will we be facilitators, enablers, guides, mentors, gurus, or just bystanders? 

Finally, the session went onto the future of education. Whether education will be challenging, frustrating, chaotic, fun and exciting, Peter Davidson concluded that teachers need to not only be aware of the changing face of education, but they need to embrace this change and help to shape it. This change needs to lead to more effective learning. According to him, and I fully agree, teachers and educators need to shape the future of education – not Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. 

The important question here is, “Did I learn anything new by watching this presentation?” The answer is no. However, what I would like to emphasize is how rewarding it is to know that Casa Thomas Jefferson is one of the frontrunners embracing this change. We, as teachers, have been using web tools for several years. Online and blended learning are already part of our reality. Computers and tablets in class are our daily routine. Even living in a developing country facing a never-ending economic crisis, we are not bystanders. Into the future we boldly stride.

IATEFL 2013 - Liverpool - The Future is Now!

IATEFT 2013 – Liverpool

The Future is Now – What Tomorrow’s Schools Will Look Like

     International conferences are a great opportunity to learn new things, debate controversial ideas, and check if you are doing a good job at your school. The IATEFL annual conference is especially exciting because you have teachers from all over the world sharing information on teaching English as a foreign language. So there I was, ready to take part in this international exchange of ideas.
     Being a tech-savvy teacher who blogs and reasonably up-to-date on technological advances, I was quite curious by the title of this presentation by Peter Davidson (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates) on Thursday, April 11th 2013. “The Future is now – What Tomorrow’s schools will look like.” Could this be a breakthrough? Could he have discovered the future of teaching? After all, he was asking questions such as, “What will classrooms look like in the 21st century?”, “Will there be classrooms?”, “Will there be schools?”, “Will there be teachers?”. Looking for answers and for new ideas, in I went.
    Peter Davidson started talking about the factors shaping education at the moment, some of which are economics, globalization, research, and technology. Going on to the topic of curriculum and tools, He mentioned blended learning, online learning (MOOC), laptops, tablets, and phones. After cruising through web tools, he got the audience to discuss the role of the teacher in the future. Will we be facilitators, enablers, guides, mentors, gurus, or just bystanders?
    Finally, the session went onto the future of education. Whether education will be challenging, frustrating, chaotic, fun and exciting, Peter Davidson concluded that teachers need to not only be aware of the changing face of education, but they need to embrace this change and help to shape it. This change needs to lead to more effective learning. According to him, and I fully agree, teachers and educators need to shape the future of education – not Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
    The important question here is, “Did I learn anything new by watching this presentation?” The answer is no. However, what I would like to emphasize is how rewarding it is to know that Casa Thomas Jefferson is one of the frontrunners embracing this change. We, as teachers, have been using web tools for several years. Online and blended learning are already part of our reality. Computers and tablets in class are our daily routine. Even living in a developing country facing a never-ending economic crisis, we are not bystanders. Into the future we boldly stride.

André Netto