Sunday, March 31, 2013

Notes from TESOL: Laura

Thursday, 10am
ENGAGING LEARNERS THROUGH TEAM FIELD WORK PROJECTS
  • do field work projects instead of final exams - communicative objectives… 
    • teachers can use creativity and fit themes/topics to needs to group
    • non-textbook instructions
    • students exposed to authentic language 
    • opportunity for experiential learning
    • encourages team work
    • motivates with real world activities
    • confidence that English can be used outside of class
  • Project Theme Example: An Insider Guide to Washington, D.C.
    • Step 1 - Prepare for field work
      • provide students with list of local sites
      • students preview website
      • find out who interested in also visiting that site
      • form groups
    • 2 weeks to complete
  • Teach Powerpoint from the very beginning - teach outlining and format… 
    • Introduction
    • Content
      • Point 1
      • Point 2
      • Point 3
      • Point 4
    • Conclusion
    • References

Thursday, 6:45pm
VDMIS Business Meeting 

Meeting called to order 6:55pm

In attendance…. Laura Ray, Kenneth Chi, Johanna, Ahmed AlShlowiy, Dong-Shin Shin

1) Leslie Kirshner-Morris - IS Leadership Council Chair 
     -part of her duties is to visit her interest sections… congratulate and celebrate the work we have been doing this past year… presented a certificate to Kenneth to celebrate his hard work over the past year 
     Web 2.0, StoryBird, Animoto, Go to meeting, etc.

2) Minutes from last year's meeting - who has them? Tony or Joyce?

3) Questions about how to present at Academic Session and InterSession were answered

4) Questions about how to register for the IS were answered… also, we shared information about our Community Page on the TESOL website as well as Facebook

5) Chair's report about this conference… 
  • 3 major presentations
    •        1 - Academic Session - using VDM in the area of ELT (Friday afternoon)
    •        2 - one session with Elementary Ed - Joanna, Ken, and Crystal presented (Thursday afternoon)
    •        3 - one session with ESP [intersession] (Saturday afternoon)
  • 40-50 proposals were submitted… ~12 on program
  • There were 2 newsletter issues this past year
    • Joyce and Laura staying on as editors this year
  • We had the table set up today - Laura did an online sign up form
  • Ken prepared a video about our interest section using PowerPoint animation
  • hard copies of all past newsletters are on a disk - can we sell this? Is this allowed? How do we do it?  -OR- can we upload this to the website?

  • 7) Ken's powerpoint - we need to define in a "positive way" how we are different from CALL… we need to define ourselves more clearly - we may need to add a clarification of our identity to our mission statement as well….
    • there is a video on the powerpoint that may be a copyright issue
  •  for next year's booth, we need to request a TV - also, can we have someone in charge of the booth next year?
  • apply for limited funds for a special project? (ex. the scanning project)
6) for 2013-2014… 
  • List of IS Leaders
    • Johanna Katchen - Chair
    • Jason Levine - Chair Elect (due to personal reasons, he would like to postpone becoming Chair for 1 year… Johanna has stepped in)
    • Kenneth Chi - Past Chair
    • Newsletter Editor - Joyce Cunningham and Laura Ray
    • Community Manager - Vacant (we are still determining whether or not we need this position)
  • Tell members they can go to website and download handouts… (for those who presented in VDM, we can request that people upload their power points onto our community page [this can be done at the same time as when we are soliciting newsletter articles]

8) for 2014 conference
  • Next year's theme… Portland's theme will be "Explore, Sustain, and Renew"
    • Jennifer Lebedev - Pearson - invited by Ken to present at Academic Session next year
    • BRAINSTORM - (10 word limit) explore, sustain, media, ways, using, video, renewing, remediation… old activities with digital twist … bring back the old using the new?   ex) Laura's SCVNGR activities… 
9) Future - what direction do we want to take with the IS?  producing video vs. using video

10) Tomorrow's presentation - Intro, then Sevi (?), then Joanna and Ken present 2nd and 3rd, then Ashley and Laura, then questions

11) Voting for next year… Ken thought voting online could be a problem? when we have a very small group at TESOL, it is hard to vote in person, so Johanna thinks online might actually be better

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, 10:00am
Opening Eyes and Minds with Local Community Based Research

Brain-based learning… 
     We need to train the brain to see… 

ETHNOMETHODOLOGY 

1) When students first arrive, they make a lot of observations… but then they are here longer and then with the pressures of school, the excitement begins to shrink.

     There's a lot out there, but we close down and stop seeing what's around us… 

2) Projects are picked by the students… if the activity is personalized, they are more apt to learn the content. 

3) Novelty - things that are new and immediate make the brain think… 

4) put yourself in someone else's shoes… ask why people do the things they do… get information from the source

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