Teaching Online with iTDi and International Facilitation Week

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Learning2gether Episode 394

I have joined and plan to blog some of my experiences with the iTDi course I have just started attending as a participant, Teaching Online with Heike Philp. This is a 4-week course to learn how to teach online, or if you are already experienced at that, to improve your technique. It’s not free, but it provides participants with multiple perspectives on how online courses might be constructed and delivered. It follows on the one I reviewed in my previous post, the 5-Day ESL Edtech Jumpstart Challenge with Jacqueline Vulcano
https://learning2gether.net/2018/10/07/esl-edtech-jumpstart-challenge-with-jacqueline-vulcano-reviewed/

The live sessions take place 4 times on Sundays, at 1pm GMT and started on 7 October. I am not allowed to share iTDi proprietary links or materials here, but I can share my own postings, such as this video from Week 2 in the course.

Week 2 – Vance Stevens models and demonstrates teacher autonomy with ELT teachers in Tehran

This is raw video from Oct 19, 2018 when Vance Stevens accepted an invitation to speak to Hossein Vakili’s teacher training class at Raja Language Institute in Tehran  about learner autonomy, which I suggests has to start out with teachers themselves becoming autonomous learners. This was done as Episode 394 in Learning2gether.net and also as a project for an iTDi class being given by Heike Philp on Teaching Online. It was also an opportunity for me to model and demonstrate my teaching philosophy to a group of engaged learners based on my experience practicing and reflecting on my teaching philosophy, and discuss my teaching philosophy in the context of teacher autonomy with teacher trainees in Tehran

The presentation is based on Stevens, Vance. (2007). The Multiliterate Autonomous Learner: Teacher Attitudes and the Inculcation of Strategies for Lifelong Learning. Independence, Winter 2007 (Issue 42) . Available: http://vancestevens.com/papers/archive/VanceStevens_multiliterateAutonomousLearner.pdf

Associated slides are posted here: https://www.slideshare.net/vances/lets-start-with-teacher-autonomy-multiliteracies-and-lifelong-learning/

This was not meant to be a top down presentation; it was meant to be a conversation. Hossein’s students were to read / review Vance’s materials and be prepared to ask questions in order to hold a conversation with the invited speaker (15 min). Online participants in the event will then be invited to speak to Hossein and his students about their view of online facilitation (15 min).

The presentation was in Zoom in Vance’s space at, https://zoom.us/j/5786977523. Anyone interested was welcome to attend and speak to Hossein and his students/teachers in Tehran, on October 19, 2018, 05:30 a.m. UTC.

Week 1 in the course

The assignment for week 1 was to pair yourself with someone else in the class and create a lesson to teach that person something of your choosing. I teamed with Hossein Vakili in Iran and decided for my project to teach how to introduce oneself in Arabic. I created a set of  slides which would allow me to present students with visual prompts of what to say during a typical first meeting with an Arabic speaker. I provided a spoken model while delivering the lesson, and got students to repeat the utterances as I flipped through the slides showing them what they might say next.

The lesson was supposed to last for ten minutes, and at the end of that time, I was able to engage Hossein in a scripted conversation. When I repeated the lesson with two volunteers from the iTDi class on Sunday Oct 14, I was able to get them talking to me in a reasonable semblance of an introduction in Arabic ending in an invitation to have tea.

Here is what it looked like when I recorded it in Zoom with Hossein:

On completion of the course I received a certificate 🙂

Vance_Stevens

International Facilitation Week and Online Facilitation Unconference

This brings us to International Facilitation Week, which just started today, at
https://www.iaf-world.org/site/pages/international-facilitation-week.

I have registered in the Online Facilitation Unconference again this year. It is the 5th year when this unconference has been facilitated in conjunction with IFA, and my second year to attend. Last year I posted a session on Sun, October 22, 2017 – Learning2gether with Hanaa Khamis – Voice Apps for Developing Speaking and Writing Activities – and the Online Facilitation Unconference

This year I have posted the following event for Oct 19, the first day of the Unconference: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kTUNrgaMNLI5uniLKi-tzwjaDqRvYsBdnOS3HyWwdx8/edit#heading=h.q0rzk3kyjbi6

This segued nicely with the Week 2 assignment for the Teaching Online course. Here is the event description, as posted at Learning2gether.pbworks.com:

Hossein and Vance had connected via Heike Philp’s iTDi class the week before and as a result of that Hossein asked Vance to present at a web conference for his teachers and colleagues at Raja Language Institute in Tehran and speak to them about learner autonomy, which Vance suggests has to start out with teachers themselves becoming autonomous learners.

The presentation is based on a paper I wrote in 2007, now dated in details concerning software that was available back then, but still quite current in principle (same valid principles, different software).

Announcements

2018-10-19_1653ofu19oct

Vance’s short bio statement

Vance Stevens has worked in CALL for 40 years. He started Learning2gether in 2009, and has hosted almost 400 podcasts. He is on the editorial board of the CALL Journal and also serves on the executive board ofAPACALL. He has been editor of the On the Internet column for TESL-EJsince 2003. He has served as TESOL CALL-IS Electronic Village Online coordinator/moderator since 2003, where he started Webheads in Action in 2002 and more recently conceived, and currently co-moderates, EVO Minecraft MOOC, He archives his numerous publications and presentations at http://vancestevens.com/papers/.

 

Earlier this week

Mon Sept 24-Fri Sept 28- 5-Day ESL Edtech Jumpstart Challenge with Jacqueline Vulcano

https://learning2gether.net/2018/10/07/esl-edtech-jumpstart-challenge-with-jacqueline-vulcano-reviewed/

Thu Oct 4 OLLReN 2018 Annual Online Conference

OLLReN 2018 Annual Online Conference on Research into using Technology for Language Learning, organized by the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG, Laureate International Universities and Cambridge University Press, took place on Oct 4, 2018

https://ollren.org/events/annual-conference/2018

Get the recorded replay here, and at Hash tag #OLLReN2018

https://twitter.com/hashtag/OLLReN2018

 

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  1. Pingback: Vance Stevens presents ‘lightning talk’ on Engaging students in gamified classrooms using Minecraft | Learning2gether

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