TESOL CALL-IS webinar on EVO: 20 Years of Free Professional Development in Online Teaching/Learning for English Language Teachers Worldwide

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Learning2gether Episode 518

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On May 26, 2021, TESOL CALL-IS hosted a free webinar on
EVO: 20 Years of Free Professional Development in Online Teaching/Learning for English Language Teachers Worldwide

Christine Bauer-Ramazani organized this special celebration of the 20th anniversary of EVO sessions as a CALL-IS webinar, in conjunction with the Electronic Village Online’s 20th anniversary.

This special EVO 20th Anniversary Webinar featured a panel of speakers that were instrumental in making EVO such a success over the last 20 years. As of 2020 EVO had trained almost 50,000 ELT professionals around the world! Critical in making this enormous feat of volunteerism happen are the EVO Co-founders and Lead Coordinators, who orchestrated the many activities carried out by the teams of EVO coordinators, some of whom have been with EVO for most of those years.

Accordingly, this special celebration of the 20th anniversary of EVO sessions featured the 3 EVO Co-Founders, 10 former Lead Coordinators, and Vance Stevens on a  panel of speakers. 

 

Vance Stevens presented for 6 minutes on
Webheads and EVO: Truly Lifelong Learning

I wanted to show how a popular EVO session I organized in 2002 led to my becoming a coordinator of EVO in 2003 and nurtured a series of Communities of Practice which have persisted and interleaved themselves in TESOL CALL-IS and in EVO to this very day.

To achieve this I prepared two versions of my slides. This link contains both versions:  http://bit.ly/EVO20Vance

The shorter version was designed to be delivered at the webinar and to encapsulate in 6 minutes what I wanted to say in an 18 minute video which I had pre-recorded to go over in greater detail what was in the longer version of the slides. The video is here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YuoOzPOPWUc

The video shows how so many participants in early versions of Webheads for EFL students, and teachers who got involved in that, became founders, coordinators, and moderators of EVO after their participation in the several communities of practice associated with the Webheads in Action EVO session I offered in 2002.

The main event
EVO: 20 Years of Free Professional Development in Online Teaching/Learning for English Language Teachers Worldwide

Christine advertised the webinar in a post sent to several ‘myTESOL’ groups prior to the event:

The Electronic Village Online (EVO) is excited to invite you to a special TESOL Webinar to celebrate the 20th anniversary of EVO sessions, the first 10 online/distance sessions held in 2001. During the pandemic, the 19 EVO 20th anniversary sessions held in January/February 2021 were especially pertinent to the 2,682 participating English teachers from 71 countries worldwide.

Presenting will be the three co-founders of EVO, Christine Bauer-Ramazani, Tom Robb, Susan Gaer, as well as the 11 lead coordinators of EVO–Dafne Gonzalez, Aiden Yeh / JoAnn Miller (Co-Coordinators), Carla Arena, Nina Liakos, Mbarek Akaddar, Nellie Deutsch, Carolina Buitrago, Martha Ramirez, and Vance Stevens–all known authorities in CALL and TESOL. They will address their contributions to EVO as well as their latest endeavors in the area of online teaching and learning.

SCHEDULE – posted on the EVO webinar wiki, and summarized below

There are 14 presenters in a 90-minute time frame.

In the first 20 minutes

  • Christine will start with the purpose of the Webinar, an explanation of what EVO is, then introduce the EVO Coordinators
  • Susan and Tom then talk about the founding of EVO
  • Christine gives a brief walk through history, including updates on the latest data on EVO participants and countries reached. I’m hoping this can be done in15-20 minutes.

Each presenter then has 6 minutes to talk about main accomplishments during your tenure and possibly any recent endeavors in “free professional development in online English language teaching and learning worldwide.”

WHEN:  Wed, May 26, 2021 from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM (ET)

REGISTRATION for participants: on TESOL site: https://my.tesol.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=253cf6e7-fc2e-493d-ad11-fd2ff4be3cc9&Home=%2fevents%2ftesol-events

SLIDESHOW: http://bit.ly/EVO-20th-view

Wiki link for SCHEDULE & uploaded presenter slides:
http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/143188116/EVO-20th-Anniversary-Webinar

RECORDINGS

This recording was made from the Zoom cloud recording with everyone’s camera showing: https://youtu.be/JbvvIdFrOAE

There is also a version from a recording in Zoom made to computer: https://youtu.be/IKy4hOiyERE

At the end of the meeting, we all waved, smiled, and clapped at our successful completion of twenty years of thriving within our robust communities of practice and getting through 90 minutes of webinar pretty much within the allocated time frame.

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Promotion

EVO and CALL-IS promoted the events here

Announcements were posted to these Facebook groups

A few of the presenters and coordination team members sat for a group Zoom portrait prior to the event

 


Feedback

ChristineFBpost

MbarekFBpost

AidenFBpost

NinaFBpost

dorisFBpost

dorisFBpic

Jane’s view of the closing applause

EVOCoordsFBchat

 


Earlier Events

Learning2gether episode 517 – Wed 19 May 1230 UTC
Vance Stevens on Communities of practice for teachers: From Webheads in Action to EVO Minecraft MOOC

https://learning2gether.net/2021/05/19/vance-stevens-on-communities-of-practice-for-teachers-from-webheads-in-action-to-evo-minecraft-mooc/

Tue 25 May 1pm ET – myTESOL Lounge Live – Nonmembers welcome 

TESOL

Come together with your peers, share your thoughts and experiences, and have a little fun at myTESOL Lounge Live!

FREE and open to members and non-members, myTESOL Lounge Live! is an online hosted conversation space for English language educators.

The next discussion, hosted by Doreen Ewert and Thomas Robb, took place on 25 May at 1:00 pm ET and went into detail on how extensive reading can work in the classroom.

Resources used

OER 101: How to Find and Create Open Educational Resources in your ELT Classroom
Chadia Mansour, Charity Davenport, and Sharon Tjaden-Glass

Links from the session

 

 

___________________________________________________________
This blog is written and maintained by Vance Stevens
You are free to share-alike and with attribution under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The date of this update is May 29, 2021 02:00 UTC

One thought on “TESOL CALL-IS webinar on EVO: 20 Years of Free Professional Development in Online Teaching/Learning for English Language Teachers Worldwide”

  1. Pingback: Vance Stevens speaks on Blended learning and communities of practice for the ELC PD Committee at U of Tech and Applied Sciences Ibri Oman | Learning2gether

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