Investivated this tool, as it was recommended to me for free meetings. Worth knowing about as it is free (it's run by the Open University) and you can host meetings, see each other and talk as wellas synchronous chat, and share a whiteboard (and files) but you can't upload a Powerpoint presentation, so it won't be any use to me for the course.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Should we teach this at all?
Another interesting opinion from Neil McMahon on the celta e-mail list:
My personal opinion is that a pre-Celta grammar course probably does more harm than good. First of all, without having started to get the classroom experience that doing Celta brings, the trainees won't have much idea of what they're learning the grammar for and may well find the course daunting and demotivating and what they do learn will probably still be contradicted in other sources or be too much for them to convey to students.
My main concern, however, is that surely such courses continue to perpetuate the unnecessary over-emphasis on grammar in the world of ELT in general, perpetuated by many Celta courses and particularly by many course books and school syllabi and assessment systems. Where is the pre-Celta vocab course? Or functions course or phonology course? Our trainees have as many if not more problems with these aspects of language than they do with grammar and we certainly don't expect them to have a good grip of any of them before the Celta starts or even during their first years teaching, so why should grammar be any different?
Please let your Celta candidates discover all the beautiful intricacies of the English language system and how they can clarify them for their students in their own good time and in their own good (or bad) ways. The Celta itself is a perfectly adequate way to begin this process.
Marisa's thoughts
Really interesting post from Marisa Constantinides (she of the great blog...) today. She runs a similar course to the one I'm thinking of, and has had trouble selling it... (see below)
I have run several language awareness courses as well as CEELT prep
> courses and truly lament the exctinction of CEELT I & II which
> addressed exactly language teachers need in the classroom
>
> More recently we started to offer an online synchronous grammar for
> English Language Teachers course which you can read about here:
>
>
> One of the things which I have come to see, however, is that these
> courses are difficult to 'sell' as I have very often found that even
> if I suggest a course such as this to a teacher as a pre-CELTA prep
> course, they very often apply to another centre which accepts the same
> candidate without a murmur
>
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Using Voice and Timing
The session tonight was on the Present Perfect. It's the first of the part II course lessons, ie the first time I've been explaining grammar rather than just explaining what things are called. It was largely quite successful, but went on for much longer than I had planned - about 90 mins, not 60. I thin this was necessary, to be honest, I couldn't have done it justice in less, but I may have to rethink the times - maybe this part II has to have 90 minute sessions.
More trouble with the breakout rooms and the (not responding) signal. I'll have to get on to Adobe again - this only seems to have happened since they changed the programme - I want the old one back!!
What was interesting tonight was that people were comfortable to use voice for the first time. I had a lot more vocal feedback and much less text chat. Not sure whether this is good or bad as it meant that some of the participants were less involved, but it made it feel more like an interactive classroom environment. Not sure how this will work if the group is much bigger.....
Started to think about a website - I'll need one if this is going to be a commercial venture. There's a lot of interest in the pilot course (it is free, though....) - I've had 15 people sign up in 2 days - what is really interesting is that they are not in any way all pre-celta trainees - a lot of them are post celta or qualified teachers in a job...... There may be a lot of mileage in this.
More trouble with the breakout rooms and the (not responding) signal. I'll have to get on to Adobe again - this only seems to have happened since they changed the programme - I want the old one back!!
What was interesting tonight was that people were comfortable to use voice for the first time. I had a lot more vocal feedback and much less text chat. Not sure whether this is good or bad as it meant that some of the participants were less involved, but it made it feel more like an interactive classroom environment. Not sure how this will work if the group is much bigger.....
Started to think about a website - I'll need one if this is going to be a commercial venture. There's a lot of interest in the pilot course (it is free, though....) - I've had 15 people sign up in 2 days - what is really interesting is that they are not in any way all pre-celta trainees - a lot of them are post celta or qualified teachers in a job...... There may be a lot of mileage in this.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Does it have to be Pre-CELTA?
I've been up to my ears in lovely e-mails over the past couple of days. It was suggested to me (thanks David Hare) that I put something on the CELTA e-mail list about my ideas for the course, and having done so, have had loads of support, encouragement and good ideas. One of the things that came through was that it wasn't only before the course that this kind of information was useful, and that it was often only during or after celta that trainees realise how much they need to know and perhaps have the schema to embed the new knowledge more effectively.
There were also some good ideas about sources for information - nothing new, but well timed reminders that Parrott, Aitken and Thornberry will be good friends to have over the next few months.......
With all of this motivation going on, I decided that I needed to strike whilst the iron was hot, so I have put out some information to publicise my first 'proper' (but still free) course, starting in April. That was about 9am - this evening I already had 4 e-mails from people wanting to do the course - wow!
This is the advert:
There were also some good ideas about sources for information - nothing new, but well timed reminders that Parrott, Aitken and Thornberry will be good friends to have over the next few months.......
With all of this motivation going on, I decided that I needed to strike whilst the iron was hot, so I have put out some information to publicise my first 'proper' (but still free) course, starting in April. That was about 9am - this evening I already had 4 e-mails from people wanting to do the course - wow!
This is the advert:
Just about to do a CELTA?
Worried about the grammar?
I may be able to help!
I am a CELTA tutor in the UK and am running an on-line class in real time in a virtual classroom to help you to prepare. If you’ve never done this kind of thing before, you’ll be able to see me on a webcam, see a whiteboard, hear me talk and talk to me and other participants.
The course is FREE, and all I ask is some feedback from you afterwards, as I am using this for an MA research project.
The course will be in two parts –
· Part I – 5 x 1 hour sessions on naming parts of speech and tenses.
· Part II – 7 x 1 hours sessions. A closer look at some of the trickier parts of grammar (such as the present perfect tense and conditionals).
All you need is a computer with a broadband connection, speakers and a microphone (if you don’t have the latter two, you can buy a headset very cheaply).
The course will begin in April. If you are interested, please e-mail me, and I will send you the web address you need to log on, and the timetable.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Jo Gakonga gakonga.family@onetel.com
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Two different courses?
Had more nightmare problems with the system last night - whenever I tried to move people to breakout rooms, the programme kept freezing up (not responding) on the screen. The Powerpoint froze on two occasions, too and I had to reload it. Will talk to Adobe today. I suspect it's glitches with the new system.
Had a bright idea this morning. I could offer a 'foundation level' course with just 4 or 5 hour long sessions covering parts of speech and verb tenses, active and passive ie just the nomenclature, and then a further add-on going over some of the more tricky parts of the grammar eg present perfect, relative clauses, the future etc. This would mean that I could offer the first one very cheaply and a lot of people might feel that this was all they needed (even if it really wasn't, but at least it'd be something and it'd be affordable for everyone.)
Had a bright idea this morning. I could offer a 'foundation level' course with just 4 or 5 hour long sessions covering parts of speech and verb tenses, active and passive ie just the nomenclature, and then a further add-on going over some of the more tricky parts of the grammar eg present perfect, relative clauses, the future etc. This would mean that I could offer the first one very cheaply and a lot of people might feel that this was all they needed (even if it really wasn't, but at least it'd be something and it'd be affordable for everyone.)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
What happens when the technology doesn't work?
Tonight was really quite a frustration! Adobe have updated the system (which, to be fair they did warn me they were going to do) and so the layout was a bit different, and took a bit of getting used to. More concerning was that when I rtied to use the breakout rooms, the whole system seemed to freeze up - I kept getting a (not responding) title on the top of my screen. Now whether this was due to the new system, or just the connection tonight, I'm not sure, but it was so frustrating. I had to log out and log back in twice and then there is a lot of hassle in trying to ascertain whether or not people can hear you again, etc. In the end, I decided not to bother with the breakout rooms and just to use the whole room scenario. This was a shame, though. The metality seems to be that people don't want to use voice in the main room and are happier to text chat, but will use voice in the breakout rooms. Snce using voice makes the whole expereince so much richer and more immediate, I'll have to hope that we can fix the problems with the breakout rooms......
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