FAAPI 2015

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FAAPI 2015, Web Content Curation, an inspiration source for busy teachers from mariacolussa

´Congreso Internacional de Educación, Santa Fe, Septiembre 2015

Congress Announcement 

I´m going to start with one the last day´s plenaries, not because of that phrase: "The last shall be first", but because I was startled to know these figures.  In Argentina every given day 12,358,248 students and 758,522 teachers get moving during a normal school day.  Luz Pearson showed us these numbers during her joint presentation with Pablo Bongiovani.  Luz and Pablo shared with us their experience of collaborative work with students who are studying the same thing.  They called it "Aula Red" in Spanish, (something like networked classroom?)  In Spanish we say "Hay Señal" when we want to say that there is wifi connection that enables us to use our devices to communicate.  They showed a slide with the following: "Hay Señal Humana" (There is Human Connection?).  I particularly liked this play on words because I´m constantly experiencing the human touch in my daily contact with teachers from whom I learn every day.  It has been happening on a regular basis since I started interacting online back in 2012.  Today we are not constrained by space and time, they said, on the contrary these boundaries are blurred by the use of technology.  I was happily surprised to see Mariana Fossatti, a dear Uruguayan teacher who led me during those early times of web use in one of their slides.  Small world!

I met another person from Uruguay: Jose Miguel Garcia who was responsible for my tears on this congress (I always cry at congresses at some point) when he showed a video made by students who were invited to re-imagine schools.  I was delighted to hear his story of how collective knowledge is constructed within the Plan Ceibal, a scheme I have heard of first regarding the distance teaching of English, via Grahan Stanley. 

Several speakers stressed the importance of reflective practice, and the need to create opportunities for critical analysis of media in a country where there are more screens per family than books and magazines.  

I was attracted by the slogan of the congress and I hope that what the speakers shared during these days catch up in Argentinian classrooms.  I am already looking forward to next year´s edition.

Where I stand as a teacher and where I hope to be

@mariacolussa, Mint. 2015

As a result of joining the many teachers out there who share their journeys on blogs, I have learned that we have more things in common than  I could have ever imagined.  Hana Ticha's reflections after a casual friends meeting reminded me of several conversations that I took part in where a group of teachers gather over a glass or something or a cup of coffee, or a round of mate, the typical Argentinean drink that inspires and accompanies philosophical exchanges among friends.  Just a few weeks ago I heard a teacher say that he wasn´t interested in the "word of online teaching" because he preferred the "human contact" as if they were mutually excluded or as if only one was allowed at the expense of the other.  I did not give any thought to that remark at all at the moment.  I considered that it was not the time and place to talk about that.  Plus I had not seen this person in any of the online events that proved that his remark was absolutely groundless. In fact I consider it a lack of respect towards so many people that have done so much for online teaching and learning, such as Dr. Nellie Deutch, just check out one of her many recorded sessions: Leading from Within. That´s what I should have said.  However I feel that this person was trying to conceal a lack of interest to invest time and energy to learn something new.  
Apparently we are all concerned about being the best teacher out there.  By 'the best' I mean a constelation of qualities that the mythical foreign language teacher is bestowed with.   We should be proficient in the language, the pedagogy, plus we have to somehow integrate technology.  
My road so far has been like a ride in the quiet waters of a stream.  I started teaching without technology, simply because I did not have access to it.  Then I taught like crazy for over 12 years to finally quit out of failing to find relevance in what I was doing.
Today my reality has changed.   I was helped and taught patiently by strangers for free online as to how to harness the potential of the web to scaffold learning.  I was also encouraged to take risks and pay it forward by sharing what I have learned with my fellow teachers.  On the way I had enjoyed myself with master learners/sharers like Vance Stevens, Shelly Terrell, and the amazing Hello Little World Teachers Skypers team. 
I have been enjoying myself learning and teaching with my colleagues and students.  I am now teaching in contexts that my teacher training college did not prepare such as adult education, teaching to a visually impaired student, in-company teaching, and soon online teaching.  I have also been invited to give workshops on the things I have been doing with my colleagues and students.  Accepting every single one of these challenges was a leap of faith.  One that I wouldn´t have dared to face had I not been connected to the wonderful people out there who share what they are passionate about.  
When I think about learning and growing as a teacher I immediatelly think about the EVO Sessions, the Electronic Village Online, which played such an important role in my motivation to explore digital tools with the help of other teachers.  When it comes to blogging I think about Sue Waters and her drive to spread the word about the benefits of bloggins for children and adults alike.  This is the kind of professional development that has worked for me during the last three years.  I admire those educators who gather together to organize conferences, online or face to face and I attend both with an open mind.   Because there are just too many interesting things to learn, I often feel frustrated about not being able to watch recorded sessions or read my favourite blog posts.  
I try to attend and mingle with my master learner teachers as much as I can, because after these meetings I feel energized and full of drive to go about the wonderful job to teach languages.
What do I want to do next?  Well, I hope to continue hanging out with my network of educators.  I like teaching adults, so I will probably go on doing so.  
I will try to concentrate my energies on doing what makes me happy as an educator.  I found setting your teaching manifesto a very healthy exercise.  It was suggested by Shelly in one of the sessions of her 30 Goals Challenge Conference 

Spreading the Word about the Benefits of Mystery Location Calls in the ESL/EFL Classroom

My demonstration session at the Artesol Southern Cone Conference 

Buenos Aires, May 8th/9th, 2015

My notes on the Southern Cone ArTESOL Conference

Yilin Sun mentioned Intercultural Communicative Competence , and she also talked about the need to help our students become responsible citizens, fully competent language users, critical thinkers and constructive social change agents.  Teachers play a vital role in the mission to teach English for social responsability: helping everyone in the world to communicate with each other to prevent global disaster.  It is not necessary to travel long distances to do so.  Today technology allows us to do so with a fairly cheap technological equipment and a decent internet connection.  However the idea of "Glocal" action is also important to become agents of change in our own communities first to later make an impact in the world: Global Perspective, Local Action.
I specially liked a picture she showed us about the "Alphabet taught to kids today" displaying all the technology related words our students come to learn at a very early age.
I agree with Yilin about people wanting to hear your story.  This also emerged in Mathilde Verrillaud´s plenary on how to use pop culture in the English classroom. The Humans of New York facebook page and website aims to show precisely that it is our human nature that binds us together.  If we are able to find that connection and use it to our advantage, learning will become memorable as Marge Tye Zuba also showed in her session about teachers´learning preferences.
Mathilde made use of infographics to provide students with culture rich information which they would later have to rephrase or make their own infographics to explain a similar themes in their culture.  She suggested Piktochart for this activity.  An artist I can´t wait to share with my students is  Amit Shimoni for its originality and potential for discussion with my adult students.
Yilin Sun revisited the art of formulating questions not only before but during and after reading.  Pre-reading questions activate schemata and stir predictions, During reading questions aid selective reading.  Post-reading questions refine our predictions and help us make connections.  Our universe becomes richer after reading.  I found the "Question Hierarchy Techniques" very interesting and I also realised that I have been using this technique in some of my classes.  Here is a question that came to me as I was writing this post:  Why not using the same technique for a listening piece?  I will give that a try too.
I attended Dana Poklepovic´s session on how games in the Business English classroom are a serious thing.  Management techniques can effectively be used in English as well.  When doing so we focus on helping our students become fluent and become aware of their strengths not only as language learners but also as members of a team. I was thrilled to have the chance to thank her in person after I attended the 2014 EVO Teaching Business English Session, where she moderated the topic: "Developing Interpersonal Skills" week.

Stop and smell the roses.

I always like that space that conferences provide for reflection and sharing.  It was great to be able to talk with hard working, creative people and I am already looking forward to the next one!

Artesol, Buenos Aires, May 2015

My experience teaching English to a visually impaired student

There are many things I was not prepared to do as I graduated from teacher training college.  Teaching English to the visually impaired was one of them.  There are also many things I dared to do after building a professional network of trusted and likeminded educators.  Having them at my disposal via Twitter, Facebook, Skype or Google Communities gave me the confidence to say yes when Gustavo, a visually impaired 45 year old Informatic System Engineer, asked me to teach him English for an upcoming leadership course he was invited to attend in the Netherlands.  If I needed help I knew I could always ask my PLN for help.
The first adjustment I had to do was forgeting to work with pictures and paper coursebooks.  However Gustavo is able to read digital content at home by means of a special magnifying tool installed in his personal computer, so everything I decided to deal with in class I then transcribed to a shared Google Doc,  This document became our online workbook and everything we had to share we did it via  this Google Doc. Since he would be asked to interact in English with people from different countries, some of them visually impaired as well, and we did not have much time (only 3 months) I decided to focus on delevoping his speaking skills during classtime and leave him the responsability to devote as much time as possible to listening to everything he was interested in outside class.  I compiled a good list of podcasts for him to download and listen on the go,  his favourite was Elementary Podcasts , a series by the British Council that has often come in handy and is very popular among my students.
I also compiled a list of useful conversation phrases and at the same time I went over the basic survival vocabulary.  His previous knowledge was one he acquired from work, which was a good thing in terms of grammar structures, but I still needed to work on personal introduction and group socializing.
In the meantime, he had to prepare some content for the course so we decided to work on that.  He had to be prepared to talk about his personal and professional, life as well as his volunteer work in the association for blind and visually impaired people in our neighbouring city of Santa Fe.
As I was surfing the internet, exploring sites related to visually impaired and blind people, I came across Insight Radio and Insight Extra, a wonderful initiative to bring blind and partially sighted people content refering to sight loss issues from around the world. My student was able to listen to music as well as people speaking in English online about all sorts of stories.  I myself became a listener as I discovered the variety of options available in the different shows.
Then the day of the Skype session with one of the course trainers arrived. Being a Hello Little World Teacher Skyper I could only reassure him and tell him that everything would be all right with me on the side.  It turned out to be a wonderful experience where the interlocutor showed herself interested and kind and there were moments when the conversation seemed to flow as if we had been long time friends.  All in all it was woth every drop of Gustavo´s sweating!  My role was to set up the call, and keep my intervention to the minimum, I just provided the unknown words and intervened only when I realised that the message was not clear.  Because I had time and my phone was handy I decided to record the conversation.  I had never done it before because the mere thought of being recorded makes my students start sweating.  However Gustavo was too engrossed in the conversation to realize that I as recording him (Am I too mean for this?) and I coul not be happier later on.
Many times I heard about the benefits of videoing or recording ourselves while teaching.  It wasn´t until I did it that I came to realize how useful a recording version of a class can be.  With the digital recording of my student´s performance in my hands  I was able to upload it to the Google Doc we used as workbook.  Later on I used it to note down grammar, lexis and phonetic areas which needed to be dealt with in the course of  the following classes.  The recording was a record of my student´s achievements as well.  I highlighted phrases and sentences that I considered brilliant and complimented him on them.
My job has not finished yet and there are still many things to be done, but as I am sitting here looking  back at the work done during last month I am aware that pulling yourself out of your comfort zone by doing things in a different way is a rewarding experience.  I used my PLN when I contacted Shelly Terrell, the I-pad queen, to ask her about orientation tools or other tools that my student can use in his I-pad.  She responded asap via twitter message, and I am thankful to her for that.  It´s a great time to be a teacher today and I am glad to have taken the challenge to teach Gustavo.