Ann Foreman June 2011 British Council

REAL TICE | Making sense of chaos | Madrid 2011

Making sense of chaos: how to use social networks to keep up to date with new technology and to find out what works best in language learning/teaching Prezi workshop presentation

Making sense of chaos

All of us feel overwhelmed when we think about whats available out there to us on the internet. We recognise the wealth of information it offers us but often feel dragged down by the shear weight of what we find. The question is: how can we confront this apparently teeming chaos? I drew inspiration for this workshop by reading about chaos theory in particular, John Gribbins book called Deep simplicity. His message is that chaos is the very stuff of life. However, the good news is that we can deal with it by identifying and employing relatively simple ground rules. Hopefully, this workshop will help us to do just that. I work as a social network coordinator for the British Council as part of its Global English team.

I run its TeachEnglish facebook page, frequently tweet on twitter (@ann_f, @TeachingEnglish) and read a lot of language teaching blogs. Being in daily contact with these social networks has been a boon. It has enabled me to discover best practices in language learning and keep up to date with how teachers are experimenting with new technology in classroom. In short, it has allowed me to continually recycle and update my professional knowledge. In this workshop, I want to share the insights Ive gained from my work in the hope that you too can see a way of using social networks for your own professional development. What Ill be proposing is a kind of Do-It-Yourself plan with a little help from your friends. We all recognise that we learn most through our contact with other people especially the people we value, who have proved their worth to us, and who we know can point us in the right direction. Thats why a good staffroom proves to be the single most important element in any teachers scheme of professional development. And with the right approach I think that social networks can help us extend that staffroom out onto the internet.

Workshop schema
What I want to cover in this workshop: To look at how we can use social networks where we are in regular contact with people we trust to identify and track the latest developments in language teaching & learning. And how, as a consequence, we can use them as a tools for our own DIY professional development. This is the starting off point for our first group discussion Next well consider 4 levels of DIY professional development. These are self-devised, schematic and certainly not scientifically grounded. Most importantly, they dont entail value judgements I dont consider one level to be better than another. Nor do they assume that youll be a better teacher if youre at one level or another. Rather, they are meant to describe different ways of organising professional development and to provide a basis for discussion. The idea is, that as we go through the descriptions of the 4 levels, you will come across different ways of managing and nurturing your own DIY professional development ones that perhaps might not have occurred to you. Hopefully in the process of looking at specific examples of internet content and tools, youll find things that you will want to take on board. My examples are mainly taken from the world of English Language Teaching the world I move in. However, the tools, techniques and methods well be looking at are more or less the same for all language teachers. After looking at the 4 levels of DIY professional development, we will have a group

discussion on what it all implies: o what level of DIY professional development you think suits you best, o the pros and cons of approaching professional development in this way, o what tools & techniques youve used and find helpful o any additions you have to the ones Ive suggested In short, what your plan is for DIY professional development Finally, well sum up the main points of our discussion and consider how you can organise yourself within social networks and operate effectively at the level of professional development you feel most comfortable with.

Using social networks for Do-It-Yourself professional development Were waving not drowning
The aim of this workshop is to save us from the sense of drowning in a sea of information a watery theme repeated throughout this presentation

Apologies to Stevie Smith Not waving but drowning

What social networks, if any, do you use for your professional development? What kind of information do they give you? How useful do you find them?
Group discussion

4 levels of Do-It-Yourself professional development Which one are you?

As we go through the 4 different levels, ask yourself which one best describes your current state of professional development and involvement in language teaching social networks.

Toe in the water

You:

know and make use of some language teaching/learning websites More and more websites, like the TeachingEnglish website, attempt to build up a sense of community with features such as comments/forums/blogs

have a facebook account and have liked some facebook pages related to language teaching/learning and follow up their posts & links on your newsfeed A good facebook page constitutes a lively exchange of posts & comments from the people who like it not only the posts from the page owner. It can be an extremely handy way to keep informed of whats happening in your field. For example, the TeachingEnglish facebook page has more than 23,000 people who follow it (the majority on a regular basis) and currently about 30 ELT bloggers who regularly post on the page

Getting the drift

In addition you: have a twitter account and follow some language teacher tweeters twitter is a place where people exchange information, ask questions, get replies, follow trends. When you identify people who share the same interests and follow them, it opens up a whole new way of keeping informed about whats happening in your professional world. have joined a number of language teaching/learning-related facebook pages and groups and regularly make posts/comments There are an increasing number of pages and groups on facebook that are based on professional communities. For example, EU Educators is A facebook group for educators interested in participating in or supporting European Union education projects within the Lifelong learning programme. Find the pages/groups that match your interests and theyll provide you with links to useful information have some favourite language teaching blogs and keep a look out for new posts Good blogs, like Box of Chooclates by Cecila Lemos, are the meat of teaching & learning social networks. Theyre where teachers put forward new ideas on the teaching & learning process, reflect on their practice, offer lesson plans and class activities. A great way to learn and find things to try out in your classes. have a delicious or diigo account and bookmark materials relevant to language teaching/ learning These not only provide a handy repository for bookmarks of stuff that youve read, and want to save as references or links to stuff you mean to read later but they also have an important social component. You can form networks, join groups and so find out what internet content other people in your field and related fields are bookmarking.

In the flow

In addition you: participate in #ELTchat or #Edchat on twitter #ELTchat and #Edchat is something that happens on twitter. Tweeters meet up live every week to exchange ideas on a chosen topic. For a couple of hours, twitter works like an online chat with teachers giving each other tips, asking each other questions. Its a unique opportunity to learn from the experience of teachers from all over the world. use a newsreader to subscribe to and keep up to date with a list of language teaching bloggers If youre like me and find bloggers a real goldmine of information and new ideas, then a newsreader, like Google Reader, is an essential way of keeping track of them. It not only lets you keep up to date with new posts, but allows you to search through them when youre looking for ideas on a given topic. add comments to your favourite language teaching blogs Bloggers, like Scott Thornbury, thrive on comments and sometimes the comments on a post can actually be more interesting than the posts themselves. A good way to dig deeper into a subject that interests you. Use Scoop.it to get updates of what other people in your field and related fields consider note-worthy There are increasingly more resources on the internet to hep people curate material. Scoop.it is a new form of bookmarking where you see the content, not just the link. You can also follow topics you find useful and interact with them. A tool to keep in mind for your classes: use it to provide content related to a topic for your students or get them to curate content themselves for class projects. participate in Nings, online course and webinars Nings, online course and webinars are all ways of making contact and interchanging

ideas with people while going deeper into your field. Exchanges can be simultaneous or asynchronous as many of them incorporate online chat or discussion forums One that I really recommend is the series of online courses run by the Electric Village Online at the beginning of every year attend language teaching conferences For an increasing number of people, conferences like TESOL provide a way to meet up face2face with the people that theyve maintained online contact with through social networks throughout the year know the current language teaching buzzwords If youre active in twitter, and read language teaching blogs then youre sure to know what these are. Critical thinking is one of the current ones, along with mobile learning and, in ELT, Dogme. Making waves

In addition you: have compiled an #ELTchat summary A fantastic feature of #ELTchat is that somebody always provides a summary of what tweeters have talked about each week. As it says, the summary is a ready-made Professional Learning Network have your own language teaching blog, Scoop.it page or Ning and join in the conversation by posting comments and responding to blogger challenges Bloggers have boundless energy to create more and more networking and learning opportunities. Challenges like these provide them with the incentive to jointly pursue a topic of common interest which is often a way the current buzzwords come into being. know about the aPLaNet project and plan to participate in it as a mentor

This is an EU project to to create support and resources which will help foreign language teachers in Europe to understand and use social networks. The aim is not only to point teachers in the direction of tools and resources they might find useful but to provide mentors that will help them along the way. Something to keep tabs on if you went to Graham Stanleys session you will already know all about it present at international ELT/ MFL conferences and produce online courses / webinars and help to establish what the language teaching buzzwords are If you do all this, then youre probably on the way to becoming someone like Scott Thornbury someone who not only is continually contributing to the theory and practice of ELT, but also uses all the social networks effectively to get feedback and go deeper into the issues that interest him. And in doing so, he has become a key component in very many English language teachers professional development tool-kits

What one are you?

At which level do you want to be? How can you organise yourself to get where you want to be? Discussion: o o o o

what level of DIY professional development you think suits you best, the pros and cons of approaching professional development in this way, what tools & techniques youve used and find helpful any additions you have to the ones Ive suggested

How to organise yourself and operate efficiently at the level you choose
creating a personal network of trusted nodes choose your learning community/ define and nurturing your networks Decide what your interests are e.g. teaching methodology, class content providers, educational technology Use the social networks that best suit you: twitter, facebook, forums, conferences online or off selecting and filtering

 employ the right tools to help you/ identify and follow mentors Use social bookmarking, news readers, curating tools, Skype Follow writers, conference presenters, key bloggers

Who are your mentors?

My favourite ELT & EdTech blogger mentors

Shelly Terrell http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/ Jason Renshaw http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/ Kieran Donaghy http://film-english.com/ Jamie Keddie http://lessonstream.org/browse-lessons/ Paul Braddock http://bcnpaul1.blogspot.com/ Karenne Sylvester http://kalinago.blogspot.com/ Nik Peachy http://quickshout.blogspot.com/ Cecilia Coelho http://cecilialcoelho.wordpress.com/ Sue Lyon-Jones http://www.scoop.it/t/cpd-in-education Scott Thornbury http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/ Kyle Mawer/Graham Stanley http://digitalplay.info/blog/ Nicky Hockly http://www.emoderationskills.com/ Adam Simpson http://www.yearinthelifeofanenglishteacher.com Claire Hart http://businessenglishlessonplans.wordpress.com Adam Simpson http://www.yearinthelifeofanenglishteacher.com David Mainwood http://efllecturer.blogspot.com/ David Dodgson http://www.davedodgson.com/ Sean Banville http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com Ewan McIntosh http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/ Richard Byrnes http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ Stephen Downes http://www.downes.ca/

Resources for DIY professional development:

Resources for Growing Your Professional Learning Network http://www.edutopia.org/resourcesgrowing-professional-learning-network Build your PLN http://www.onlinecollege.org/inside-online-learning/2011/04/26/build-your-pln/ What Will You Learn this Summer? 26 Professional Development Resources Shelly Terrell http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/2011/05/26/what-will-you-learn-this-summer-23professional-development-resources/ Teacher training videos: Russell Stannard http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

SchoolsWorld.tv videos showing best teaching practice http://www.schoolsworld.tv/videos/ Sites For Educators http://cristinaskybox.blogspot.com/p/for-educators.html English Companion Ning http://tinyurl.com/4fydjb (thanks to David Leal)

Making sense of chaos

A connectivist approach the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, complexity, and self-organization theories: George Siemens