IH Teachers’ Online Conference, 25 May 2012

International House is running its second Teachers’ Online Conference and, this time, it is open to all!

The conference will be held throughout Friday, May 25th 2012 catering for all time zones from East to West. However, non-IH staff can only take part from 13.00GMT.

This conference has been put together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of International House Teacher Training. It will take place online, using Blackboard Collaborate virtual conference rooms (kindly provided by OUP) which let you attend the conference from anywhere in the world. All you need is an internet connection and a headset with microphone.

How to take part

Please read the instructions for how to take part in the online classroom.

• How to enter a workshop
• How to participate in a workshop
• Watch a video

Troubleshooting

If you have problems logging in to the online classroom please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). If you have problems during a session, please send the moderator a chat message and they will try and help you. Remember we will be very busy during the day, so please only contact us once you have read all of the relevant instructions and tried to solve your problem by yourself. We will endeavour to help you as soon as ‘the action’ allows.

Timetable - links to the classrooms will be added at 12.00 GMT on the day of the conference.

Session abstracts

Simon Greenall - IH Trust - The decline and fall of coursebooks?
Coursebooks not only continue to get written, but continue to get written about and written off with equal regularity. The Decline and Fall of Coursebooks? will consider the present day polemic in favour of and against coursebooks, and set it against a review of their recent past history. It will examine the dilemmas and compromises which coursebook publishing and writing face today and in the future.

Shawn Severson - IH Porto - New Worlds of ESL Teaching: GMAT, GRE, TOEFL and IELTS
A potential student needs at least 700 on the GMAT.  Puzzled?  Increasingly, students look to IH for help into the world of Academia in English. Hence, it is our lot to teach such entry exams as the GMAT.  Be not afraid of acronyms.  We will look at how to plan and tailor these 1:1 or small group speciality exam courses as well as strategies for student success.  This session is meant to give you an overview of what these exams all have in common and an idea of what resources you can use to guide your students bravely into these New worlds. 

Emma Cresswell - IH Buenos Aires, San Isidro - Podcasts: a modern take on listening and speaking
Are your listening activities sounding a bit lacklustre? Do your speaking activities leave people speechless? Add another element to your repertoire with podcasts.

The ever-growing world of digital media players has led to a rise in popularity of podcasts in recent years. Find out more about these versatile recordings as well as a number of activities aimed at incorporating them into your listening and speaking classes.

Lisa Phillips – IH Buenos Aires, Recoleta – Collocations Conundrum
A refresher on some of the theory related to collocations and some practical ideas on how we can help our learners to put together the pieces in their heads to become more effective language learners.

Estelle Huxley – IH Londres – La prononciation du français
Dans cet atelier, nous discuterons des multiples difficultés que les étudiants rencontrent avec la prononciation du français, ce qui affecte non seulement la communication mais aussi la compréhension orale et comment y remédier au travers d’idées et d’activités pratiques... avec ou sans phonétique!

Neil McMahon – IHWO Academic Coordinator Resources & DoS Support, IH Buenos Aires Teacher Training - Surviving through song: words of wisdom for NQTs

The first year or two of teaching post-CELTA or teaching college are usually a wave of hits and misses, successes and insecurities.  In Surviving through song, we’ll look for words of wisdom from the best of the last fifty years of music that will help make our early (and not so early) days of teaching a more comfortable and rewarding experience as we continue to grow as teachers.  At the same time we’ll see a variety of ways of exploiting songs in class to promote engaging and personalised skills and language work and get the students thinking as well as singing.

Sandy Millin - IH Newcastle - 24/7 Professional Development through Twitter
Twitter is a waste of time, right? Wrong!
Twitter is the place to access a supportive and inspirational community of English teachers, trainers and writers from around the world. In this workshop I aim to show you how to access this community and get the most out of it without feeling too overwhelmed. I will go over the basics of Twitter, including some of the most common jargon and shorthand, and introduce you to some of the people you can find there and the useful things that they share.
Welcome to a whole new way of approaching CPD!

Dominique Vouillemin - IH London - Business Culture Frameworks for Monolingual Business English Classes      
Current best practice in Business English (BE) training includes culture and soft skills along with the more familiar lexical input and output, work on language systems and regular task and feedback fluency cycles
How can the BE language trainer incorporate awareness of the importance of culture in business and professional communication in the predominantly single nationality learning groups throughout the IHWO?  What are these soft skills and cultural considerations and how do they help the BE learner to be more effective in the English required to do the job? Are we as BE trainers up to the required self-examination and in-depth exploration of our own cultural and professional background?
This presentation will offer some experiential BE training room frameworks originating in cultural theory which personalize culture and give practice in identifying and developing  soft skills. 

Natalia González - IH Montevideo - Collaborative Exam Speaking

At FCE and CAE candidates are expected to achieve a collaborative task by maintaining a conversation in a context that does not necessarily lend itself to authentic communication.

In Collaborative Exam Speaking, we will analyse collaborative tasks and reflect on typical learner problems as well as different activities that can be set to help them develop strategies to cope with this part of the speaking component.

Hector Low - IH Bogota - Using Authentic Literature with Young Learner Classes   
Given the training that most of us have received e.g. CELTA, there is a possibility that our approaches to teaching and learning don’t always meet the needs and expectations of students and parents. The workshop consists of a variety of activities and tasks which aim to develop an awareness and understanding of the theory on the use of authentic literature, including:
● what to look for in children’s stories
● children’s stories, authors or illustrators
● how to captivate young learners
● what can be done after reading the story: class extension activities
● how to create a ‘scheme of work’ from a story book
Participants will be asked to share experiences and discuss ideas but hopefully will leave with some practical ideas for using authentic literature with their classes. Many of the ideas are suitable for adult classes too.

Workshop etiquette

Please read the following information and bear it in mind during your IH Teachers Online Conference workshop, so that you and the other participants can enjoy the event to the full.

• Arrive early so you can check your audio settings (by clicking on Tools, Audio, Configuration) before the workshop begins (the room will be open 15 mins before the workshop starts)
• Please use headphones during workshops to avoid echo and feedback noise for other participants if you intend to participate through using the microphone.
• Only turn your microphone on (Talk button in top left corner) when you are about to speak
• When your microphone is on, the button turns yellow and any sound you make will be visible in the sound bar above it
• When you are not speaking, keep your microphone turned off by clicking the microphone button again
• Keep chat in the chat box related to the workshop
• If you need to step away from the session, click on the door icon above the participants panel to show that you are absent from the session, so that you aren’t put in a group or nominated while you’re away
• If you want to speak while someone else is talking, put your hand up (by clicking on the hand icon above the participants panel) and wait to be invited to speak by the presenter
• Don’t worry if you arrive late or cannot attend the whole workshop.  You are still welcome to join us since you will not interrupt the session by entering or leaving the classroom while the session is in progress.  We’d love to have you with us whenever you can make it!
• Enjoy all the workshops you go to on conference day and recommend the next one to your colleagues!

Thank you to our sponsor!