Coaching connected learning across borders

Last school year I experimented with Ning in various ways including using it to house a course I was teaching with three classes and recommending it as a way of extending the conversation for the schools service of a local attraction. Ning is a personalised, scalable, social networking site which you can configure for your…

My husband had to hurredly prepare a two hour teaching session yesterday to stand in for a colleague stuck in the Azores because of the European flight cancellations. There must be thousands of people in similar situations especially in Europe but also around the world if an event involves travelling Europeans. It’s at times like…

I am just returning from my first IATEFL conference which this year was held at Harrogate. Why was this my first time even though I have been teaching English for over 10 years? I guess that I have been attending events which are geared to e-learning rather than teaching English. I get the impression that…

An aspect of intercultural learning which we haven’t looked at much so far in the Absolutely Intercultural podcast is experiences gained through voluntary work. In Barcelona at the Anna Lindh Foundation forum, I was fortunate enough to meet Rachad Izzat from Morocco who has gained a huge amount of intercultural experience through his involvement in…

On Monday 15th March I attended an event which is new to me; a learning event conducted entirely through the medium of Facebook. Now you could argue that with text and voice chat, Facebook is more than able to host live events, learning or otherwise, but this one took place entirely through the message walls.…

Pre-amble So I’m here at the Anna Lindh Foundation Forum and waiting for the workshop on creating spaces of peace and co-existence to begin. This is my first time live-blogging and I think this is going to be mentally exhausting. What often takes a great deal of time is adding links so that may come…

Tomorrow I set off for Barcelona and the Anna Lindh Foundation forum 2010 which is bringing together NGOs and voluntary organisations from around the Mediterranean in a bid to promote projects aimed at improving intercultural communication, dialogue and understanding. I have been invited as my capacity as blogger though to be honest it is more…

I’m not sure why it hasn’t occurred to me before to explore the intercultural aspects of the EVonline sessions for language teachers offered by TESOL. For 8 years now I have been enjoying and benefitting from the international mix of teachers who sign up for these free development sessions and so in the last Absolutely…

I spend a great deal of my time now moderating online teacher training courses to help teachers integrate ICT into their teaching. This means that a great deal of technical stuff is going on both from my end and at their end. Often problems can be solved by a quick exchange of e-mails. Sometimes adding…

In order to attract teens to continue their education after the compulsory leaving age, one tactic is to hold open days where prospective students can get a taste of what life at our vocational college is like. Last year we attempted to run a continuous radio show on Ustream relying on live talk and invited studio…