Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi Everybody,
I thought I would update you on what I am learning about online teaching.
1. Korea Yahoo has a lot of great animated activites including stories, songs and TPR in English. I have not bookmarked the site. Instead I set my google language preferences to Korean and google "children's stories English Korea yahoo" That way I can look at other good Korean resources. If you teach kids, you will want to check it out.
2. Are you thinking about teaching online, but don't feel too confident about those online skills yet? At Skype you can find people to talk to (pick you language - they are all there) and hone those mic skills. If you already feel comfortable with VoIP, you might want to move on to the MSN, Yahoo, or AOL capabilites of webcam, whiteboard and applications sharing.
3. I am currently working on setting up small discussion groups (using Skype) about current events and interests with students all over the world. We are quickly being joined by so many students that I cannot keep up with all of them by myself. These groups really need professional TESOL people to help them. These students can find people to talk with, but if there is a discussion group whose purpose is to hone in on specific skills, they need someone to help them. If you are interested in being a moderator, let me know and we can talk about setting something up. Don't worry about your current computer skills, these young people can help you.
4. Those of you who are teaching online or thinking about it: Please reply to this post with your expereince and/or questions about teaching online. I know there are folks out there who have expereince we can all benefit from.
Thanks, Kathy

Hi, I am interested in your message. Would l ike to have some further exchange with you. Furthermore, I am a teacher of around 350 students who are teachers of english and they are interested in online teaching. Please write to [email protected] to which all my students have access to. You may get some replies from them. Best wishes!

Liang from China

Hello

I would add one more element to make the cycle more complete and it is training.

We have been training teachers for the EDEXCEL - University of London Diploma in Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages and some 100 candidates have been doing it online.

If we do not start with the training then it is a coded failure since teachers / trainers are only able to train / teach in methods they themselves can learn with.

If we start with the training then we have to build up a whole system as the conceptual basis of the whole training teaching learning assessment cycle, i. e. the

trainer training,
teacher training,
teaching,
peer-learning,
learning to learn,
autonomous learning,
assessing the trainer training,
assessing the teacher training,
assessing the teaching,
assessing the peer-learning,
assessing the learning to learn,
assessing the autonomous learning,
peer-assessment of the trainer training,
peer-assessment of the teacher training,
peer-assessment of the teaching (in the training and in team-teaching),
peer-assessment of the learning,
self-assessment of the trainer training,
self-assessment of the teacher training,
self-assessment of the teaching,
self-assessment of the learning,
self-monitoring of the trainer training,
self-monitoring of the teacher training,
self-monitoring of the teaching,
self-monitoring of the learning,

and they all must be based on the same principles.

Leslie