A year of big changes!

2018 is coming to an end and so I've realised it's been a year of big changes in many ways. 

Academically - I feel really satisfied with all the learning done this year! In my last post I shared I had started the IH London Diploma in Academic Management and well, I finished it in Aug and got a Distinction, so I couldn't be more pleased. It was hard but a rewarding experience and I learnt lots both from my tutor Maureen McGarvey and my classmates.

I also completed a few very interesting MOOCS: Culture of Services: A New Perspective on Customer Relations with EdXand the University of Kyoto. It was a real help during the IH London Diploma above.

The next course was a Udemy online course: Become a SuperLearner2: Speed Reading and Boost your Memory, which I enjoyed a lot too.

And the last one, also online, by Trinity College London - Excellent in Education: Quest for the Best: Teaching and Learning Vocabulary which I also enjoyed a lot. There were lots of interesting materials and the tutor, James Easton, was excellent too! 

I've started learning Basque while taking advantage of the fact that it is widely spoken here in my new town and that people are so friendly and patient when I try to practice everywhere I go. It's going to take a long time as it is truly difficult a language, but I love it and am determined to learn as much as I can and use it as much as possible too!  In also resumed French lessons at work so I couldn't be happier a man - I love languages and having a job that allows me to learn then and use them is a blessing! I've been actively using Memrise, Quizlet and following a couple of YouTubers (Eskera Satorra) to keep up with my learning curve!

My next academic adventure is the new Going Mobile Online Course by TheConsultants-e.com running from 1-20 Feb 2019! Nicky and Gavin's book Going Mobile is a great resource in the classroom already so I can't wait to start this course. Also, I'm seriously considering doing a PhD in Education and so that's in the back burner for the moment. I'm really thankful to my last MA tutor at the University of Nottingham, Cecilia Goria for her support and encouragement at this stage!

Personally - ups and downs family-wise but Thank God everything back to normal now. I also left my previous post as Academic Manager at GIGA IH Catania where I was for 8.5 years to join Lacunza IH in the Basque Country as Director/Team Leader Goierri Area at Lacunza IH Beasain. I learnt tons at GIGA and had a very productive time there, but it was time to move on to face new challenges!

I've resumed running and going to the fantastic gym here in my new town too so I'm really excited about all the new and positive aspects of our new life here!

ICT-wise - I continue to experiment and explore tech tools for the classroom so my blogging will resume shortly too!

Genyally - it's simply great

I came across Genially just recently thorugh a Twitter post by Nick Peachey and I simnply loved it. I think it's got a lot of potential for presenting information in a nice and visual way for our students.  Nick's great Genially presentation on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs here (there are links to Nick's social media at the end of the presentation) is a wonderful example of how you can use it.

I have now created a Teacher account and will start exploring it asap as I can see it can be very useful for me as a teacher trainer and learner myself. I'll keep you posted as I'll report soon on how I use it while reviewing it from a teacher's point of view.

Google Keep - a must keep!

I came across Google Keep not long ago and it's been an incredibly flexible tool so I decided to write a short entry here to share what I've been using it for and how useful it's been. There are other programs out there to make notes and organise one's ideas, commitments, etc., like EverNote, OneNote, Swipes and many more. Jimmy Daly's blog post here offers up to 14 different ones!

As I said earlier, I've been using Google Keep and it's been really simple to use and very useful so I would definitely recommend it to anyone doing lots of different things and wanting to be able to make, classify, find, edit, etc., notes in their daily lives.  As I have several roles besides my full time job, Google Keep is helping me organise all those extra commitments I have easily as you can create labels for the different categories you need and also colour code them.  They're accessible to you anywhere you go and so it's easy to keep track of all the different things I need to do. Here's a Google Keep video with the basics and do share the good stuff!

Update - after using it for over 6 months now (Jan 2018) I can say that Google Keep is definitely a tool worth exploring and using. I have at least 4 or 5 different jobs and so Keep helps me keep tabs on all my commitments and projects offering a lot of flexibility as I can create to-do lists or simply notes, I can also label them by creating the label I need to group them together thus making it is easier to organise. I can also add visuals, pictures and links to specific notes so this has been very useful when I get specific info from different parties at the same time on different projects or activities. Once done, I can archive them and move on and the best feature of all for me: that you can access your notes and important info anywhere on any browser and on your phone so I would recommend it without reservations.

Here we go again!

Hello!

It's been four months since my last post and I must confess it's been hectic to say the least. This is, of course, no excuse for my absence so here's an update on all the things I've been working on since then.  As regards my full time job, it's going well and as usual I'm enjoying it immensely. I think it's great when you can honestly say you do want to go to work in the morning so in spite of the usual ups and down we all go through, things are going well and changes are ahead as my role is changing from DoS to Academic Manager with a more supervisory capacity, but still very involved in the academics of the school and of course, Teacher Training and Development, which is my true love.

My external activities are also thriving and this year I started working for IDP as a language consultant so a very exciting opportunity from which I'm learning lots and also traveling a bit more! Language assessment can be said to be my second true love and as such I'm getting more and more involved in it as a lead trainer also for Cambridge so I'm very pleased that I can learn and also make a difference in the lives of those colleagues I'm to lead for.

Study-wise, I had said in late September last year after finishing my second MA wonderful results that I would have taken a break from study for a year as I have not stopped studying in the last 12 years and was feeling it was a time for me to focus on work and on making a bit of money! However, I cannot help it! So I've enrolled in the Diploma in Academic Management offered by International House London. As part of the Ih Family I know lots of people there and some of the tutors so I can't wait to learn with and from them!

As part of my Head of Teacher Training role, I will be leading the team offering the International House Certificate in Teaching Young Learners and Teenagers at GIGA Ih Catania and so I'm now busy making sure the transition from the Cambridge YL Extension to CELTA into the IHCYL&T course, also validated by Cambridge, is smooth.  So if you're interested our next teacher training and development courses are:

CELTA 5-week course Mon through Thu: Aug 1 - Sep 5

IHCTYL&T 2-week course Mon through Fri:  C1 - Sep 11 - 22 & C2 - Sep 25 - Oct 6.

You can email me at direzionedidattica@gigact.com for information and an application pack.

Bye for now!

Time to come back!

It's 2017 already and time does fly when one is having fun! I finished my MA in September last year and it seems like it was yesterday when I got the great news that I had got a Distinction. After that, it's all been really busy with new projects, courses, training, assessing, inspecting and examining! You name it!  I wanted to get on to a PhD, but it's all been so busy - enjoyable and challenging at the same time - that I have decided to have a short break and dedicate myself to all the different projects ahead of me.

I'm back now and looking forward to getting back into creating videos, trying out apps and tools and briefly writing about them so stay tuned!

Slack - making communication easy

I came across Slack last year while working on my MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching and decided to give it a try with my peers on the course. Well, I signed up, created an account and then invited my classmates. It was easy and very quickly we started using it to keep up with our own lives, tasks and assignments for the course and above all to share resources, materials and encouragement before and through our dissertation writing months.

We quickly took to it and although we were using lots of the basic features, it really helped us get through it without losing touch. I've now started exploring the extra resources they offer e.g. video tutorials here and extra resources here as I've created a private group inside it for my school and we will be using it from next month to enhance communication between staff. I'm sure it will be as useful as it's been so far as it can be used on a web browser and mobiles devices both Android and IOs. I've got an iMac at home, an iPad and a desktop and Samsung laptop at school and Slack works wonderfully across all of them. 

You can create a free account which has worked wonders for me as an individual and want to see how it will work for me at school with a small number of colleagues. I'm sure it will be fine.  In any case, you can also get a paid for subscription and unleash its potential, which I think it's definitely worth it!  For the time being, as an individual teacher, I'm sticking to the free account but would highly recommend it based on my experience of it so far!

 

MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching? Done!

It's been just over a year since I last posted here and so I thought it was about time I came back.  As per my entries on the MA course tabs I created to track and help me reflect on my second MA studies, I finished the content modules in Dec 2015. This year has been dedicated to the dissertation and I'm now back posting here as I managed to finish it 2.5 month early.  No, I'm not a nerd - ok, maybe, a little! This is mainly because of my work load during the summer where I regularly act as Main Course Tutor on our full time CELTA courses and so I couldn't see myself writing am MA dissertation and working 10 hours a day on top of that, so I got very well organised from the beginning of the school year and managed to completed it in record time. It's now time to wait for the results and once they come out organising the trip to Nottingham for the graduation ceremony in Novemeber - I think.

Anyways, I wanted to bring everybody up to speed here and so I also wanted to share my dissertation topic.  Fro my previous MA in TESOL I researched a topic which is still very controversial: Pre-Teaching Vocabulary in Receptive Skills Lessons. Results showed that there is indeed a place for PTV but under specific circumstances.  Anyways, the topic for my second MA was: The Role of Social Media in the Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teacher Trainers and the results were very interesting.  As part of the program we were asked recently to prepare a quick presentation on the what, the why and the how of our dissertations and so I thought I'd share it here. I hope it helps you see it from my perspective.

What's next? Well, I'm doing soem research into another MA or as suggested by my tutors on both MAs, a PhD. I've attended a couple of PhD webinars and also looked for what's out there so I'm carefully considering the options. In order to keep me busy in the meantime though I'm doing a Level 5 CMI Management and Leadership course online with FutureLearn which I'm enjoying a lot as I'd like my future studies or research to go in that direction. We'll see what happens next!