Conference in Tokyo
I went to Tokyo with two colleagues on the weekend to attend JALT CALL - Japan Association of Language Teaching Computer Assisted Language Learning. It was interesting, although it varied in the quality of the presentations. It was wonderful to just GO somewhere different from Nagoya! And I have always loved riding the shinkansen.
It was great to network with other people doing the same things too and quite an eye opener for how techy it all is now. I chatted and exchanged business cards with quite a few women there too, although there were far fewer women that men attending. Hopefully I'll get time to keep up a connection with other professional women. Perhaps opportunities to collaborate on research will evolve.
Our new Department of English at work is very keen on integrating Moodle, an open source Course Management System (CMS) written by some Perth (Aust) guy into educational delivery - all our new students have macbooks and an iPod loaned to them from the get-go and they can keep it if they graduate. J from work and I are on the CMS committee for that. Ours is presently in beta, and I am struggling to get the time to work on it with the myriad other things to do, but the conference gave me the chance to learn a lot, even though some of the presenters went too fast for me, and I feel more motivated now. It gave me directions and some ideas for what is possible with blended modes of learning, especially with regard to Extensive Reading for which I am the co-ordinator.
It was great to network with other people doing the same things too and quite an eye opener for how techy it all is now. I chatted and exchanged business cards with quite a few women there too, although there were far fewer women that men attending. Hopefully I'll get time to keep up a connection with other professional women. Perhaps opportunities to collaborate on research will evolve.
Our new Department of English at work is very keen on integrating Moodle, an open source Course Management System (CMS) written by some Perth (Aust) guy into educational delivery - all our new students have macbooks and an iPod loaned to them from the get-go and they can keep it if they graduate. J from work and I are on the CMS committee for that. Ours is presently in beta, and I am struggling to get the time to work on it with the myriad other things to do, but the conference gave me the chance to learn a lot, even though some of the presenters went too fast for me, and I feel more motivated now. It gave me directions and some ideas for what is possible with blended modes of learning, especially with regard to Extensive Reading for which I am the co-ordinator.