Thursday, December 27, 2007

EVO 08 Coming

I’m copying below Dafne’s invitation to join this year’s TESOL Electronic Village Online, a series of free 6-week online workshops. I first heard about EVO sessions about two, three years ago after just missing the 05 event. I joined one of the sessions despite being too late for the main action, explored resources a bit, and decided to definitely return in time for the next round. In 06 I took part in ‘Becoming a Webhead’ and this year in ‘Becoming a Webhead’, ‘Blogging for Beginners’, and ‘ESP Potpourri’. I very much enjoyed them all. Learning collaboratively with and from other educators from all over the globe is simply great (especially for couch potatoes like me ;-)). It importantly influenced my view of teaching and learning and I’m definitely coming back for more this January again. :-) Here's Dafne's invite:
Dear all,
The CALL Interest Section of the international TESOL professional association is pleased to offer the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2008 season. This is a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2008 Convention in New York. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL 2008 participants
and those who can participate only virtually.

You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate in a free , six-week , wholly online session of the EVO, Jan 14 - Feb 24, 2008. Please visit our Announcement Page to select one or two among the various offerings.

http://evo08sessionscfp.pbwiki.com/FrontPage#Sessions2008

Feel free to distribute this annoucement.

Looking forward to having you in the EVO 2008 sessions,

Yours in TESOL ,

Dafne Gonzalez
On behalf of the EVO coordination team

2 comments:

Dennis said...

Živjo, Saša.

I was also looking forward to the 2008 EVO sessions and it's amazing and exciting to know that they have now officially begun. The kick-off event yesterday (13-01-08) was a great success, I think, even though there were technical challenges. I, for one, view the challenges as a valuable lesson: currently available technology is wonderful indeed, but as the number of synchronous users increases, so do the chances that online applications will "misbehave." All of us eventually come to accept this as "par for the course," but newcomers to CMC (computer-mediated communication) are often dismayed when this happens and feel that any challenges are caused by their own lack of skill, not the varying robustness of software.

On a personal note, I was honored and pleased to be asked to be a co-moderator for Ba@08 and a "special contributor" for another group, Blogging For Educators. These honors were deeply appreciated, but they've come when I have many other tasks competing for my time. It may seem, since I am no longer teaching, that I have much more time than I previously did, but this isn't actually the case. Keeping up with the requirements of maintaining my disability leave and other responsibilities (such as having dinner ready when my sister returns home from work, maintaining the Arizona TESOL website and participating in AZ-TESOL's planning sessions, and helping my sister with Blackboard and word processing) are amazingly time-consuming. Consequently, I haven't been able to participate very much in the pre-session BaW and B4E activities. Fortunately, however, there are others who have done (and continue to do) a splendid job of keeping things dynamic and engaging—and beginning today, I will find a way to increase my interactivity.

I agree with you, Saša, that " . . . learning collaboratively with and from other educators from all over the globe is simply great," but I cannot imagine you as a "couch potato": no way that this could be true!

Warmest regards—and, of course, objemi!

Dennis in Phoenix

Saša said...

Dear Dennis,
The kick off was very exciting, yes. I enjoyed seeing so many people in the chatroom. I had to restart the audio numerous times while listening so I didn't hear everything, but as you said, it's good to 'view the challenges as a valuable lesson.' You are a webhead in the truest sense of the word :-).
Time management skills is what I badly need improving too... Especially in the EVO season...
A big hug from the rainy Gorica, s