Cardiff says hello to the world:
On April 1st, 2009, over 1600 teachers and academics from around the world will descend on Cardiff for the annual conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).
The conference boasts an international line up of world-class plenary speakers;
Delegates hail from as far as Vietnam, Venezuela, Cameroon and Micronesia.
However there are many thousands of professionals for whom attending the conference is usually no more than a dream because of the costs involved in travel to UK.
Therefore this year the event is being made accessible to thousands more participants from all around the globe through a virtual community space, known as ‘Cardiff on-line.’ This exciting and ground-breaking innovation is possible due to a collaboration between IATEFL and The British Council and is in line with their aim to link and support English language professionals worldwide.
The event, April 1 - April 4th 2009, is expected to be one of the biggest global teacher development events ever.
A large team will be in place behind the scenes to bring the workshops and speeches to remote audiences. Any teacher, anywhere in the world, from Mongolia, Nepal or Ethiopia to Germany, the USA and Japan will be able to sign up and participate for free in the conference from their own country.
All they'll need is good internet access, a computer and preferably a headset. All the plenary talks, as well as a sizable number of other presentations will be shown live over the Net, recorded and also made available on the conference site for later viewing.
There are also numerous forums discussing all aspects of the EFL profession, (already very active and engaging) photo albums, chat sessions and prizes!
See you there,
Best,
Karenne
Biggest global teaching event ever!
On April 1st, 2009, over 1600 teachers and academics from around the world will descend on Cardiff for the annual conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).
The conference boasts an international line up of world-class plenary speakers;
- Marc Prensky (from USA),
- Elana Shohamy (from Israel),
- Bonny Norton (from Canada),
- Fauzia Shamim (from Pakistan),
- Claudia Ferredas (from Argentina).
Delegates hail from as far as Vietnam, Venezuela, Cameroon and Micronesia.
However there are many thousands of professionals for whom attending the conference is usually no more than a dream because of the costs involved in travel to UK.
Therefore this year the event is being made accessible to thousands more participants from all around the globe through a virtual community space, known as ‘Cardiff on-line.’ This exciting and ground-breaking innovation is possible due to a collaboration between IATEFL and The British Council and is in line with their aim to link and support English language professionals worldwide.
The event, April 1 - April 4th 2009, is expected to be one of the biggest global teacher development events ever.
A large team will be in place behind the scenes to bring the workshops and speeches to remote audiences. Any teacher, anywhere in the world, from Mongolia, Nepal or Ethiopia to Germany, the USA and Japan will be able to sign up and participate for free in the conference from their own country.
All they'll need is good internet access, a computer and preferably a headset. All the plenary talks, as well as a sizable number of other presentations will be shown live over the Net, recorded and also made available on the conference site for later viewing.
There are also numerous forums discussing all aspects of the EFL profession, (already very active and engaging) photo albums, chat sessions and prizes!
See you there,
Best,
Karenne
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Useful links related to this posting:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009
Poster for your staffroom:
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/2009/webgraphics/staffroom-poster.pdf
This text is an adaptation of the IATEFL Press release (March 09) , used with permission.
Thanks for letting us know about this! I hope Marc is virtual - I'm a big fan of his thinking....
ReplyDeleteI applaud all conferences starting to see that an online component in our growing field is essential. I butted heads with the international TEFL conference here in Korea on this. They are still so stone age. I even had to bring my own speakers to my presentation room - that's how bad it can get (and I was speaking on text to speech). Oh well, slow but sure and it takes time for people to see the value of what we do online...
cheers,
David
By all means go to Cardiff, but avoid the Conference - total BORE!! Try the pubs out instead - you'll enjoy yourself much more, and get to meet some real people too!
ReplyDeleteGood lead. Wish I could go.
ReplyDeleteBut is this the biggest educational conference? Hardly. TESOL will attract at least 8,000 this year and claimed over 12,000 last year. Sorry to be nit-picking.
Thanks, again, for the lead and the great enthusiasm.
Hi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIt is totally cool to nitpick, don't worry about that however you didn't really read through the posting properly. It is the biggest online conference because it's going to be available to anyone anywhere -it's online.
xK