04/10 - Harrogate, UK

Pre-Conference Events

 

This year for our PCE we offered a variant of an Un-Conference for our pre-conference event.

We are also ran a Virtual PCE (VPCE) in the six weeks that led up to the day of the PCE in Harrogate, on the theme of Web 2.0. During the VPCE we looked at a number of topics:

  • Week 1 - Introductions
  • Week 2 - Student Publishing with Blogs and Wikis
  • Week 3 - Audio Tools
  • Week 4 - Using Images & Video
  • Week 5 - Virtual Meeting Places (including Virtual Classrooms and Virtual Worlds)
  • Week 6 - Round-up

The VPCE is still open at http://iatefl-ltsig.ning.com/

On the day of the PCE itself, some people who took part in the VPCE were able to attend the face-to-face event (but we will also had a virtual presence as well), and we showed some of the activity we had been engaged in.

However, the main focus of the PCE day was to consider where we are now in the field of learning technologies and language learning and where we are going. Have we reached a time when learning technologies are a 'normalised' part of our practice, or is there still some way to go?

We asked three people - Stephen Bax, Scott Thornbury and Mark Pegrum - to help us with short focused presentations during the day at various points to seed the debate. Stephen and Scott were in Harrogate, Mark was online. Group leaders worked with conference participants to support the discussion of whatever questions were raised as part of the day; groups then reported back to the audience. Group leaders were asked to make a record of the event and write up the ideas for a special publication.

 

LT SIG Programme

 

Our SIG programme took place on Friday 9th April, with the following sessions (where available click the link to watch the video recording) :-

  • Richard Turnbull - Using Google Streetview as a window on the world
  • Ozge Karaoglu & Shelly Terrell - Engaging lower primary students through Web 2.0 tools
  • Sanaa Khabbar & Amal Abou-Setta - Facebook as a writing medium for students
  • Joe Pereira - Avalon to Shakespeare: Language learning and teaching in virtual worlds
  • Rachel Lindner & Vida Zorko - Computer-mediated intercultural exchanges between ESP students. Practical guidelines and insights
  • Russell Stannard - Web 2.0 tools that make a difference
  • LT SIG Open Forum