My first presentation at an international TESOL conference!

Several months ago, a member of my wonderful PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter, Lesley Cioccarelli (@cioccas), sent me a DM (direct message) suggesting that we could perhaps present together at CamTESOL 2013 which would be held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in February.  I thought it was a great idea, especially as her proposed topic was 'How teachers can connect via the internet'.  We had an initial 'discussion' on Twitter and agreed that we would submit an abstract before the deadline, which was months away.

Then, as often happens with these things, we were both busy with work and life in general and CamTESOL was put on the back burner - until, that is, I happened to mention our idea in a Tweet to another of our PLN, prompting Lesley to check the date for abstracts and discover that it was the very next day!!  Talk about leaving things to the eleventh hour!!

We hastily put our abstract together and completed the necessary paperwork by sending the forms back and forth via e-mail.  Breathing a joint sigh of relief, we then sat back and waited for confirmation that we had been accepted.  When this arrived a few weeks later, it suddenly became real - it was no longer simply an idea in our heads - we were really going to do this!!  It was so exciting!

In the months leading up to the conference, Lesley and I exchanged a few e-mails expressing our thoughts on our workshop, but, in the end, we decided to leave the main planning to a couple of days before, when Lesley would be staying with me in Binh Duong. 

So it was that on the Tuesday before the conference, we said goodbye to my Mum at the airport (she had been staying with us for a month) and met up with Lesley.  Although we'd never met before, we recognised each other straight away and it felt like we'd been friends for years!  We talked non-stop during the hour-long taxi journey home and continued all the next day when Lesley came to work with me so we could plan our workshop. 

Lesley had had much more experience than I had of presenting at TESOL conferences, so I was happy to take her advice and 'pinch' slides she'd used in previous presentations when putting ours together.  In truth, though, we worked very well together and agreed that the basis of our workshop should be the story of how we 'met' online and how we came to be collaborating on this project at CamTESOL.  After all, we were living proof of the power of the internet, and social media in particular, to bring colleagues from different parts of the world together.  We decided not to script our presentation, relying instead on anecdotes and our enthusiasm for our subject to carry us through.

These were the details we submiited to the CamTESOL organisers before the event:

Session Title:  Connect with teachers around the world

Subtitle:   How to use the internet to develop a personal learning network (PLN)

Abstract:

Take charge of your own professional development.  By using the internet, you can decide when, where and how to keep up-to-date with all the latest developments in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.  This workshop will show you how to use Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other online forums to learn from, and share ideas with, a huge network of colleagues from all over the world.

We will demonstrate the advantages of building your own PLN and the ease with which it can be done, at no cost to yourselves.  We will share the story of how we came to collaborate on this project through ‘meeting’ online.  You will leave the workshop with the beginnings of your own PLN and the means to develop it further.

This is the PowerPoint we put together:

 

On the day, we were very ably-assisted by another member of our PLN who we met for the first time at the conference, Mike Griffin (@michaelegriffin).  He moved the slides on for us because neither Lesley nor I had thought about bringing one of those natty remote gadgets that you can use to make the job easier!

In the end, the workshop went extremely well.  Initially, we had planned to have a live link-up to show the power of Twitter.  However, on arrival at the conference, we were told that we would not have an internet connection in our room.  So, in the hour before our presentation, we put out a plea to our PLN to Tweet about their reasons for using Twitter, in the hope that we could at least read out their replies.  As it turned out, a technician did manage to hook us up to the internet just before the workshop started so we were able to show the #CamTESOL feed on TweetChat live.  As is always the case with the amazing people in our PLN, they came up trumps and we were able to demonstrate so effectively why we love Twitter and what it can do in terms of PD and networking.  Thanks to @sandymillin, @SophiaKhan4, @vickyloras, @pterolaur, @gotanda, @leoselivan, @TheSecretDoS. @trylingual, @AnneHendler, @damon_tokyo, @oyajimbo, @forstersensai, and @iTDIpro for their great replies and for the RTs.  Many apologies if I have missed anyone out!!

At the end of the session, we gave out this flyer:

 

The feedback we had from attendees was all positive - they admired our passion for our subject and had seen for themselves the benefits of developing a PLN.  We met lots of people and hope that we will continue to connect with at least some of them online!!

The whole experience was a really positive one for me and I hope to repeat it fairly soon!  I thank everyone involved, but especially my co-presenter, Lesley Cioccarelli, without whom none of this would have happened!!
 

Why I love the 'Twitterverse'!

The Twitter Logo

I've been using Twitter for several years now.  I remember that one of the earliest proponents of this new social media was Stephen Fry and, being a big fan of his work, I thought that if he could see value in it, then I should check it out, too!!  Since I joined Twitter, there have been periods when I used it too much - times when it was almost taking over, to the detriment of other things I should have been doing.  Conversely, there have been other times when I haven't used it at all - not checking my Twitter account for months on end.  For the last year or two, however, I think I have found a happy medium when it comes to Twitter. 

Currently, I use Tweetdeck to manage my Twitter use.   I keep an eye on things by using hashtags - so much easier than trying to follow everything that's going on!  I'm not a slave to it.  I usually check my account in a morning before I go to work and then again a couple of times in an evening.

So, why use Twitter at all?  What do I get out of it?
 

Well, firstly, Twitter is usually the first place I see the news - via @BBCBreaking, @guardiannews,  or @TelegraphNews.  My news is delivered in bite-sized chunks together with links I can click on if I want to read more about a particular story.

It is also how I satisfy my curiosity about the world of celebrity!  I follow a few famous people who have interesting things to say.  As well as @stephenfry, I particularly enjoy the tweets of @eddieizzard, @prodnose (Danny Baker), @mjhucknall (Mick Hucknall of Simply Red who tweets about good food and great wine), @bobbyllew (Robert Llewellyn of Red Dwarf fame), and @simonmayo.

Courtesy of the BBC

Twitter is also how I follow my interests and hobbies.  For example, I am keen on genealogy, so I follow a number of groups and individuals who share that interest (@ancestrydotcom, @WDYTYA, @Archivescom, etc.).  My passion for film is kept alive by following @wittertainment, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Twitter account which supports their excellent film review podcast from Radio 5 Live.  My interest in keeping up-to-date with sport, particularly tennis, is satisfied by following certain Twitter accounts, as are my hobbies of cooking, photography and, above all, travel.  There are too many great Twitter travel accounts to mention here, but amongst my favourites are @indietravel, @lonelyplanet, @wanderlustmag, and @TelegraphTravel.

Over the years, I have also become involved in several charities and campaigns to raise public awareness of certain issues through Twitter, not least @comicrelief, @ProjectPangolin and @charitywater.

At times of great global events, such as the recent London Olympics and Paralympics, I keep up with latest developments through their Twitter accounts.

Mark, myself, Tara & JC

Whenever I move to a new country (as I often do in my line of work!), one of the first things I do is look for relevant Twitter accounts to follow - people and organisations that will help me to adapt to my new surroundings with ease.  This has always been a successful ploy, especially here in Vietnam.  When I first arrived here, I started following several Saigon and Hanoi based bloggers, such as Steve Jackson (@ourman), @mekongmadness, @VietTravelGuy, and @MikeInVietnam.  My best follows, though, had to be Tara and JC Vargas (alias @HerDailyDigest and @kingceejay), a couple from the Phillippines who moved to Saigon several years ago and who both blog about and post pictures of Vietnam and give lots of advice to newbies like me.  Reading their accounts of trips to different places has saved us so much wasted time finding things out for ourselves and has led us to visit locations we might not have thought of.  After a few false starts, we were fortunate to meet up with them in person a few weeks ago.  We spent a very pleasant lunchtime with them in a Saigon restaurant and hope that it will be the first of many such meetings.

So, I have already listed several good reasons why I use Twitter and what I get out of it, but I've yet to mention the most important - for my professional development as an EFL teacher and manager.  Through Twitter, I am connected to a huge circle of dedicated professionals living and working in almost every country on earth.  We exchange ideas about all aspects of our jobs.  Whichever time zone we are in, there is invariably someone online to answer a query or to offer links and advice about something which is troubling us.  The PLN (personal learning network) I have developed through Twitter has grown gradually and organically over time and, although I have never met the majority of the teachers in person, I feel like they are friends and colleagues.

All of the articles I read, the webinars I attend, and the ideas I share with my 'real-life' colleagues at EIU, come from tweets and links posted by my PLN.  This invaluable information comes through throughout the week, but there are two hours every Wednesday when it comes thick and fast!  These are the times when a number of us get together to debate an issue in a forum we call #eltchat.  You can read about how it works here.   It is clear how much I value my #eltchat sessions when you see how many summaries I've written! 

I'm not going to list the teachers I follow on Twitter - they know who they are and there are too many of them to name individually.  I will, however, mention a couple, just to illustrate the power of this great tool.  The first is @teacherphili who I 'met' through Twitter and who, just last week, came to work with me at EIU in Vietnam.  The other is Lesley Cioccarelli (@cioccas), a teacher from Australia who I haven't met in person yet, but with whom I am presenting at CamTESOL 2013.  I'm really looking forward to collaborating with her on this project and to welcoming her to Vietnam before the conference so that I can show her EIU and share with her what we are trying to achieve here.

These reasons, and others too numerous to mention, are why I love the 'Twitterverse' and why I will continue to use it - for facts, fun and friendship!!