Great Professional Development Opportunity

Have you discovered the free PD offered through Pearson? I am very impressed with the online newsletters that Pearson Longman has been posting.  Today's links to a video of Kate Kinsella's TESOL presentation on academic vocabulary.  It's a professionally produced video of a TESOL presentation that most of us were not able to attend. What an opportunity to stay current in the field!

I discovered the website also has a full library of podcasts from well-known professionals in our field.  Some are teaching tips; others are personal stories.  Choose your favorite ESL author from the pulldown menu or browse topics. A great resource!

Tech update for summer 2010

1. We’ve got some document cameras
   You can go to the equipment reservation page to reserve the document cameras
   Come to the lab to check it out, set up is as simple as hooking up two cables



2. We moved some whiteboards
   Now the whiteboard in each room is aligned with the projector screen. Easier to write on the projected images now!



3. The Plone website is in the process of upgrading, and the bookmark website is the temporarily replacement
   Please use http://teacher.moodle.sjsu.edu before the new plone is ready to go. You can also use the other URL: http://sal.sjsu.edu/bookmark



4. We have a new way to add students into Moodle Classes
   Now if you tell the student to use their SJSU id as the user name and pin number as the password, they will be able to log in to the Moodle directly. No more waiting for confirmation email!
   Check the pin number for your student at this page: http://moodle.sjsu.edu/studentdata
   Use the same username and password as the teacherdata to login to the page

Sally's CATESOL 2010 Highlights

These are brief write-ups of the two most interesting talks I attended at the recent CATESOL conference.
By Sally Teeple.

Promoting Academic Honesty in the ESL Classroom

I attended this presentation because I recently had a student in a writing class turn in an essay that was 100% cut-and-pasted from the Internet, so the topic of plagiarism and academic (dis)honesty was fresh in my mind. The presenter, Jessica Plotner, had many good ideas for introducing this topic in class early in the term, and for engaging students in activities to help them learn what is considered plagiarism and what isn’t. For example, she recommends spending time on a thorough discussion of the cheating/plagiarism policy of the classroom and of the institution. She also provided a handout with a number of plagiarism-related scenarios that can be used to do various activities. For instance, students could categorize them into “cheating” and “not cheating”, or they could do role plays of some of the situations. The presenter had many other great ideas, and I hope to be able to apply some of the her suggestions in my own classes in the future. In her presentation, she used a saying which is somewhat hackneyed, but nonetheless appropriate for this topic: The best offense is a good defense. I agree with her. If we engage our students early in a discussion of plagiarism, and show them what they shouldn't do, we will have to spend less time later in the semester backtracking and telling them what they shouldn't have done.

How IEPs and College/Universities Work Together to Prepare Students for Freshman Academic Life

Since I teach at two IEPs, I am interested in how students adjust from the comfortable ESL classroom to a large college or university (like SJSU or Mission College). I often find that in my classes, students don’t know basics like how to compose an email to a teacher (they often use lots of happy faces and text-type abbreviations), how to write an assignment heading (I’ve had students simply scrawl their name at the bottom of a paper in pencil), and what size and type of paper is appropriate to write an assignment on (Asian students often use cute, small paper), and I wonder how these students will fare in the “real world” of the university. The talk I attended was given by a teacher at CSU East Bay. She teaches in a program designed to prepare their IEP students to enter the university. In her presentation, she discussed how they designed the program and what sorts of skills they teach students. I really like some of the projects they have students do. One project is a sort of scavenger hunt on campus, to help students get familiar with places like the health center, library, book store, etc. They also have students make appointments with and interview professors and other faculty and staff on campus, so that when they become university students, they have had some practice visiting office hours and asking questions of their teachers. Many of the assignments they do in this program could be easily turned into shorter assignments in a listening and speaking class to help students become familiar with American college culture.

CATESOL 2010 The Culture of Conversation Strategies

"What happens if you don't XXXXXX correctly?"  

"What happens if international students don't shake hands correctly?"

Josh Kurzweil presented on the problem of international students with strong language skills sabotaging conversations by being unaware of American cultural expectations.  He filled his Saturday afternoon presentation at CATESOL with examples of how student behavior (or lack of) in conversation has consequences.  His strategies for teaching students are based on the four Cultural Knowings from the book, Teaching Culture, by Patrick Moran.

It was such a strong presentation that I'd like to bring him to SAL for an in-service for teachers, conversation club partners, and staff. I'll follow up to see if that's a possibility and I'll post the handout when I get it.

Pecha-Kucha Presentation style

I just recently read about this presentation style and found it quite interesting.
It consists of a tight restriction, 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, 6 minutes 40 seconds in total The visuals on slides are only to support the ideas in the presentation, but not to list the points. So it comes out more of a speech than a slide by slide presentation.

More info in the following links:

What is Pecha-Kucha?
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what

official website ( why would a presentation style have an official website... I don't know. But it looks almost like a cult now...
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

Some examples: (around 6:40 each)
http://vimeo.com/5111955
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZOt6BkhUg
Search for pecha kucha and you can see a lot of it..

It may be an interesting thing to play with our higher level students or any class you want them to do presentation.. Food for thought!

Faculty Memo 1/24/2010

Here's just a quick note to say to please refer to the online Classroom Schedule for your room numbers -- they may be quite different from what the students' schedules show or what it shows on the class list or attendance site; Megan is posting classroom changes in the plastic frames in the room windows.

I hope everyone has a good day tomorrow! We're also welcoming our group of 17 graduate students (chemistry) from Kyushu University. Tomorrow I'll be mostly focused on getting them oriented.

Here's the most direct and efficient contact for the following issues:

Lost students: Kim will be on hand at 8:30 and again at 1:00 to look up students who have lost their schedules

Level adjustments: You know the speil: students who think they are in the wrong class right away need to stay in the class and do their best while teachers do assessment (please do email Kim with a headsup if the student seems quite misplaced to you, though).

Elective questions: Sarah D.

Gateway issues: Ann S.

SAS issues about SJSU courses: Kristin C.

Requests for room changes: Megan (she'll sort it all out. We have an unusually complicated set of factors the first month of the term).

Facilities issues: Moe will know whom to call, (or Cindy: 924-2580)

http://sal.sjsu.edu.bookmark to connect to the classroom and lab schedule and calendar

Moving on to new sites

The intention of this blog a year ago was to provide an accessible place for SAL teachers to share new ideas gleaned from conferences - virtual professional development. Since my last post, I've been inspired to share from the LLD Best Practices session, the Pasadena CATESOL, the national NAFSA conference in LA and my meetings with students, agents, and universities in Asia.

I've discovered, though, that now other online resources offer even better formats for these posts. Facebook, Twitter, and Diigo each serve a different purpose but all support our objective of sharing strategies and inspirations. SAL teachers have two Diigo groups for posting and discussing articles and videos and their own Twitter for updating activities and passing along quick ideas.

So, I'll get up to speed on and move on to those social networking sites. Anyone else is welcome to post to this blog. Perhaps a reasons for rejuvenation is right around the corner, but for now please join SAL's Diigo and Twitter groups to stay in touch with your colleagues and conferences.