In the Works

It is unusually late at night for me to be blogging. I am a professed morning person, but when something really enthuses me, there is just no stopping. At the moment I am forging ahead with three projects that offer really exciting possibilities.

Wiki in the Works
The first, as mentioned in the previous post, is developing more electronic resources for the course I am teaching. Although my college provides server space and a best-kept-secret Virtual Learning Environment, these do not yet offer the collaborative options needed for a dynamic teacher-generated resource base. For this reason I have started a wiki, where materials will eventually be hosted. Since materials will only apply to the coming session, this is on ice and will be up and running at the end of April.

UnPluggEd! Workshop
My upcoming workshop at the Oman International ELT Conference is beginning to take shape. UnPluggEd!: Chalkface Recollections of E-Learning Dreams explores the possibilities of e-learning principles for enhancing learning in classrooms without educational technology infrastructure. A fully functional online version is under construction as a new tab on my T42 Hub website. Nothing conquers sloth quite like online visibility, and this is sure to keep my preparation on track well ahead of schedule.

Product Versus Process Article
The editor of my college’s new English Language Teaching journal is a supportive mentor who has no qualms about pushing me to be a better professional – whether I like it or not. One result of this is that I am working on an article for the first edition. Product Versus Process: The Role of Assessment in the Oman General Foundation Programmes investigates the influence of current assessment practices on learning and considers more beneficial alternatives. Researching this article has given me newfound respect for the saintly visionaries behind academic accreditation in Oman, as well as staggering insights into the role of assessment in learning. Hint: it is a grossly misunderstood and under-utilised learning tool. Yes, I said learning, believe it or not. I also said misunderstood.

Although I am looking forward to branching out of ELT, and these projects may well be my swansong in the field, I am a firm believer in transferrable skills. While these little projects may be small stepping stones within a language teaching career, they provide significant foundations for the great wild blue beyond where I set my sights. It is thrilling to be learning, and I am very lucky to be doing so at the comfortable skirttails of a job. At least for the moment!

Image: Dragon CV is a MindMap I created many years ago as an outline for my CV. Now that there are many new things to add, it is clear to me that what goes on paper in a CV is only a shadow of the experience gained.