Electronic Village Online - 2007

It is my absolute pleasure to share with you some information on EVO. The TESOL sponsored Electronic Village Online courses, set to begin next January, are free six-week long online workshops open to the public on a variety of topics related to English Language and Teaching. They provide an excellent opportunity to meet other practitioners all over the world, discuss the topics at hand, and learn a lot of new things if you have not had much experience in e-learning, and a few new things if you have.

All participants are learners and co-moderators at the same time. They share their knowledge with colleagues who are beginners and are helped by more experienced teachers who have participated in previous sessions or have extensive knowledge about e-resources. The first two weeks are rather hectic, a lot of emails overflow accounts but little by little one begins to develop strategies to manage the load and pay attention to what is really important depending on our needs. (to read more about EVO, go here: http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/TESOL/EVOL/portal.htm )

Take a look at what was available this year: http://webpages.csus.edu/~hansonsm/announce.html I participated in the Becoming a Webhead and Collaborative Blogging sessions and although it was a time consuming experience and a bit stressful at times, I learned tons, especially on Blogs and Wikis, as you can see here: http://itwill definitelywork.blogspot.com/  and http://bleiva2003.motime.com/

I am looking forward to the upcoming sessions. If you are a newbie, I will recommend to take the Becoming a Webhead session as it gives you an overview of many tools. If you have experimented a bit already, go to Podcasting, Webquest or any other related session that might call your attention. I heard there is one on ESL e-Games.

My advice:

1) Register at the beginning of January.

2) Get a yahoo account just for EVO (most sessions operate under a yahoo group).

2) Set your mail properties to daily "digests" (to avoid the shock of receiving 300 messages in one day)

3) Check the calendar of events and download the necessary tools BEFORE synchronous events (those that take place one day at a specific time). If you cannot attend for one reason or another, these events are recorded and stored so you can check them out whenever you want.

4) Be careful with times. Synchronous sessions are given at GTM times, which you have to translate for your specific time zone. There are participants in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America and North America, so this is an easy way to let all know when events will take place.

5) Buy yourself a set of headphones and a microphone. They are usually cheap and most are OK in quality.

6) Dare to try some of the tools and make an effort to participate in the electronic forums.

7) Get to meet colleagues all over the world, who knows, you might find someone who can collaborate with you and your students to make activities more authentic and communication more real. There are many international ESL/EFL projects that have sprung from these sessions.

I hope this information has been helpful. EVO sessions, and Becoming a Webhead in particular, changed the way I see myself and my students in cyberspace now and all the potential e-learning has in our profession. Don´t miss this chance. It will cost you nothing and could end up being a mind-boggling or serendipitous experience.