Is it really serendipity if it’s planned? By starting prep so early (6 months before), it allows time to find things as they cross by during my daily info-grazing sessions.
Four things have come across my desk last week that will improve the course I am teaching in May/June.
The first is a discussion group for a previous iTDi course on Dogme. Maria from the Ukraine, our community builder, set up a Facebook Group after the course, and now every couple of weeks 6-8 of us gather to discuss teaching. Last week it was about feedback. Elena (Russia) brought some new perspectives, Andreea (Romania) brought her critically incisive examples, Bistra in Sicily brings her solid background in teaching (I want to assign her blog posts about language learning to my students), Fabio (Italy) is a natural teacher, Jorge brings his perspective from Mexico, Renata her energy and stories from Macedonia and the Middle East, and Priscila, a school owner from Brazil. We discussed CR (Corrective Feedback) in all of these locations, a real sampling of worldwide situations.
A former JALT-er (Japan teacher) Jim McKinley co-authored an article on oral corrective feedback. A substack newsletter by “The Educationalist” talks about feedback in a wider educational sense, giving perspective on language feedback. And finally, a TBLT-adjacent topic has a new book on Evidence-based language teaching. Out soon.
So with all of these filtering in (and a solid note-taking/organizing/archiving system), I can take advantage of all of these.
Reading (Yesterday 1:08 Ch. 12, Today 0:48 Ch.13) and Blogging (0:47)
Previously: Announcement. Book. Selection 3Readings. FirstRead. BloodBrainBarrier.
Background: I’m preparing an 8-week course about TBLT for iTDi as part of their Great Minds series (not mine, the ones in the book). I am blogging about the process of preparation mostly for the fun of it. I was inspired by Cory Doctorow, an SF writer that does this with all his books. But it also helps me focus. This is even more exciting than teaching a grad school course. I’m looking forward to it and hope this might spark an interest.