One of North Italy’s top-quality language schools, Alpha Beta Piccadilly, has asked us to do a series of ICT teacher training seminars over the next 2 years. The idea of the seminars is to help them continue to improve their high pedagogical standards by giving their teachers an in-depth knowledge of a variety of ICT tools.
One of our first seminars for A.B.P. was on the more advanced uses of Microsoft Word. Most teachers will have used Word at some point in their teaching careers, but many wouldn’t know how to use macros to make student worksheets quickly and easily, or don’t know how to use templates to help make student-handouts look smart and presentable. Together we looked at these and other handy features that help make teachers’ jobs more easy.
Teachers “Can Do” it!
We use four lists of “Can Do” statements ranging from Elementary to Advanced for this seminar. These lists help teachers to realise what they already know how to do with Word and help them to build on this knowledge until they are “expert” users.
Are you an expert Word user?
If you would like a copy of these lists to check out your how good your knowledge of Word is, click the link below. Can you tick all the boxes? 
microsoft-word-can-do-statements
One of the reasons I posted so little (be honest Seth, you posted nothing) between January and April this year, is all the hard work that has been going on behind the scenes of the “Click*” project I’m involved in. Click* is the (newly chosen) name for a comprehensive teacher-training course, funded by the European Community’s Leonardo programme.
Together with a group of truly fabulous colleagues from various institutions around Europe including WSL Czestochowa, The Open University U.K. and EAQUALS all led by Dresden Technical University we have been beavering away to produce what I’m pretty sure is going to be a really high-quality course.
We have blended our different experiences and expertises together to produce a wide ranging set of course modules from the academic theory of how to teach languages online, through simple to follow, expertly written guides of how and why to use WebQuests, all the way to basic guides on blogging, podcasting wikis etc.
I’m really confident that the materials are of such high quality that the project will be a great success. If the demand for the courses is anything to go by (we were more than three times over-subscribed for our first round of piloting) I’m sure the project will go brilliantly!
The TESOL association’s special CALL group have just announced the timetable and sign up period for their Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2008 courses.
The EVO courses are a series of free online courses for language teachers. Many of the courses are based on recent developments in ICT based teaching. The EVO courses are taught by an international team of teachers and teacher trainers, many of whom are active members of the Webheads Yahoo group. In fact the Webheads themselves grew out of a past EVO project in 2002!
There are 13 different free courses which look really interesting this year. They cover a variety of ICT & language teaching topics from “Advanced Tips & Tricks for Successful Online Teaching and Learning” to “Teaching With Powerpoint.” There are also courses on non ICT based subjects too like “Music in the Classroom” or “Getting Started with Drama in the Classroom.” All in all it looks like a great learning opportunity, certainly one not to be missed! You can read about it and find out registration details from the EVO Online 2008 Wiki.
The sign up period is from the 1st to 14th January 2008, so there is still plenty of time to have a think about what you want to study. I fancy the look of the Advanced Tips and Tricks course, EVO Video 2008, Social Media in ELT courses… and many of the others! The organisers suggest not signing up for more than two courses, so I guess I’m going to have to narrow my choices down.
Anyhow, I look forward to bumping in to everyone in the online sessions, this is going to be fun!
