Our September and October topics looked at the theme of professional and career development and, as usual, we had some fantastic posts on this topic.
Several of you looked at the benefits and affordances of online professional development and how it differs from face-to-face, as well as warning of the dangers of overdoing things!
There were also a number of posts about blogging and how this can help with development and reflection, links to useful blogs and some great ideas for freelance teachers. There was an interesting post about teachers using board games for professional development, benefits of teaching associations and a lot great insight into linking research with practice.
Lizzie Pinard | Online or face-to-face Continuing Professional Development
Natalia Moiseeva | Board games club for teachers
Sulaiman Jenkins | Basic research in English language teaching
Rossana | Linking classroom research and teaching practice
Lizzie Pinard | From research to practice
Alexei Kiselev | Professional development for online teachers
Fatima.taha | Over Professional Development disorder
Topics for November and December 2018
Topic 1
Every so often, and increasingly, there are suggestions that students will be taught by robots in the future, not by humans. If this extended to other areas of education and your role suddenly changed to a consultative one, providing advice and support to the programmers of these robot teachers, what would your job look like and what would you do?
Topic 2
What difference is there between having a teacher who is considered, in traditional terms, a 'native English speaker teacher' and a 'non-native English speaker teacher'? As the English language evolves and becomes more international, is it really worth making the distinction between these two groups anymore?
Topic 3
More and more, we are told that our role as teachers is changing. We are told that the skills our students need for the future workplace in a globalised world are different from how they used to be. Creativity and imagination, collaboration, critical thinking, citizenship, student leadership and digital literacies are all things our students need to be competent in. How do you provide a focus on these skills in your classes? What activities do you do that help your students develop these?
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