Tomorrow the IATEFL conference at Cardiff is beginning, but I have been at it since the beginning of March. How come? Well there is the Online IATEFL conference as well as the "real" physical one and the next best thing to actually being one of the 1300-odd delegates in Wales is to be an online participant. And I was chosen to be one of four Online Moderators of the English Language Teaching Management forum, known as ELTM (although the IATEFL people are apparently at present discussing whether Management is the right word or whether Leadership should have something to do with it, too).The site has been running since about 10th March and will go on for a while after the conference.

Well, when I registered for this stint I had a bit of difficulty finding my way around the site; I didn't know simple things like what my account was or how to get my profile picture installed or how to link from one thread to another and I even started a thread on the Moderators' Only Forum called "Technical Queries" because I had such a lot of the same! But I was not the only one and thanks to the marvellous support team, I learnt fast.

It was also a bit of trial and error when it came to "conversing" with the other users, as I sometimes didn't know how personal and "pally" I should be (especially to other NS), and being a typical British lady, I thought of an ironical or wry comment to almost anything that was said, but of course I had to remain professional and not chip in on all the discussions. The point of a moderator, after all,  is to stay in the background and encourage the users to exchange their views. And obviously as the forum is about Management and I have only experience of being managed but not of managing teaching or teachers, I can't say anything on many aspects of the topic, anyway.But I did start up a couple of threads myself. Not surprisingly the one on CPD, Continual Professional Development, is proving the most popular with over 30 postings to date. There are 11 Special Interest Area Forums which correspond roughly to the IATEFL SIGs and I have been reading about or sometimes joining in discussions on the other forums as well. At present,I gather, there is a heated debate raging on Interactive Whiteboards and another on textbooks. It's difficult to find time to keep up with everything that is going on, so I would recommend anyone who wants to join in to do so now! During the actual conference there will be a lot of interaction with the sessions actually going on at Cardiff and the idea is that the OMs alert their users to what is happening in their area.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the experience a lot and am really glad that many, many teachers from all over the globe are doing so, too - and it is all part of our CPD!