This week there are two courses I’ll be training on that are now open for signups: the EVO textbook course and the Consultants-E Emoderation course. I thought I’d take a moment to give a little plug to each of them.
Almost since I had become active online I had heard about EVO, the Electronic Village Online. In their own words, the EVO
is a set of online discussions and workshops that takes place every year from mid-January to mid-February. Sessions include a range from simple discussions to virtual hands-on workshops. They can serve as a run-up or preview to the TESOL Convention, or a discussion of an issue in the field of teaching language, or experiments with and pedagogy of new technology tools.
An online session is the perfect venue to pre-discuss papers from Academic Sessions or Intersessions, or to carry on a discussion of topics important to your member group. EVO provides an invaluable service to teachers all over the globe, for it brings the convention to those who cannot travel. We usually have over a thousand participants, both members and non-members of TESOL. Most sessions also offer live chats (text and audio/video), including Webcasts from the Convention, and all participants are welcome to any of these live events.
A few months ago Shelly Terrell asked me if I’d like to be a part of one of these discussions, on the creation of e-books and textbooks. I was happy to say yes, although I didn’t realise at the time that this discussion was blooming into a full open online course! That’s fine, I’ve always been curious as to how that works too.
So, here’s the deal. If you are interested in textbook design and fancy a bit of free online professional development please check out the Crafting the ePerfect eTextbook course. Signups are open now, and we begin in 5 weeks!
I will also be training on the excellent Consultants-E course Emoderation Course. Here’s the description from their website.
The E-moderation course looks at the range of skills needed by an online tutor, particularly in the field of ELT (English Language Teaching), although these skills are easily transferable to other disciplines. Through the experience of the course itself you will acquire and analyse these skills.
This course is always a great learning experience, it lasts 4 weeks and really gives participants a good grounding in the pedagogy of online course delivery. Costs and enrollment information can be found here.
So, why not join me and start off 2014 with a bit of professional development! See you online!
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