POOLS arranges a joint language teacher conference
Invitation to participate in a joint language teaching projects conference
If you are a project coordinator (or have some interesting language teaching ideas to present) then please consider presenting at a language teaching projects results conference in September 2007.
Many projects have planned a final conference (some even call for a press meeting;-) and find that the number of participants from outside the project teams is rather limited (to say the least). The solution to this is to cluster with other projects and have a joint conference.
Imagine that five projects have a joint conference; the project teams would get together approximately 100 participants and the combined dissemination efforts are likely to attract another 100 participants, i.e. a prospect of 200 participants keen on learning about your results!
POOLS now offers you such an opportunity in September 2007 in Alkmaar, a beautiful city in the Netherlands. The dates for the conference are set to September 27th and 28th . Learn about Alkmaar here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkmaar or from the homepage of Alkmaar: http://www.alkmaar.nl/
The Horizon college in Alkmaar offers its facilities to the conference with possible meeting rooms the day before and after the conference (Wednesday and Saturday); this makes it possible for you to move a project meeting to Alkmaar and thus cover the travel costs. If you are having an EU-supported project then please remember to ask your national agency or the Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (http://eacea.cec.eu.int/static/index.htm ) for eligibility of the costs.
All language teaching projects are welcome to participate and are also welcome to assist us in planning and disseminating the event. If you are interested then please e-mail ka@ots.dk before February 1st after this date we might have to say no to some projects because we “only” have conference space for approximately 200 participants.
We also welcome presentations from individual teachers. We are planning a format for proposals and a panel to decide which presentations to accept, more about this in the coming months.
Costs: We plan to make a low cost conference to take place in a college with no profits whatsoever. Participation as such will be free, but we want to include social events like a conference dinner at the college with everything pre-paid. We have made an arrangement with a nearby quality hotel which offers single rooms with breakfast for 55EUR per night, but cheaper lodgings are also available.
Kent Andersen
Eksamenskoordinator
Byggeri & Teknologi
Odense Tekniske Skole
Tel. +45 6312 6500 direct +45 63126605 mob. +45 4079 7720
e-mail ka@ots.dk web www.languages.dk
Pools Newsletter July – September 2009
Pools Newsletter January – March 2010
Pools Newsletter April – June 2010
Pools Newsletter July – September 2010
Pools – Producing open online learning systems
language teaching materials, methods, and teacher courses
Pools is a Leonardo II supported two years (2005-2007) project developing materials for language teaching and learning as well as teacher training courses based on pools of materials for nine languages; Basque, Danish, Dutch, English, Gaelic (Scottish), German, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Spanish. It is also a main objective to cluster with other language projects.
Let the pools website serve as a portal to your results. From the website you also have access to copyleft language teaching materials and methods manuals that you may include in your own projects.
To join the pools teams please e-mail ka@ots.dk
The project target group is teachers of the LWUTL (Less Widely Used and Taught Languages) in technical colleges. Due to the limited range of ICT materials for these languages the teachers often have to develop materials themselves if they want to exploit the many advantages of eLearning. The final products will be:
1. Pools of online copyleft materials to be used during in-service teacher training courses and in teaching.
2. Flexible competence based language teacher course modules on ICT methodologies and development of ICT based teaching resources. The modules will be developed for in-service, distance, and blended courses
3. A DVD with step by step instructions and examples on how to create multimedia online material.
4. A course book (downloadable .pdf file) with description of language teaching eLearning materials and methodologies
5. A website, which will serve as portal to clustering projects and other ICT and LA projects. The site will contain all of the project materials, videos, discussion area and e-mail lists.
Needs documentation: In 2000 a survey among teachers in the EU countries “The European Language Learning Materials Survey” showed that teachers of less taught languages have little pedagogical and methodological training and the course materials for these languages were rarely communicative in nature. The survey emphasized the need for improvement in this area. This was in 2002 followed up in a report to the EU Commission “The Training of Teachers of a Foreign Language: Developments in Europe” (Revised Report, August 2002) which in its recommendations p. 75 states that “All teachers should be trained in the use of ICT approaches for interactive use with pupils in the classroom” and p. 79 “More efforts needs to be made to make initial teacher training modules and in-service course content available online and in other distance learning forms”.
It is the aim of pools to address the above documented needs by creating pools of online copyleft resources (Copyleft is a way to license a work so that unrestricted redistribution, copying and modification is permitted, provided that all copies and derivates retain the exact same licensing) and to develop, test and disseminate flexible competence based teacher training course modules. The course modules, also “copyleft”, will deal with ICT approaches and development of ICT based materials for teachers of less taught languages like Basque, Danish, Dutch, Gaelic, Lithuanian, and Romanian.
The project will build on results from a previous project (BP-BLTM) as well as results from other ICT and LA projects, the partnership will seek to cluster with these projects to ensure exchange of expertise and results and achieve broader impacts through joint dissemination.
Download the February 2006 Newsletter
Pools was presented at the EfVET 2005 conference. Click here to watch the PowerPoint presentation used.