The Shawnee Hills IEP Camp

Last month, we (the Center for English as a Second Language) hosted the Shawnee Hills IEP Camp at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. I blogged about how we were able to organize and host it in a previous post. As mentioned in that post, we followed the EdCamp model and shared our professional learning with IEP faculty and staff from the University of Southern Indiana and from Southeast Missouri State University. Our program (CESL) was also hosting English language teachers from Panama, who also attended the Camp.

Starting early at 8am in the morning, we had a very good turnout with around 65 of the registered 70 participants showing up. Above is a picture of some of the earlier attendees mingling over our sponsored and catered breakfast from yummy Cristaudo's Bakery of Carbondale. They have always been a dependable and popular caterer at CESL events.

Pictured above is a couple of our faculty members with our Panamanian visiting students/teachers. We were grateful to have unseasonably warm weather for our IEP Camp, which involved us walking between a few buildings throughout the day.

Our first outdoor trek was to SIU's Morris Library, where I (that's me behind the podium) officially welcomed everyone to the IEP Camp and explained the concept of EdCamps to them in about 5-10 minutes. Then we proceeded to choose session topics based on our interests, questions, and concerns.

In the pictures above you can see a few people pitching their ideas. One of our faculty volunteered to pass around the microphone. You can see him in his gray sweatshirt standing. In the top picture, one of our faculty suggested a discussion about integrating technology in and beyond the IEP classroom. In the bottom picture, one of our staff members suggested a topic about increasing opportunities for international students studying abroad.

Below are selected highlights from our concurrent sessions during the day:

None of this would have been possible with the support of our sponsors, so I'd like to end this post thanking our sponsors.

Thank You!

We look forward to our 2017 IEP Camp at the University of Southern Indiana!

Comments

Is Wikipedia Too Difficult to Read?

Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Afghan_man_reading_Wikipedia_article_in_Kandahar.jpg The short answer via statistical analysis is yes . For more information, read Lucassen, T., Dijkstra, R., & Schraagen, J. M. (2012). Readability of Wikipedia. First Monday at http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3916/3297 . Wikipedians are aware that the open online encyclopedia may be too difficult, and there is a discussion of its reading level at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reading_level . Much of this discussion took place over a decade ago, but the gist is that many contributors write at or for the college level. What appeals to me most is at the end of the page, where Wikipedians are discussing accessibility and what it means to be open to all. Here's my screenshot (in case it gets edited later). What does this mean for English language teachers? I was interested in seeing how selected Wikipedi...

The Horror! A Listening Curriculum for English Language Learning

I've been inspired by Clare Maas' blog post , which was inspired by Dr. John Field's TEASIG/CRELLA talks, to share my shock at the listening curriculum of an intensive English program where I previously worked. To be fair, this listening curriculum was designed twenty years prior and my job was to lead faculty efforts to revise it. Unfortunately, the program went through financial difficulties and leadership changes, resulting in the "non-renewal" of most of the curriculum committee members. Upper-Level (EAP) Listening (B2-C1) Listening was relatively equally integrated with speaking and reading skills in one course set apart from another course that focused much more on writing. This was the case for the two highest levels for students who intended to matriculate into the university as undergraduates. The highest level was not dependent on any one coursebook, so all of the listening material had to be collected by the instructors. When I was the curriculum ...

Adrian Holliday

In January 2015, the University of Warwick (UK) hosted a lecture by Dr. Adrian Holliday, whose work has greatly influenced my dissertation. The lecture was recorded and can be viewed at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/groups/llta/activities/events/holliday . If you are interested in watching the video, I advise that you wear headphones as Dr. Holliday was not wearing a microphone. For this blog, I briefly summarize the video, highlighting what I found most provocative. Following that, I explain how Holliday's work has influenced my research and teaching philosophy for the past 5-10 years. Summary of "Revisiting appropriate methodology, BANA, TESEP and 'contexts'" The main purpose of this lecture was for Holliday to reflect upon his book Appropriate Methodology and Social Context , published 20 years ago by Cambridge University Press. In this lecture, he integrated criticism from another professor whose research I admire, Dr. Suresh Ca...

Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

Search This Blog