Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

A few weeks ago, I attended my first American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference.  I first heard about it during my first year at the University of Iowa as some of my colleagues went there.  They described it as a more intimate and research-oriented conference compared to the International TESOL Convention, which is now held immediately after AAAL in the same city.  As a new PhD student, I still preferred the practitioner-oriented TESOL Convention as many of my ideas were in the mindset of a teacher.  I went to a couple TESOL Conventions until my graduate studies and dissertation crowded out any opportunities for professional conferences.  Now as my dissertation is near completion, I got my first opportunity to attend AAAL and it was really worth it. I came to AAAL wearing two hats.  The first hat was my PhD candidate hat.  With it, I attended presentations and roundtables about language & culture and language planning & ...

Today at the University of Iowa's Tête-à-Tête Professional Development Workshop, I facilitated an expository session about Google Hangouts for use in the foreign language classroom.  The digital handout for this workshop is provided at http://bit.ly/HangoutTeT . I discovered Google Hangouts during my still ongoing hiatus of not teaching English language learners, so I don't have direct experience.  However, in a professional and educational context, I have become more accustomed to and confident with Google Hangouts as both a consumer and producer of this free and easily accessible internet video conferencing (IVC) program. Google Hangouts as Consumer I knew about Google Hangouts for about a year before I realized its full potential.  I was in the participant selection process of my dissertation project when I found Victor at http://www.youtube.com/user/Gimmeaflakeman .  Victor is an English language teacher in Nagoya, Japan who uses Google Hangouts with other...

One reason that I am not posting so often on this blog is that I am busy with my PhD dissertation.  At this stage, I have written the first draft of my data analysis (Chapter 4) and I am in the process of revising my introduction and purpose for the study (Chapter 1).  I'm at a crossroads in terms of the latter.  I have made the smaller revisions as suggested by my dissertation committee.  However, there were some suggestions, not shared by everyone in the committee, about reframing the purpose.   So the purpose of this posting is to share my brainstorm for this possible reframing. This research project has been guided by my experiences as a sojourning English language teacher (ELT) in Japan, South Korea, and Russia.  At the turn of the millennium, when I was new to the field, there were not many ways to learn about the experiences of sojourning ELTs as compared to now.  I first prepared by reading travel and history books and watching videos about t...

I am in the data analysis phase of my dissertation, and one of the best benefits of doing this research is learning about the impact of social media on English language teachers abroad.  To clarify, my research is about the adjustment process of sojourning English language teachers, and I intend to complete my research and to publish my findings in peer-reviewed journals.  However, I wanted to share my enthusiasm of the learning process through social media.  This is part of my attempt to bridge the gap between researchers and practitioners. Through my research and my job as instructional designer at Kirkwood Community College, I have discovered many practitioners learning more about teaching and learning through social media than through peer-reviewed research journals.  This is completely anecdotal evidence as I am witnessing teachers sharing what they learn through their practice more than teachers sharing what they learn through reading research articles. ...

These past six months have been quite chaotic in terms of social media.  This blog went on a long hiatus as I was preparing to start my new professional blog geared towards my new job at Kirkwood Community College.  That blog was then overtaken by the blog I started for my job.  So I am here to announce my new blog organization now that the dust has settled.  I will try to start posting on this blog again for two main reasons: 1) I want to write to ESL & foreign language teachers more directly than in the Kirkwood (related) blogs, and 2) Both my job at Kirkwood and my dissertation research project have helped learn the relationship between social media and professional development.  I haven't done much in terms of exploring ideas and concepts of teaching English for glocalized communication beyond my dissertation since March, and I plan to direct part of my learning back this way as my dissertation data analysis eases up.  I have gained a stronger i...

As I mentioned in my previous post, here is the link to my new blog:  http://jdslagoski.blogspot.com/ I will maintain this blog as well, but since the new blog centers around my new job, I will be posting on that one more frequently.  I hope to post on this blog at least once every month or two.

A few weeks ago, I started my new job at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  My job title is instructional designer, and thus I will be working with the community college faculty across all subjects and disciplines.  Kirkwood has a large ESL program, but I have not yet had the chance to visit the department yet. Because of my new job and my current dissertation research project, I will not be writing too much on this blog for the next year.  For all things English language teaching, my time will be spent on my dissertation and Twitter @slagoski23.  I expect to blog here a few times, especially when I encounter an engaging question or a brilliant idea.  In the meantime, I will be creating a new blog related to professional development in community colleges with an emphasis on education technology--like we need another edtech blogger.  When the blog is up and running, I will post the link here.