Teachers, instructors and EL administrators from the Northwestern region of Russia and beyond gathered in Saint Petersburg to get first-hand knowledge and learn newest tricks of the trade from a distinguished American specialist Thom Thibeault, director of the Language Technology Forum at Samford University. Dr. Thibeault is an expert teacher trainer in CALL, distance learning, Moodle, MOOCs, Hypermedia, LSP (Language for Specific Purposes), and autonomous language learning. Professor Thibeault is a frequent presenter at EuroCALL and CALICO.
The seminar opened with a welcome speech by Jerrold Frank, English Language Officer of US Embassy, Moscow, and Suzanne Bodoin, Public Affairs Officer, Consulate General of USA, Saint Petersburg.
Educators tasked with moving their courses online, developing MOOCs, and other distance courses, or those who are training the trainers in e-design, concentrated on what benefits the platforms like MOODLE, various social networks and LMS offer students and teachers.
Sophia Barinova, Assistant Professor at the Foreign Languages Department, Pushkin Leningrad State University, says that she appreciated the information she learned about the multitude of free websites and software resources that the teachers can use to create quizzes, games, questionnaires, puzzles, presentations and other interactive content. «It allows saving plenty of time, energy and money», she comments. «We all are now loaded with the information, and are ready to implement it in our teaching».
The seminar finished with making a micro-lesson presentation — participants working in pairs introduced a 2-minute lesson using tools & strategies covered in previous sessions.
