I did not see Livia looking stressed at any stage; sign of a good actor? Perhaps, but also a sign of good leadership and delegation. The student helpers were indeed that; very helpful, and there was always someone friendly and charming at the reception desk. The Canadian Conference Crier – as I dubbed him – is in the wrong profession. Give him an oscar or the equivalent for Conference Chairing. IATEFL could do with him at every conference.

In terms of trying to pick a nit….. well, only ONE glass of red wine at the reception!HINT HINT to Livia or should that be addressed to David Hill?

THose of you wondering what happened to all those photos that I took…. well they are with LIvia and some will be uploaded onto this website soon whatever soon means. THose who requested photos from me please be patient.

Andrew’s remark about the lack of numbers… Well, I have heard of chap from Nazareth who started with only 12 and the rest is history…
Spread the word.

Thank you to all (organisers and delegates) who made my first experience of Hungary IATEFL very pleasant. I hope to be able to attend again. Lindsay and I discussed the possibility of a PECHA KUCHA based on EFL and the Kama Sutra (hmmm) Watch this space. That should pull in a few more punters , Andrew.

Finally, on leaving the conference, I bumped into Gordon Lewis in the ‘watering-hole’ of his hotel where we did our best to enhance the profits of some brewery called Bitburger Pils. Thanks Gordon.

Best wishes from a cloudy London
Cheers

Rakesh

Just wanted to say thanks, Elek, for stimulating such a rich exchange of ideas over the past few days. Nora, can’t agree with you at all that it’s in any way a bad thing to hear so many points of view on a lot of different but related issues. It’s been great and I’m sure it’s helped us to crystallize our thinking and come up with new ideas. Of course, at times there has been some overgeneralising but that’s in the nature of these kinds of discussions.

Elek, I think the reason we so consistently fail to see eye to eye (post 30) is that, even though we have a lot in common – we both think that using new technology in education can be very beneficial for teachers and learners – the strength of our ’faith’ is somewhat different. To borrow some terminology from the communicative approach, I have a weak version view of technology: I believe it can considerably enhance the learning and teaching experience but is not essential to good teaching (although I encourage my trainees to experiment with it creatively). I have seen many very good teachers in Hungarian schools who did not use any new media in their teaching (unless you count CDs/DVDs). You, on the other hand, clearly believe that new technology is not only beneficial but essential to good teaching and effective learning: “If you refuse to use technology, the quality of your teaching and consequently, your students will suffer.” This is why, when someone says “I am not anti-technology. But … I am dubious about the insistence that we have to embrace it” I have no problem understanding what they mean but you see it as a contradiction.

As far as the ’cons’ of technology go, I don’t interpret this to mean arguments against using technology, and therefore I don’t see it as a return to square one. To me it means the problems and potentially problematic issues involved in using technology. These issues need to be considered seriously but by doing so we are not returning to square one but moving the conversation on and further developing our ideas and knowledge about how to use the new media and what for. What am I talking about here? What is the ’price’ of technology? I think it’s things like dealing with the issues of privacy and private time for teachers, dealing with the highly variable quality of knowledge on the internet and working out effective ways to evaluate it, facing the dangers of anonymity and vulnerability in the cyber world, e.g. cyberbullying, the possibility that the web encourages superficial reading habits and uncritical information gathering, and many other issues which are coming up as we learn more about how we interact with the new media. I don’t believe this is a zero sum equation: we can be in favour of using technology but still acknowledge that there are many problems with it and seek to address those problems. I believe that we have to be critical practitioners in everything we do, not just as regards using new technology but in all aspects of teaching.

Anyway, thanks again for sparking this whole thing off, and let’s go for a beer and a chat some time

Going back to where I left off:
Mark, as I said, trainers should be ready to embrace technology as one of the many tools they showcase to trainees. I’m always disheartened when colleagues at institutes such as ELTE warn people of the potential dangers of ICT. Of course there are such dangers, I say: go out, explore them, look at what other people are doing and feed the best practices back to your trainees. In order to able to do that, we need all the help we can give each other – simply because right now there’s not much going on as the use of ICT is still in its infancy.
Also, I was not implying that trainers are doing a bad job (and I wrote trainers to include those not teaching at a university but are involved in in-service training), but I would encourage them (all of them) to gain some experience in using ICT – not just to upload worksheets to Moodle, but examine the use of ICT in its different forms and contexts. All this came to mind while reading the mELTing POt issue – I was disheartened by Gyula’s article – so that’s the source of all this.
The solution (as I see it) would be to create a forum – be it online or face2face (possibly both) where examples of good practice could be accessed, we could exchange ideas and try and help each other’s work. This is how I envisage such co-operation:

1 there seems to general consensus that we cannot disregard ICT in education
Once we agree it has a place in teacher training as well
2 we should seek out ways in which it can be utilised.
3 Naturally, issues will arise and discussion should follow on what works and what doesn’t.
4 this should be fed back to 1

I believe this very simple structure would allow all of us to avoid fruitless theoretical debates at the very early stage of this cycle and help us design a construct that is both theoretically sound and would serve as suitable basis for practical instruction in teacher training.

This way trainers (at least at the highest level – by which I mean the level where you are actually writing articles about the issue) will be required to engage in a variety of ICT applications with some help from the chalkface – projects filmed in schools, articles written up (such as Anna’s and Livi’s in the M.Pot). As a result, we’d be moving forward towards the successful integration of ICT into teacher training rather than constrain ourselves to warning teachers ‘don’t touch a computer until have completed a course’ or ‘don’t use the computer lab as very little language work is going to happen’.

Kati, 2 brief points, there are classes for me to teach today, as I have just been reminded
1 Virtual space is NOT the same as offline space – your common sense doesn’T work there. I, every now and then, go to a pub w/ friends to let of steam and talk about things. Never have I met a student there – we’re simply moving in different circles and I know where to go and where not to meet or avoid them. This is not the case online! You cannot decide what you share w/ friends and your students. Once the pic is uploaded w/ you wasted at a party, it’s there for all to see – not just your friends, your students as well. There is a post I’ve written on this in Hungarian on http://www.tanarblog.hu .
2 I find that teachers are interested and willing to learn about ICT – I expected young, enthusiatóstic teachers to show up at my training sessions, and I was surprised to see that most of the participants are experienced teachers wanting to learn something new.
Sorra, I really must rush now ..