I started the day first by watching the interview with Deborah Healey who has arrived from the USA and this is her first time at IATEFL. I really enjoyed it because she was talking about use of technology and games in teaching. My cup of tea, really.
The basic point that I agree with is that teachers shouldn't tech the classroom without thinking about how their learners will benefit from it. We should have the learner in mind whenever we incorporate technology in the lesson plan. Nik Peachy actually asked a question that I always get asked by teachers: if learners play games, how do we teach grammar? As I have already discussed in my previous posts, we can teach many things through games: grammar, vocabulary, writing, speaking, etc.
At this point I was already getting the feeling that I was at IATEFL. Next, I watched David Crystal's plenary talk with 309 people online. Not too bad, is it? (I will not go into the plenary because by the time I decided what to blog about Graham Stanely already blogged about it). There must have been more people in Liverpool, but the online audience was also big. Unfortunately, I couldn't participate in the online chat, which was very lively, because I had some students writing tests and didn't want them to think that I was chatting and ignoring them, which might have been true.
Next thing to do was to get on Facebook to see what was going on. Some friends shared photos from presentations that they attended, some mentioned their own presentation. I wished them good luck. Marcos Benevides shared the link to Vicky Saumell's presentation which was very nice, because now I might even think that I was there as well as Hakan Senturk and Burcu Akyol.
Next I read our roving reporters Sanja Bozinovic, Branca Segvic and Addeh Hovassapian's reports on teh sessions they had attended and got a full feeling of being in Liverpool. Now I get down to teaching feeling completely happy. :) Later in the evening I know that I can watch some of the sessions and some more interviews, read more reports and see more photos.
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