Practical Solutions for Challenging Times
Saturday, November 21, 2009
CSU Los Angeles
The conference program is available in PDF format.
You can download the conference flyer for more information and posting.
LA Regional Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CATESOL-Los-Angeles-Regional-Conference-2009/126806008770?ref=ts
Chair: Pearl Alvarez
The Power of Communities
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Mt. Diablo Adult School, Concord
Featured Speakers: Jayme Adelson-Goldstein, Maricel Santos and Edmee Marcek
The conference program is available in PDF format. Northern Regional 2009 Program Book
Program Chair: Paige Endo
Yes We Can: Empowering Students in a Learner-Centered Environment
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Grossmont College
Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Brennan, Mission College (Santa Clara) - On Course Facilitator
The conference program is available in PDF format (1 MB). San Diego Regional 2009 Program Book
Chairs: Virginia Berger and Nancy Herzfeld-Pipkin
Here’s a slide show of photos taken that evening. Tatiana Roganova, our coordinator 0809, shared delicious Russian chocolates with everyone at the end of the meeting.
Minutes : Business Meeting Minutes 2009
A great line-up of technology-related workshops made it difficult to choose which workshop to attend. There were a number of sessions about wikis, some about podcasting and moodle. During the Rap session the key question was:
What is the difference between Wikis and Blogs?
Tatiana Roganova, the TELLIG coordinator, suggested that this question be discussed on our TELLIG listserv.
Here’s the reply by Elizabeth Hanson-Smith. To learn more, join our listserv.
Hi Tatiana–
Sorry I missed the session–I really was supposed to be there, but had a bum knee and couldn’t walk for 2 days (it’s fine now).I see the two–blogs and wikis–as very different and having different pedagogical purposes, though both are easily editable and can support all kinds of media nowadays.
Since blogs are created in reverse chronology they are good for journal-keeping or developing an electronic portfolio that demonstrates growth over time. I like them for free writing or for developing a project. The media capabilities are great for PBL. Here’s an example from Rita Zeinstejer’s international exchange. She uses PodOmatic, a podcasting blog, to hold student writing, audio and video, and photos:
<http://caeb2006.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2006-08-21T06_20_55-07_00>
Blogs become Web 2.0 when you have students make and exchange comments on the blog.Wikis are great for peer editing of compositions, and for archiving material–either that created by a student, or student groups, or the teacher for a course. It’s basically a quick Web page, but the power comes from the ability to organize material by content (or alpha-sorted) rather than chronologically. Also you can retrieve earlier drafts of a page and communicate with wiki members with email messages. Here’s an example of a plain vanilla archive or resources created over the last three years in an Electronic Village session on video (I could jazz it up with images and embedded video, but it’s not needed for this purpose):
<http://evovideo.wikispaces.com/>
The nice thing is that anyone who joins the space can add to the resources, rather than just tacking on a comment at the end.Both blogs and wikis have RSS capability so you can see when pages are updated (you can do that with most Webpages now anyway). And both can use tags so they can be searched. But I’m thinking of moving everything in my ed tech blog to a wiki because of the organizational capabilities.
Hope to hear some more from others about what they are doing with these tools.
Cheers–
–Elizabeth
Here’s a photo of participants at the Rap Session. 
Here’s a list of tech-related workshops at this event.
Technology-related workshops at CATESOL Northern Regional 2008 - PDF
The Planning Committee did a great job of hosting another professional development event for the CATESOL community at Biola University in La Mirada, on October 25th 2008. They had a very user friendly Web site offering useful info weeks before the event.
The following is a list of technology-related presentations:
The participant in the Rap session talked about using videos and hand-held devices in ESL.
CATESOL State was a success, thanks in part to the great Web site created and mantained by Bruce Moon.There was a very nice description of the Electronic Village in the Program Book. Here it is:
Here’s a list of all the presentations related to technology.
Saturday, November 3rd, at Las Positas Community College.
During our TELL-IG Rap session the participants came up with this list of workshops they would like to attend at CATESOL 2008 and future conferences:
