#KELTChat Slowburn: “Reflecting on the KOTESOL International Conference (and others)” (Tuesday, October 20th, 11am-6pm KST)

Apologies for the lack of #KELTChat Twitter chat action recently. This was largely due to the fact that #KELTChat folks have been out and about in the real world doing some live #KELTChat sessions. One of these sessions was at the KOTESOL International Conference at COEX on the 10th and 11th October. This conference is also the subject of Tuesday’s chat. We’d like to know if you went, what you saw, what you learned and how you felt about it all. If you didn’t go, this chat might also be a good place to catch up on anything that you missed, and to share any other recent conference going experiences.

This chat is a Slowburn chat, meaning that it takes place over a much longer time than regular Twitter chats. We hope people will dip in and out of the chat throughout the day as their schedules allow; we don’t expect anyone to be involved for the whole 7 hours.

Some general questions to consider: 

• What were some of the sessions that you enjoyed?
• What are the three most important things that you learned?
• Did you do anything different the following Monday?
• What other aspects of the conference (aside from the sessions) did you enjoy?
• What would you say to someone attending the conference for the first time?
• Do you feel different about conference going as you get more experienced?
• What are good ways to get to know other teachers at conferences?
• What makes a good session in general?
• If you presented, what advice would you give to future presenters?

We hope to see you in the chat on Tuesday.

#KELTchat Slowburn – Getting the most out of conferences (Tuesday, September 23rd 10 am-10 pm)

Photo by Rodd Lucier used under Creative Commons license https://www.flickr.com/photos/thecleversheep/3165592302/

Hello again. #KELTChat’s fall/autumn activities continue with a return to our Slowburn™ chats. The topic is “Getting the most out of conferences,” and the chat will take place via the medium of Twitter on the 23rd September 2014 between the hours of 10 am and 10 pm, Seoul time.

The Slowburn chat is intended to be a more relaxed and less involved alternative to our intensive one hour chats. Spacing it out over twelve hours means that you have time to dip in and out as you wish, and topics have time to rise, fall, be resurrected and fully explored over the course of the day. We hope that this will better suit people with busy weekday schedules.

With at least two large East Asian conferences upcoming (the KOTESOL and JALT international conferences) we thought it would be a good time to look at how we can best use these opportunities to learn and connect with other teachers. Therefore, some of the questions we will discuss are:

How do we choose which sessions to attend?
What are we looking for when we attend conferences?
Learning, presenting, networking: what is the best balance?

How can we cope with getting so much information at once?
How can we take notes in a useful way?
How can we use social media to improve our conference experience?
How can we reflect on what we’re hearing about?

How can we communicate and connect with other participants? How can we engage with the conference playfully? Can it sometimes help to move “outside” the design and flow of the conference, and how can we do that?
How can we cope with fatigue over two or three day conferences?
What do we do after conferences? How can we carry the “buzz” back into the classroom? How do we apply what we learned?

Should we think about setting goals for conferences? What kind of goals?
What should we do the week/ the day/ the morning before the conference?
Do you have any essential conference going equipment?
What are some of the best conference sessions that you have attended? Why were they so good? Did you expect them to be so good beforehand?

Of course, you should also feel free to bring and ask your own questions during the chat.

If you would like to take part in the chat, you will need a Twitter account. There are some excellent how-to guides at the top of the page (not written by us!). If you would like a more personal explanation, ask on the Facebook group and we’ll be happy to help. We’d also point out that while we are Korean centered, we’re by no means exclusive, and you should feel free to join us from anywhere in the world. We’d welcome the international perspective.

We hope to see you on Tuesday .

The #KELTChat team

 

This article from ELT Journal written by Simon Borg (and discussed further on his blog here)  was shared by David Harbinson on Twitter recently and might be of interest for those thinking about topic.