AZ TESOL Mini-Conference

I recently presented at a small TESOL conference that is connected to the state of Arizona TESOL. I presented on the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom as instructional resources. I talked about social bookmarking, wikis, and screencasting. There were about fifteen people in attendance at the conference, three of which were my professors.

The wiki I created for using at the conference is located here. I created a short demonstration video using Jing so that teachers could get an idea of how this social bookmarking site might be beneficial. In my tutorial I stress the use of the highlighter, which is specific to Diigo.

I also discussed the use of the screeencasting software Jing, mostly for use in the writing classroom to provide feedback and for tutorials. Because some of these free screencasting software are so user friendly, I said that teachers could experiment a lot with making instructional tutorials, especially for those teaching in computer labs and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL).

I also touched upon some of the ways I've used wikis in the classroom. While many educators stress the use of wikis for intensive writing classes, I pointed out there are a number of other uses for ESL teachers, such as learner created vocab glossaries and gap-filling exercises with sample texts.