If not, you should, well you should if you’re involved in the ELT. Of course if you don’t use twitter then you might be a bit lost at this point. Let me explain.
ELT chat is the weekly discussion held on twitter. ELT professionals from around the world spend an hour discussing pre-chosen topics. It ‘meets’ every Wednesday for two sessions – one at 3pm London time and then again at 9p.m. with a different topic discussed each time.
It started two weeks ago and so far we discussed:
Motivating students outside the classroom
Intercultural Competence
Will online teaching replace f2f
Oral error correction
Of course an hour is never enough but so far I have found the three I have taken part in, have given me lots of food for thought, reaffirming some of my teaching beliefs and challenging others.
I always find talking about teaching stimulating and felt twitter has served as my online staffroom since I joined it. However, now with #eltchat I find it even more so, especially as I am not currently teaching. In week one there were nearly 1500 tweets that’s quite a lot to digest even if tweets are only a 140 characters
The growth of the #groups had added a new dimension to twitter this year – ironic given that towards the end of 2009, some educators were saying teachers would stop using it – a definite case of the Mark Twains (reports of my demise and all that).
ELT chat has its own website where you can suggest topics for discussion (these are then voted on), see archives and continue discussions. A podcast is also on its way and there is a ‘newspaper. So no excuse for not joining in really.
You can find the website here.
The newspaper here
If you are on twitter then follow @eltchat and use the hashtag #eltchat.
If you are new to twitter and need advise just post to the hashtag, one thing you’ll find is that they are a helpful bunch.
See you next Wednesday?
