Thanks to the School of Foreign Languages, Eastern Mediterranean University, for running a one-day workshop festival to share new ideas and research conducted the SFL instructors.

• The depth and breadth of content in the workshops demonstrates the level of expertise and commitment of SFL instructors to the profession.  It also highlights the status of SFL-EMU in North Cyprus (and indeed Turkey) and is a tribute to the ongoing support for teacher development and innovation by the SFL-EMU administration.
• The School of Foreign Languages at EMU  certainly offers a great deal of inspiration to sister institutions in North Cyprus and abroad, in how the investment in teacher development yields such a wealth of experience and expertise.

Here are links to the PREZI content that formed the basis of the two plenaries I was privileged to share with my former colleagues at the School of Foreign Languages, Eastern Mediterranean University.

1. The Grammar Translation Method is Dead! Long live GOOGLE translate!
2. Technology, teaching and training: pragmatic issues and concerns

For those of you who wonder ‘why’ not ‘how’ to use technology in teaching, have a look at a short history of educational technology.

The symposium entitled “How to Cope with Digital Bees: E-learning Practices in Secondary Education” brought together teachers, directors, and professionals to exchange and discuss ideas and experiences regarding e-learning in English Language Teaching. Teachers and directors from secondary schools shared their relevant applications, observations, reflections and practices. See http://digiprep11.cankaya.edu.tr/index.html for the conference web site.

The symposium’s theme covered the following topics:

• Web-based learning & teaching
• On-line education
• Blended learning
• Web 2.0 Tools
• Multimedia Tools
• Moodle

I was invited to give a plenary session on pragmatic issues and concerns in using Web2.0 tools in teaching.  Here is a slidecast of my plenary session.  Any comments or observations about your own teaching practices in this context would be welcome.