TESOL 2010

It's been almost 2 weeks since I attended the TESOL 2010 convention. I have been swamped with work, but wanted to include some notes about the sessions I attended.

I went to a panel on qualitative research. I was expecting more from it. I liked David Freeman's presentation. I'm not sure what he said about research, but it was good. The next speaker was really good and animated. I really liked what she talked about with active research and qualitative research. I really need to write more and so some self-study. Really this hasn't talked a lot about qualitative research. Monrage brought up some good points about how it is difficult for English teachers to teach if they themselves have low english proficiency. It really isn't discussing qualitative research, but using materials that could be used in qualitative work. I like that they published a book. That is really cool.

Another presentation that I went to was on the use of video with pre-service teachers.They used an interesting program. It did a lot of the things that i am looking for in a program, but it wasn't perfect. I was excited to talk to the presenters afterwards, but they didn't seem too excited to talk to me. During the time I was there, I did get some great ideas for a good video annotation tool.

Karen Price was a lively presenter. She talked about using Transana for qualitative data analysis. This sparked a lot more questions for me. We've been talking about CAQDAS in the qualitative inquiry class and I am appaled at the lack of great tools available, especially for the mac platform. During these two presentations I made a little mindmap that is difficult explain. It should be a database map, and I know how it is mapped.



Overall, I learned that their are really 3 purposes to go to TESOL.

  1. Networking
  2. Publisher's Exibit
  3. Sessions

And yes, these are in order of importance. I did more networking than anything else, I think. I would also have to say that strengthening existing relationships is also important. I get so many good ideas from talking with friends both new and old. I also got loads of ideas from the books I looked at. The sessions are always hit and miss. About 30% of the ones I went to were actually good.

Well, I thought that I would write more, but that's all I feel like saying.

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