Fall 2017 Week 13

Welcome to this week's post! You'll find the following:

I.    Video Blog Series 
II.   Classroom Profile: ESOL 20
III.  Tech Corner
IV.  Links & Things
V.   ELAC Update
VI.  Upcoming Professional Learning Opportunities
VII. Call for Contributions

Grab a cup of coffee or tea, settle in and enjoy! Please post questions, feedback, and comments in the comment box below.

I. Video Blog Series Separating Difference from Disability with Students Learning English as an Additional Language by Professor Stefanie Johnson Shipman:

Professor Stefanie Johnson Shipman has just completed the TESOL online course Separating Difference from Disability with Students Learning English as an Additional Language. This four-week course addresses specific issues in assessment, intervention, and identification strategies that are most effective in separating difference from disability.

View her Week 1 Recap below and be sure to click the tab at the top to view Weeks 2-4.

Link: Separating Difference from Disability Week 1 Recap



Additionally, the next section of this course is available through TESOL from April 16 - May 13, 2018. Find out more about the course and how to enroll here.  Link:  Separating Difference from Disability with Students Learning English as an Additional Language


II. Classroom Profile: ESOL 20
Professor Abedin Jamal's ESOL 20 class has been engaged in a variety of activities this semester. Keep reading to get a sneak peek:

For units on both Entrepreneurs and Diets, students participated in Gallery Walk - Speed Dating Presentations. In these activities, students were up and moving, sharing and listening to each other about their topics.

On another day, students had a Class Potluck with the twist that students had written about the dish, so as students helped themselves they also read about it. Delicious and educational!

III. Tech Corner

Flipgrid 

• Remember when we tried our first Flipgrid at Fall Flex? It's not too late to add your introduction! Click here: ESOL Faculty Flipgrid Introductions. 

• I used this tool in my ESOL 32 class this semester, and we even did a Joint Flipgrid with an ESOL Class at the City College of San Francisco. Link: San Francisco to San Diego

 

Adobe Spark Video + Pixar in a Box from Khan Academy

I recently learned about Pixar in a Box - a Storytelling Spine that every Pixar movie is based on. Khan Academy has an entire lesson on this. Link: Pixar in a Box Storytelling.
It basically boils down to this:

We altered it in our class to be this:

Then students used Adobe Spark Video to upload images for each sentence, record their voice, and add music! The stories that they created were lovely! 

Link: Thanh's Story



Link: Howard's Story

 W

IV. Links & Things

• Meet the new CATESOL President Danielle Pelletier on the latest edition of CATESOLcast 006

• I enjoyed this NY Times article about how we are Stronger Together

• A helpful reminder: Are You Broadcasting on Too Many Channels? by Cult of Pedagogy

• New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: How Many Verb Tenses are there in English?

• Before you answer students' questions, try this to combat a culture of learned helplessness.

• My students completed this Start-Stop-Continue Activity and I learned a lot!

• The New York Times Learning Network started a new weekly series, What's Going on in this Graph?

V. ELAC Update

• The ELAC Program passed through Curriculum Committees on all three campuses and the CIC, but is still pending Board and State approval. The plan is still moving forward for this to be implemented Fall 2018, which means that outreach to students, communication with counselors, and professional learning experiences for faculty are well underway.

• Thank you to those of you who attended the last ELAC Professional Learning Workshop at Mesa College. We had interesting break-out discussions about goals and activities as per the course outlines. Our next and last workshop this semester is Friday, December 8th from 1:00-3:00pm in the Mesa LOFT.

• ELAC Blackboard Professional Learning Shell. To facilitate sharing of information and activities, a Blackboard shell has been created and all of you have already been added. To find it when you log in to Blackboard, scroll to the bottom right to view your list of My Organizations. You will find ELAC Professional Learning listed there. Please peruse it for the latest information!

VI. Upcoming Professional Learning Opportunities

Click the tab at the top to view a running list of conferences, workshops, webinars, and other professional learning opportunities. A few can't-miss opportunities coming:

• CATESOL Recap, Friday, December 1st from 10:30-12:00 noon in H-107. Come listen to Stefanie Johnson Shipman, Denise Maduli-Williams, Abedin Jamal, and Sara Solouki recap their presentations and favorite workshops.

• Active Learning Conference, Saturday, January 27, 2018, Palomar College. Early registration $55 by December 15th. This conference is hosted by the Active Learning Leaders (ALL), which is a group of faculty dedicated to increasing student engagement and success through the use of active learning strategies in the classroom. Keynote Speaker Mark Reardon, CEO Centrepoint Leadership will speak on "Navigating the New Reality: A Brain-Centered Approach to Teaching and Learning.

• TESOL Convention, March 27-30, 2018, Chicago, IL. Early registration for TESOL Members $365 by February 1, 2018.

• Online Teaching Conference, June 18-20, 2018, Anaheim, CA. Early Bird registration $300 through April 15, 2018. 

VII. Call for Next Blog Posts

I would like to have one more blog post this semester, to come out at the beginning of week 16. The kicker is that I would like this post to be authored by all of us! Please click the link to sign up for a section. I'll send a friendly reminder to email me your section by the end of Week 15, and then we'll all benefit!


Link: Sign-Up Form ESOL Professional Learning Blog

If you are still reading at this point, a giant thank you for staying with it to the end! Thanks for all of your creativity and work on behalf of our students and department!

Fall 2017 Flex PD Recap

ESOL Faculty getting started with Flipgrid and Padlet

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to our Fall Flex PD Meeting! We had a great time sharing ideas and trying out Flipgrid and Padlet. If you missed the meeting, please click on the top tab to PD Activities to record a video for our Flipgrid ESOL Faculty Introductions and post One Thing on Padlet. We discussed ways that we can use both of these easy tech-tools in our classes.

Below is a quick summary of what each of us shared:

• Evelyn is incorporating SMART Goals into her class so that students can focus on improvement and specific goals. Here's short video.

• Karen talked about the many different ways she has students write Mini Sagas. I think we all immediately want to try it out! We thought it could be cool to have students post them on Padlet, to lighten up Karen's car trunk full of her students' mini sagas!

• Tina has decided that one of her big ongoing class projects will be to create a class cookbook of recipes. What a great takeaway for students to have when the class ends too. 

• Abedin shared how he has potlucks in his classroom where students write and share recipes for the food they make and then present them. An extra step he mentioned is having students go home and cook something using another student's recipe. Sounds yummy to me!

• Stephanie discussed a great way to have students work on summary writing by having every student write one-line summaries per reading section of a longer text on sticky notes. When students come to class they put the sticky notes together by sections and then groups have to discuss, analyze, and decide on which one-line summary is the best for their reading section.

• Sheryl reported that she and Victoria are "going commando" without a core textbook and are using My English Pages which has many resources including great grammar units and quizzes.

• Miriam reminded us all that the best part of teaching is creating and fostering a strong and caring class community that lasts far after the class ends.

• Denise showed off Newsela and encouraged everyone to join as our department has been given free Pro Accounts again from the Newsela for the semester. A quick link to join is here: Newsela Pro Account.

• Tina also suggested we check out University Readers, which puts together readers of just the materials you want for a more relevant and price-friendly "textbook." The contact for University Readers is Mark Nagy, mnagy@cognella.com.

Thanks everyone! 

Welcome to our Shared Space

Welcome to our Miramar College ESOL Department Professional Development Blog. This is our space to share ideas, spotlight faculty and students, keep each other informed about department and college events, and discuss relevant topics in ESOL education.

Regular blog posts will include college updates and events, interesting articles and links, new technology tools and teaching ideas, and best practices from our classrooms.  I invite everyone to contribute to these posts by sharing resources and taking turns blogging!

Denise Maduli-Williams
ESOL Coordinator

Summer Update July 2017

Professional Development Opportunities:

• FREE Comic Conference for Educators and Librarians - San Diego Public Library, July 19-23, 2017 (I'll be at the Saturday Educator-Focused Panels)
• CATESOL Proposal Deadline is July 23rd (CATESOL is in Santa Clara, October 19-22, 2017).
• SXSW EDU takes place in Austin, TX March 5-8, 2018 and has an ELL/ESOL strand.
• If you're looking for virtual PD, check out #catesolchat on Twitter every 3rd Monday from 7-7:30pm.

Fun links and some food for thought:

• Cool art installation in Times Square contains the recorded voices of 70 immigrants sharing their coming to America stories.
• Results of the 2017 Teaching with Technology Survey from Campus Technology
• Get art on demand through Send Me SFMOMA
• Why professors won't try new things.
• Are you a workplace giver or a taker?

A tech tool to try:

• I experimented with Adobe Spark during the Maker Cycles in SDAWP and it was super intuitive to create social graphics, web stories and animated videos! I'll definitely be using this to create some of my presentations, but I'll also be including it as a tech tool for students to use to create photo essays and videos.
• If you want to see what's possible and what I made (no judgement please, it was my first time), check it out here: Adobe Glide of what I learned Week 2 of SDAWP, Adobe Video of my Position Paper Hack, Adobe Animated Video of my Inquiry Project Idea.

End of Spring 2017 Notes

End-of-Semester SLO Meeting:

We would like to meet to work out the kinks in our Listening/Speaking and Reading SLOs. If you remember, we didn't have quite enough time to get to it at our Flex Meeting back in January and we would like those in order before we start in the fall so that we collect data all be on the same page. We will also use this meeting to share and discuss the themes covered in all of our Reading and Writing classes. We hope to avoid covering similar themes across levels.  To help us select the best day and time, please click here to fill out the poll: End-of-Semester SLO Meeting.

Opportunity to work at The PLACe this summer:

The PLACe will be open this summer and needs faculty coverage. Also, there is 1 ESU for an  ESOL faculty member to train tutors to prepare and deliver face-to-face workshops. This begins June 5, so please let me know immediately if you're interested.

ESOL Redesign

There have been meetings between City, Mesa and Miramar over the course of this semester discussing and brainstorming new ideas for our ESOL Program. Look for an email from Ken with specifics and please give us your feedback so that we can bring it to further meetings.

Upcoming Professional Development Opportunities

Here are a list of PD happenings this summer. Please share others that you know of.  I hope to have time for all of us to share something we've learned at our Flex Meeting in the fall.

Online Teaching Conference, June 19-21 Anaheim

SDAWP Summer Open Institutes, UCSD

• College-Ready Writers Program, June 19-21, 8:00am - 3:00pm
• Building a Writing Community, June 27-29, 8:00am - 3:00pm
• Writing, Revision and Mentor Text, July 11-13, 8:00am - 3:00pm

CATESOL 2017, October 19-22, Santa Clara Call for Proposals through July 23

TESOL 2018, March 27-30, Chicago, Call for Proposals through June 1

PD through Technology

• If you aren't up for travel, try out Twitter for free, ongoing PD! I regularly log on and follow these hashtags: #ELL, #ELT, #ESOL, #CATESOL, #CATESOLers, #Edtech, and  #TESOL. I find something new and interesting every time. I'm at @dmaduliwilliams
• Have you heard the CATESOL Podcast? Check it out here: CATESOLCast
• Free Webinars that are also archived that you can view later include @ONE and Listenwise