Phil in ninja cloak

Dear All,

I can hardly contain my excitement! Alex suggested a proxy server that works, and it is called 'Ninja cloak', which makes it all the more exciting!

With only two weeks left before the deadline, I am afraid that I have, like Sarah, moved away from the idea of basing my assignement on the develpment of pathways, as there just simply won't be time. It does, however, remain a work priority for me this year too, so let's stay in touch! I am now moving on to focus on concordancing, which I have been reading a lot about, and which seems to be a very tangibly useful tool for teaching a very important element of EAP; vocabulary.

On a slightly different note, and just to throw another thought out there really, my thoughts on the value of technology for EAP this week in particular are based on its value to teachers themselves. I facilitated a large staff development session this week at CELE UNNC on the subject of encouraging autonomy amongst students. It seemed like the natural next move after this interesting (one-hour) discussion would be to set up a WebCT discussion board to keep thrashing ideas out, which I am doing now, and it should be ready do next week. It will be really interesting to see how many teachers get involved and how useful they find it, and I think this experiment relates a lot to what we have been talking about. I am particularly thinking about the discussions we had regarding the reluctance of some staff to engage with technology. I will keep you 'post'-ed (ninja cloak permitting)!

As regards an online discussion, I think we are probably all nearing the 'panic and write' phase of the essay development cycle, and so perhaps this is something for after the assignment, when we can perhaps discuss the pathway development ideas, and anything we might get going along the lines of cross campus simulation activities for students?

As a start on pathway stuff, VELA at Hong Kong University (use google search 'VELA Hong Kong' to find it) is pretty good.

Bye for now, and a happy belated 60th anniversary of communist China to you all!