#ELTchat

A PLN for ELT Professionals

                                                                      

Welcome to #ELTChat

What is #ELTChat?
#ELTchat started in September 2010 when a group of #ELTchat professionals began to use twitter to discuss topics of interest to English Language Teachers. It began with the aim of creating a freely available social network for ELT professionals offering mutual support and opportunities for Continuous Professional Development.

Now, every Wednesday at 12pm and 21.00pm, ELT teachers from all over the world log into their Twitter account and for one hour hold an online discussion on a topic they have selected.

How does it work?
The conversations can be followed by following the #ELTchat hashtag on twitter. Anyone who posts a comment, a link, a question, adds #ELTchat somewhere in their message (status update or tweet). This way everyone who follows this hashtag can see their tweets.

If you would like to find out how to search and save the #ELTchat hashtag so you can see everyone's tweets, please watch this short screencast.

How are #ELTChat topics chosen?
Every Saturday, one of the moderators will put up a blog post on the #ELTchat Blog asking teachers who follow #ELTchat to propose some topics for the next chats.  

The link is posted on Twitter as well and re-tweeted by all the moderators several times throughout Sunday.

#ELTchat followers can go to that post and suggest topics in the comments under the blog post.

On Sunday evening, the moderators review the topics and create an online poll. #ELTchat followers are then invited to vote on the topics until Wednesday morning. Once the poll closes the top two topics become the subjects of the discussions.

What if you cannot follow #ELTChat?
After each chat, a transcript is posted on the #ELTchat wiki and moderators put out a request to the #ELTchat participants-fellow Twitterers asking for volunteer to write a summary of the chat.

Once the summary has been published on the volunteer's blog, it is also reposted on the #ELTchat blog and linked to the summaries index page on the blog.

How else can you connect with the #ELTChat community of teachers?
#ELTchat followers are great at connecting through Social Networks! They meet on Twitter throughout the week but we also maintain a Facebook group with more than 550 members. Join this group as well to share links and continue the conversations started on Twitter!

Every month, we also publish a podcast, featuring an interview with one of our followers, interviews with well-known ELT authors and a quick summary of the past month's #ELTchats!! Click on the podcasts page to listen to some of the past podcasts!

       
         Find out about the #ELTchat nomination