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Happy New Year to #ELTchat followers and contributors, fellow #ELTchat bloggers and summary writers, friends who have joined #ELTchat on Twitter and who have made our Facebook Group a focal meeting point for announcements of events, articles, news and blog posts.

 

2013 in Review 

In 2013 we hosted not one, not two, nor three but 64 #ELTchats.

 

On 64 occasions, we provided free development opportunities to teachers from places as close as the next street to our homes and as fas as Australia, India and Indonesia!!!

 

We had some great chats – some with more people, some with fewer participants, but we generated some great conversations amongst our followers.

 

Here is the link to our last #ELTchat of 2013 which was a review of our topics throughout the year.

 

Best of #ELTchat in 2013 – An #ELTchat summary (11/12/2013)

 

At times, we wondered whether the life cycle of #ELTchat had come to an end. We were certainly the first hashtagged chat Twitter focusing on English Language Teaching, but our example has since inspired many other groups of teachers to form their own communities and to gather on Twitter to talk about specific problems, perhaps related to their teaching focus, such as #EAPchat or to their region, such as #BRELTchat for Brazilian teachers and, later, #AusELT, for teachers in Australia.  Many of the members of these newer chats still follow and contribute to #ELTchat when they can, but naturally, the numbers have dropped.

 

Why have they dropped is perhaps a question to research – Twitter is still seen as a threat by many teachers – for example, we have more than 2000 members in our Facebook group, but very few of them venture out on to Twitter, preferring to wait and read our summaries.

 

To us, who use it  as the hub of our online professional development on a daily basis, this is somewhat hard to understand, although we do see where it is coming from, but we do hope we can encourage you all to make it your new year’s resolution to join Twitter and to participate in #ELTchats, if for no other reason, but to experience the rush and excitement of conversing and sharing with colleagues from around the world in real time !!!

 

 #ELTchat changes in 2014

 

Given some of these changes in our membership, all three current moderators have decided to reduce the number of #ELTchats and hold only one every week.

 

The times of the chats will rotate: one week, we will hold an #ELTchat at 12 p.m. GMT and the following week we will hold it at 21 p.m. GMT.

 

Calls for topics and polls will be held on this blog as before but only the top topic will be chosen each week. Topics with high numbers of votes will be included in the next week’s poll automatically

 

Keep Scrolling!

This change has been made necessary due to the heavy load of work faced by all three moderators and the fact that one of them – James – is no longer able to assist with both chats as he has moved to a completely different time zone.

 

We may reinstate the second #ELTchat on Wednesdays, or even decide to hold one on a different day, but to do this we need help, and this means new moderators.

 Reminder!!!!

Reminder!!!!

A call for New Moderators

At times, we have all mentioned one colleague or another as a possible moderator but we think it’s best to open this position to our PLN and explain a moderator’s duties and responsibilities:

 

In future moderators we are looking for the following attributes: 

 

• A broad range of experience in English Language Teaching in a variety of capacities or contexts
• Experience in using Twitter as a medium for Professional Development
• Blogging experience, as moderators have to write new blog posts every week or to edit, copy and reshape summary posts copied from other blogs.
• Availability to moderate #ELTchats for at at least one of the two times indicated above
• Familiarity with social media and ability to disseminate information about our topics, our posts, our Twitter discussions
• A willingness to contribute to the wider ELT community freely and voluntarily
• Some familiarity with pbworks wikis (this is not of primary importance and can be learnt very quickly)
• Commitment to the aims of #ELTchat and interest in its development

 

We are going to be a little bit formal about this and would like to ask any interested applicants to send an email expressing interest and providing evidence of the above to either shaunwilden@gmail.com or marisa.constantinides@gmail.com

 

Please pass on this information to any of your colleagues you think might be suitable to be moderators

 

Deadline for Applications the end of February 2014

 

 

Time to Vote! 

Read the comments below for the first two questions – one wsa too long to try to squeeze into a few words the second was fine but I had to go to class 🙂

[polldaddy poll=7732500]

 

 

 

Post by @Marisa_C