SENSE Ed - Kicking Off the New School Year

The next meeting of the SENSE Ed SIG will be held on Saturday 26 September from 14:00-16:00. This virtual meeting will be held via Zoom and is titled KICKING OFF THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR.

This spring SENSE Ed met on a regular basis to discuss the many challenges we were facing in having to make the hurried switch to online teaching. A few months down the line, we’re not out of the woods yet: it looks like we’ll be staying with virtual classrooms for some time to come. It thus seems appropriate to get together again after the summer break, recap what we’ve experienced so far, and discuss new ways to meet the challenges ahead.

Two speakers will be on hand to assist us in this process. The first of them is Stephen Johnston, who needs no introduction to SENSE members. Most of us will have already attended at least one of his entertaining and informative presentations on copywriting and/or teaching. Stephen will be talking to us on the subject of ‘Mistakes to Avoid When Using Zoom’. Nowadays, a more appropriate topic could scarcely be imagined.

Our second speaker is new to SENSE. Tom Wigham is originally from the UK; he completed his BA in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. He has lived in the Netherlands since 2011and holds an MA in Linguistics from the University of Groningen. He has worked as a language instructor in Amsterdam and most recently at the University of Groningen, where he teaches courses on academic writing and debate skills. On this occasion, Tom will be demonstrating a number of techniques he has developed for providing effective feedback to students during a virtual class. In particular, we will see how a teacher can use Google Docs to ‘look over the student’s shoulder’, despite the physical distance between them.