Category Archives: culture

AI in the Classroom: The New, New Normal?

In December of 2022, Cecilia Aponte-de-Hanna brought the discussion of artificial intelligence or “AI” to the TESL Ontario community with her post, AI in the Classroom: Love It or Hate It – It’s Here. Cecilia piqued our curiosity by showing us an example of a test text generation and suggested three ways that she was considering using AI with her lessons.   

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Discussing the holiday season with students

Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta

When I look around my classroom, I see a mix of ethnicities from around the world. Each student has their own cultural traditions and special holidays, but they may also be curious to learn about some of the traditions we celebrate in Canada during the holiday season.

In Canada we celebrate several important holidays at the end of the year, including Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Diwali, Oktoberfest, Día de los Muertos, and Yee Peng. These are a few of the more commonly observed celebrations, however there are many more. Whatever the ‘reason for the season’, I try to be inclusive and recognize the diversity of our year-end celebrations when discussing the holiday season with students.

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Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Class through Critical Texts, Talks, and Tasks

I asked TESL Ontario educators to record their thoughts on the question “What are one or two ways that you incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion in your teaching practice?” This post shares their recordings (see link below) and synthesizes their responses, which highlight the importance of infusing criticality in classroom texts, talks, and tasks. 

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Language Never Stops

Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Is it possible for a language to become outdated? Daniel Tammet (2018) answered this question in Every Word Is A Bird: “Language never stops.” “Language evolves over time to reflect the way understanding and beliefs change” (Lellman, 2021). Some expressions that were common a few years ago might not be so common now. This has made choosing good materials more challenging when it comes to real-world language learning.

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#CdnELTchat and #teslONchat Summary with Guest moderator JPB Gerald: Decentring Whiteness in #ELT

Decentring Whiteness in #ELT
Guest Moderator, JPB Gerald
Image Source: #CdnELTChat Team

Post by Tanya Cowie, Jennifer Chow and Bonnie Nicholas

On May 11, the #CdnELTchat team, along with #teslONchat, welcomed JPB Gerald (@JPBGerald) as our special guest moderator for a live chat on the topic of Decentring Whiteness in #ELT. JPB Gerald is a doctoral candidate in Instructional Leadership. His scholarship focuses on language teaching, racism, and whiteness. Learn more at jpbgerald.com or by listening to the podcast, UnstandardizedE. We can also recommend his article in the BC Teal Journal, Worth the Risk: Decentring Whiteness in English Language Teaching, as well as his most recent co-authored piece (with @ScottStillar and @Vijay_Ramjattan) in Language Magazine, After Whiteness.

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#CdnELTchat Summary for April 27, 2021 Building Community in Online Classes

Image Source: #CdnELTChat Team
Image Source: #CdnELTChat Team

Post by Bonnie Nicholas

As we continue with online teaching and learning, I think all of us have discovered the importance of building community in the online spaces in which we spend so much time. I suspect that we have all also discovered that it’s more challenging to build a community in an online environment than in a face-to-face class. #CdnELTchat hosted a Twitter chat to talk about this ongoing challenge.

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Summary of the #teslONchat on Workplace English with Patrick Chan

Image Source: teslontario

Post by: Patrick Chan and Vanessa Nino

On March 26, 2021 we discussed Workplace English on Twitter. The guest moderator of the evening was Patrick Chan (@patchantweets). Patrick Chan currently serves as the Social Content Committee Chair for TESL Ontario. He is also Technological Lead in TESL Ontario’s Conference Committee and the current president of TESL Ottawa. In addition to these roles, he is a LINC instructor in Ottawa. Along with his Ontario Certified English Language Teacher (OCELT) designation, he is an Ontario Certified Teacher. He has taught Workplace English for many years.

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Effective Online Tools & Resources for Teachers and Learners

Education, distance education, internet studying, e-learning flat vector illustration. Online classes, training courses, tutorials, online education design for mobile and web graphics
Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Over the past two years, I have been attending a lot of webinars, presentations, conferences, dialogues and online courses. I’ve also been reading blogs and articles as well as doing presentations and writing blogposts. I’ve gained knowledge and collected remarkable resources. Tools like the ones below can help us design tasks that will engage and motivate our learners.

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Music for the Mind, Body, and Soul

Music recording concept. Creative process of writing a song
Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

I recently created an online listening and speaking module about music. The idea came to mind as a way to make online learning fun, interesting, and engaging for students.

           The module was broken down into four weekly sessions and accessed by students via Canvas, Padlet, Zoom, PowerPoint, Word, voice recording apps, and email.

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