Coming together for #eurocall2022

 

It is that time of year again when the Eurocall community comes together. For the third year running we are meeting virtually rather that being able to get together in the same physical place. As a community we love the intercultural mingling we have enjoyed in the past: sharing food and fellowship, and our dancing together is legendary. 

However, we are able to recreate some of this community building online thanks to the digital literacies we have. This post shows just what has been going on as we prepare for our annual conference and I am grateful to all those who have been connecting on the conference app Whova or on social media channels using #eurocall2022. 

Hugh Prior will be presenting on Wednesday and he has been fortunate enough to visit Iceland. He has shared his journey in our Whova app:  

Many of us are just imagining how best to reduce our impact on the #climatecrisis and we are encouraged to share our #virtualjourney using the #eurocall2022 tag:

We are going to#Iceland for our annual conference, attending virtually this year. Choose a gif or image to show us your #virtualjourney. Let's make this year a commitment to reducing #climatechange. Use #eurocall2022 tag so we can share your creativity! pic.twitter.com/NpY0VawG3m

— Eurocall (@EurocallLang) August 15, 2022

I'm  looking forward to seeing the creativity of our community reflected on our Wakelet mood board:

#eurocall2022 mood board

There are many community members active in the open and we are grateful to them for their support in expanding our community. Special mentions go to those who regularly tweet using the #eurocall tag. Here you are, we see and appreciate you:

A full archive including the sharing of digital badges we issue to our members can be viewed here. Open badges are another way we can recognise the actitivies of our members in the field of CALL (or CMC or TELL - I know the acronym debate continues in Whova!).

Another way in which we thank our community is through prizes of course. There are prizes for the photo and caption competitions in Whova as well as prizes for best poster and best student presentation...more about these in the opening ceremony on Wednesday. 

I imagine life can be pretty harsh for the Icelandic ponies in the picture above but I am sure they are better protected when they get together. So indeed are we, and how we will dance when we finally get together in the same place!

Recognising participation and contribution to the EUROCALL community of practice.

 

At last the time has come to provide official recognition to all those who participated or presented in our 2021 conference. 

The French organisers hosted a huge event which morphed over time due to the pandemic from initial plans for a blended event into a fully online conference. Ever resourceful and enthusiastic the organisers provided a fantastic event which was well received by our membership. 

Notifications of badge award have been sent out by email but we know there are always those emails which do not make it through the filters and consequently end up in spam. If you have not yet had yours here are some practical tips:

• Open a free account in Open Badge Passport using the email address you used for registration. The account will locate your badge and ask you to accept it. 
• If you already have an account, make sure that the email address used in registration is included in your profile.  You can add multiple email addresses. 

and/or 

• Download the Open Badge Passport app  to your mobile device and follow the steps above
• Check out the tutorial videos available on You Tube. 

We hope to see you showing off your EuroCALL badges online through social media. Tag our social media accounts so we can celebrate with you. 

Image by Artturi Mäntysaari from Pixabay

A summer of sharing and learning together.

Image by Jessica Joh from Pixabay

I'm sure that we are all feeling the need to turn our faces to the sun in order to recharge our batteries after all the stresses of the pandemic. It does look as though our lives will continue to be disrupted for some time yet to come but at EuroCALL we are keen to provide opportunities to learn from our experiences and grow stronger together so that the next academic year can bring greater certainty and security for everyone. 

Of course the annual conference is nearly upon us. To be held online this year the French team have created a wonderful event which has the highest registration numbers we have seen. A good deal of thought and planning has gone in to this virtual event in order to help us share the community spirit we so enjoy at our live conferences and those who have registered can download the event app and start to explore already. 

EuroCALL has always had good links with practising teachers, often running workshop sessions with teacher educators as part of our conferences. Indeed, we moved our conference dates into August in order to make it easier to facilitate teacher participation. This year is no exception. We will be running an online Teacher Outreach event this year which is open to all, whether you are a EuroCALL member of not. There is a small fee for a day pass to this event and all participants will get a EuroCALL digital badge to show their commitment to connecting for professional development. The programme is now live and has a dedicated website. 

Please check it out and share this post with your teacher networks around the world. Registration is now open. 

As an organisation we want to help our community of international language teachers, researchers and developers overcome the challenges experienced due to covid 19 and recover for a better future. Read more about our organisation here.