A couple of weeks ago our association received a personal invitation from the British Council in Madrid to join them at their V annual meeting of English Teachers Associations. It took place at The BC Headquarters on Friday & Saturday 18-19 of February. MªAngels Gonzalez, Teruca Figuerola & Vicente Sanchez from the board attended.
The British Council Madrid kindly payed for all expenses involved which included AVE Return tickets to Madrid, accommodation and full board.
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Pay Attention !
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Linking up !
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There were associations from almost everywhere in the Iberian Peninsula including:
TESOL Spain APIGA (Galicia) APABAL (IBalears) TEA(Canarias) APAC(Catalunya) GRETA(Granada CETA(Córdoba) BETEA (Euskadi) APPI (Portugal) APAVAC (C.Valenciana)
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That's all of us !
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Friday 18
We started at 6 pm and were welcomed by the BC organizers Mark Levy and Maureen McAlinden. Mark talked about the new challenges to reach an audience through ICTs and how the British Council Worldwide are keeping pace with the times. An example of The British Council involvement in areas of shared concern is the research work published under the title " La acreditación del nivel de lengua Inglesa en las universidades españolas", a copy of which can be downloaded from :
http://www.britishcouncil.org/spain_informe_acreditacion_ingles_universidades_espanolas_.pdf
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Mark Levy, Maureen Mc Alinden, Martin Goosey ( British Council Madrid)
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Then every organization talked about what had been done and achieved during the last 12 months since last meeting.
British Council : Aims at giving all ELT teachers access to UK media, and networking for sharing resources, materials, through exploitation of WIKIs. etc.
TESOL Spain : Hillary introduced REAL a French based Framework European Association of Associations and talked about seminars in forthcoming months. See their website.
APIGA (Galicia) (20 years history)(50 members)have been refounded recently after a difficult period. They have been working along APPI Portugal and with publishers: Pearson.
APABAL (I Balears)(250 members)(11 month History) had held their first Conference with great success. Brilliant PPT presentation.
TEA (Canarias) (100 members) Their recently elected president told us how they focused on on-line Teacher Training and are launching an E-magazine.
APAC (Catalunya)(25 years) (850 members) They do lots of courses for teachers and their latest Annual Convention gathered 350 people.
GRETA (Granada) (25years) (325 members) held their conference in Jaen a few months ago. They are working alongside CEPS with courses and seminars.
CETA (Cordoba) (12 years) (100 members)Their newly appointed president , who is a primary school teacher, told us about countless activities organized by the Association including a Grundtvig European Union Project and their next Conference being held on 7 May. They work closely with GRETA.
BETEA (Euskadi) (50 members) They are holding their conference after the Summer. They advised us to always offer some feedback time at the end of every talk or seminar.
APPI (Portugal) (7.000 members) Huge National Association.They run a teacher training centre providing courses for teachers all over Portugal. They are focused currently on Primary Teacher Training. They hold their AGM either in Porto or Lisbon. Their latest gathered 600 teachers.
APAVAC (C.Valenciana) as a new member told the rest about our brief history and commented about our plans for the future One thing we learnt from the rest of TAs is that Comunitat Valenciana are the guinea pigs concerning Prova Homologada in IES in Spain. No one had even heard of it yet.
Saturday 19
From 10 to 14:00 Graham Stanley from BC Barcelona and Ann Foreman from BC Bilbao talked about how Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin.com…etc can be used to our advantage as TAs (Teacher Association) as well as some advice on Dos and Don’t s about them.
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Ann Foreman (BC Bilbao) & Graham Stanley (BC Barcelona)
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We started a Facebook account on the spot as a practical exercise on how to link to all other TA s in Spain.
Being their motto “The more avenues, you explore the better...”
From APAVAC we would like to thank the British Council Madrid for such opportunity to link with the rest of TAs. Such getting together has quite encouraged us in our task as it will help us learn from others and in the future we will be able to share and work together towards the same goal which is becoming better professionals.
