Harrogate Online registered bloggers: David Read


One of the other registered bloggers, Adam Simpson (blogging at http://www.teachthemenglish.com/) has come up with the idea of a blog chain reaction in the lead up to the 2014 IATEFL conference. The idea is for each registered Harrogate Online blogger "to choose two or three of this year’s registered bloggers and introduce them on their blog. These bloggers then in turn choose other registered bloggers and interview them…and so it goes on until we all have a good idea of who will be blogging about this year’s event."

My first choice is David Read, and here are his answers to the blog challenge questions:

Please introduce yourself
Please introduce yourself My name’s David Read, I’m from the UK and work as Technology Director at the English Language Teaching Centre, part of the University of Sheffield. I’ve been an EFL teacher for about 20 years and worked in 14 countries (don’t worry, I won’t list them!). As my job title suggests, my main interest is technology, particularly mobile and web apps for developing digital literacy. 

Could you give us brief details about your session at IATEFL 2014? 
Not doing one this year, did one last year and just wanted to be able to enjoy IATEFL this time without having that performance anxiety banging around in the back of my head! So decided instead to become a registered blogger and put pressure on myself to churn out a few posts during the conference… 

What areas of the conference are you interested in? 
My two main interests are technology and English for Academic Purposes, so anything related to those. Any mobile stuff particularly, there seems to be a constant stream of new apps coming out and hearing what other teachers are using is alway useful. 

What should your audience expect to learn? 
If you mean my audience for my session - very little! If you mean my blog, hopefully some useful reflections on the sessions. 

Do you blog? Could you tell us about your blog(s)? 
I’ve been blogging on and off since about 2003, to start with it was mainly travelogue stuff but then later I started using it as part of my own professional development. I had a blog on mobile learning in ESL (http://mobileesl.blogspot.co.uk/) but decided to move over to Google+ and use the communities there as a way of sharing ideas and information. I moderate an ESL teacher community there that has nearly 2000 members. But recently I decided to start up again, this time as an unofficial blog of our school. I wanted a space where our centre’s teachers and students could share experiences and knowledge and so started up this: http://eltcattheuniversityofsheffield.blogspot.co.uk/ 

What other aspects of the conference are you looking forward to? 
Just meeting up with other teachers, especially those I’ve worked with in the past. IATEFL is a great whirl through your recent and distant past!

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