The second time around

I’m happy to announce that I have been asked to present at a conference (as you may already know from my Facebook post). I don’t know how this is usually done, i.e. whether people take the initiative and send a proposal or just wait to be addressed. The truth is that I would never have the courage. In some areas of my life, I simply prefer to wait for things to happen. So, I’m grateful someone has been more proactive than me. 🙂

My workshop will be about blogging and the topic was suggested to me. I immediately liked the idea because blogging is something I know a lot about. This is not to say I’m some kind of blogging expert but I just do it a lot. Anyway, I hope that since this will be the second time around it will be a bit easier.

I’ve started working on the draft and I’m enjoying it. That’s a good sign. I’d like the talk to be interactive as I believe people at conferences like to be engaged and I’m not into long monologues myself. Also, I don’t want it to be too me-centred.

Although I’m truly enjoying the process, I realize the topic is actually a bit tricky. The thing is that I don’t expect many people, i.e conference attendees, to have extensive experience in blogging. I suppose that if I come across and bloggers at all, they will be in a minority. I mean, people certainly read blogs but I’m not convinced they are keen on hearing all the details from behind the scenes of blogging.

Well, my intention is not to spoil the story by writing up this post. I just wish to sort out my ideas and maybe I’m hoping to hear some feedback and advice from you, readers (and bloggers combined with conference presenters).

Here are some of the questions I’d like to address in my workshop:

1. What is a blog?
2. What does the etymology dictionary say?
3. What blogs (educational or other) do you read? What topics do you read about?
4. Why do people read ELT blogs? Isn’t the Teacher’s Book enough? 🙂
5. Have you ever kept a diary? Why (not)?
6. Why should you never start a bog (in English or your mother tongue)?
7. Do you know any Czech teachers of English who blog?
8. Why should you start your own blog (if we discard all the cons)? 🙂
9. How did I start my blog then?
10. Examples of blogs and posts that might be useful for a Czech teacher
11. Where to start a blog?
12. What about your students and blogging?
13. Time for a little experiment …

I’ve recently learned how to use Socrative.com, which I’d like to use to find out about my audience’s teaching background and context. This will hopefully be much quicker and more effective than asking everybody to introduce themselves one by one.

So, wish me good luck. 🙂