thomas leverett weblog: Toronto 2015

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Toronto 2015

I've accepted an invitation to present an Electronic Village Classic at the TESOL 2015 Convention in Toronto, which brings up a number of other topics. The presentation is called For better or worse: Grammar technology and the language learner and in brief it shows how technology changes the student's process of learning, as well as the process of writing, the final product, etc. I often show free grammar-check programs and show what they do to the writer. Ironically teachers often stop by hoping to just get computers to fix the problems; it's as if nobody really wanted to deal with grammar in the first place. The site for the presentation is here though obviously it will need to be updated.

So here are a couple of other issues related to Toronto. First, are my good friends the Webheads going to be there? I hope so. Toronto is one of my favorite cities. The Webheads are my favorite people. This would be wonderful.

Second, do you need a passport to get into Canada nowadays?

Third, what about the SIUC reunion? I feel like I'm sitting on a lot of information, and I don't know what to do with it. Last year, I couldn't organize a reunion, because I didn't go to Portland; I'm not sure if they even had one. I have all these e-mail addresses in my inbox, and information from SIU alum...I need to forward it to someone. Nobody was interested in keeping track of people when I took it over, but I said, SIUC, your international alumni are your most valuable resource. Even now, what I have is a set of e-mail addresses bottled up in an e-mail box that has become impossible to maneuver, due to the fact that SIUC put it all on Outlook Express, and I can't seem to view the entire mailbox. There are hundreds in there, but they are deep on the inside, constantly covered up by more recent correspondence. Time to clean out the box, Tom!

But it's also time to dust off this presentation. I was pleased to be invited, pleased to accept; I hope it can happen. Oh Canada!

Labels: grammar, tesol, writing