The Electronic Village Online         

What is the EVO?

     EVO is a set of online discussions and workshops that takes place every year from mid-January to mid-February. Sessions include a range from simple discussions to virtual hands-on workshops. They can serve as a run-up or preview to the TESOL Convention, or a discussion of an issue in the field of teaching language, or experiments with and pedagogy of new technology tools.

     An online session is the perfect venue to pre-discuss papers from Academic Sessions or Intersessions, or to carry on a discussion of topics important to your member group. EVO provides an invaluable service to teachers all over the globe, for it brings the convention to those who cannot travel. We usually have over a thousand participants, both members and non-members of TESOL. Most sessions also offer live chats (text and audio/video), including Webcasts from the Convention, and all participants are welcome to any of these live events.

Two articles describing EVO:

Yeh, A., Rogers, S.,  Philp, H., Chattopadhyay, K., Arena, C., & Stevens, S. 2011. The Electronic Village Online provides free professional development annually. TESOL-Italy Newsletter, June-July 2011: 9.

Hanson-Smith, E. & Bauer-Ramazani, C. 2004. Professional development: The Electronic Village Online of the TESOL CALL Interest Section. TESL-EJ, 8(2).

An Invitation to Join EVO 2012:

Arena, C. 2012. http://www.teachingvillage.org/2012/01/02/come-join-the-electronic-village-online-by-carla-arena/. Blog Post at Teaching Village.

For those wishing to offer an EVO session

     An EVO session needs a moderator (co-moderators are preferred) and sponsorship from a TESOL Interest Section, Forum, E-Group, Affiliate, or other TESOL entity. Usually, your home IS is a good sponsor, but we hope to involve all of TESOL's member entities. (We will help you find a sponsor appropriate to your content if you need help.) At least one moderator must be a TESOL member.

The moderator(s) will spend 4 weeks in October-November learning how

• to run the course interface
• maintain a healthy and productive discussion or workshop
• create an explanatory course syllabus
• foster an online learning community using Web 2.0 tools

In other words, those who offer sessions will receive training in how to be effective online moderators.

Successful completion of the training is of great personal benefit to the moderators and can lead to other opportunities in online teaching.

Click here to see examples of the online sessions from earlier EVO sessions.

To contact the Coordinating Team, write to any of us:

EVO Team

Time Frame:

• Call for Moderators -  July-August
• Deadline for proposals - September
• Call for Participants  - December
• EVO Sessions - January-February
• TESOL Convention - March

Please urge your colleagues to join this ongoing project!