Elluminate Fire and Ice ESL! An all-inclusive blended learning experience to learn English at a distance

[Heike Philp]

Online Presentation

Thu 22 April 2010, 4pm GMT

Elluminate, Inc., the world’s leading provider of virtual classroom technology, has created an engaging and fun opportunity to learn English as Second Language. The Fire and Ice ESL! program targets primary and secondary school teachers and connects them to certified and native English instructors using the power of the Internet.

Elluminate has joined forces with Europe’s top supplier of online English training courses, Digital Publishing, as well as LANCELOT Schools, a certified and accredited teacher training organisation. Fire and Ice ESL! is aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference, an internationally recognized standard for evaluating and measuring language skills.

In this highly interactive workshop, Elluminate’s Stace Wills will present a case study from their groundbreaking online project to train rural Colombian teachers in beginner English. Joining Stace will be some key team members who will share their triumphs and pitfalls pertaining to education across borders. A “must see” for anyone considering launching their own live online training course.

Since co-launching Fire and Ice in 2006, Stace has successfully managed over 30 CSR projects involving over 5000 project participants from 25+ countries, and has overseen the delivery of online ESL training programs for teachers in Colombia, Burkina Faso, and China.

Fire and Ice was a finalist for the prestigious Stockholm Challenge

Awards in 2008, and also was named 2007 Laureate for the Tech Museum Award (Microsoft Education Category). Thanks in large part to Fire and Ice, Elluminate was also named one of the Top Ten Best Corporations in Global Development by InterAction in 2008. Stace and the Fire and Ice program have been featured on CNN.com, Education Week, CBC Business News, CTV News, Alberta Venture, Shaw TV, and several others.

Stace Wills Mayte Esponda Mary Gillespie Holly Longstroth Neil McMahon

About Stace Wills Fire and Ice Program Elluminate, Inc., Calgary, AB, Canada Stace serves as Global Director of Fire and Ice – an award-winning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program of Elluminate, Inc., one of the world’s leading educational technology firms. Fire and Ice sponsors and leads social development projects in collaborative education, poverty reduction, and climate change, as well as manages online training programs targeting nurses and teachers in remote areas of developing nations. About Mayte Esponda Mayte Esponda is a very enthusiastic teacher who loves interaction, ICT and team working. During her professional career she has added new tools to teaching. Her experience as an online instructor and online coordinator allowed her to design a course to help other teachers to build collaborative projects successfully. She loves working online and learning about other cultures. Her best challenge is to overcome diversity conflicts and work with people from different cultures. About Mary Gillespie Mary has been teaching English for almost 20 years, and has her MEd in English Language Education in addition to other TESL certifications and a certificate in cross-cultural counseling. She has worked with learners of all levels in a wide variety of settings, and has been involved in teacher training, curriculum design and materials development. She is also in the process of becoming a Cambridge ESOL oral examiner. Mary has been interested in technology and language teaching for many years, and has worked as a freelance online instructor for the past 4 years. She is currently curriculum coordinator for the Alliance for International Women's Rights (www.aiwr.org), a teacher with the Jellamando distance education project which matches rural Korean schools with distance English teachers, and works on a variety of materials development and curriculum projects. She had the pleasure of working with Fire and Ice on the Colombian teachers' training project as an instructor. Mary recently completed the LANCELOT training course, and is looking forward to doing her assessment soon. About Holly Longstroth Holly Longstroth holds a Masters in TESOL and a Masters in Organisational Leadership, is currently teaching live online worldwide and TOEFL prep classesin the USA. Holly is LANCELOT certified and is preparing to launch a recruitment agency for language teachers and schools called ViTA, Virtual Teachers Agency. She moved back to her home town in Boise Idaho after having lived abroad for more than 20 years amongst others 11 years in Finland where she taught Business English in corporations. About Neil MacMahon Director of Studies at International House, Buenos Aires, Argentina Neil is currently working as a teacher trainer both face to face and online. At International House Buenos Aires Teacher Training he delivers Celta and Delta courses face to face, while on the IHWO Online Teacher Training Institute (www.ihonlinetraining.net) he tutors courses on Online Tutoring, Advanced Methodology and DoS Skills, having taken both the IH COLT and the LANCELOT courses in 2006. As IHWO Academic Coordinator for Resources and DoS Support, Neil is also responsible for developing and editing resources and materials for schools across the International House affiliate network, while supporting DoSes of IH schools in their day to day work. Neil was a DoS himself for four and a half years, at IH Belgrano, Buenos Aires. Before arriving in Argentina at the beginning of 2002 he worked in Prague for four years, where he began teaching and working for International House. He also presents workshops at international conferences on a regular basis.