IATEFL TTEd SIG Updates – May 2018

IATEFL TTEd SIG Updates 

1. Committee Members and coordination of the SIG: At the TTEd AGM in IATEFL Brighton on April 12, 2018, after her dedicated service to the SIG for the last six years, our long-standing coordinator Prof. Dr. Birsen Tutunis stepped down. Due to her wish to step down for a long while, the committee members co-opted the role to Burcu Tezcan-Unal, who has been the events, publicity, and membership officer of the SIG since 2011. Burcu, as the interim coordinator of the SIG, will ensure a smooth transition of the period until a new coordinator has been chosen within a year.  Members could see Burcu’s personal statement, which is attached to this email.

2. The need for new committee members: TTEd SIG committee has been trying to operate with only four members for a long while. In order for the committee to serve the members and reach its goals more effectively, it urgently needs more committee members. Hence, a call for new members will be sent to you shortly. The committee decided to call for a webinar manager, a discussion list moderator and a treasurer as well as a new publicity and membership manager due to the role change of Burcu.
3. Conditions to apply for committee membership: In order to apply for becoming a member to the TTEd SIG, one needs to have been a fully-paid individual member and/or should be the designated representative if their membership is an institutional one for a minimum of six months.
4. Communication with members: At the AGM, some members indicated that they had not been receiving emails from the SIG. Please be reminded that no SIG committees have direct access to the members’ contact details. IATEFL Head Office is responsible for the communication of SIG news with the members. Thus, the issue of not getting emails from the SIG will be investigated and solved shortly. However, you may check your inbox for emails from IATEFL just in case.
5. Composition of TTEd SIG members: Based on the most recent statistics, below is a profile of our members (membership type, age group, occupation, distribution of geographical areas).

6. Organising Face-to-face Events: At the AGM, some members stated that TTEd SIG should organise events in South America and in other regions. I would like to clarify that SIG would be more than happy to organise events wherever possible; however, travel costs of the main speakers, hiring the venue, and other expenses sometimes make it hard to balance the budget, which is a prerequisite for IATEFL’ Head Office to approve of any events. If these costs are somehow covered or shared by the host institutions, TTEd SIG is willing to help them to organise events regardless of their geographical regions.Therefore, I would like to encourage our members to brainstorm possibilities of venue sponsors and/or speaker sponsors as well as attractive themes that are congruent with the aims of our SIG.
7. TTEd Scholarship: I would also like to remind our members that TTEd SIG offers a generous scholarship named after Gillian Porter Ladousse, and that they should be alert when the Scholarships Working Party and Head Office contact members, which happens once a year in advance. You could apply yourself and/or encourage younger colleagues to do so. For more information you can visit : https://conference.iatefl.org/scholarships.html
8. Revision of our Website: We aim to revise our website. Your ideas to help us with this job are welcome. Please contact me or our website manager directly with your ideas. We aim to make our website more user friendly,and interactive with resources that our members would like to make use of.
9. TTEd SIG Annual Report: You can find our annual report for 2017 that was presented at the AGM attached. Please be reminded that the amount of reserves that SIG has could only be used for emergencies, for relevant causes which would also benefit our members.
10. TTEd SIG Newsletter: TTEd SIG newsletter Spring 2018 edition should (have) reach(ed) the members by early May. For the new newsletter, you are welcome to send articles, classroom research that you conducted and/or summaries of best practices by September 30, 2018 to our newsletter editor, Jennifer Book directly ([email protected]).