[etni] Fw: ETAI Newsletter 26 - January, 2010
- From: "Ask_Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "ETNI" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:39:01 +0200
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From: ETAI office - etaioffice@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: ETAI Newsletter 26 - January, 2010
ETAI: Keeping in Touch
Newsletter 26: January, 2010
Dear Readers,
I don’t know if you noticed, but there was no Newsletter last month! I got
‘bogged down’ in an enormous amount of work, plus festivities, family
events: I apologize! Anyway, here is the January newsletter, a little
longer than usual.
First, happy belated good wishes to all those celebrating festivals in
December and January 1! All of us are now recovering, getting back to
school / college / university routines …
The main ETAI event in December was, of course, the Beer Sheva conference.
Congratulations to Mitzi Geffen and Michele Ben and their team of conveners!
It was a new venue: Ben Gurion University. This is a beautiful campus with
excellent halls and classrooms, ideal for a conference. There were, of
course, some problems associated with the use of new facilities: finding the
conference in the first place, getting to and from the different rooms,
problems with computer and internet access, and so on. All have been noted
and discussed, and hopefully will be taken care of next time round.
The outstanding positive feature of this conference was the overall high
standard of the academic program: three excellent plenaries, and lots of
interesting workshops and talks: some, of course, better (or worse) than
others.
Which brings me to the main topic of this Newsletter: the fluctuating
standard of presentations at our (or any) conferences in general.
We have all had the experience of attending bad presentations. It’s really
annoying to feel you have spent money and time attending the event, only to
be disappointed by badly-prepared or boring sessions. On the other hand,
good presentations are very rewarding: enjoyable in themselves, and
providing opportunities to learn new, enriching knowledge and skills.
Luckily the good ones outnumber the bad ones - or we would have nobody
coming to our conferences!
The challenge for ETAI, in general, and our conference conveners in
particular, is how to ensure the quality of presentations. To some extent we
can do this by carefully scrutinizing participants’ feedback, and trying to
make sure that, on the one hand, we do not invite back speakers who got
generally negative feedback and that, on the other, we encourage the good
ones to re-present.
But we can never be quite sure.
For one thing, participants often vary in their responses: different
teachers may have quite different responses to the same session. For
another, there are often not enough proposals sent in for the conveners to
be able to pick and choose. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we all
learn by doing, and few, if any, of us can claim to have given brilliant
presentations the first time we tried (I remember with embarrassment my own
disastrous first attempt!). It is up to ETAI to encourage novice
presenters, even if maybe their first try will not be as good as that of the
more experienced presenters; next time they’ll be better.
What is, however, unforgivable is not to work at the preparation of a
session. A presenter who makes it clear to his or her audience that he or
she hasn’t really prepared properly is insulting both them and the ETAI
conference conveners. (One instance of this was brought up on ETNI
recently.) Other examples are presenters who spend the whole session just
reading the text off powerpoint slides; or those who read out papers
originally written for an academic degree.
Apart from doing our best to select the best presenters when we can, ETAI
has recently come up with a new initiative to help address this problem.
This is a (free!) ETAI workshop event called ‘How to give a presentation’
which will be given in the period leading up to a major conference. So in
the Northern area, there will be one such workshop on the afternoon of
February 28th in Maghar: presenters who know they will be presenting at
Haifa on March 25 are warmly invited, as is anyone else who is thinking of
presenting at any other conference or mini-conference. Details will be
posted shortly on the ETAI website www.etai.org.il. Then we are planning
another similar workshop in the central area in the early summer, for
presenters at the main International Conference in July.
And finally, before I sign off, note upcoming ETAI afternoon
mini-conferences. Check the website: if the programs are not yet posted,
they soon will be.
19/01/10: Kiryat Ono, convened by Sarit Burd and Hagit Atlas
28/01/10: Ohalo College, convened by Yehudit Od-Cohen
15/02/10: Talpiot College, Holon, convened by Nava Horovitz and Laura
Shashua
17/02/10: Bet Yerach School, convened by Aviva Shapiro and Debbie Gabai
23/02/10: Rehovot, convened by Amanda Caplan and Michele Ben
Best wishes,
Penny Ur
Chair, ETAI
Tel: 02-500-1844
mailto:etaioffice@xxxxxxxxx
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