About me

Hi!

My name is Evelyn Izquierdo. I’m an ESP/EAP teacher at the School of Education of Universidad Central de Venezuela. I hold a master degree in EFL, and I have been interested in online activities after becoming a Webhead in Feb. 2005. Since then, almost all my courses have been blended, and a few of them totally online under the Moodle platform.

I’ve been participating in different EVO sessions since 2005, and it is a must each year if you want to learn a lot, keep updated, share your online work and experiences, enjoy with hands-on activities and have fun with colleagues.

Thanks to the British Council in Venezuela, Consultants-e, Webheads in Action and Learning with Computers, I’ve had the opportunity of learning and being trained on Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, as well as becoming an e-tutor. As a co-founder of Avealmec (the Venezuelan CALL Association), I have also had the great pleasure of training other language teachers in Venezuela, including my own colleagues at the university where I’ve been involved in Distance Education. In 2008, thanks to my work on ICT in ELT, I won a full scholarship to attend the WorldCALL 2008 and represented Venezuela in Japan. I was chosen by a Schorlarship Comittee among 125 participants from many different countries. It was a great experience to share my teaching experiences with the world and learning from my colleagues too.

In October 2008,  I received a training to teach Spanish in Second Life and another training to be a moderator of an EVO session. A month later, I started running the online version of a TKT course sponsored by the British Council in Venezuela.  It was another wonderful experience.

In January 2009, I lived a great experience being part of a six-week, hands-on EVO session called Web-based lessons and e-portfolios. I was proud to share the e-moderation along with my colleagues Teadira Pérez and Miguel Mendoza, also Avealmec founder members. We did a great team!   In mid- 2009, I ended an excellent postgraduate course called Muvenation where I learned a lot about virtual worlds and how to use them to teach English. It was fascinating! And, at the end of 2009, I offered my first graduate course on ICT in ELT.  It was a big challenge for me, but we had excellent results. It was really worth. You may see my students’ work here.

Early 2010, I shared the co-moderation of Week 4 with Kat Urbaniak, a marvellous colleague from Canada, in an EVO session called ’Becoming a Webhead’. We offered three live sessions on Virtual Rooms (WiZiQ, Alado and Elluminate) and explored several Voice tools. What a wonderful EVO experience! Later on, in August, two colleagues from Avealmec (Dafne González, Miguel Mendoza) and I took a Webcasting course with José Rodríguez and Pilar Soro Mateos through Puentes al Mundo, the Spanish version of Worldbridges. It has been one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever lived. Webcasting requires to develop many skills in which I had never thought of. After that experience, the idea of creating a radio for Avealmec and my school turns around my head. I will need some help to make these projects come true. If you can read in Spanish, you are cordially invited to visit our course blog Explorando la Radio en Internet.

In October 2010, the training for the 2011 EVO sessions started and Miguel Mendoza, José Rodríguez joined forces to offer Podcasting for the ESL/EFl Classroom session.

In October and November, I was invited as a lecturer by two universities in Venezuela, Universidad Rafael Belloso Chacín (Maracaibo) and Instituto Universitario de Tecnología Dr. Federico Rivero Palacio (Los Teques) to talk about my experience in Virtual Worlds, especially in Second Life, and its uses in education.

Besides this, I’m a member of the Distance Education Committee of the School of Education – UCV, VenTESOL’s Communications Coordinator and Avealmec President for 2010-2012 .

Thanks for visiting my Website. Your comments are welcome.

‘See’ you online!

Evelyn