Sharon Hartle

My guest today is Sharon Hartle, who, like so many other teachers in my PLN, left her home (in Yorkshire) quite a while back, moved around for a bit, and now she lives in Verona, Italy. Sharon was among the first ELT teachers to incorporate technology in her methods, so, naturally, this was one of the topics we talked about. If you’ve been reading her blog, you’ll also have realised that she’s been having a go at dogme, with quite positive results.

 

Watch this 2-part interview to learn more about Sharon and her teddy bear, to find out what it was like in the beginning for her, how she copes with 100-student classes, and her future aspirations.

 

 

 

Bio

 

From West Yorkshire to Verona, where she arrived in the eighties, via Berlin and Madrid, just to name one or two diversions along the way, Sharon Hartle has lived, studied and worked all over Europe. She has taught most levels and age groups, in her time, as well as running her own language school in the early nineties. This was a centre, which she set up together with three other colleagues in Verona, with a focus on quality teaching and learner centred work with smaller groups of adult learners.

 

Now she works at the University of Verona and the University of Bolzano, and concentrates on teaching, teacher training (INSET and CELTA), materials development, together with exams co-ordination, both at the university and for Cambridge ESOL as she is the Cambridge ESOL team leader for Verona, Vicenza and Mantua (for oral exams). Another of her major interests is elearning. Although most of the teaching in the university language centres is F2F she has introduced a blended element to her classroom, which has become a crucial feature of her work. At present she is exploring the option of distance learning in a virtual classroom, for which she uses WizIQ with the backup of a class blog, and she is in the process of adding Skype to this as well.

 

You can read more about her work at her teaching blog and on her website as well as checking out one of her public wikis. See the links below:

 
 Links:
 
http://www.wiziq.com/sharon_hartle
http://hartlelearning.wordpress.com ( teacher blog)
http://www.wix.com/sharonhartle/activateyourenglish (website)
http://c1academicenglish.wikispaces.com (public wiki)
http://hartle.edublogs.org (Activate your English class blog)
 

Tech info
 
Goldwave 5.58 (I used this to increase the low volume in Sharon’s audio, and then overlaid it over the original in Windows Live Movie Maker (Version 2011).
 

About these ads