KOTESOL Conference 2005

I attended the conference again this year, but found it slightly disappointing. Many of the presentations I attended were less than stellar, and much of the information presented was hardly news to me. Especially, the seminars on being an online teacher and using podcasts in ESL merely regurgitated experiences I've already had.

I did enjoy the presentation by Brian English on upgrading your EFL teaching career, but that was tempered when I asked him about university teachers' salaries in Korea. Let's just say that when he asked me what I was earning right now (and I told him), he told me not to bother with universities. Well, just one more fact that I already knew.

I spent most of my travel time to and from the conference (1 1/2 hours by subway) reading Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. It is an interesting read. In fact, it has given birth to an idea I have for getting published. Since my M.A. research project was hurt by students who missed classes during the research phase, the report as it ended up was not good enough to get published. But now, I think I might try analyzing the outcome of my project with the Six Hats method, and then write a paper for submission to the English Connection: Six Thinking Hats and Reflection on Action Research.