It's that time of year again! One of the best value professional developments available, especially for language teachers is the free series of online courses offered by TESOL in January. The programme has now been revealed for 2008 and as usual it is diffiult to restrain myself from signing up to all of them.
The organisers put a huge amount of work into the series so they are very professional even though no money changes hands. I also like the approach whereby you can benefit even if you are not a very good student in terms of attendance. The discussions and artefacts tend to be available long after the event which means that you can return, re-visit or even save parts of the course for later.
I first became aware of these course in 2002 and since then the series has just grown and grown and I would say that they are a major input in my PD each year.
Keywords: electronic village online, professional development, TESOL
