GRECO is a Grenoble inter-university consortium devoted to designing and implementing in-job training courses for teachers. However, the various parties to the consortium have no defined policy regarding the population we are interested in, ie, language teachers. Lack of information regarding the very existence of the courses is another factor in their little attendance. Finally, there is no demonstrated will to get language teachers to acquire IT competence. As a result, the number of colleagues showing up is purely a matter of individual willingness to advance.

In any event, I was instrumental in such a course being organized for language teachers in July 2002 under GRECO's direction, which we will be describing now.

The above grid is the result of negotiations among the team of organizers. My ideas —largely inspired by my European experience with Tony Fitzpatrick— prevailed as far as the general geometry goes, ie, the practical input followed by the participants selecting the workshop they felt most comfortable with, and the final delivery in plenary session. But I was not able to get more than two full days of actual work by the participants. I guess the second part of day 3, or evening slots, could have allowed us to finish an ambitious program.

Lesson 1: allow for 3 full days of participant hands-on practical work, if you are to achieve anything.

Four workshops were proposed.

• One was on getting practical training on a software called E-Savoir, which allows a teacher to organize web-based scenarios, complete with forcing certain passages and stopping students trying to stray away from the route initially explored and designed by the teacher.

• Another was about the commonalities between Roman languages, and the implementation of reading and comprehension strategies for non-trained speakers of the various languages concerned. This was the thesis of one of the organizers, and despite its intrinsic interest it had so little to do with the use of IT as applied to language courses that it received virtually no follow-up.

• Yet another was a very pragmatic and interesting approach as to how to organize the presentation of exposés in class through an extensive use of e-mail between the teacher and his students. But the material was regarded as insufficient to provide food for two full workshop days.

• The one I proposed I will now cover in detail. We ended up sharing participants between the first one and mine, and the presentations nicely dove-tailed with each other on day 5. But the initial four narrowed down to two.

Lesson 2: avoid abstract workshops (or abstractly-labelled workshops), focus on nitty-gritty use of IT, but propose something that promises to fulfill strong appetites.

Click here or on the right-hand arrow for more on the various phases of the event.