On the train on the way back from the 18th HUPE conference
Opatija in the 1920's
HUPE came of age this weekend. It was the 18th annual gathering in elegant Abbazzia this time, Vienna by the sea otherwise known as Opatija, the jewel of Istria. I was lucky to be able to attend the conference as the representative of IATEFL Hungary. (Come to our conference if you can!)
Now that HUPE is 18 years old everything is possible: pub quizzes, live links to London and now tweeting in the conferences. These are the things I’d like to focus on in this blogpost.
Pub Quiz
The last event of the conference was a pub quiz, flamboyantly
Ultimate Pub Quiz
compered by the witty and entertaining Peter Hopwood, an English resident of Varaždin and creator of “The ‘The Libris Communications Ultimate Pub Quiz“, our three hour extravaganza that we were treated to. We were invited to rack our brains to see if we could recall the owner of the “Lovely” brand of
Lovely Perfume but whose is it?
perfume, the chronological order of 4 ABBA albums and the names of American states beginning with a certain letter and many many other fun and interesting questions. Teams were restricted to five teachers, the use of mobile phones was not allowed and throughout the whole event we were sustained by wonderful Istrian wine and other local beverages. The venue was the Grand Hotel Adriatic restaurant and the atmosphere was buzzing with conference participants, spurred on by the thought of partial massages by the hotel manager, trips to Gardaland and other financial prizes kindly donated by the sponsors. One of the highlights of the evening was when a member of each team, for five points, was asked to dance to popular hits including “You can leave your hat on” and “Las Ketchup Asereje”. There was some fabulous dancing too, check out 106 photos of the event here from Peter’s website.
Zagreb, the location of one of the 8 regional branches of HUPE and the capital of Croatia
The team that came third received their massages and are planning on going out together in Zagreb this weekend, at the beginning of the evening they didn’t even know each other, how’s that for teambuilding? Altogether there were 26 teams, 135 challengers, 100 questions, 10 rounds and 1 Ultimate winning team. And each of those teams had an evening of fun collaboration, even the team that came last cheered themselves at the end. It was a great event and it reminded me of how good a pub quiz is as a social event at teachers’ events. The best pub quiz I’d seen before this one had been done by Philip Kerr in Serbia on a summer course when he brought with him nibbles and cheese from England to add to the authenticity of the experience!
The Spice Girls pub team celebrating their third prize in a restaurant in Zagreb
Getting a class to prepare and organise a pub quiz like this for other students in a school would be be a great activity if the fun had by the teachers on Saturday night is anything to go by. Thanks Peter for a great night. “Always look on the bright side of life” was one of the songs played towards the end of the evening and which most people sang along to.
Live link up
One of the spin-offs of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull volcano was the improvised live link up by Longman and the local Microsoft team of the ELT author David Cotton, one of the authors of Market Leader. He couldn’t make the conference because of the flight restrictions but we were able to follow his powerpoint and also see him in the top left hand corner of the big screen. We could ask him questions at the end and after reading about Jeremy Harmer’s Turkish plenary from his Cambridge home on the same day, maybe there are lessons to be drawn from the volcanic ash not only related to how much we fly but to the way in which being beamed into a conference might not be seen as a poor substitute for ” the real thing” but an exciting add on. This was an exchange on twitter between Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury. Scott was actually at the conference and took a photo of Jeremy in his Cambridge home delivering his plenary. This was the exchange of tweets between Jeremy and Scott.
Jeremy Harmer doing plenary talk from Cambridge to Anadolu Turkey courtesy of Scott Thornbury
Weirdest experience! Talking to a conference via skype, someone operating ppt in Turkey (which I cldn’t see). Too early. Going back 2bed!
Technology triumphs over adversity: @Harmerj gives virtuoso online plenary at Anadolu University!
@thornburyscott thank you for really generous comment! Went back to bed. 2 hours sleep. Now ready for anything. Ash cloud? What ash cloud?
@Harmerj ‘s plenary beamed live from Cambridge to Anatolia: http://twitpic.com/1g937p
Jeremy has just blogged about this experience on his excellent blog here .
I really enjoyed being part of the live link up in Croatia and I wonder what other people’s experiences of this are, either as the person doing the talk, webinar or whatever we might like to call it and those watching in “the audience”. It was a truly global experience, which Andy Poole gave us too. It was also great to have participants from Bosnia Hercegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Austria, the USA and Britain present.
HUPE
Both Les Dangerfield, the Director of the British Council, and Robert Post from the US embassy addressed the conference and both sponsored different aspects of the conference, bringing in speakers and one of the things I love, which the US embassy does, is to sponsor the buses which bring the teachers from all over Croatia. There is a great atmosphere on the buses and they contribute enormously to the feeling of togetherness of HUPE as an organisation.
Tweeting
And finally the tweets. 10 minutes before my talk as people drifted into the room I tweeted this:
“Just about to start session in Croatia, gonna show people the power of twitter, if u have a min can u tweet what it’s gd 4?”
With Robbie Williams’ “Morning Sun” playing in the background these are some of the tweets that came up.
@marekandrews Twitter is unbelievable for 24/7 access to like-minded educators / cutting edge ideas / as-they’re uploaded cool links & more
@marekandrews Hi from Athens Greece, just the place to be when u’re in touch with so many great educators globally!
@marekandrews Hi from Zagreb, I love twitter, it connects me with like-minded people
@marekandrews Hi,frm China. twitter connects me with t whole world. I “meet” so many amazing minds here and they inspire me!
@marekandrews Here in Barcelona. Twitter great for general prof dev & being able to comment fast on others new blog posts!
@marekandrews Hello from Germany Twitter is gr8 for collaborating w/ educators around the world just like now! 🙂
@marekandrews Hello to everyone!Twitter is the best tool to connect w/educators everywhere,exchange ideas,opinions & resources!
@marekandrews Hi from Scotland! Twitter’s a gr8 way to keep abreast of what’s going on in ELT & to get to know & chat w/ other practitioners
@marekandrews networking, finding links in ELT, education, politics – for fun, for discussion, feeling connected to huge community : )
There were several more and thanks to everybody who tweeted back, you all contributed to the spontaneity and immediacy of the session. I’m writing this blogpost with different audiences in mind, but one of them is certainly the Croatian teachers who came to the session and to the conference and for any of you who choose to give twitter a try I’m sure that you will be welcomed very warmly by those who hooked up with the conference and many more too.
Sean Banville
My actual workshop was about “Quality of Life” in classrooms and our own quality of life as teachers. I started off by reading out Sean Banville’s excellent post on “Teaching and your Health” and my response to it, a sobering wake-up call to us all. It was a nice way of introducing blogs too as I moved onto Sean’s “Iceland volcano shuts down Euro airspace” lesson plan on his newsenglishlessons.com website. The vast majority of teachers I talked to weren’t familiar with ELT blogs and there was a lot of interest in discovering this part of the ELT world. Shelly Terrell has compiled a very useful list of good ELT blogs to follow which is a very helpful introduction to the blogosphere.
Before the conference there were only two Croatian people I followed on twitter, @Koraljka and @abfromz . I now follow two more and look forward to sharing ideas and links with any more teachers who take the plunge, a year ago I wondered what all the fuss was about and now I am a huge advocate of this mighty microblogging service.
Opatija seafront
Final thoughts and thanks
Finally, this was my fifth HUPE conference, the first was in Brela, south of Split on the Adriatic coast in 1985. It was there that I first met Ken Wilson, @kenwilsonlondon the Salford Fulham football supporter who got me onto twitter in the first place last October. 15 years on the ELT landscape has changed enormously but the Adriatic coast remains as stunning as ever and the sea just as inviting.
brrrrrrrrrrr!
The sea temperature was 13 degrees this weekend but every day I found 5 minutes to have a short swim. Sean, you could add getting into cold water to your reduced coffee drinking regime, only joking but it works for me!
Thanks to Wendy Arnold and Phil Dexter for all the improvisation in the final plenary and thanks to the whole of the HUPE committee for putting on such a fabulous event again and hope to see some of you at one of the regional branch meetings somewhere in the not too distant future or in July at SOL . Devon is a great place to take part in a methodology summer school as several of you, some lucky enough to win Grenville’s prize in the past, already know!
Woolacombe North Devon, one of the places SOL teachers visit on Grenville Yeo's courses
Hvala! Thanks to all the conference organisers, the HUPE committee and all the regional branch Presidents for all their hard work! It’s all worth it, teachers’ associations rock!
Irena
Ksenija
Ante
Dubravka
Koraljka
Irena
Sonja
Suzana
Sandra
Marinko
Davorka
Kristina
Anita
Daria
Jasna
Vanda
Dear Mark,
Congratulations on your blog. It’s really interesting and inspiring!
What I especially liked about the conference was exchanging experiences with other teachers and socializing. The quality moments were 3 workshops: “How to survive matura (graduation exam)”, “Video killed the radio star” (on using funny video clips in the classroom), “Break the ice and build the team” (great ideas – I have already tried them) and the presentation of the new Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. After the presentation I tried the CD with the help of OUP representative and quite liked it!
thanks for that Maja, guess those are two of the basic ingredients of a good conference, exchanging experiences with other teachers and getting great ideas to try out in classrooms. And glad you like the blog.
On Sunday here in Budapest there is a presentation of the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary at the International Book Fair. It’s one of my favourites and I wrote about the guy who is most associated with the ALD here http://markandrews.edublogs.org/tag/a-s-hornby/
Enjoy your quiz celebration evening with the others in Zagreb tonight and say hi to all from me
dobro jutro
Mark
This is a reply from Nina Babić who asked me to add to this comment:
It’s been more than a week since my return from HUPE conference in Opatija and that gave me enough time to replay some of the nicest moments in my head. Everytime I go I decide these conferences are really worth it because I come back inspired and with a few new friends. But this year it was even better. I especially treasure a couple of moments, both professionally inspiring and private. The great band on the first evening and a bit of wild rock’n roll dancing were a great way to unwind and get ready for the conference. I want to thank my collegue from Rovinj Milan for drawing me out and not letting me rest. Then came Mark’s workshop about quality life in the classroom. A lot of the things he said I could really relate to. It’s been years now since I’ve realized work can and should be a source of energy where you lose some through teaching but also acquire some through the general atmosphere in the classroom and what your student can give you. I’ve been trying and I hope managing to bring the element of fun, enjoyment and zen into my classroom. I think my students feel it and appreciate it. They inspire me, make me laugh and I still after all these years manage to love the job and get energized through it. Listening to many friends who do not like what they do makes me realize how lucky I am. Thanks Mark for saying out loud what I’ve always felt was so important! This was a trully inspiring workshop. And then came the very practical, hands on workshop on what to do with video clips in the classroom. Three very young, brave and smart Croatian teachers delivered a fast paced and very practical workshop sharing with us three techiques of working with video, showing three excellent clips, and we laughed, worked in groups devising ideas and left with a CD compilation of great clips to think about and do in our classroom. How great!
But what really got me was the pub quiz which took place on the last evening. I was persuaded by my high school friend who happens to be the HUPE treasurer to try and find a team. What she promised was a great evening with a lot of fun. I was a bit suspicious but nevertheless started together with my roommate Maja to look for three more people for our team. We weren’ t in luck and almost gave up when we were approached by Dunja, a teacher we barely knew, who told us that the three of them heard we were looking for a team and suggested we play toghether. So the Spice Girls came to life. There were 23 teams, the atmosphere was hot thanks to the most charming and wonderful host Peter Hopwood. Our team hit it off, we gave our best, had tremendous fun and ended up third with just a point and a half behind the leading team. We won five massages which was great, but what was even better got a boost of self confidence at how much we knew, had a lot of fun and gained new friends. I am enclosing a photo of this Friday night when we went out to a celebratory dinner to a great Greek restaurant, had a great evening and lots of laughs. So much for conferences bringing people together! We are sending you our love and a message: Go to Conferences whenever you can! You will learn new things, renew your teaching energy and most likely acquire a couple new friends. Can you ask for more?
Nina Babić, Nova Varšavska, Zagreb
Opajija HUPE (Hotel Adriatic) in the 1990’s was fun.
As was Zagreb around the same time.