Introduction

My name is Karenne Joy Sylvester and I am from Grenada, which is an island in the Caribbean.  I am a British citizen - as when I was born, many, many years ago, Grenada was still part of the British Colony.

I recently completed an MA in Educational Technology & TESOL (Distinction) at the University of Manchester.  During my time there I focused on teacher education, educational video production, the potential use of mobile apps in language learning and gamified language educational e-tivities. My dissertation involved going through the design process of building a prototype of a mobile app to teach pronunciation in a game-like environment.  In September 2014, I will be starting a Games Development course.

Along with my teaching responsibilities at New College Manchester  (IELTS, Business English and TKT) , I also produce a series of one minute animated educational videos. Via this project, I create storyboards, digitally design the artwork, write the scripts, organise the voiceovers, and produce the videos.

Prior to returning to the UK, I used to live in Germany where I worked as a freelance Business English trainer and I also wrote an internationally popular blog, Kalinago English. The focus of this blog was on providing helpful tips for the integration of technology within the adult Business English classroom and offering conversations on topical issues in the field of ELT. Moreover, I was also the first to set out a series of best practices for social media in Education and supported and established a community of educational bloggers.

Throughout my career I have lived, worked, studied, taught and trained TEFL teachers all over the world; written articles for magazines in the field of ELT, written audio scripts for Didactica, co-authored Working with Films (published by Klett) and designed and sold materials for ESL/EFL conversation classrooms.

Additionally, I was once Director of Summerbridge Hong Kong and the Academic Director at EIL, Ecuador (both international non-profit organizations) and I was also an Academic consultant for Voxy, a company which delivers language learning through a mobile application.


YOUR TURN!
1. Write a short comment at the bottom of this post.
2. Create a new blog post and write a brief introduction for the rest of our teaching colleagues.  If you can, add a photograph (not necessarily of you, it could be of your home town or one of your hobbies)
3. Read your colleagues' introductions and write a brief comment welcoming them to the course.