What's New on ETNI?

 This was the month of the English Bagrut , a point well felt by ETNI. Much of the discussion on the ETNI mailing list (too much, in the opinion of some) was concerned with the Written and Oral Bagrut.  

 Together with this discussion (and maybe partly as a result of it) Judy Steiner, our Chief English Inspector,  decided to post an on-line questionnaire on ETNI asking teachers for their feedback with regard to the Oral Bagrut. We see this as an important development and congratulate Judy on her initiative in recognizing the Internet as a viable tool for this purpose. If you haven't filled out this questionnaire yet, you are invited to at - http://www.w-angle.galil.k12.il/red/National/feedback.htm  

 Judy Steiner also sent us the High Court's decision (in the original Hebrew for posting on ETNI) which rejected the petition brought forth to attempt to force the English Ministry to allow the use of electronic dictionaries during the English Bagrut exam - http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni/hmishpat.htm  

 The registration form for the ETAI 4th International Conference appears on the ETNI site at - http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni/etaireg.htm . We hope to renew our ties with ETAI during the coming months and set up a special corner for ETAI on ETNI where information about all areas of the organization can be found, as well as detailed information about upcoming conferences, on-line registration and membership forms.  

The "Textbook Writers"corner
 http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni/textbook.htm - is a new addition to ETNI inviting textbook writers to describe their books for the English teaching public.  This allows teachers to know about the material that is available in the field as well as providing the textbook writers with an opportunity to publicize their works. We accept only entries sent in directly by the textbook writers, and not by way of the publishers.  

We have recently posted a set of guidelines - 
http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni/guidelines.htm  - for sending mail to the ETNI mailing list. These guidelines were prepared with the help of the members of the list. It was felt, that although ETNI usually depends on self-censorship and is an open list (meaning that messages sent to the list are automatically forwarded to the rest of the members on the list without any human intervention) there was still the need for a set of clear guidelines, especially for teachers new to the Internet. 
 

The "Teaching Positions" section - 
http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni/annteach.htm - has become very active lately as schools look for teachers to fill teaching positions and teachers look for positions to fill. 
  
We are now working on the Photogame and it should be up on ETNI soon.  For this game we asked teachers, teacher trainers, ministry officials, etc., who are subscribed to the ETNI list to send in their picture. We will post the pictures on the web and ask people to try to correctly guess which name fits which picture.  This will be an interesting exercise in seeing how people's mental picture of others, through what they perceive from their e-mail correspondence, conforms to reality. It will also lead up to the face-to-face (f2f) meeting of ETNI members at the ETAI conference in July.  

 We have also been conducting a survey among ETNI members in order to determine in detail  how comprehensive the ETNI members list is in representing the English teaching public in the field. We feel that the discussions on the ETNI list are being read by many more teachers than the actual number of teachers now subscribed to the list, and the survey addresses this point as well.  We plan to use this survey in our campaign to convince the English Inspectorate to utilize the  Internet more in presenting their material to teachers in real-time and in offering a direct line of communication between the Ministry and the teachers.  

The LIST - the Etni list - for English Teachers- 
http://www.boker.org.il/eng/etni/links.htm   - has been updated, added to, and modified over the last couple of months in an attempt to offer a comprehensive and extensive list of links to sites of interest and relevance to the EFL educator.  It is not an easy task maintaining such a list since  things change so quickly-- web sites are added, disappear, change addresses.  We are doing our best to keep up with everything and your help is welcome (sending in recommendations for sites, notifying us when a link does not work, etc.)  

 Your input about ETNI - what has been done, what could be done, what could be done better - is more than welcome. Please send your comments/ideas to -  
David@boker.org.il  

    David Lloyd