Life Long Learning

I am Valentina Dodge. I live in Salerno, Italy.
I am a teacher, teacher trainer and online tutor.

I train teachers from all over the world to pick up a range of useful technology-related skills which are immediately applicable in their classrooms (The Consultants-E – ICT in the classroom online 10 week course in collaboration with Trinity College London).
I work part-time at the University of Naples. I co-manage a small business consultancy (24 hours – English for Busy People) specializing in tailor-made Business courses in the Salerno area (southern Italy) and help develop educational material e.g for eTwinning projects.
I have worked in the field of education for the past twenty years and as a consultant for local and European projects for the past five. I am actively involved in setting up, running and mentoring trans-national projects at secondary school level involving learning technologies. In 2003 I coordinated a project (Liceo Scientifico Statale “Leonardo da Vinci” Salerno Due porti, due realtà a confronto (PON, misura 1.1.c ) which was selected for a European Day of Languages award.

Find out more about us from our one of our first blogs!

I have also worked freelance for the British Council on a blended e-learning course for Italian school teachers in the Campania region. I have recently presented my free exchange mechanism, www.echatbox.com, a dynamic e-moderator’s resource bank at the annual IATEFL conference (Harrogate 2006) . I am a regular contributor at British Council conferences nationally and have published articles on e-moderation and virtual teams.

I give regular seminars, hold in-service workshops and teacher training courses on project work, Task-Based Learning and in recent years have helped teachers acquire the necessary pedagogical and technical skills ICT in the ELT classroom and I collaborate closely with the Trinity College Centres in Italy.

I hold a University of Westminster BA, an International House RSA Cert (1986), Trinity College LTCL Diploma in TESOL (1993) and University of Sheffield Hallam TESOL PGDip (1994). I have also gained online teaching qualifications such as E-moderation skills and the Trinity quality- assured ‘ICT in the Classroom’ with The Consultants-E (2005-2006).

Recent publications

E-learning styles – an emoderator’s responsibility? Learning Technologies Newsletter Oct 2006

eChatBoX- dynamically creating a resource for real-time emoderator
co author: Valentina Dodge, Italy, and Sheila Vine ,Germany published by HLT- Humanizing Language Teaching online pilgrims publication Year 8; Issue 3; May 06

TESOL Italy Newsletter – author of regular column “Webtoo” – the net is about people not content.
Great NEWS the TCE- ICT in the Classroom course has been shortlisted for the 2007 British Council ELTON awards – http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-innovation-awards-2007-shortlist.htm

This is where I live in the heart of a very beautiful town in the South of Italy!