The first International ATENK Conference ‘Bridging the Gap in North Kazakhstan: Think globally, act locally’ was held virtually on October 10, 2020. Initially the conference was planned to be organised face to face, in Petropavlovsk, but due to Covid-19, we decided to postpone the conference to a later point in the project year to reassess the environment and situation for teachers.
This provided the opportunity for ATENK members to participate in TESOL’s 2020 Virtual Convention & English Language Expo, on 16–18 July. The Six active members of ATENK who participated in the English language teaching community’s first-ever TESOL 2020 Virtual Convention & English Language Expo, were: Tamara Chereshko (Mamlyutka district), Maira Kakimova (NKSU), Valentina Chernykh (North Kazakhstan Education Department), Dina Alibekova (ATENK Vice-President), Alexandra Ilina (Petropavlovsk) and Tatyana Arendarenko (Petropavlovsk).
This experience significantly helped us in organising our first ever virtual conference. Without any prior experience of organising conferences before, organising a virtual conference would have been a great challenge. However, after participating in the Virtual TESOL conference, as a team we were able to organise this event. This event gained a strong interest among other regions, so we had 283 registered participants, with some international guests including one of our keynote speakers Dr. Chris Stillwell from College of Sequoias, California. Dr Stilwell emphasized the need of teacher-to-teacher engagement and collaboration. Another of our two keynote speakers: Richard Harrison and Paul Woodfall, were from our partner, Oxford University Press. These representatives talked about global and critical thinking skills providing hands-on examples.
Full version of the Conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOnccZW-tkM&list=PLK0lOC9nEA1-Xb6wxWdedkghNBcy6Uqe1
https://www.instagram.com/p/CD-omBHpp2y/?igshid=1czeo08filnbx
https://www.instagram.com/p/CF_ZsRmJOwa/?igshid=kx5iaol54c8b