Beyond CLESOL 2012: Emerging oportunities in new learning spaces

I have just returned from CLESOL 2012. I felt I had started to miss the conference even before it finished, just two hours ago, when I was sitting in the Rec Center, the hub of the conference, in IPC. That was the time the key note speakers and the conference organisers were having final words about the conference highlights. They were also saying thank you words for everything, and I was being overwhelmed with the urge to say thousands of thank you words to everybody, the thing I was unable to do physically in the spot. In fact, Gillian did pose me the question of what I thought about and how I felt being in CLESOL early this morning, the final day, when we met in the Rec before the conference started, and I tried to make my answer compact and most revealing of what I was feeling and thinking about, but the answer would  never be enough for it is increasingly added to.

Key note speakers: Left to right: Prof Andreas Lund, Prof Cynthia White, Emeritus Prof Paul Nation, and Sunita Narayan

Personally, being in an international conference like CLESOL makes me feel different, and hopefully, better about me. I have realised I am possessing something, which I don't know was worthy or interesting or whatever to people, that they liked to (or probably like to) listen to. I received possitive comments and supportive questions to my presentation, and I was not sure if people meant so when they said so. However, I told myself just to be optimistic, and relate the situations to the conference theme to think "they are trying to make opportunities emerge". Significantly, being in the conference has made me feel going public is not as daunting as I had imagined. This might not be true in other situations but CLESOL conference, which was very supportive, encouraging, and stimulating to me, a young bird first time flying out into the big sky. The feeling of a young bird (I don't know if people were viewing/knowing me as a young bird) who was counted in, listened to, and paid attention to, was amazing and stimulating. Above all, the feeling of not being daunted at all has helped trigger some more confidence inside me and opened more of my hidden selves.

Me in my presentation: Negotiating roles and identities in a new teaching and learning space: Wiki writing in Vietnamese tertiary classrooms

What would be far more worthy to me, at least at this time, was the professional values the conference brings to me. Opportunities to observe, listen to, and to think and relate to my research are numerous. I have found connections and reference to my research from every branch sprung out of all the presentations I was in. I have felt the passion for doing research and academic endeavours radiating from every face, which made me start to believe that only does a genuine interest accompanying hard work make people excel, retain accomplishment and most importantly to realise their idealism. Apart from that, I also saw potential paths to put my steps onto to expand my teritory of learning, the teritory that is already charted by forefathers and will be enriched and flourished by newcomers. My eyes have been opened, my views have been widened, my path has been brightened, my mind has been fuelled, and I have been hugely inspired. Why not embark on the journey of discovery and excellence?

Professor Lund and Professor White giving comments to my presentation

Opportunities have been emerging from this CLESOL 2012. Things have just started.