CSiTrain is the latest endeavour of Christel Schneider, who founded the company in January 2013 and now holds the position of managing director.
Christel has run teacher trainer seminars both on a national and international level for many years. Her experience in online training stretches over a period of more than sixteen years.
She originally qualified as an online trainer with the Institute of Education at the University of London and later went on to become a certified online trainer with the ILM (Institute of
Leadership and Management), UK. She went on to work as an online tutor for the Institute of Education at the University of London and as a guest tutor on an online course (train the
'online' trainer) at the Northern Illinois University. She designed, set up and delivered an online teacher training course for Cornelsen with more than thousand
participants.
She has been involved in several EU projects, such as:
GUINEVERE Project (2017-2019) "Games Used IN Engaging Virtual Environments for
Real-time language Education"
CAMELOT Project (2013-2015]
"CreAting Machinima Empowers Live Online Language Teaching and Learning"
.Euroversity (2011-2014) is a pan-European Association of professinals devoted to education through 2D and 3D virtual environments.
ELTACS (2010 -2012)European Language Teachers
Assessment and Certification Scheme
PELLIC (2009-2011) Practice Enterprise for Language Learning & intercultural Communication
LeTS Go /LeTS Go Pixel online
(2009 - 2011)
Tell Me How (2011) European Language Portfolio for the Blind and Visually Impaired
DEW (2008-2011) Diverse Europe at work
DeafPort ( 2009-2010) European Language Portfolio for the Deaf and Hearing-Impaired
AVALON (2009-2010) Access to Virtual and Action Learning Live Online
ActivELP (2007-2009) Mentors Activate European Language Portfolio through Multimedia
EUROVOLT (2006- 2007) European Vocational Online Language Teaching and Vocational Online Language Learning via a Virtual Learning Environment (2005-2007)
LINGUAPEACE (2003 - 2006) a European Language Portfolio designed for peacekeeping English
Christel learned and trained teaching in 3D worlds, namely Second Life®, OpenSim and Minecraft.
From 2013 until 2016 Christel studied for an MA in virtual education at the University of the West of England, which she passed with distinction.
From 2014 until 2015 Christel worked as assistant researcher at the University of Central Lancashire for the CAMELOT project where she published a framework for teaching and learning with machinima, an evaluation of two teacher training courses as well as an evaluation of the field testing of machinima in four European countries ( http://camelotproject.eu/work-package-5/ )
2013 Christel took part in MachinEVO2013 where she developed her skills as a machinimatographer and has produced many machinima videos since.
From 2006 until 2012 Christel was the director at the international language association ICC. Prior to this position she was head of the language department for the German adult education association in Schleswig Holstein. She also taught didactics and methodology, as a visiting lecturer at Hamburg University (Dept. of Education), for over ten years.
In addition, Christel has been the German representative for Abacus Learning Systems for the eight years, where she developed and implemented various online courses, such as Language Trainer Courses and Language Courses, as well as courses on Online Methodology.
Christel’s professional career further includes her position as local secretary for the Cambridge ESOL examinations and co-ordinator and examiner for ‘The European
Language Certificates (TELC)’ 'Cambridge' and ‘Goethe’ examinations.
Her published works comprise of a wide range of materials on course design and teacher training, as well as several course books and numerous articles. Christel was also part of a team of
authors, who published English textbooks for adults and is a well-received speaker at international language conferences.