The PLN Staff Lounge

Intermission

2011-07-08T17:56:00.009+01:00

An unexpectedly busy workload coupled with a minor back injury have sidetracked me from finishing off some of the things I'd planned to post over the past few weeks (it's not easy to type with one finger while lying flat on your back and holding a netbook in the other hand, y'know! ;-) so I've decided to rest the blog for a short while until I (literally) find my feet again.

Feel free to help yourself to cake and virtual snacks while I'm away, and check out my scoop.it pages for some of my recent picks from the ELT Blogosphere and beyond that are well worth a read.

Sue :-)

Dogme ELT

TEFL Online

CPD in Education - Courses, Seminars and Conferences

Ethical Issues in Technology

Topical English Activities - Free Resources for Teaching and Learning English

and a bunch of my favourite scoop.it collections curated by others...

Learning Technology, curated by Nik Peachey

#ELTChat, curated by Shaun Wilden

PLN Interviews... Who's Next? curated by Dave Dodgson

Teacher Development, curated by Paul Braddock

Inspiration for Tired EFL teachers, curated by Sharon Hartle

Learn English on the Web, curated by Guido Europeaantje

Comics and Cartoons, curated by Janet Bianchini

Emergent Language... Every Little Helps

2011-06-17T11:30:00.006+01:00

image credit: Scott Thornbury on #ELTpics

I spent a very pleasant couple of hours sitting in a beer garden the other day with Mr @esolcourses, drinking wine and chatting about a really productive unplugged one-to-one session earlier on in the week, where I'd used a TESCO food magazine as an impromptu student workbook for learning new vocabulary and clarifying various grammar points.

This amused Mr @esolcourses greatly, and the ensuing conversation went a bit like this:

Him: "So: in other words, you were just winging it basically?"

Me: "Not at all. Only one student turned up for the lesson. We had a brief discussion about what she would like to do in class that day, and she said she needed more vocabulary for talking about food and cooking. We used the magazine as a discussion prompt, and for taking notes."

Him: "So: in other words, you winged it, aided and abetted by a copy of TESCO's food magazine?"

Me: "Not at all. I'd taken the magazine into class to use as a resource. We spent an initial half-hour or so chatting about food, work and cooking before we got to the point where we looked at the magazine. By that stage, I had a good idea of the language areas she needed to work on and I was able to channel the conversation in a productive direction."

Him: "So: in other words, you chatted for a bit, and then you winged it?"

Me: "Not at all. They way we used the magazine was highly focused and directed. We worked on expanding her vocabulary for types of foods and methods of preparing foods, and we talked about the difference between countable and countable nouns (we say two bowls of rice, not two rices, etc");

We looked at plural spelling rules (tomatoes, potatoes, etc) and clarified the difference between "how long do you need to cook it for?" (a baked potato) vs "how long have you been cooking for?" (as a hobby).

We followed this with a role play for a job interview and a bit of reflection about what we'd covered in the lesson, and finished up with a discussion about some of the other areas of her English she'd like to work on. At the end of the lesson, the student took her Tesco's Finest workbook home with her to revise what we'd done in class and make further notes.

Him: "Fair enough. But how do you square that kind of teaching with demands from higher up that you stick to lesson plans and teach to the syllabus?"

I was forced to concede he had a point there; because of course, you can't. Or at least, not officially, anyway. When did the education system lose the plot and move from learning for learning's sake to never mind the quality feel the width, I can't help wonder? And why didn't anybody kick up an almighty fuss back when it did?

As we finished up our drinks and prepared to go, I quizzed him a bit about the teachers he'd had when he was younger. Was there anything he remembered about the teachers who had inspired him in some way which struck him as being different to the way that other teachers went about doing things? This was his response:

"The most memorable teacher I had didn't do much in the way of teaching, really. We just sat around in a circle during his lessons and talked about the meaning of life and such..."

Sounds like a pretty good recipe for learning to me ;-)

Sue

Five Surefire Ways To Kill Your Blog Traffic

2011-06-15T11:00:00.008+01:00

... Part 3 - Thin Content

image: Sue Lyon-Jones

What would your definition of a good online lesson or blog article be? I suppose that's a bit of a "how long is a piece of string?" question, as people's approach to blogging varies widely.

Some edubloggers share lesson plans mapped out in meticulous detail and provide downloadable handouts and worksheets, while others just suggest interesting ideas for using materials in the classroom or throw out questions for crowdsourcing, and leave the rest to the imagination of their visitors.

All these approaches are equally valid, and of course quantity doesn't always equal quality. However, there has to be something for teachers and/or learners to sink their teeth into and get the creative juices flowing.

It seems to me that if you choose to share your thoughts about teaching with the world, then it pays to put a bit of effort into what you post, for the following reasons:

A Youtube Video Doth Not a Lesson Make

If educators visit your blog and all they find there are embedded YouTube videos, accompanied by comments along the lines of "Hey - I just found this awesome video to use in the classroom - Enjoy!!!"... their reaction is likely to be "WTF? That isn't a lesson! Where's the learning? I could do better than that myself!" ... and they will.

Search Engines Hate Thin Content

If you don't put rich, quality content on your pages you will never rank highly enough in search engines for people to find, and your blog will end up languishing in some dark and dusty corner of the web where only the most poisonous black hat spiders fear to tread. It's a blog eat blog world and there is a lot of competition out there. Granted, there are educational sites with weak or lacklustre content that have achieved decent page rank because they have been around for years, but the Google Panda has been cutting bloody swathes through their ranks since the beginning of the year and it's only a matter of time until they sink into obscurity.

Your Blog is Your Digital Calling Card

In cyberspace, you are what you post, and what you post is out there in perpetuity for people to read. Your blog is part of your digital footprint and presents you with the opportunity to shine next time an employer checks you out after reading your CV.

If you were chasing after a job, would your blog paint you in a positive light and perhaps prove to be a selling point that might just clinch the deal? And if not, don't you think it might be a good idea to do something about that?

Sue

Related Posts:

Five Surefire Ways To Kill Your Blog Traffic, Part 1: Intrusive Advertising

Five Surefire Ways To Kill Your Blog Traffic, Part 2: Bad Neighbours

Further Reading:

On Edublogging - KalinagoEnglish

Five Surefire Ways To Kill Your Blog Traffic

2011-06-13T08:02:00.016+01:00

... Part 2 - Bad Neighbours

image credit: greenkozi

Link exchanges used to be a good way of building traffic to your blog and achieving decent rankings in search engines a few years years back, but eventually Google got wise to the fact that people were using them to manipulate search results and changed their algorithms to filter out people who were playing the system.

These days, blogs are likely to be penalised if they hook up with poor quality sites or exchange links with "Bad Neighbours" - scraper sites, sites that feature gambling or porn, sites promoting illegal activity, or ones that bulk buy paid links.

Exchanging links with dodgy sites can damage your page rank and lead to you being downgraded in search results. In theory, checking out sites when people approach you asking for links ought to protect you; however, pause for a minute to consider the following scenario:

You receive an email from learnenglishdeadgood, a blog you aren't familiar with, asking for a link exchange. It's a new-ish blog that looks like it might develop into something useful when you check it out, so you agree to add it to your blogroll.

A month goes by, and learnenglishdeadgood removes your link from their site (along with links to the other blogs that agreed to a link exchange when they approached them) but you don't notice, as it is not a site you ever visit.

Another month goes by, and learnenglishdeadgood has added an auto re-direct on their blog to send visitors who land on their page to "The Best Little Whorehouse in TEFL" - an online strip joint where English students pay to practise their English and the bootylicious hostesses peel off an item of clothing for every question learners get right.*

Once again, you don't notice, as you don't follow the site in your blog reader; although your visitors who land on their page via your blogroll do, as do the search engines.

Not a situation that you would want to find yourself in, I'm sure you will agree :-(

So how do you go about building quality backlinks to your blog? Here are some tips:

1) Join Twitter (if you haven't already) and start making connections with other ELT bloggers. Barbara Sakamoto has a useful list of friendly, helpful educators to follow on Twitter for people who are new to it.

2) Add links to your blogroll purely on the basis of merit. Your blogroll is a reflection of your personal taste and its primary function is to say to visitors "if you enjoyed visiting my blog, then you might enjoy visiting these blogs, too."

3) Leave quality comments on other ELT blogger's posts. Avoid comments such as "nice post - thanks!", which marks you out as a blogging newbie and/or somebody who just wants to get a backlink. You need to add something new to the discussion in order to get people's attention and respect.

4) Don't over-promote your blog posts on social media sites, or send multiple @ messages to people asking them to read your blog posts and comment on them. It's considered bad social media manners and some people will unfollow you or block you if you do this.

5) Don't go around asking people you add to your blogroll for a link back to your site. It smacks of being needy and the answer in most cases will almost certainly be no (if people even bother to reply).

Most bloggers keep statistics that track where visitors to their site come from and if your blog appears in their stats, they will check you out. If they like your blog, then the chances are that they will link to you. If you consistently produce quality content, then people will find your blog eventually. As the saying goes, "content is king".

Footnote: I ran a check on a handful of sites (including one of my own) with the Bad Neighbourhood Text Link Checker Tool and the results were quite surprising. Although my own site came back clean, it turned some pretty dodgy links on a couple of other sites that had been left there via comments. If you are curious as to whether or not there are any hidden nasties lurking on your own blog, it might be worth giving it a spin :-)

Sue

Related Posts:

Five Surefire Ways To Kill Your Blog Traffic, Part 1: Intrusive Advertising

Further Reading:

On Edublogging - KalinagoEnglish

*if you decide to run with this business model, don't forget to credit me with the idea ;-)

Five Surefire Ways To Kill Your Blog Traffic

2011-06-10T08:16:00.015+01:00

...Part 1: Intrusive Advertising

image credit: Julian Bleeker

I came across a really great educational site recently; well written materials, pedagogically sound, interesting content, the kind of stuff that teachers are always on the look out for basically...

but I won't be using it in class or recommending it to my students.

Nor will I be blogging about it, tweeting it, putting it on my blog roll, or passing the link on to contacts within my network.

Why? Because the advertising model the site uses sucks, to put it bluntly.

Okay, so I accept that advertising on the Internet is a fact of life, and I use advertising on my own sites. However, if you wish to avoid irritating people and driving them elsewhere to find content, you need to be thinking in terms of visitor experience first and foremost. Because if the visitor experience is unsatisfactory, then the odds are that people won't bother coming back or linking to your site.

Here are three types of ads that I recommend avoiding if you are running an educational blog or site:

Pop-up Windows

Not just because they are annoying, but also because the ads served to pop-up windows can be highly inappropriate.

Do I want to run the risk of seeing a row of naked female backsides popping up when I'm teaching conditionals to a group of Muslim men? Do I really need to even ask that question?

If I were you, I'd steer well clear of them. Trust me on this.

In-Text Advertising

At best, context-based advertising positioned within the text of pages is annoying, and at worst (particularly if you are teaching English as a foreign language) it can be distracting and confusing for learners. The words underlined and the ads served to the page can sometimes be pretty random, and can be mistaken for links to dictionary apps, etc.

Pay Per Click Landing Pages and Loading Screens

Ok, I've arrived at your site, and before I can view the page, you make me sit through a 30 second advertisement... and then you expect me to sit through another ad every time I want to play a quiz? Sorry, you lost me at the "this page will display in 30 seconds, after an ad from our sponsors" bit.

The same goes for quizzes that you have embedded into your blog pages. The minute that they shove advertising into my face, then that's my cue to surf off elsewhere.

Of course none of this is rocket science, but I never cease to be surprised by people who put these kind of ads on their pages and don't seem to realise that they can be a real turn-off.

Obviously, some people are more interested in making money than providing a good quality experience for visitors, but for the benefit of people who aren't of that ilk, I believe that this kind of feedback is worth sharing.

Sue

Further Reading:

On Edublogging - KalinagoEnglish

If The Shoe Fits...

2011-06-08T10:11:00.018+01:00

... A Modern Day Cinderella Story?
I was heading into town the other morning when a discarded shoe perched on a wall caught my eye, and I thought that it would make a great focus for a discussion based lesson.

Age Group: Teens and upwards

Level: Intermediate and above

Activities: Speaking and listening, asking and answering questions, creative writing.

Task 1

Show students the picture above, and ask them to discuss the following questions, in pairs or small groups.

Questions:

1) Who do you think the shoe belongs to? What type of person are they?

2) What were they doing before they lost the shoe?

3) How did they come to lose the shoe?

4) What happened after they lost the shoe?

5) How did they manage to get home with only one shoe?

6) Who put the shoe on the wall, and why did they put it there?

7) Do you think the person who owns the shoe will come back for it? Why/Why not?

Task 2

Closer inspection revealed that there was a note tucked inside the shoe, which someone had left for the person it belonged to. This piqued my curiousity further, and generated some more ideas for questions.

Questions:

1) Who do you think left the note?

2) What do you think the note says?

3) What do you think the relationship is between the person who left the note and the owner of the shoe?

4) If you came across a shoe on a wall with a note in it, would you read it and then put it back? Why/Why not?

5) What do you think will happen next?

Task 3

Put learners in pairs or small groups, and ask them to write a few paragraphs about how the shoe came to be lost, or what happens next in the story. You could either set a particular genre for them to use (romantic, mystery, detective, etc), or encourage them to come up with their own ideas.

Any more ideas for using these images in the classroom? Feel free to add them :-)

Update: The shoe has now gone, so I'm afraid that whatever was in the note seems destined to remain a mystery :-)

If you do this lesson with your students, I would love to know what they thought the note said, and who it was from!

Sue

Four Weddings, & a Funeral

2011-05-16T18:30:00.020+01:00

... Teaching Ideas For Your Next Lesson.

In the interests of balance and as a counterpoint to my last lesson ideas post, here are a few lesson ideas for teaching adults and teens on the topics of royalty, wedding celebrations, and other important milestones in life.

The True Cost of The Royal Family Explained

...Or Perhaps Not?

Researching the background to these quirky little videos could make an interesting webquest for use with higher level learners.

Ask students to work in groups to research the claims made in the first video and then present their findings as a team, before playing the second video to the whole class.

You could follow this activity up with a debate about whether or not the British Royal Family earns their keep, or should be abolished to pave the way for Great Britain becoming a republic.... or alternatively, debate whether the royal family should have been made to pay for their own wedding, instead of expecting the British taxpayer to foot the bill.

Indian Wedding in London

Highlights of an Indian (Hindu) wedding filmed in London. A lovely piece of video footage from real life that could be used as an introduction for a lesson about wedding customs in different cultures around the world.

Gay Wedding (Civil Partnership) in Bath

Another wonderful little video short, that would be great to use in a lesson about wedding customs in different cultures, or about equal rights for gay people.

Funeral

There may be times when learners want to discuss issues surrounding death and dealing with the loss of friends and family. This heartwarming, positive video could be used to introduce the topic and act as an introduction for looking at the way that different people and cultures deal with death and dying, and celebrating the lives of loved ones who have passed away.

Muriel's Wedding

One of my favourite films of all time, this trailer has tons of potential to use as a warm-up for talking about families, friendship, weddings and life in general with adult learners. It contains some mild nudity and a smattering of rude words, so make sure you watch it all the way through if you are considering using it to check it will be suitable for your learners!

Follow @esolcourses

Pay Attention... There'll Be A Quiz on This Later

2011-05-04T07:24:00.025+01:00

image credit: Samael Kreutz

When I hear educators complaining about learners becoming distracted with something or other in class and not paying attention, I'm often reminded of my younger self, because back in my schooldays daydreaming, looking out of the window, and carving the names of rock bands into my desk with the nib of a fountain pen seemed to have been set as my default position at some point between juniors and secondary school :-)

Despite this, there were many teachers who did succeed in getting my attention and managed to engage me sufficiently to fire up my interest. Those teachers are easy to spot if you leaf through my old school reports and skim through them looking for A and A+ grades, and I have them to thank for my love of drama, literature, and languages (particularly English) amongst other things.

Conversely, I have the teachers who didn't manage to engage me to thank for the fact that I became rather good at drawing, as I was busy doodling pictures of teenage heart-throbs during most of the time I spent in their classrooms. Over the course of time, I became so good at it that other students started asking me to draw things for them, and it developed into a nice little sideline to supplement my pocket money, which I used to fund my tuck shop habit.

As for the subjects that the teachers who failed to connect with me taught, I either dropped them like a hot potato as soon as I was given the option, or flunked them pretty spectacularly if I wasn't allowed to drop them; although if you were to ask me my views on the subjects I did badly in at school decades later, you would probably get a very different answer now than you would have done back then...

in fact, I've not only managed to overcome my aversion to most of the subjects I hated at school, but I've even grown to like them and in some cases, developed a love for them (or if not love, at least a bit of a serious crush, at any rate ;-)

What did the teachers who did manage to engage me do right, and where did the teachers who didn't manage to connect with me go wrong? If I knew the answer to that one, I'd bottle it and sell it, but I think part of the answer lies in their attitude towards learners, and their approach to dealing with classroom management issues.

If a student isn't paying attention in class, then we need to consider the possibility that the issue may be one of PEBWAS, (problem exists between whiteboard and student ;-) because if we don't, I think we are selling learners short by automatically assuming that the problem lies with them and their behaviour.

To borrow a phrase from one of the teachers who consistently gave me low grades when I was at school, it seems to me that we are "not giving of our best, and need to try harder."

Obviously, a lot has changed in the world of education in the intervening years, but I think a bit of considered reflection and a willingness to concede that we may not get it right all of the time doesn't go amiss.

What about you? How have your own educational experiences shaped the way you look at teaching?

I'd be interested in hearing your comments.

Sue

Teaching With Technology - A Basic Checklist

2011-05-01T10:01:00.014+01:00

Diarmuid over at Management's Pique challenged people to come up with a basic checklist for teaching with technology yesterday, so here's my offering:

Click on the image to view the full-size version.
Click here to download it as a PDF file

Any comments? Feel free to add them.

Five Teaching Ideas for Your Next Lesson..

2011-04-29T08:23:00.012+01:00

...That Have Nothing To Do With The Royal Wedding

Okay, so I know some people are excited about the Royal Wedding and are looking forward to it, but personally I find it hard to get enthusiastic about bankrolling the nuptials of the grandson of one of the richest women in the world; particularly while we are in the middle of a global recession and the UK ESOL sector and public services are reeling from vicious funding cuts... (micro rant over!)

So here are a few ideas for your next lesson that are perhaps just a little bit more relevant to the daily lives of most of us who inhabit this planet :-)

Let's Colour!

Fun video for revising colours with lower level language learners.

1) Brainstorm words that learners already know for colours before playing the video.

2) Play the video and ask students to make a note of all the colours that they spot.

3) Play the video again, and pause it from time to time.

Get learners to shout out the colour(s) that they see while the video is paused.

Save ESOL

(No prizes for guessing why I've included this one)

Save ESOL day, Hackney, Sunday 13th March from Ben Edwards on Vimeo.

Questions for Discussion:

Why are the people in the video protesting?

Who will be most affected as a result of the funding cuts?

How important do you think it is for people to have access to affordable English classes?

How do you think the cuts will affect people who can't afford to pay for classes?

Leeds City College has produced some excellent lesson resources about the proposed Esol funding cuts, which can be downloaded from here.

You can find out more about the Action for Esol campaign here. Please consider signing the petition against the cuts if you have not already done so.

The Chase

Use for testing observation skills and getting students to sit up and pay attention!

Questions:

1) Where does the action take place at the beginning of the film?

2) What is the woman's name? (clue: look out for her Facebook profile)

3) What are the bad guys trying to steal from her?

4) How many times does the woman change costumes in the video?

5) What colour is the car she jumps in after she lands in the pool?

6) How many bad guys does the woman fight off while she's on the roof?

7) How does she get rid of the bad guys in the end?

Optional follow-on activity:

Work in groups to write either the prequel or the sequel to the scenes shown in the video.

Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot - Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo.

Questions for Discussion:

What do you think the message of this video is?

Do you think that we need to look after our planet more?

What do you think we should be doing to preserve the earth for future generations?

Do you think there is intelligent life on other planets? Why/Why not?

Do you think we will ever colonise other planets?

Would you want to live on another planet? Why/Why not?

In Austin

Another visual feast of a short film, which would be great to use as a conversation starter for talking about places, culture, festivals, aspirations and dreams.

TEFL Evolution

2011-04-27T23:22:00.004+01:00

That Lindsay Clandfield is a very bad influence on me, so he is... ;-)

I should be getting on with work really, but I've spent this evening playing around with Overstream instead. Hope you have as much fun watching this as I had putting it together!

Sue :-)

Teaching With Technology, Plan B: IATEFL 2011

2011-04-14T08:45:00.016+01:00

Post IATEFL Brighton Update:

Thanks to all of you who came to my talk - I hope you enjoyed it!

Click here to download the slides from my talk in .pdf format >>

Teaching With Technology: Plan B

View more presentations from esolcourses

Links to the free offline tools I talked about can be found here. I'll upload tutorials for them once I've finished catching up with work and other stuff that has piled up while I've been away :-)

(original post follows)

I'll be giving a talk at the IATEFL Conference in Brighton next Tuesday about strategies for dealing with some of the problems that educators who teach with technology encounter during lessons from time to time.

My Talk is called "Teaching with Technology: Plan B", and I'll be focusing on practical suggestions for keeping lessons flowing if the Internet goes down or other technology fails in the classroom.

I'll be demonstrating quick fixes for some common equipment and software problems, and looking at examples of user friendly tools that can be used to create standalone activities for backup when technology based lessons don't turn out as planned.

Hopefully the tech gods will be smiling down on me on the day, although if they are not, I will of course have a Plan B up my sleeve to pull out and use as an alternative (have you guessed what it is, yet? ;-)

Any last minute suggestions for issues you would like me to cover in my talk? Feel free to leave a comment and if I can think of a fix for them, I'll try and fit them in.

Date of Session: Tuesday 19 April 2011
Time: 12:25 -13:10
Venue: Syndicate 4

Hope to see you there!

Sue :-)

image credit: icanhazcheezburger.com

Every Picture Tells a Story

2011-04-13T08:45:00.019+01:00

... And Some Are Harder to Explain Than Others!

I'm super busy preparing for IATEFL Brighton at the moment, but one of the sites I stumbled on this morning while I was busy procrastinating and drinking coffee instead of working has so much potential for generating fun classroom activities that I couldn't resist the temptation to knock up a quick blog post about it :-)

ExplainThisImage.com is a site that invites visitors to explain the story behind pictures people have uploaded, which don't make any sense!

Ideas for Using The Site in Lessons:

Activity 1 - Jackanory

Can't remember where & when I picked this classroom activity up (lost in the mists of time, I'm afraid!) but it's good fun!

Step 1

Divide learners into three or more roughly equal groups, and give each group a copy of the same picture.

Ask students to discuss the picture with the other members of their group, and give them five to ten minutes to create a fictional backstory for it. Tell them their stories can be as imaginative, as implausible, as silly or as wild as they like.

Step 2

Each group nominates a member to stand up and explain their version of the story behind the picture. Award bonus points to any student who can manage to keep a straight face while presenting a story on behalf of their group.

Step 3

When all the groups have presented their stories, students vote to decide which group's version was the best.

Activity 2 - Write a Newspaper Report

Put learners in groups, and ask each group to select one of the images you have chosen, and then write a fictional newspaper report about where and when the picture was taken and the story behind it.

To add an extra level of difficulty for more advanced students, you could restrict them to using a particular genre, e.g. "In The Style of Hello Magazine", "In the Style of The Guardian", etc.

Activity 3 - Caption Contest

Put learners in pairs or groups, give each group an image, and ask them to write a funny caption to go with it.

Get more mileage from the activity by saving the pictures and the captions that your learners have written to use for a matching activity with a different class.

Teaching Tip:

As the site is user generated and some of the images people upload may be innapropriate for use in class, I recommend letting learners choose from images that you have pre-selected, rather than giving them free reign to pick an image from the site.

Any more ideas for using this site in class? I'd love to hear them!

Please feel free to add your thoughts.

Sue :-)

20 Minute Lesson Filler: Best of a Normal Day

2011-04-11T21:08:00.024+01:00

Observational games can make fun lesson activities, so I thought I'd share this video I found recently that I've bookmarked as a possible resource for revising vocabulary and grammar connected with daily routine and things to do with house and home.

Age Group: Teens and upwards

Level: Pre-Intermediate and above

Activities: Speaking and listening, asking and answering questions, describing things, revising vocabulary for everyday activities, people's homes, and household objects.

Step 1

Put learners in pairs or small groups.

Tell students that you are going to show them a short video clip and that they will need to watch it carefully, as they will be asking and answering questions about things that happened in the video later.

Step 2

Play the video, and give the students a few minutes to discuss it in their groups.

Step 3

Give the groups five minutes to come up with around three to five questions* about the things they saw in the video to ask another group of students.

(*depending on the level, & how much time you want to spend on the activity)

Model a few suggestions if necessary, to start the ball rolling...

"How many hoops was the man juggling?"

"What colour was the cat?", etc

Circulate and make a note of any errors you hear at this stage, for correction later.

Step 4

Play the video again, to allow students to check that they have accurately observed what is happening in the video, and that the questions they've written all make sense.

Step 5

Get the learners to ask each other their questions, and record the questions and learners' responses to them on the board, or on a flipchart.

Step 6

Watch the video again, to look for the answers to the questions and check who got them right.

Follow-on Activities

Briefly run through the main grammar structures used in the activity and correct any errors that arose, and then take a step back and see where the conversation goes from there...

Hopefully the activity will have helped learners get in the mood to talk about where they live and share some of the activities that they might do on a typical day with their classmates.

You might want to print out and laminate a few images perhaps, to use as conversation prompts and get the discussion flowing.

There is a nice collection of interesting and unusual Creative Commons images of homes from all around the world on ELTPics that you could use, such as this one, for example:

Who do you think might live in a house like this?

I'd be interested to know the answer to that one myself... :-)

image credit: Carol Goodey, ELTPics on Flickr

Twittercide, or a Cry for Help?

2011-04-07T08:06:00.019+01:00

Yesterday morning, several people I really enjoy following on Twitter (Diarmuid Fogarty, Gavin Dudeney, and Victoria Boobyer) decided to throw in the towel and deactivate their Twitter accounts.

I was surprised and a little saddened by this, as although I'm sure they have their reasons for abandoning Twitter, deactivating your account is a very drastic step from which (to the best of my knowledge) there is no going back, as once you have pushed the button it sets the wheels in motion for your account to be deleted.

For the benefit of those who perhaps may be feeling a tad overwhelmed by the relentless flow of information being pumped into the Twitterstream, here are a few alternative suggestions to pulling the plug permanently, if you are starting to feel that Twitter has been getting a bit too much lately and it is interfering with your work flow, stopping you getting things done, etc...

1) Take a Twitter Sabbatical

Tweet that you are planning to take a break from Twitter, and stick to it until you feel like returning. DM anybody who @messages you that you want to keep in touch with instead of Tweeting publicly for a while.

2) Use Twitter Lists

Choose a small number of people (say 20-50) who you connect with regularly on Twitter and who tweet great stuff, and add them to a Twitter list. Keep that list open to follow what they are tweeting about and ignore everyone else. Put out a general message once a week or so to thank other people for @ messaging you or retweeting you, rather than thanking them individually.

3) Bulk Unfollowing

Unfollow people who don't add value to your Twitter experience, and focus on to following those who do instead.

4) Become a Twitter Recluse

Follow these three easy steps to go into hiding on Twitter, and keep your options open to return at some future point if you wish to do so:

Step 1

Remove yourself from any Twitter lists that you've been added to. You will need to block and unfollow anybody who has put you on a Twitter list in order to achieve this (you can always re-follow them once you have removed yourself from their list, if you like).

Step 2

Change your user name, profile picture, Twitter profile, and any other information that might give the game away.

Step 3

Tweet 20 or so things that are unrelated to the kind of stuff you usually tweet, so that all the things you tweeted about under your old identity are pushed off your twitter page.

Congratulations! You have just cloaked your Twitter identity and are now in full-on stealth mode... should anybody search for you under your old name, they will be directed to a "Sorry, that page doesn't exist" message.

If you ever wish to stage a comeback, simply reinstate your old Twitter handle, photo and profile, and act like you have never been away ;-D

Footnote:

I'm busy finalising my talk for IATEFL Brighton about how to keep your lesson on track if the technology breaks down, so I'm following my own advice and will be mostly just lurking on Twitter rather than posting till it's done... just send me a DM if you need to grab my attention :-)

Sue

Every blog has a silver lining - Blog Challenge

2011-03-31T01:00:00.002+01:00

I didn't manage to catch Dave Dodgson's talk at the 2011 Virtual Round Table, but I've heard great reports about his presentation and I'm really looking forward to watching it once the recordings have been uploaded.

Dave put out a blog challenge during his session for people to make a word cloud from their blogs. Although I'd done something similar when featuring other people's blog posts in the past, it had never occurred to me to make a word cloud from my own posts; however, it's a cool idea, so here goes...

Of course, as I have several blogs, you get three for the price of one ;-)

The PLN Staff Lounge

Free English Lessons Online

The Edtech Hub

What does this say about the content of my blogs, I wonder? Do you think these word clouds give an accurate picture of the type of things I tend to blog about?

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Something For The Weekend...

2011-03-20T07:42:00.014Z

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately, as I've been busy preparing for various talks I'm planning to do over the next few months at ELT conferences (more on that later) but I thought I'd share some of the resources I've stumbled across recently that I've bookmarked for possible use in the classroom.

How Typical Are You?

This would make a good mingle activity, along the lines of "find someone who".

Learners could devise their own surveys (either paper-based, or using an online tool such as surveymonkey) poll other students, and then present their findings as a chart, slideshow, or whatever.

On a deeper level, it could also be used as a springboard for discussing global issues in a critical thinking lesson, as it throws up some uncomfortable facts about the hard realities of life for people living in poorer parts of the world.

Why does the typical woman in Afghanistan live 41 years less than the typical woman in Japan? Put your learners into teams and get them googling to find out.

The Girl Effect

Another video which might make a useful springboard for a critical thinking lesson. March is International Women's Month, and this short clip about how childhood poverty impacts on the lives of everybody dovetails nicely with the theme.

World Poetry Day - March 21

Last year, I was lucky enough to catch a couple of wonderful talks by Jeremy Harmer which inspired me to try out some of his ideas for using poetry in the classroom. Although I've been too busy so far to get around to it, I did get manage to collect some bits and pieces of poetry that are in the public domain that I thought I might use at some point, and here's one of them, about racism.

It's a powerful and moving poem written nearly a hundred years ago, which sadly still has a lot of contemporary relevance.

See what you think.

Incident, by Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

The Worst Song in The World?

Possibly one of the cheesiest songs ever written, and some would argue, super irritating.

However, if you can ignore the urge to flee and run a mile whenever you hear it, it would make a really useful vehicle for teaching grammar to teenagers and there is tons of simple, useful vocabulary in there being repeated ad nauseum, throughout.

The Little Penguin Who Could

An inspiring, heartwarming little clip, that works on so many levels. Audacity, bravery, taking a leap of faith, adjectives for describing penguins... take your pick :-)

Hope there is something in there that you found useful, and as always, your comments are very welcome.

Sue :-)

Using Videos in the Classroom: The Best Story Ever?

2011-01-05T17:43:00.038Z

One of the new year resolutions I made this year was to blog more frequently about some of the things I've been doing in the classroom and share more ideas for lesson activities.

With that in mind, here's a short video I came across recently that I thought would be great fun to use with higher level adult students. Here are some of my initial thoughts on how to use it; feel free to add more of your own.

The Best Story Ever?

Age Group: Adult

Level: Intermediate and Above

Activities: Speaking and listening, asking and answering questions, discussing ideas and predicting what is likely to happen next in the story.

Grammar and Functions: Question forms, future forms with "Will" for making predictions (will, going to, maybe, probably, etc)

Step 1

Put learners in pairs or small groups. Tell students that they are going to watch a video of an exciting story, and that you will be pausing the video from time to time and asking them to make a guess about what happens in the story next.

Play the video, and then press the pause button 0:19 seconds into it.

Check that none of the learners have already seen the video at this point, and if they have, ask them to keep quiet about what happens in it!

Ask learners to discuss the following questions, in their groups:

Who do you think the man in the video is?

Who are the people chasing him?

Why do you think they are chasing him?

What do you think happens next?

Circulate and monitor student discussions, and note any errors.

Be prepared to let the conversation continue to flow, if it spins off on an interesting tangent.

elicit whole class feedback, and nominate a learner to write all the suggestions down on the board.

Alternative/Additional Task

Ask learners to draw what they think will happen in the next scene

Step 2

Start the video again, and press the pause button at 0:27 seconds into the video.

Ask learners to discuss what they think will happen next.

Circulate and monitor student discussions, and note any errors.

Step 3

Start the video again, and press the pause button at 0:34 seconds.

Ask learners to discuss what they think will happen next.

Circulate and monitor student discussions, and note any errors.

Step 4

Start the video again, and press the pause button at 0:39 seconds into the video.

Ask learners to discuss what they think will happen next.

Circulate and monitor student discussions, and note any errors.

Step 5

Start the video again, and press the pause button at 0:43 seconds into the video.

Ask students to discuss what they think will happen next.

Step 6

Start the video again, and press the pause button at 0:54 seconds into the video.

Tell the learners that we have almost reached the end of the story.

There is only one more scene to go. How do they think the story is going to end?

Ask students to discuss what they think will happen in the final scene.

Step 7

Play the final scene of the video, and elicit feedback. Run through the grammar on the board and clear up any errors which arose during the activity.

Some Ideas for Ways to Use this Video in The Classroom

As a lead in/warm up for a lesson on storytelling

As a lead in/warm up for a lesson on advertising and persuasive texts

As a lead in/warm up for a lesson on film and film genres

As a lesson filler to raise energy in the classroom if the students are flagging

Tech Tip:

If you don't trust yourself to pause the video at the right moment, then you might want to think about using Tubechop to edit it into different segments.

If you enjoy using videos in your lessons, then check out Jamie Keddie's new site, Lessonstream (formerly TEFLClips) which has slots of great lesson plans for using videos in the classroom!

If you have any more ideas for ways to use this video, I'd love to hear them :-)

Sue

More Like This:

Using Videos in The Classroom - Twisted Trailers

Biting The Hand That Feeds ELT

2011-01-05T10:31:00.009Z

I'm posting this message (with permission) that NATECLA sent out to members last month about changes being proposed to the way that public sector ESOL is funded, because I think it deserves a wider audience.

Although I'm not directly affected by the proposals, it seems to me that everyone who works in ELT should be concerned about the way that the UK government is planning to slash funding to public sector ESOL, on point of principle.

I would therefore urge you to pass the word around amongst your collegues and students, sign the petition to defend ESOL, and join in with the campaign to oppose these short-sighted and discriminatory measures that will effectively bar some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the UK from accessing the English language skills they need to obtain employment and integrate within society.

Sue Lyon-Jones

"Defend ESOL

Message from the Chair of NATECLA (National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults) to members and colleagues

Dear colleagues,

We believe that ESOL provision faces the most serious threat experienced to date, and we fear that many vulnerable and disadvantaged people will be unable to access the English classes they need, and so be unable to develop the language they need to integrate and play their part in society.

What has happened?

The Government published its strategy on skills 'Skills for Sustainable Growth' and 'Investing in Skills for Sustainable Growth' in November 2010. The strategy proposes changes to funding for ESOL to start in 2011/12. We have checked our facts with the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and believe the government’s proposal is as follows:

• Full funding will be only be available for ‘settled’, unemployed people on job-seeker’s allowance (JSA) or on employment support allowance (ESA), described as ‘active benefits’.

People on other benefits, described as ‘non-active benefits’, such as income support or on low income, or spouses of people on low incomes will not be eligible for fee remission. They will have to pay the co-funded rate of 50% of the full cost of the course.

• Asylum seekers and those on ‘Section 4’ support will be excluded from public funded for ESOL classes.

• There will be no public funding for ESOL in the workplace. Learners or employers will be expected to pay full cost.

• Since 2007, ESOL learners on benefits or low incomes have been able to get help towards fees from the discretionary Learner Support Fund for ESOL. We understand this will be unavailable in 2011-12.

• The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) grant, which provided support for-16 - 18 year old ESOL learners is being withdrawn.

• The weighting for ESOL and Literacy, which was reduced from 1.4 to 1.2 in 2009, is to be further reduced to 1.0.

Implications

These changes and reductions will drastically affect our learners, our local communities, our jobs and our profession.

Several colleges from around the country have already conducted a quick survey of ESOL learners on their courses. They find that, on average, only 30% ESOL students are on one of the ‘active benefits’ - JSA or ESA. 70% are on ‘non-active benefits’, such as income support, working tax credit, housing benefit or council tax benefit.

We predict devastating effects on ESOL provision, teachers' jobs and ESOL students with people on low wages, women and asylum seekers likely to be worst hit.

What can we do?

NATECLA will join with the Refugee Council, the University and Colleges Union (UCU) and other stakeholders to defend ESOL and prevent the end of publicly funded ESOL provision for adults and young people on low incomes and ‘non-active’ benefits.

For this we need the support of all our members because, not only will our students be adversely affected, but it will jeopardise all the work built up over the years to provide a trained ESOL teaching workforce and a well-resourced and positive learning experience for our students.

You can

• Sign up to Defend ESOL

• Take part in Defend ESOL activities - for example, collect evidence of the likely impact, send a letter to your MP, produce a learner case study of a learner, help learners produce learner testimonies. Templates will be on the NATECLA website www.natecla.org.uk early in January

• Come to the ESOL Alliance Planning meeting on January 12th 2010

• Join campaign meetings in your part of the country in January and February

• Encourage colleagues to join NATECLA and sign up to defend ESOL

It is essential for our students and the future of ESOL that we campaign hard and make our voices heard.

Patricia Sullivan

Chair, NATECLA"

2010: That Was The Year That Was

2010-12-31T08:52:00.038Z

As New Year's Eve marks the the last day of 2010 and we're approaching the second anniversary of launching the Esol Courses site as a free resource at the beginning of January 2009, it seems like a good time to indulge in a spot of reflection as we see the old year out, so here goes:

glitter-graphics.com

2010 - Some Personal and Professional Highlights

It's been a very full-on year in terms of personal and professional development and I probably could go on listing things till this turned into the blogging equivalent of War and Peace... however, it's New Year's Eve and there's a glass of bubbly with my name on it that will go flat if I leave it for too long, so here are just some of the things which happened in 2010 which spring to mind that made a difference:

Winning English Club's Site of the Month in January and being in the running for their 2010 Site of The Year Award at the moment - a big thank you to those who nominated us and voted for us!

...............

Participating in the ISTEK Conference Twitter backchannel, which made such a profound impression on me that it galvanised me into registering for the IATEFL conference at Harrogate

...............

Getting to meet some members of my wonderful Twitter PLN face to face, and many other wonderful, lovely ELT & MFL folk throughout the year at various conferences

...............

Karenne Sylvester's Crowd-Wise Presentation & awesome epic poem about the History of the English Language at IATEFL

...............

Scott Thornbury's interesting and hugely entertaining IATEFL Harrogate session on the History of Methods

...............

Shelly Terrell and Ozge Karolgu's wonderful, inspirational presentation about using Web 2.0 Tools with young learners.

...............

Jeremy Harmer and Steve Bingham performing Touchable Dreams at Harrogate (which was also my favourite Christmas present :-)

...............

Chatting with Jeremy Harmer at IATEFL Harrogate about graded readers and thinking "I'm going to wake up in a minute..."

...............

Marisa Constantinides' fun and extremely practical IATEFL talk on The Art of Being Creative

...............

The IATEFL Harrogate Pecha Kucha, with a special mention to Gavin Dudeney, for his side-splittingly funny Personal Reading List PK

...............

The IATEFL Harrogate Conference full stop, really - several days worth of wonderful, inspiring presentations without a single duff one amongst them. If you missed the conference, you can catch up on some of the videos here.

...............

Stepping outside my comfort zone and doing a guest post for Ken Wilson's Blog about Teaching the Unteachable - with grateful thanks to Ken for kindly giving me the opportunity!

...............

Stepping outside my comfort zone once again, thanks to a bit of gentle nudging and a great deal of encouragement and support from Shelly Terrell, and doing a PRESTO presentation for the Virtual Round Table

...............

Taking part in the Virtual Round Table, The Reform Symposium, and various other excellent online conferences and events

...............

Being nominated for Best Individual Tweeter in the 2010 Edublog awards - a big thank-you to those of you who nominated me and voted for me!

...............

Helping my Dad, who is in his 80's, get to grips with the Blogger Dashboard and set up his blog ... Digital Immigrant? I don't think so!

...............

Watching Luke Medding's incredibly cool teaching unplugged presentation at The Language Show, where he created Powerpoint Slides on the fly while battling to be heard above the din of the Karaoke session in the next booth (major props, Luke!)

...............

Shadowing my lovely friend and colleague Alison for a couple of months, team-teaching, swapping skills, and BETA testing some new features which I hope to introduce to our site in 2011

...............

Attending the BESIG Annual Conference in Germany and discovering that I knew even less about teaching Business English than I had previously thought ;-) ... Once again, a great experience, and I came away with a head stuffed full of new and useful information

...............

Anne Hodgson's speed networking session at BESIG, which was great fun and incredibly practical in terms of picking up skills for face-to-face networking with people you haven't met before

...............

Enjoying the TESOL France annual conference in the company of a fair smattering of the Usual Suspects from my Twitter PLN, and getting to meet another bunch of wonderful ELT people for the first time. Again, not a single duff presentation amongst the ones I went to see - each of them wonderful and inspiring in their own special way.

...............

Willy Cardoso's fascinating complexity theory and ELT stuff and fabulous poster for his presentation, which is the coolest thing I've ever seen stuck to a wall with blu-tack by a mile!

...............

David, Hilary and Ben Crystal's performance at the TESOL France Annual Conference

...............

The TESOL France Annual Conference Open Mic Night (A.K.A. TEFL's Got Talent ;-)

...............

#Edchat, #ELTChat, #ELTPics and a whole bunch of other #hashtags that are great for furthering your CPD

...............

Achieving much of what I did thanks to the wonderful, inspirational, sweet and lovely unstoppable force of nature that is Shelly Sanchez Terrell , owner of the coolest dog in the world :-))

...............

Nudging past the one million visitors mark on our free language learning sites - Yay! Way to go!

...............

So many more things that I could mention that enriched my personal and professional life greatly, but it's time to head off and get ready to join the party now, so on a final note, I'd like to thank you for your support and friendship throughout the year and for being a constant source of inspiration on my learning journey :-)

Happy New Year to you all! Sending you hugs and smiles across the Interweb, and wishing you all the very best for 2011!

Sue :-)

The Twelve Days of Edtech Christmas

2010-12-20T16:46:00.013Z

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
How to Teach with Technology *

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Seven groovy Glogsters,
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Eight #EduHashtags,
Seven groovy Glogsters,
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Nine VRT Talks,
Eight #EduHashtags,
Seven groovy Glogsters,
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Ten training videos,
Nine VRT Talks,
Eight #EduHashtags,
Seven groovy Glogsters,
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Eleven bloggers blogging,
Ten training videos,
Nine VRT Talks,
Eight #EduHashtags,
Seven groovy Glogsters
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Twelve Twitter tips
Eleven bloggers blogging,
Ten training videos,
Nine VRT Talks,
Eight #EduHashtags,
Seven groovy Glogsters
Six wicked Wikis,
Five useful Nings...
Four Google apps,
Three techie tools,
Two edtech tips,
and "How To Teach with Technology".

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

(* ok... so the book is called
"How to Teach English with Technology"...
I cheated because it scanned better :-)

Reservoir Dogme - Let's Get to Work (In Groups)

2010-12-06T10:00:00.007Z

Abstract of the talk I will be giving at The Inaugural and Unorthodox English Raven ELT Conference in Geelong, Australia next month...

"As I'm only going to be teaching you for a couple of sessions and I'm rubbish at learning names, we will be using aliases. These are your names: Mr Red, Mrs White, Mrs Blonde, Mr Ginger, Miss Maroon, Mr Blue, Mrs Green, Miss Magenta and Mrs Eau De Nil."

It gives me great pleasure to announce the birth of a groundbreaking new movement in ELT: Reservoir Dogme

A novel and eclectic mix of student-centered pedagogy for the 21st century, Reservoir Dogme takes the materials light, authentic conversation-driven approach of Dogme ELT and blends it seamlessly with the cinematic oeuvre of popular independent film director Quentin Tarantino.

Reservoir Dogme is a teaching style which is:

materials light

conversation-driven

focuses on storytelling, using authentic language

doesn't shy away from tackling controversal topics & taboo subjects in the classroom

My talk will be divided into two segments of roughly 30 minutes, with a short break in the middle for serving ice cream and popcorn.

I will also be flogging and signing copies of my new book while I'm at the conference, "Don't Bother me Son, I'm Tweeting!"

Look forward to seeing you there!

Sue :-)

2010 Edublog Awards - My Picks

2010-12-03T21:33:00.012Z

I always agonise over this kind of thing as I'm rubbish at making decisions at the best of times, and there are so many great blogs out there that truly deserve to be recognised... However, as we're rapidly approaching the deadline to nominate for the 2010 Edublog awards, here are my nominations for this year:

Best individual blog: Kalinago English by Karenne Sylvester
Best individual tweeter: Shelly Terrell
Best new blog: Box of Chocolates by Cecelia Coelho
Best Resource Sharing blog: Teacher Reboot Camp by Shelly Terrell
Most Influential blog post: Why I walked out - but would you? Jeremy Harmer
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion #ELTChat
Best teacher blog: English Raven by Jason Renshaw
Best educational tech support blog Nik's Learning Technology Blog by Nik Peachey
Best educational use of video / visual Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard
Best educational Wiki: technology4kids - Ozge Karaoglu Ergen & Shelly Terrell
Best educational podcast #ELTChat
Best Educational Webinar Series: Virtual Round Table
Best Use of a Virtual World: The 1920's Berlin Project in Second Life
Best use of a PLN: ELTpics on Flickr (@VictoriaB52, @vickyloras & @cgoodey)
Lifetime Achievement: Gavin Dudeney

Dogme Hard With a Vengeance ;-) Challenges 1,3,4 & 5

2010-11-18T18:00:00.030Z

"Providing space for the learners' voice means accepting that the learners' beliefs, knowledge, experiences, concerns & desires are valid content in the language learning classroom."

Luke Meddings & Scott Thornbury, Teaching Unplugged, Delta Teacher Development Series, 2009.

(Dogme Blog Challenge #5)

In this post, I'm going to be sharing some ideas for using a teaching unplugged approach with pre-entry students and very low level English beginners.

There's been a lot of lively discussion during #ELTChat and on TEFL blogs recently about teaching vocabulary, which has led me to reflect at length about the way in which I approach teaching vocabulary to learners, and to beginner level students in particular.

In Rob Haynes's post on the Dogme discussion list about using a teaching unplugged approach with beginners this week, he talks about the fact that he rarely gets true beginners in his classes and how most of the students he teaches know at least some English... as his experience is somewhat different from mine in this respect, I'm going start by giving a bit of background about my own teaching context:

I live and work in the UK and I teach ESOL (English as a second or other language) with IT to young learners (aged 14-19) and adults.

The learners in my beginners classes tend to be refugees and asylum seekers more often than not, and a fair number of them can't speak or read any English at all. In addition, some of them need to learn the alphabet before they can progress to tackling reading and writing tasks.

I get students in my classes who aren't literate in their first language and have little or no previous educational experience (if any at all), and on the flip side of the coin there are learners who are highly skilled professionals who have had some prior exposure to English.

To add to the mix, there are generally some migrant workers who have little or no English but are highly motivated and keen to progress as quickly as possible.

Very spiky profiles tend to be the norm rather than the exception in the classes that I teach. I get learners who don't know the alphabet but can converse fluently in English, and other students with high level writing skills who can't speak any English and who struggle to follow conversations.

Many of the learners I teach face significant barriers to learning. Asylum seekers and refugees are often very traumatised by their experience and may be in poor physical health after fleeing from torture and imprisonment, or suffer from depression or other mental health issues.

The hoops that asylum seekers are required to jump through by the government put other obstacles in their way and can often lead to them missing classes to attend appointments with the Home Office, solicitors and such. Migrant workers often work shifts, which can sometimes mean that they only turn up for lessons once a fortnight!

Despite my best efforts some learners struggle to progress, and it is not uncommon to encounter learners who have been in the UK for decades and yet have never progressed beyond Entry 1 (absolute beginner level).

It seems reasonable to assume that a student in this position might perhaps have some form of learning disability and require extra help, and in theory there is funding for this; unfortunately, the wheels of bureaucracy in further education grind so slowly that the course would be over before we even got to the stage where a learner would be assessed for additional needs, so I just have to press on and give them what extra help I can, in the hope that it makes a difference...

Where can you find a coursebook that will work with this type of learner mix?
The answer, of course, is that you can't!

Granted, you could consider adapting materials from a coursebook as option, but it would almost certainly involve an awful lot of hard work and even then it's likely to be a poor fit for the language that your students need to learn.

To illustrate my point, lets take a look at the vocabulary that one of my beginner level students needed to learn when she first came to the UK, and compare it to the language used in the first few chapters of a popular coursebook:

image created with Graphjam

As we can see, although there is some crossover with the vocabulary featured in the coursebook, there is a lot of important vocabulary which Amina really needs to pick up quickly that isn't covered at all.

There is also a lot of vocabulary that she has little or no need to learn at all at this stage which is a) of no real use to her at the moment and b) is probably not going to stick anyway, because she won't get the opportunity to practice it.

If we accept that a learner-centred classroom is the best possible option for our students, then it seems to me that we need to find another way of teaching groups such as this that will give them the language they need quickly, without going around the houses first... (Dogme Blog Challenge #1)

So how can we use an unplugged approach then, to help learners with little or no English build the vocabulary they need to find their voice?

A Few Suggestions and Ideas

Based on my own personal experience and what works for me, I would venture to suggest that teaching unplugged with beginners is not just about teaching materials light, but also about teaching vocabulary light. (Dogme Blog Challenge #4)

Try not to overwhelm learners with too much/overly complex language until they have built up some degree of confidence and fluency. Keep the vocabulary that you are introducing as simple as it can be to get the message across (i.e. photo instead of photograph, TV instead of television). Start with very short phrases, use lots of repetition, and gradually add more words to the scaffolding as you go along. (Dogme Blog Challenge #3)

Example:

Lesson 1: Where are you from? Student: Somalia
Lesson 2: Where are you from? Student: I'm from Somalia
Lesson 3: Where do you come from? Student: I come from Somalia (and so on)

Teach learners the vocabulary they need, when they need it. An asylum seeker isn't in a position to wait a year or two before they learn how to use the past simple tense; they need to learn it now so they can talk about their reasons for claiming asylum!

Use visual prompts in lessons and encourage your learners to bring in objects from their daily life, pictures of things that they want to learn the words for, and photos to help them tell their own personal stories (although be sensitive to the fact that if you are teaching refugees and asylum seekers, they may not want to talk about some aspects of their personal lives)

Differentiation is a must! Beginners need to be challenged but they also need to be allowed to work at their own pace. Focus on helping students build a personalised vocabulary which will empower them and help to motivate them to join in with the conversation further

provide learners with paper-based or online exercises (or links) to complete between lessons which will help them consolidate what they have learnt

Use work produced by learners in previous sessions as the basis for activities to help progress their English

Set tasks for students between classes which will introduce the vocabulary you intend to cover in the next session, to free up more time for conversation based activities in class

and finally... technology is your friend - if it is available in your classroom, and it suits the purpose of what you are doing in class, then use it!

A few examples of free Web 2.0 tools that are simple to use and great for beginner level classes:

Glogster - a simple drag and drop tool for creating digital posters and stories

Animoto - use text and images to create short, animated stories and videos

Storybird - collaborative digital storytelling with text and images

Linoit - online post-it notes - brainstorming, ideas, suggestions, feedback on lessons

The Dogme Blog Posts Challenge - Related Links:

The Dogme Blog Challenge + links to the blogs discussing Dogme
The dogma of Dogme - background info & links

Challenge #1 (Co-construction)
Challenge #2 (It's emergent?)
Challenge #3 (Scaffolding)
Challenge #4 (Materials light)
Challenge #5 (Learners' voice)
Challenge #6 (NNEST vs NEST)
Challenge #7 (Myth 2, Dogme ELT = No Technology...?)

How to share on Twitter: use the #dogmeme hashtag

Unanswered Questions That Continue To Dogme...

2010-10-21T13:31:00.022+01:00

"DOGME: For those who know, no explanation is necessary; for those who don't, no explanation is possible." Diarmuid Fogarty

October seems to have been a bit of a Dogme month all round in the ELT Blogosphere thus far, with Jason Renshaw teaching unplugged and blogging about it, the seeds of Karenne Sylvester's #dogmeme challenge taking root and springing up all over the place, and a fabulous post and huge, sprawling discussion about Dogme on Jeremy Harmer's blog which, like The Energiser Bunny, just keeps on going and going…

Last weekend I visited the Language Show and caught some excellent presentations by various members of my PLN while I was there, including Jeremy Harmer & Jamie Keddie (both of which I hope I'll find the time to pick up on in another post) and Luke Meddings, (the co-author of Teaching Unplugged, with Scott Thornbury) who gave a wonderful talk about Dogme, with a very cool Powerpoint twist :-) ...

… and then, of course, we had last night's #ELTChat about whether or not Dogme could work in schools, which, despite the fail whale's best efforts to derail things, proved to be a very interesting discussion indeed!

While all this has served to focus my mind on Dogme and reflect at length on how it sits with my preferred style of teaching, I'm not so sure if it has taken me that much further forward in terms of clarifying exactly what Dogme is and what it isn't, as I still seem to have a fair number of unanswered questions… although judging by last night's ELTChat discussion, it seems I'm far from being the only one!

Some of the things about Dogme that continue to perplex me, despite a good deal of head scratching:

Is Dogme a methodology, a movement, a concept, an approach, an attitude, a philosophy, a combination of some or all of these things, or something else entirely? (and does it really matter what it is, anyway?)

To what extent can Dogme be squared with teaching to a rigid, exam-based curriculum in schools or adult education? (if at all?)

Are Dogme teachers born or are they made?

Where does Dogme 2.0 begin and end?

Is Dogme the "scenic route" or the "direct route"? (LOL! - sorry Karenne :-)

Having said this (and to a certain extent in spite of it), I'm going to take up Karenne Sylvester's challenge and share some of the ways that I incorporate various aspects of what I consider to be Dogme & Dogme 2.0 into my lessons.

To keep things as simple as possible for the benefit of those who aren't familiar with Dogme, I'm going to take my cue from Scott Thornbury's "Dogme: Another way of teaching" SumoTweet, which offers a very clear and concise summary of the three axiomatic principles of Dogme, here: http://sumotweet.com/dKk

"Dogme is about teaching that is conversation-driven"

Most of the activities I do with learners in class are conversation-driven (to the extent that the syllabus we are following at any given time permits it);

I wait until courses are underway before doing my overall planning, and use student's interests, backgrounds, life experiences and learning requirements, etc, as a framework to hang my schemes of work on;

I aim to ensure that the vocabulary subjects we cover in class are directly relevant to learner's daily lives and interests, and avoid wasting time teaching any words, phrases or structures which may be "conversationally redundant"; particularly when I'm teaching lower levels.

"Dogme is about teaching that is materials-light"

I don't use coursebooks to teach, although I do sometimes take things into class and/or ask learners to bring things into class for discussion;

I write most of the online and paper-based materials I use to teach with, based around things we have discussed and worked on in class, or on work produced by students in their journals;

Although I do use technology in my lessons more often than not, I only use it if it adds something to the learning experience - for example, I've taught in classrooms that have been stuffed to bursting point with technology that I haven't bothered plugging in and switching on, because it didn't fit with what we were doing in that particular lesson.

"Dogme is about teaching that is focused on emergent language"

I set personalised online activities for learners to work on between lessons, to help them build their vocabulary and work on any other aspects of their English that they need to;

For instance, when I'm teaching low level beginners, I provide them with a customised version of activities such as this one to help them practise their English outside lesson times:

I set (optional) online tasks for learners to help prepare the ground for vocabulary and topic areas we will be discussing the following week, such as for example, this lesson on weather, months and seasons;

I encourage learners to keep journals (either blogs or paper-based) and I recycle student errors by feeding them into online exercises for learners to do at home between lessons, and in pairs and groups when we recap what we've done the previous week at the beginning of each class.

For example, I developed this spelling quiz as a follow-on activity to an Intermediate level business English lesson I taught last year. I used some of the mistakes that learners had made in the previous lesson for the incorrect choices and then asked learners to do the quiz in pairs and small groups the following week. As a general rule, I find this type of approach works well when done in class as a peer correction activity.

I think that just about wraps up what I have to say for the moment.

So... Would you say that this fits your definition of what Dogme is, or not?

As usual, all comments are very welcome.

Sue

Why Ofsted Inspections are Like Crufts Dog Shows

2010-10-13T12:23:00.011+01:00

OK - so I'm late handing my #beltfree homework in this week due to pressure of work (sorry Miss - the Dogme ate it, an' so I'm going to have to do it again ;-)

... but I couldn't resist knocking out this quickie after one of my twitter friends made a passing comment yesterday about OFSTED Inspections being a bit like CRUFTS.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the UK education system, every four years or so educational establishments here are required to undergo a formal inspection by Ofsted, (AKA "The Office for Stressing Teachers and Educators") the Government body responsible for assessing the quality of schools and colleges.

Should you ever find yourself swamped by the mountain of pointless paperwork that inevitably heralds such a visit, then hopefully this will raise a grin :-)

Ten Reasons Why Ofsted Inspections are Like Crufts Dog Shows

1) Months of preparation are required before the big day

2) The approaching deadline sends everyone involved into a blind panic!

3) Participants are groomed to within an inch of their life beforehand by their masters, and coached to be obedient

4) Both processes involve extensive judging

5) Lots of prancing about goes on behind the scenes, while you are being trained to put on a good show

6) Jumping through pointless hoops is mandatory

7) Participants are checked on at regular intervals between classes, and any stragglers are brought to heel

8) Biscuits (especially chocolate ones!) can sometimes be used to revive flagging participants and help keep them loyal

9) Both situations bear little (if any) resemblance to how the participants act and behave in real life situations

10) At the end of the process, participants are left feeling 'dog tired' and in need of a well-earned break!

Any that I missed? Feel free to add your suggestions :-)

Sue

image credit: ICANHASCHEESBURGER.COM

Are You Talking To Me?

2010-10-07T08:35:00.025+01:00

Just a quickie, on the subject of online privacy and unintentional sharing of personal information transmitted via social media...

I received a DM from one of my Twitter friends this morning that had been sent via Twitlonger. This was the first time that anyone had sent me a DM in this way, and it grabbed my attention sufficiently to look for information about Twitlonger and find out more.

Twitlonger is a third party application that allows you to send tweets and Direct Messages to people who follow you on Twitter that are longer than 140 characters. All very well and good I hear you say, and I'm not disputing the fact that it is a legitimate program or that many people find it a useful service. However, there were a couple of things about the page where I was taken to read my friend's message in full that made me do a double take:

There was a button on the page giving me the option to follow the person who had sent the DM... which struck me as odd, given that if I wasn't already following them, then how could they have sent me a message in the first place???

Equally surprising, there was a Facebook "like" button below their message

The page gave me the option to reply to, or even tweet the direct message!

Now, to be fair to Twitlonger, it does state in their terms and conditions that messages sent via their service aren't private, and that they don't recommend using their service to send direct messages... but then again, how many of us always pick through the teeny, tiny print before we start using a web tool? I know I rarely do.

I'm not setting out here to knock Twitlonger. I'm simply drawing attention to the fact that it isn't a secure way to send other people private messages.

As the saying goes, it pays to know these things; particularly as many Twitter platforms are moving towards integrating these kind of add-ons into their products these days.

Sue

Yay! Normal Service Has Been Resumed

2010-10-04T20:09:00.012+01:00

We have transferred esolcourses.com to another server, and the site is back up and working as normal now. Please let us know if you encounter any problems.

Once again, sincere apologies for any inconvenience which the downtime has caused to anyone who planned to use our lessons with their students this week, and we hope you will continue to enjoy using the free lesson resources on our site.

Sue & Ade :-)

National Punctuation Day - Lesson Ideas

2010-09-24T07:46:00.015+01:00

September 24 is National Punctuation Day, so I thought I'd blog a few ideas for punctuation activities to do with students.

Lesson Activities & Handouts

There is a multiple choice punctuation quiz about Liverpool on our ESOL courses site here, with printable worksheets, and a handout on how to use capital letters and full stops.

There is also a Thanksgiving-themed worksheet on our site to practise using full stops and capital letters.

Sean Banville's ESL Holiday Lessons site has an excellent lesson plan on National Punctuation Day.

There is a wonderful cartoon infographic on How to use a semicolon on The Oatmeal.

BBC Skillswise has some fun games and other activities on using commas and apostrophes.

This cool, creative commons infographic by Phantom inker on deviantART would make a fun classroom poster or conversation starter for talking about punctuation.

Using Twitter

Tweet some sentences that need punctuation, and ask students to punctuate them and tweet them back at you. Once students get the idea, they can tweet their own sentences for other students to punctuate.

Tweet some sentences that contain punctuation errors, and ask students to correct them and tweet them back at you.

Punctuation Jokes

I can't claim any prizes for originality, as these jokes have been doing the rounds for a very long time, but they would make a fun activity to try out with higher level students.

Dear John Letter

dear john

i want a man who knows what love is all about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior you have ruined me for other men i yearn for you i have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart i can be forever happy will you let me be yours

gloria

With Punctuation - Version 1

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours?

Gloria

With Punctuation- Version 2

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria

A Woman Without Her Man

An English lecturer wrote the words, "A woman without her man is nothing"
on the board and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.

The men wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."

The women wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Epic Punctuation Fails

Some funny epic fail images that you can print off and give to students for a spot of punctuation practice.

Alternatively, use BIG HUGE LABS Motivational Poster Tool to create some punctuation fail images to use in lessons, or get learners to make their own for other students to correct.

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

Sue :-)

Teaching With Technology: Feel The Fear and Do it Anyway

2010-09-22T20:51:00.025+01:00

One of the questions which came up in this week's #ELTchat was "Where should English language teachers who are new to technology begin? "What skills should they learn first?

Here are a few suggestions and links worth checking out for those who have little or no experience of using technology, which I hope people will find useful.

Baby Steps

BBC Computer Tutor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/computertutor/computertutorone/index.shtml

BBC Webwise - A Beginners Guide to Using The Internet

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/courses/internet-basics/

BBC Webwise - Computer Basics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/courses/computer-basics/

Onwards and Upwards

The European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL)

The ECDL is certainly worth considering doing, as it will give you a good basic grounding in ICT and hopefully the confidence to spread your wings and start experimenting with using technology in the classroom.

http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.5829

If you do decide to do the ECDL, make sure that the test centre you sign up with is teaching to the most up-to-date syllabus (syllabus v5.0 at the time of writing).

Where Next?

When I first started teaching there were no courses or books on how to teach English with technology and so for me it was a real in at the deep end experience, without a lifebelt...

I probably didn't make a terribly good job of teaching with technology at first and I wince sometimes when I think back and reflect on some of the things I inflicted on my poor students back in those days!

Had anybody offered me any training back then I would have bitten their hand off! I'm sure it would have cut many of the painful corners I banged into, en route to becoming a competent and confident edu-techie.

If I was starting out now, I'd definitely be giving serious thought to signing up for some kind of accredited course in teaching with technology. Here are a couple of courses to check out that are worth considering:

Cert ICT: Certificate in Teaching Languages with Technology, run by The Consultants-E.

http://www.theconsultants-e.com/courses/trinityict/index.asp

MA Digital Technologies, Communication and Education

http://130.88.43.233/elwww/madtce/prospective_intro.html

If you would like to build your IT skills further but don't want to go down a formal qualifications route or prefer a D-I-Y approach to learning, here are a few links to online resources that you might find useful:

Russell Stannard's Teacher Training Videos

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

The Virtual Round Table Conference

http://www.virtual-round-table.com/

Teach-ICT.com

http://www.teach-ict.com/

Sue

A Fistful of TEFLers

2010-09-18T07:48:00.009+01:00

Unless you've been hiding under a rock in Second Life recently, then you've probably noticed some of the new online outfits that have waded into join the rest of us in the scrum to bag the latest wave of English language students and enthusiastic, bright-eyed young wannabe TEFLers who are keen to forge a glittering career in ELT.

If you have been paying attention you may have also spotted that a few of them don't seem to be strictly on the level :-(

Some of the pie crust promises made by sites that I've seen recently stretch the truth so far beyond belief that they are utterly hilarious - pick of the crop so far has to be the one which claims that English learners who subscribe to their site will have their grammar corrected by top ELT bloggers and some very famous coursebook authors, although the one which claimed you can become a millionaire through teaching ELT ran a very close second...

The majority of them, however, deploy a lot more subtlety in the ways in which they seek to mislead punters to part with their money for a service that isn't going to deliver the goods.

I don't know how other people feel when they come across sites that make less than honest claims about the services they are offering, but personally it makes me more than a tad uncomfortable and it makes me wonder if perhaps there's a need for some kind of online TEFL kitemark, to help people who want to study online sort the wheat from the chaff.

What do others think?

As usual, I'd be interested in hearing your views.

Murphy's Law of TEFL Enrolments

2010-09-02T19:37:00.023+01:00

The courses your college has decided to offer this year will be the wrong ones, as the people who turn up on enrolment day will be looking to sign up for something completely different.

The days and time slots that your college has scheduled for courses will clash with prospective students' work and other commitments.

The brilliant students you taught last year will have returned to their home country long before enrolment day.

Any student whose poor attendance and dreadful timekeeping had you tearing your hair out in previous years is guaranteed to make a re-appearance.

Prospective students who understand and/or speak zero English always turn up to enrol for courses unaccompanied.

Prospective students who don't need an interpreter will turn up for their enrolment interview with hyperactive toddlers and fractious babies in tow.

Most (if not all) prospective students will forget to bring a pen, some form of ID, and a means of paying for their course along with them.

Any room you will be allocated for group interviews will be way too small to accommodate the numbers that turn up.

The time frame that you have been allotted to complete the enrolment process will be totally unrealistic.

There will always be at least one person who cruises in just as you are about to wind the enrolment session up, wanting to sign up for a course. This person won't have read the prospectus and will sit there for an hour or so nodding and smiling as you run through the various options before announcing in perfect English that what's on offer isn't really what they are looking for.

The enrolment forms you will be provided with for prospective students to complete will be peppered with typos, and grammar and spelling mistakes.

At least half the students who enrol for your course will either complete the form wrongly or forget to sign it.

For every student you enrol that turns up for classes, there will be one that you will never see again after enrolment day.

There will be some students who turn up on day one of your course who will have been enrolled onto it by mistake, via another tutor. In the interests of keeping "bums on seats" such people are probably worth hanging onto, as you can always bung the odd worksheet on floristry or motor mechanics their way to keep them sweet.

There will always be one crucial page of the enrolment form missing that admin forgot to staple in. This omission will not be discovered until the funding body demands to see it, half-way through the course. By this time, many of the students will have dropped out.

Murphy's Law of Logic dictates that you will get the blame for this ;-)

Sue

Related Posts

Murphy's Law of Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Five Blog Posts Worth Reading - Hidden Gems Edition

2010-08-27T07:14:00.026+01:00

A good while back, Darren Elliot (@livesofteachers) came up with the idea of digging around for hidden gems in blog archives, to uncover great posts dotted around the blogosphere that people had perhaps missed the first time round.

As usual, I'm late for the party; however, here are my contributions...

Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did :-)

Sue

A sweet and lovely modern fairy tale, by Shonah Kennedy (@MissShonah)

Interesting ideas about using poetry to teach English critically, by Sara Hannam (@sjhannam)

A fascinating post about James Joyce's "TEFL years", by Mark Andrews (@marekandrews)

A thought-provoking post about what makes an effective teacher, by Tamas Lorincz (@tamaslorincz)

...and finally, a cracking good read by Gavin Dudeney (@dudeneyge)

image credit: Mario Sarto on Wikimedia Commons

I used Comment Haven's Glitter Text Generator to create the sparkly, animated texts.

What's Your Twitter Gullibility Score?

2010-08-17T15:38:00.009+01:00

Just a little reminder that some of those "fun polls" and cool tools doing the rounds on social media sites at the moment have been set up with the aim of obtaining your password for spamming purposes or spreading malware, rather than providing you with quality entertainment or go faster stripes for your favourite Twitter client...

Let's all remember to exercise a bit of caution when deciding whether or not to allow third party apps to access our passwords, eh?

Sue :-)

10 Twitter Faux Pas To Avoid, Part 2

2010-08-13T08:58:00.025+01:00

A while back, I blogged a list of things to avoid doing on Twitter when building your PLN, for the benefit of people who were new to social media.

As it appears to be silly season on Twitter at the moment judging by the number of spam DM's that have winged their way into my inbox this week, I decided it might be worth adding a few more to the list, so without any further ado, here we go with Part 2.

As usual, please feel free to disagree with me if you like by all means, and add your own opinions.

1) Tweets that contain the phrase "Get More Twitter Followers Fast!"

A Tweet that marks you out as either clueless, a Twitter newbie, a spammer, or possibly combination of all three.

As anyone who has been around the social media block more than a few times knows, it is the quality of your followers that matters; not the quantity.

Having twenty followers that interact with you is way better than having twenty thousand followers who ignore you and only followed you in the first place because they were hoping to sell you something...

Most people worth following won't follow you back if they see this in your Twitter stream and a fair number of people are likely to block you.

Should your Twitter stream be peppered with such messages, some of the people who block you may also report you to Twitter, as this kind of behaviour is classed as spamming according to the Twitter Terms of Service.

Enough said, I hope, to get the message across.

2) Putting the phrase "I always follow back" in your profile.

Pause for a second to consider what this statement says about you.

For most people the message it gives off is "I'm not choosy. I don't particularly care who follows me; I just want to get more followers fast!!!!" (see point 1)

Doesn't offer much in the way of an endorsement, now you come to think about it, does it?

3) Bulk @ messaging people

Sending bulk duplicate @replies to people asking them to RT your links and/or check out your fabulous website/latest blogpost/new and shiny product/sexy pictures is considered bad social media manners at best, and many people regard this kind of thing as spamming... and if you aren't following the people you are sending such messages to, then this applies doubly so.

It will annoy some Twitter users sufficiently for them to unfollow you, block you and/or report you for breaching The Twitter Rules.

Unless you are looking for a surefire route for getting your Twitter account suspended, I honestly don't recommend that you try it...

4) Overtweeting your own stuff/retweeting people's compliments

Ok, so we all like to be noticed, but there is a fine line between self-promotion and shooting yourself in the foot by coming off as too way too big for your digital boots.

It's called social media for a very good reason...

Imagine the reception you would get if you were to stand on a chair in the middle of the room at a gathering of your peers and brag loudly about your accomplishments...

... now imagine the reception you are likely to get from people you are hoping to forge links with, if you wheel out a similar kind of schtick on Twitter to promote your blog posts, or sleek and shiny products.

Not exactly rocket science, is it?

5) Misusing the #hashtag system

The #hashtag system is there to help people on Twitter find topics or groups of people they are interested in.

When people abuse it (whether for promotion or personal gain, or through ignorance) Twitter users attempting to follow discussions attached to a #hashtag will often become quite miffed by this, and may decide to unfollow you, block you, report you for spam, or flame you mercilessly...

point taken, I hope.

6) Bulk re-tweeting #teachertuesday & #followfriday recommendations

Bulk re-tweeting recommendations for people who you aren't following isn't big, and it isn't clever...

Retweeting recommendations for #followfriday and #teachertuesday that other people have given you is more likely to mark your card as a "point 4" kind of person, (needy, egotistical, desperate for attention) than increase your follower count and enhance your Twitter standing.

Retweeted recommendations that aren't genuine stick out like a sore thumb; they will get you noticed, but for all the wrong reasons!

See also point 5 (misusing the #hashtag system) for even more reasons why you really shouldn't engage in this kind of thing...

As for tweeting #followfriday and #teachertuesday recommendations suggesting that people should follow you... do I really have to spell it out if you've read thus far?

Thought not.

How not to do #FF recommendations - as kindly demonstrated by Guardian News ;-)

7) Doing the Follower/Unfollower Dance

The follower/unfollower dance goes a bit like this:

@followmipleez follows @isharegr8stuff, but @isharegr8stuff doesn't follow him back.

after a while, @followmipleez decides to see if he can get @isharegr8stuff's attention by unfollowing him and following him again, so that he will appear at the top of @isharegr8stuff's followers list once more.

As @isharegr8stuff still doesn't follow him back, @followmipleez repeats the process until it gets the point where I @isharegr8stuff becomes sufficiently irritated to reach for the "block user" button.

What @followmipleez should have done of course, was to try and forge a connection with @isharegr8stuff by retweeting some links he found interesting and engaging in conversation with him.

better luck next time, @followmipleez ...

8) Indiscriminately sharing your password with third party applications

So... you've clicked on a link promising you a free iPad? Yay! Lucky you!!! Way to go!!!

... and now the site you've landed on is asking for permission to access your Twitter password...

... but of course, you're way to smart to fall for something that's as obviously fishy as that now, aren't you?...

aren't you? ;-)

9) Re-tweeting other people's links you haven't checked out beforehand

See point 8, and add to it the fact that if you haven't bothered to check out links that you're retweeting, you may be directing your faithful followers to affiliate spam sites, malware sites, a red light district in Second Life, or some other seedy, not safe-for-work pocket of cyberspace they'd probably prefer to give a miss, for all you know...

Sooner or later you are bound to come a cropper on this one, and your followers won't thank you for it; trust me on this.

10) Email spamming people who have retweeted you, asking for reviews

Ok, so I retweeted your latest blog article, which I suppose is a pretty good indication that I quite enjoyed reading it... however, would I like to give it a glowing write-up on my blog and share how much I enjoyed it with my readers?

Umm... not unless I enjoyed it so much that you didn't need to ask me in the first place because I'd already given you a mention... although as you don't read my blog or follow me on Twitter, I can understand why you didn't manage to figure that one out for yourself.

Welcome to my spam folder! Expect you'll quickly feel at home and make lots of friends!

Ask Dr Marc Schneider to show you around and give you the tour.

And on that note, I'm going to love you and leave you, as the saying goes.

Hope you found this helpful... :-)

Sue

Related Posts

10 Twitter Turn Off's To Avoid When Building Your PLN

Further Reading:

SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part V) ‘Join Twitter’ by Shelly Terrell
(@ShellTerrell) on Burcu Akyol's blog (@BurcuAkyol)

Twitter for teachers - why you should start tweeting! by Jason Renshaw (@englishraven)

Kalinago English - Thnx 4 ur RTs (@kalinagoenglish)

Kalinago English - Social Not-working (@kalinagoenglish)

A Twitterholics Guide to Twitter by Sue Waters (@suewaters)

Pick of The Week: The 2010 Reform Symposium

2010-08-08T22:31:00.008+01:00

It's been another super-busy week, and I'm still working my way through April's to-do list, which unfortunately means little time to spare for blogging ...

However, here's a round-up of some of my favourite talks from The Reform Symposium that I recommend you check out, if you haven't already done so.

I may blog about some of the cool tools that people shared during the conference if I manage to progress as far as May's "to do" list next week and have a bit more time on my hands :-)

This week's word cloud was created using ABC Ya!, which was featured by Marisa Constantinides in her presentation about using word clouds.

Here are My Picks:

Alexandra Francisco

Technology, what's in it for my students?

Janet Bianchini

The Power of Images for Effective Communication

Jo Hart

Who Needs Bricks and Mortar?

Karenne Sylvester

EduBlogging

Marisa Constanitinides

Using Word Clouds to Integrate Reading and Writing

(There were a few hitches uploading some of the slides for Marisa's presentation; you can view them here, on Marisa's Blog.)

Monica Hardy

Students Redefine School

Phil Hart

The Social Context of 21st Century e-Learning

Steven Anderson

Education: Timeless and Priceless

Steve Hargadon

Opening Keynote Address

Terry Freedman

Introducing Web 2.0 into Your Classroom: A Project Management Approach

If you missed the Reform Symposium, the presentations were all recorded and can access the archive via this link:

http://reformsymposium.com/

Related Posts Elsewhere:

Janet Bianchini - Reform Symposium 2010

Jennifer Verschoor - Great Quotes from the 2010 Reform Symposium

Jo Hart - We Didn't Need Bricks and Mortar

Karenne Sylvester Kalinago English: Thoughts on Being an Edu-Blogger

Nicholas Provenzano (The Nerdy Teacher) #recon10 - My Thoughts

Phil Hart - Presenting at the Reform Symposium

Shelly Terrell - Teacher Reboot Camp - The Importance of Voice

Terry Freedman - The Reform Symposium Conference

Take Your Students on a Textpedition

2010-07-25T14:00:00.008+01:00

Phil Bird's excellent post on using Google Streetview a while back jogged my memory about a lesson I sometimes do with students when the sun is cracking the flags and the classroom gets too hot to want to stay indoors for the full session.

image source

Recipe for a Textpedition - Version 1

If you are teaching in a country where the first language is English:

Ingredients:

a bunch of students
mobile phones
a local neighbourhood (safe to walk around)

Step 1:

Write or type the words "text is all around us" on the whiteboard or IWB.

Elicit examples of different types of texts you might see outdoors from students, such as road signs & markings, notices, etc.

Get a volunteer to come up and write them on the board or type them on the screen.

Query any misspellings written on the board and encourage other members of the class to peer correct them.

Step 2

Explain to students that you will be sending them off out into the urban jungle today, to hunt down and catalogue examples of text that can be found in the local neighbourhood.

Organise learners into teams and ask each team to choose a fixed number of signs to go out and look for, (say 10-12) out of the examples that are written on the board.

Nominate one student in each group to draw up a list of the signs their team has chosen, using the notepad on their phone.

Nominate another student in each group to take photos of texts they come across with their mobile while taking part in the task.

Tell students that bonus points will be awarded for any interesting or unusual signs that they discover on their trip which have not already been mentioned.

Double check before sending learners off to complete the task that they all understand what they are meant to be doing!

A few practicalities to think about:

How you organise the trip itself will depend on the age group and level you are teaching; for example, with young learners you might need to escort them round the neighbourhood in a crocodile, with one or two helpers in tow.

(not literally, of course, as it would probably give the poor thing indigestion)

image source

With adult students, I would accompany any students who might need extra help and give the other groups a set time frame (around 30-45 minutes) to explore the neighbourhood independently, with instructions to be back in class by a set time.

Step 3

Get the teams to upload the photos they have taken on their phones and compile them into a simple slideshow or a Glogster to present their findings.

Ask each team to delegate a student who hasn't already performed a role to operate the technical side of the presentation, and another student who has yet to do a task to be the spokesperson for their group.

Post-Task Questions & Evaluation

A few ideas for questions:

How many examples of text that were on your list did you find?

What examples of text did you find that weren't on your list?

What did you learn from doing this task? Did you enjoy doing this task?
Why/why not?

To finish, garnish with praise, and send students off on a break to chill thoroughly for 15-20 minutes.

A Few Things to Bear in Mind:

Don't forget to keep your line manager in the loop and let them know you are planning to let the students loose outdoors for part of the lesson!

If based in the UK, you would also need to complete a risk assessment beforehand.

Risk assessment approval can be a long-drawn out process and it pays to put any requests for classroom trips in at least a month in advance of the date you are planning to take your students out on an activity.

Recipe for a Textpedition - Version 2

If you are teaching in a country where English is not the first language, then you could use Google Streetview to modify the activity by choosing a city in an English speaking country that students could do a virtual tour around, to hunt for examples of text.

Check out Phil Bird's post for some great ideas for using Streetview in the classroom!

Five Blog Features You Might Want to Rethink

2010-07-25T10:12:00.059+01:00

There was a discussion on the BELTFree Ning a while ago about cool widgets & blog features, and it got me thinking about the flip side, i.e. blog features that might be more of a liability than an asset in one way or another.

As usual feel free to disagree with me, but here's my list of the top five blog features you might want to think twice about before using (in no particular order).

1) Widgets that inform visitors about your travel plans

Probably not in your best interests, unless you plan to leave a large, angry dog or a spouse who moonlights as a nightclub bouncer behind to guard your home.

2) Widgets that track your whereabouts

See these articles here and here, for an illustration of why advertising a chronological breakdown of your daily routine to the wired world isn't perhaps such a great idea...

3) Pop-up windows engineered to bypass pop-up blockers

Yes, we all want our visitors to interact with our blogs, but there is a reason why a lot of people use pop-up blockers - have you guessed what it is, yet?

That's right - it's because they don't want to see pop-up windows!

Well done! You're learning... give yourself a pat on the back.

Now try putting yourself in the shoes of a visitor who has gone to the trouble of blocking pop-up windows, yet arrives on your site to find themselves confronted with one.

How do you think that person is likely to feel?

Frustrated? Irritated? Angry, even? Motivated to surf away from your site at the speed of light and never darken your virtual door again?

Well done! You've learnt something else... give yourself another pat on the back.

Now go away and expunge that evil pop-up window from your blog.

4) Using blog feeds that come bundled with third party spam ads

I had a bit of a micro-rant about these in a comment that I posted on Karenne Sylvester's blog recently so I'm not going to repeat myself here, though feel free to swing over there and read it if you like.

Using an RSS feed which redirects to third party advertising is almost certainly going to annoy some people sufficiently to deter them from clicking on future links or retweeting them once they become wise to it... in fact, it could even lead them to decide to give your feed or your blog a miss altogether.

Not good, I'm sure you will agree.

Nor in any way necessary, given that there are plenty of free alternatives that will take visitors directly to the link they want.

You shouldn't have to be told this kind of thing sucks, really.

Just don't do it.

5) Humongous twirly whirly, sparkly mappy things

Yes, I know that they look shiny & pretty and it's great to celebrate the fact that people from all corners of the globe are visiting your blog; however, not so great when the bleeding things take forever and a day to load and cause browsers to hang and crash, which often seems to happen to me when I visit blogs that have one... even with a high spec PC/broadband combo.

If you must have a visitor geolocation thingy, then opting for a mini-version with a lower bells and whistles factor would seem to be a much more sensible choice.

What do you think?

Do you agree or disagree?

Are there any other plugins and widgets out there that you'd recommend giving a miss?

Sue

Pick of The Week - WTF is Social Media Now?

2010-07-20T09:56:00.013+01:00

Check out this excellent slideshare presentation by Marta Kagan and compare it with previous versions of WTF is Social Media, to see how the growth of social media has exploded over the past few years or so.Scroll down the page for PG rated versions of the slideshows for embedding and using in lessons.

Sue

2010

What the F**k is Social Media NOW?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

2008

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

2007

What The F**K is Social Media?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

2010 - PG Rated Version

What is social media NOW?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

2008 - PG Rated Version

What is Social Media?

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

2007 - PG Rated Version

PG-Rated version of What The F**K is Social Media?

View more presentations from Jared Prins.

ESL Lesson Fillers: Funny Warning Signs

2010-07-16T16:40:00.016+01:00

I was chatting with some friends on Twitter recently about funny warning labels on products, and it jogged my memory about a list of crazy product warnings that has been floating around the Internet for as long as I can remember, which makes a good "find your partner" type mingle activity for English language students.

Here are some of my favourites from the list (with a couple of extras added, following our discussion):

a packet of peanuts
may contain nuts

an ice cream
best served cold

a mattress
do not attempt to swallow

a hairdryer
do not use while sleeping

air freshener
keep out of reach of children and teenagers

laser pointer
do not look into laser with remaining eye

superman costume
this garment does not enable the wearer to fly

Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges
not intended as a substitute for human companionship

a men's razor
do not use during an earthquake

a microwave oven
do not use for drying pets

a pushchair
remove infant before folding

TV remote control
not dishwasher safe

a cattle prod
for use on animals only

sleeping tablets
may cause drowsiness

a muffin
remove wrapper, open mouth, insert and eat

Pre-Task Suggestions

Make sure you run through the vocabulary first, to check that the students know the names of the products and any other words that they may not have encountered before.

Divide the learners into two even sized groups. If there is an uneven number of students in the class, then you can join in to make up the numbers.

Give each student in group A a card with the name of a product on it, and the students in group B a card with one of the warning labels written on it.

Explain to the learners in group A that their task is to find the person with the warning label that matches the product written on their card, and vice versa for group B.

Model the activity with a confident learner first, and double check that the students all understand what they are meant to be doing before you start the activity.

Give students around 10 minutes or so to try and find their partners, though if the conversation is flowing in a productive direction and they are having a good time you might want to give them a bit longer.

Follow-on Activity - Create Your Own Crazy Warning Signs

If your students are a creative bunch and you have Internet access, you could let them have a go at making their own crazy warning labels for products, using this fun warning label generator:

http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

A big thank you to my Twitter friends Emma Herrod & Phil Bird for helping to nudge this post into being, and thanks to Phil as well for the link to the warning label generator :-)

image created with warning label generator & a dash of of Photoshop post-production

Would You Like Fries With Your Assignment?

2010-07-14T16:00:00.021+01:00

If you read the UK papers at all, then you can hardly have failed to notice the media storm currently raging in the press about Mark Elms, a primary school headmaster who is said to earn more than the British Prime Minister.

If the press are to be believed, some union officials have adopted the "how very dare he!" line and are said to be outraged over the fact that Mr Elms gets paid extra for working during his evenings, weekends and holidays, unlike the rest of the teaching profession - although if you ask me, I can't help feeling that such outrage is very much misplaced, ignoring as it does the rather large, smelly, incontinent elephant stomping around smack-bang in the middle of the classroom, blocking the light from the window and making more noise than a vuvuzela...

If we are to accept that (at least in theory, anyway) the primary purpose of unions is to look out for the interests of working people, then it strikes me that what they ought to be making a fuss about here is not the fact that Mr Elms is being paid for putting in extra hours during evenings, weekends and holidays, but the fact that lots of other teachers up and down the country who are expected to work the ridiculous amount of extra hours outside of classroom time that seems to be the norm these days are not being financially rewarded for the extra hours they put in at all.

I suppose I probably ought to declare a bit of a vested interest at this point, being both a teacher and someone who is not exactly a stranger to having unexpected work dumped in my lap from time to time that I haven't agreed to do, and which I'm usually expected to do for nothing.

Following a particularly bad "Termus Horribilis" a few years back when I had so much extra paperwork thrown at me over and above what I had initially agreed to do that I found myself working pretty much solidly from dawn till dusk every day (including weekends) to the brink of mental and physical exhaustion, my curiosity was piqued sufficiently by the experience to sit down and do a few sums.

After I had totted up all the extra hours I'd worked that I hadn't been paid for, I discovered that I'd actually earned less over the previous 12 weeks than I could have done if I'd been working in a McJob, spending my days flipping burgers instead of teaching.

In other words, I had just spent an entire term working for less than the adult minimum wage.

Obviously this is a fairly extreme example, and it doesn't accurately reflect my wider experience of teaching; however, the fact that it happened to me at all did rather stop me in my tracks at the time and make me seriously question whether I wanted to continue to work in the profession at all, for a while.

Obviously I didn't go into teaching for the money, (lets face it - who does!) but equally I didn't go into the profession with the expectation of being ruthlessly exploited and treated with less respect than a pig farmer's doormat after a deluge, either.

Although after a lot of soul searching I decided that I really wanted to continue being a teacher, that "Termus Horribilus" was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak, and I've since learnt to develop ways of dealing with people who seek to make unreasonable demands on my time.

From talking to other teachers and subscribing to discussion boards and such, it's clear that my experience is very far from being a unique one and that there are many other teachers out there who are struggling to cope with excessive and unfair workloads.

Which leads me to ask:

Have you ever found yourself in this kind of situation, and if so, how did you deal with it?

I'd be very interested in hearing your views and any stories you would care to share.

On a related note, there is an interesting article on the TEFL Tradesman site entitled How To Double Your Money at Summer School, about how to make a mimimum wage complaint should your summer job turn out to be a lot more graft then you had been led to expect.

Sara Hannam wrote an excellent article a while back about supporting collective action for improving pay and conditions among teachers which I would also urge you to go off and read.

Curiously, in contrast to trade unionists quoted in the tabloids, the parents and governors at the school where Mark Elms teaches not only don't seem to have a problem with the size of his pay packet, but they have rallied to his defence, arguing that he has transformed the school since he has been there and that he is worth every single penny that the school is paying him.

Which does rather make you wonder what all this says about attitudes towards teachers, and the teaching profession in general...

What do you think? I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Sue

Guest Post: Karenne Sylvester on Blogging

2010-07-04T11:30:00.006+01:00

Blogging terms and phrases¹

All the words and phrases every newbie Edu-Blogger should know about: words derived from and related to the word blog.

By the way, I didn't make up 95% of these :-).

Blog n.
A regularly updated website which provides information, personal opinions and news in the form of a diary (the word blog is short for web-log).

Designed to be interactive and community driven, popular sites include comments and prompt for their readers to share their own experiences and knowledge. Generally displays articles in order of latest posting first.

The dynamic nature of blogging software has meant that they have been used in a variety of forms: to store reflective personal stories and essays; lists of useful links; share experiences using a variety of media with friends, families and the global community at large; to report on events; to market new books, services or products. Blogs have also been used as electronic portfolios, alternatives to paper-based resumes/CVs.

Blog directory
A list of blogs organized by genre and stored on the internet for easy referral by others in the same niche. A popular directory for edu-bloggers is the International Edubloggers Directory

Blogger n.
A person who blogs. Sub categories include: Edu-Blogger, Mommy-Blogger, Food-Blogger, Photo-blogger, Tech-blogger, Lingua-blogger; Moblogger (blogs via mobile phone) and Vlogger (video-blogger).

Blogger n.
One of the easiest and most flexible platforms to use, this popular google-owned website with ending urls of .blogspot.com (although one can also self-host) is available via www.blogger.com. Free.

Blog post
Each individual article that is written and published. Also known as postings.

Blogaholic
Someone who has become seriously addicted to writing his thoughts, experiences and sharing information with the community he talks to and is, eventually, unable to anything else until she's had her fix.

Blogan
A person who earns enough money from his blog to make it his profession. Also known as a pro-blogger. Differs from Blogian, a person who identifies himself as being a citizen of the blogosphere.

Blog awards
Awards and ceremonies celebrating the blogger. Most respected include the Bloggies and in Edublogging circles, popular ones include Bab.la's language teaching sets and the Eddies.

Criticized recently as being more beneficial to the sites sponsoring prizes than the hundreds of bloggers who promote them by hosting their badges and links on their pages.

As a result of the rampant blegging in the 'sphere they can have also been seen as a competition of a blogger's personal popularity rather than a clear representative of the, somewhat illusive concept of, content quality!

Blog buzz
The happiness one gets from having one's blog read and commented on. Also known as the Blog high. Blogaholics often refer to needing their blog fix.

Blog candy
A post that requires little work on the part of the blogger but is something she knows her audience will love reading. Alternatively it can be a posting which does take an effort to write but is on a popular topic - i.e. on Twitter and is therefore guaranteed to receive a large number of visitors.

Blog carnival
An invitation is sent out to other bloggers asking them to contribute with their own urls of previous blog postings, written on a specific topic or theme. These are then organized and collectively hosted by one blogger.

Many carnivals have one regular host or are distributed amongst popular blogs within a specific niche. Generally they tend to draw many new visitors as, usually, only quality articles are featured from right across the blogosphere.

Due to the increase in hits on a page they tend to show up well in searches on specific niche keywords - therefore they are an important feature in marketing new posts, serving to highlight both new and old bloggers.

Blog curners
New bloggers after writing three or four posts suddenly realize that the physical act of blogging takes up a lot of time, head space and energy and seek out unoriginal ways to cut corners and make the process easier on themselves.

Examples include asking for guest-posts from random more famous individuals and/or bloggers and blegging for interviews (i.e send out a list of 5 questions, get back 3 pages of text to post up from others = email, receive, click to copy, paste, post = easy shortcut).

Frowned on by those who've been blogging for any serious amount of time.

n.b. This is not the same as group blogging/ guest-post-series blogging or community bloggers, however, whose specific vision is to create a series of articles exploring a common, long-running, theme and posts are often made up of many different global voices.

Blog dumper
A blogger who visits another blog with the sole intention of leaving his url within the comments. Will usually not read the original post nor contribute to the conversation but will leave a short nonsensical remark such as "great blog."

When done by those with blogs of the same niche he will sometimes, quite unnecessarily, leave behind his url in the comment and sometimes may even request that the blogger he has visited for the very first time should now come (along with his readers) to visit his own newer blog, bleg that the blogger thoroughly read his own posts and comment there. Also referred to as blog whoring.

Blog-ego¹
The disease: narcissism attached to suddenly having one's words read by thousands of strangers. Dangerous and should be kept in check to keep from spreading as, like in life, no one likes someone who crows too often about how many hits a blog gets, how many visitors it receives daily nor how many articles one has written and published throughout the years. Also known as blogoasting.

Blog-ego²
A blogger who does not read other blogs because she doesn't have the time but repetitively sends out calls, links, tweets to get her own blog read.

Blog-ego³
A star blogger who has let the blog-buzz go to his head but is still loved.

Blog fodder
Something that a blogger reads, sees or experiences in normal life or the classroom and immediately has a blog buzz upon realizing that she has stumbled on something really quite blogable.

Bloggeteer
Comes from muskateer and refers to a blogger who is on a mission to change or fix the world, via their blog.

Bloggy adj
An insult. Poorly written and edited text, publishable on a personal blog but not suitable in a paper magazine or newspaper.

Blogian
Citizen of the blogosphere.

Blogiquette
The non-standardized but "really, everyone senses them" rules of behavior across the blogosphere. Includes things like saying thank you, acknowledging or commenting when your own blog has been listed on another person's blog (if you've been notified); and very importantly not referring to another blogger or their work without linking back to them; not blogoasting, blog-jacking, blog-zumping or ever being a blog pirate.

Blog jacker
A person who frequently visits a blogger's site with the sole intention of trying to upstage or out-do the original post through his comments. Generally not done by someone who has his own blog for fear of this occurring to herself.

Blogger loyalty
Bloggers that link out, usually to a specific subset within a niche or to friends, regularly and differs greatly from link farming. Quality content is served up to other bloggers and readers.

This practice was once done prolifically in the 'sphere, in order to help each others sites grow and become stronger, moving forward as a community rather than as individuals. Often an older blogger will set out to help a newbie enter the 'sphere properly and then once that person has become an experienced blogger himself it is good blogiquette to then pass on down the lessons he's learned.

However, as the general blogosphere grew and grew and new blogs were created everyday (70 million and rising) in every single genre, many bloggers have now become much more competitive and tend not to help each other out as much.

Blog meme
A blogger comes up with an unusual idea or a fun-tell-me-about-you type of post and then nominates other bloggers to do a similar post on this specific topic. The bloggers are required to link back to the original blogger who nominated them, in order that their own readers may go both forwardwards and backwards through a chain of blogs in the blogosphere.

Sometimes blog memes take on the appearance of link-baiting, however for the most part they are good fun to do, help a niched blogging community to learn more about each other/ other bloggers' work, to communicate and forge stronger alliances.

Blogorrhea
An unusually high output of articles, one after the other, when a blogger has nothing else to do.

Often just random babble (blogabble) but sometimes long lists of quality links - the trouble is that most people cannot keep up with those who have constant blogorrhrea and may abandon reading altogether.

Blogosphere
All blogs within the wider blogging community. Sometimes refered to as the blogspace, blogville and blogistan but never The Blogverse (but ~Twitterverse). A democratic community, level-playing-field where any educator can converse with any other, no matter the level of experience, training and be heard and respected.

A semi utopian land of words, ideas and thoughts. A place where the experienced can communicate with his/her fans and share their years of experience and knowledge, initiate conversation and get feedback on newer, less-well-thought-out ideas.

Sub niches generally put their genre in front of the word i.e. Edu-Blogosphere and ELT-Blogosphere (English Language Teaching Blogosphere).

Blog pirate
A blogger who copies the original idea of another blogger (often outside of his own niche thinking he will not get caught) when they've run out of things to say themselves but does not correctly acknowledge the original post by referring or linking to it. Also refers to those who read a post on another person's blog and instead of commenting there, expand the conversation on their own blog - therefore pirating the story. See also blog-zumper.

Blog roll
Meant to serve as a list of blogs which each individual blogger personally recommends to his/her own readers. Can be abused and done only to earn reciprocal linking (for SEO purposes) and when this occurs, the service of listing further sites on to one's readers is completely lost.

Blog burglar
Also known as blogarism. In violation of both copyright and copyleft, a blogger who takes content from another blogger's site and places up entire posts on another blog. Usually done as a short-cut to actually blogging. Also usually done to earn revenue from Google.

Sometimes done innocently by new bloggers who think that by cutting and pasting whole posts (without permission) that they are notifying their readers on a specific subject however it is a violation of copyright. **note that if this happens to you as a blogger you can report the site in question by clicking at the bottom of their google ads and reporting the infraction.

See makeuseof which lists 5 plagarism checkers you can use to protect your site.

Blog-zumper
Like the blog pirate, someone who takes a concept series away from another blogger. In this case however, he raids an original idea before it is entirely thought through/ the series is completed and markets it prolifically, in order to make it look as if he/she came up with the concept, thus forcing the original writer to abandon his/her theme.

Derived from the concept of gazumping, albeit merely 'intellectual' property.

Blog-zine
Usually written by a team of professional paid bloggers. Contains longer, well-researched articles of quality content.

Did you know all these words? Which one do you think I made up myself? :) Which ones were your favourites?

Did I miss any that you've heard too or have you got your own to add? If so- do please share!

And by the way, more terms and expressions used in the practice of edu-blogging, of an ever so slightly more serious nature, can also be found on Mike Harrison's Blog.

Image credit
Mike Licht of NotionsCapital.com on Flickr: Blogging on the Dunes, based on 19th C poster

Sources
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/06/the-giant-blogging-terms-glossary/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_blogging
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blog
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blogosphere

(c) KarenneJoySylvester, 2010

This article is part of a new series: Thoughts on Edublogging. Karenne is an ELT edu-blogger, a ESP:IT teacher, EdTech teacher-trainer and materials writer, originally from Grenada in the Caribbean. She currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany and writes Kalinago English and BusinessEnglish~5mins.

Karenne was one of the first people I met after I joined Twitter who helped me to make sense of it all and she was also one of the people who inspired me to start off this blog, so I'm really honoured to feature her article as my first guest post on here.

If you aren't already subscribing to her blog and following her on Twitter you should be because you are missing out, so off you go now to check her out... :-)

More Articles in the Thoughts on Edu-blogging series by Karenne Sylvester:

Mike Harrison's Blog: Blogging Terms and Phrases (part 2)

Turklish TEFL: The Dogma of Blogging

Teacher Reboot Camp: The Best Kept Secrets of Highly Successful Edu-Bloggers, Part 1

Janet's Abruzzo Edublog: The Best Kept Secrets of Highly Successful Edu-Bloggers, Part 2

IATEFL Conference 2010: 10 Talks Worth Catching

2010-07-04T06:00:00.008+01:00

As the end of the academic year is upon us and most people will have a bit more time on their hands over the summer, I've decided to do something a little different for my pick of the week and feature webcasts of some of my favourite presentations from the 2010 IATEFL Conference, rather than blog posts.

I've selected a mixture of presentations that I caught while I was at the conference, and talks that I didn't manage to catch while I was there but really enjoyed watching after the event.

Hope you enjoy them!

Anthony Gaughan and Izzy Orde - Teacher Training Unplugged:
Simplifying Initial Language Teacher Education

Chia Suan Chong - Improvised Principled Eclecticism:
a Dogme Research Project

The Consultants-E: Nicky Hockly - Teaching The Mobile Generation, Part 1

The Consultants-E: Nicky Hockly - Teaching The Mobile Generation, Part 2

The Consultants-E: Nicky Hockly - Teaching The Mobile Generation, Part 3

The Consultants-E: Nicky Hockly - Teaching The Mobile Generation, Part 4

The Consultants-E: Nicky Hockly - Teaching The Mobile Generation, Part 5

The Consultants-E: Nicky Hockly - Teaching The Mobile Generation, Part 6

Nick Perkins -), LOL, [_]>, :P and 1337: New literacies and bilingualism

Petra Pointner - what Students Can Get Out of Twitter Part 1

Petra Pointner - what Students Can Get Out of Twitter Part 2

Petra Pointner - what Students Can Get Out of Twitter Part 3

Petra Pointner - what Students Can Get Out of Twitter Part 4

Robert Hill - Transformation Stories

Russell Stannard - Web 2.0 Tools that Make a Difference

Jeremy Harmer and Steve Bingham
Extract from Touchable Dreams

The IATEFL 3rd Annual Pecha Kucha Evening

Final Plenary Session By Jan Blake

If you enjoyed watching these, why not check out some more webcasts of presentations from the 2010 IATEFL conference?

This Week's ELT Blogosphere Picks, Part 2

2010-06-25T14:13:00.010+01:00

Part 2 of this week's instalment features another free graphics generator that I've been playing around with a bit recently, Trippy Text.

I decided to split my picks for this week into two instalments because one of the drawbacks with adding this kind of thing to your blog is that it can really slow down page load times - something worth bearing in mind perhaps, if you decide to create some of your own.

Have fun!

Karenne Sylvester - Why Use Google?

Jez Uden - Interview with Jeremy Harmer, on Graded Readers

David Deubelbeiss - Every Lesson (should) Have a Hook

Jason Renshaw - Unplug Thyself

This Week's ELT Blogosphere Picks, Part 1

2010-06-24T20:00:00.010+01:00

No wordles this week as I've been rather busy; plus I've been spending time trying out some cool tech tools that I thought were worth featuring.

Part 1 of this week's instalment features an image creation site called Blixy.com.

Blixy is great fun to use and is bound to be a hit with students!

Happy summer reading!

Mike Harrison - I'm a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here!

Michelle Worgan - Have I Gatecrashed The Party?

Lindsay Clandfield - Six Communist Textbooks to learn English

Ken Wilson - Are you THE Ken Wilson

Marisa Constanides - Wallwishers are great!

Emma Herrod - A Fold-Mine of Activities

Make your own widget at Blixy.com!

This Week's ELT Blogosphere Picks, Part 2 >>

When Good Workplaces Go Bad - A Modern Day Fable

2010-06-23T17:48:00.003+01:00

(adapted from a Portugese story by PR Obrigado Mario)

See more presentations by jnageshri | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately. She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief, a lion, was surprised to see the ant working without supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, then wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor? So he recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports.

The cockroach's first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and so he recruited a spider, which managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyse trends, so that he could use them for presentations at board meetings. So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruited a fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time…!

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the cicada, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.

The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, who he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimisation Plan …

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset…

It was at that time that the cicada convinced the boss , the lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment . Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before.

So he recruited the owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.

The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded : “ The department is overstaffed …”

Guess who the lion fires first?

The ant, of course, because she “showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude".

Sound familiar to anyone?

Speaking from personal experience, I'd say there was more than a dollop of truth in there and a fair bit to reflect upon...

I also think it might make an interesting text to use with business English students.

What do others think?

Sue

The History of Teaching, Part 1: Lesson Observations

2010-06-20T21:41:00.020+01:00

Aeschylus didn't enjoy doing Socrates's teaching observations...

More Teaching humour on The PLN Staff Lounge:

Murphy's Law of TEFL

Should TEFL Be More Like Ryanair?

They Tried To Make Me Teach With Edtech... Why Some Teachers Don't Do Technology

Tongue Twisters for the Digital Age

Mangled Metaphors

Pick of The ELT Blogosphere 14 June 2010

2010-06-16T04:54:00.040+01:00

Time for the latest round-up of some of the ELT posts that I've enjoyed reading recently.

I used WorditOut to create the word clouds for this week's posts.

A Journey in TEFL - Eva Buyuksimkesyan

Food For Thought

EFL Classroom 2.0

Let me list the ways I'm Subversive... - David Deubelbeiss

Learning To Speak 'Merican - Vicki Hollett

Underselling Brits - Guest Post by Karenne Sylvester

L'il Miss Bossy's ELT Playground

Eight Enjoyable Games - Anita Kwiatkowski

Nik's Quick Shout - Nik Peachey

Teaching Grammar Through Songs

Tao Te(a) Ching - Diarmuid Fogarty

There Are 29 Knuts in every Sickle (and only one in every Topic)

Teacher Reboot Camp - Shelly Terrell

The 30 Goals Challenge Continues This Summer

Teaching Village - Barbara Sakamoto

What You Can Learn From My PLN

TEFL Matters - Marisa Constanides

Words From Context: Of Logic & Connections

TEFLtastic With Alex Case

The CELTA Ten Commandments

They Tried To Make Me Teach With Edtech...

2010-06-08T14:25:00.017+01:00

Why Some Teachers Don't Do Technology...

Update:

Check out this brilliant, animated version of the song that Alexandra Francisco made with GoAnimate!

Excellent job, Alex!!! Well done :-))

They tried to make me teach with Edtech,

I said No! No! No!

Yes I'm old hat, don't care about that,

I don't want to know,

I ain't got the time,

And if the students think I'm fine,

They tried to make me teach with Edtech,

I don't want to know!

I ought to be at home, marking essays,

My week has only got seven days!

And there's nothing, nothing you can teach me,

That I can't learn from Mr Thornbury!

Don't need no edtech in my class,

It's such a load of faff - no thanks! I'll pass...

They tried to make me teach with Edtech,

I said No! No! No!

Yes I'm old hat, don't care about that,

I don't want to know,

I ain't got the time,

And if the students think I'm fine,

They tried to make me teach with Edtech,

I don't want to know!

Original Version

Image credit: Daniel Arnold on Wikimedia Commons

Blogging Tip of the Week - Optimise Your Links

2010-06-07T08:39:00.054+01:00

I've been doing a lot of reading around edublogs of late, and one of the things I've noticed about teaching blogs in general is that if you click on a link to read an article that someone has referenced elsewhere on the web, the external link usually opens on the same page rather than in a new window.

From a blogging point of view this setup seems far from being ideal, as once a visitor has landed on your site then presumably what you are hoping to do is to keep them there and finish reading the fabulous, insightful article that you sweated blood over!

From a visitor point of view, it can sometimes make for a frustrating experience as well. If I've landed on your blog then the chances are that I'm there because you've written something that I'm interested in reading.

If the links on your site aren't set to open in a new window, then it means that I have to keep to-ing and fro-ing between your site and other sites, which after a while can get annoying; particularly if you have lots of funky widgets on your site which take forever and a day to load every time I land back on your page again.

There is also the possibility that if I get distracted by a brilliant article you've referenced or some shiny new toy that you've linked to and surf off to investigate, I may forget to come back and read the rest of your post. Which, as I'm sure you will agree would be a shame...

Setting links to open in a new window is actually quite a straightforward process - here's how to do it, if you decide to give it a go:

Method 1 - For Techies and Seasoned Bloggers

If you feel confident enough to go poking around under the hood and getting your hands dirty, then here's an example of how to edit the .html for your blog so that your links will open up in a new page, using Blogger:

1) (Very important - do not skip!!!) Open up the Dashboard for your blog, click on the Layout tab and select Download Full Template to back up your existing blog template.

2) Click on the Edit HTML tab and run a search for the title tag in your .html code of your blog

3) find the closing tag for your page title

and type in the code below, directly after it

like so:

4) Save your changes and view your blog. All the hyperlinks on your site should now open in a new window.

Method 2 - For The Rest of Us

If you aren't a techie and would prefer to play it safe, then here's another way to set links that you'd like to open up in a new page:

1) In compose mode, select the text you want to link to and set your hyperlink.

2) Switch to edit mode and insert the code

after the URL and before the closing bracket .

Example:

Click here to visit my free TEFL lesson resource site, esolcourses.com

3) Save your post. The link will now open in a new window when visitors click on it.

Hope you find this useful.

Any questions? Feel free to ask...

image credit: kevinrosseel on Morguefile

Pick of The ELT Blogosphere - New Edition

2010-06-06T16:27:00.018+01:00

Deciding which articles to feature this week has been a tough call, as I've been doing a lot more reading than usual over the half term. However, given that it's Sunday evening & I need to quit procrastinating, these are my "must read" picks for this week.

I used Tagxedo to create the word clouds for this week's post. Tagxedo is a lot like Wordle, only it has some cool extra tricks up its sleeve (including animation) so if you haven't checked it out yet, I recommend you do so.

Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom - Steven Anderson

Beautifully and Simply Explaining Technology

Classroom201X - Phil Bird

Using Streetview

Classrooms on The Danube - Mark Andrews

Can the ELT community respond to this week's events off the coast of Gaza?

ELT Digital Play - Graham Stanley & Kyle Mawer

Guest Post #1 : Video Games and Wikis by Shelly Terrell

eModeration Station - Nicky Hockly

Not waving but drowning -Coping With Social Media Overload

HTML clipboard HTML clipboard
ICT in Education - Terry Freedman

10 Obligations of Bloggers

Learning The Language - Mary Ann Zehr

A Q&A English-Learning Blog Carnival

Nik's Quick Shout - Nik Peachey

ESL Activities to Explore Issues Around Human Migration

Traveloteacher - Arjana Blazic

60 Second Recap

Web 2.0 For ESL - Rita Simsan

What I’ve Learned from My Children about Technology

ESL Lesson Fillers - Twisted Trailers

2010-05-29T16:01:00.030+01:00

Watching movie trailers in class can sometimes be a good way to warm students up at the start of lessons and get the conversation flowing.

Watching spoof movie trailers can be equally good fun, if not more so!

Here are a few of my favourite spoof movie trailer remixes. Some contain the odd bit of swearing/other content that would make them unsuitable for use with younger audiences, so make sure you check them out thoroughly if you plan to use them.

Shining

(the trailer for the original film is here)

10 Things I hate About Commandments

(the trailer for the original film is here)

There's Something Scary about Mary

(the trailer for the original film is here)

Must Love Jaws

(the trailer for the original film is here)

Titanic - The Sequel

(unfortunately the film for this one hasn't been made yet!)

Some ideas for using movie trailers in the classroom

Pre-Listening Questions:

1) What type of films do you enjoy watching the most?

2) Are there any film genres you don't like?

1) Do you usually watch trailers before seeing films?

2) Decide whether you agree or disagree with the following statements:

Movie trailers are a useful way of finding out what a film is going to be about
agree/disagree

Movie trailers can be misleading, as they only tend to show the best bits
agree/disagree

Movie trailers can sometimes spoil things by giving too much away
agree/disagree

Post-Listening Questions: Part 1

What type of film (genre) do you think this trailer is advertising?

What kind of audience is the film aimed at? (age/interests)

Is it a film you think you'd like to go and see? Why/why not?

Post-Listening Questions: Part 2

(Assuming your learners haven't guessed by now that the trailer they have just watched was a spoof)

Do you think this is a movie trailer for a real film, or not?

Elicit some feedback and then take a vote. Either show them the original trailer if you have time, or give them the answer and wrap up the activity.

More Tips & Ideas

Set the video up full screen on the IWB before the students come in, to hide any comments that people have left about the videos and avoid giving the game away.

If you haven't covered film and cinema with your class before, there are lots of free movie quizzes, games and worksheets on our website here that you may find useful.

Useful Links

Nik Peachey - Youtube Video Tutorials

Jamie Keddie - Lessonstream

Conversation Questions about Movies - Sean Banville's ESL Discussions.com

10 ELT Blog Posts Worth Reading - This Week's Picks

2010-05-27T11:55:00.010+01:00

I've decided to keep the momentum going on this one, so here are a few more recent picks from the ELT blogosphere that I thought I'd share. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did!

Click on the Wordles to visit the blogs.

Sean Banville
Will Adblockers Bring The End of Free Websites?

Graham Stanley - blog efl

Private or Public? Has Facebook Changed the Privacy Game?

Janet Bianchini
Facebook Privacy Issues

Jason Renshaw- English Raven

Silent Periods Can Also Be Good For Teachers

Burcu Akyol
10 Classroom Management Ideas That Worked For Me - Part I

Darren Elliot - The Lives of Teachers

A Class With No Teacher

Eva Büyüksimkeşyan

Liven Up The Classroom With Music

Nick Jaworski - Turkish TEFL

Dogme in the Mind of a Teacher – Banking

Marian Steiner - ELT Ideas

Unlocking The Teacher Within

Shelly Terrell - Teacher Reboot Camp

Children of Immigrants Series - Struggling With The Dialect

TEFL Bingo - Eyes Down For A Full House!

2010-05-15T12:27:00.003+01:00

Learning a foreign language can sometimes be hard going, so it's good to inject a bit of fun into lessons from time to time to break up the more serious business.

With that in mind, here are a few ideas for using bingo games in the TEFL classroom:

for learning and consolidating new vocabulary

Variation for beginners: Use picture bingo cards and/or slideshows to provide support for low level learners.

Variation for Intermediate and Advanced students: Give a definition rather than calling out the word, or show pictures of objects on an OHP or smartboard and get learners to guess what the word is.

for teaching & revising irregular verbs

Call out the present tense of the verb and get the students to identify and shout out the past tense form.

for drilling pronunciation

Call out the words and ask students to repeat them back to you, before marking the words off. Correct any prounciation errors.

To revise vocabulary and spelling

1) Put learners into groups, give them a topic you have already covered, and ask them to draw up a list of words that they would like to revise.

2) Ask groups to swap lists and peer check for spelling mistakes.

3) Get learners to use their lists to create their own bingo cards, using print.bingo.com's free BingoCard Generator.

To motivate learners to return on time after a break

Playing bingo (or indeed, any game) can be a good way to improve the timekeeping of students who have a tendency to linger over their coffee for a bit too long at breaktime - especially if you can work some kind of tie-in to an interesting follow on activity.

The more fun you can make the game, the less inclined students will be to be late back to class and miss it!

A couple of points to bear in mind:

Playing bingo in the EFL classroom is not like a playing an ordinary game of bingo; it isn't about who wins or loses, it's about exploiting opportunities to practise the target language in a fun and interesting way. In classes where you have a broad spread of abilities you may need to level the playing field a bit by giving stronger students cards with extra words on them, to give weaker learners more chance of participating.

If laminating cards with a view to using them again, then I recommend handing out non-permanent markers to students at the start of the game, as there will always be at least one learner who is bound to use the wrong type of pen! (useful tip: nail varnish remover pads can be used to remove permanent marker from laminated cards)

Stick to topics that are likely to be useful and relevant for the learner group you are teaching, and use bingo cards that are age appropriate if playing the game with adult learners.

Use bingo cards that feature lexical sets rather than random groupings of words.

Click on the link below to download some free bingo templates from our site to use with your students:

TEFL Bingo - Free Colour Printable Templates >>

Feel free to add your suggestions and ideas for using bingo games in the classroom; the more, the merrier!

More Ideas For Using Bingo Games:

English With Jennifer - Reinventing Bingo to Get Students to Use English Outside the Classroom

10 Blog Posts Worth Reading

2010-05-10T16:02:00.034+01:00

Following on from It's Worth Taking A Look At This Blog, I thought I'd keep the momentum going by posting some links to blog posts I've enjoyed reading over the past week or so. Not an exhaustive list by any means, but there may be one or two in there that are new to people or that you may have missed as they whizzed past in the Twitterstream.

Enjoy!

Danny Nicholson - The Whiteboard Blog

Henrick Oprea - Doing Some Thinking

Ian James - tefltecher

Janet Bianchini - Janet's Abruzzo Edublog

Kalinago English - Karenne Sylvester

Ken Wilson - Ken Wilson's Blog

Luke Meddings - onefortywords

Mark Andrews - Classrooms on The Danube

Shaun Wilden - Shaun Wilden's Blog

Shelly Terrell - Teacher Re-Boot Camp

It's Worth Taking A Look At This Blog

2010-04-26T17:22:00.028+01:00

Earlier this week, one of my Twitter friends Arjana Blazic, an inspirational teacher from Croatia who is part of my Twitter PLN, or POSITIVE LEARNING NETWORK (as another of my Twitter amigos, Valentina Dodge so excellently puts it!) tagged my blog as part of the It's Worth Taking a Look at this Blog project.

Arjana is someone I genuinely admire. I love her blog and her award-wining "Greetings From The World" Wiki, and I feel really honoured that she has tagged me.

If you are tagged by somebody as part of the project, here's what you should do next:

1) Insert the picture above into your blog with a link back to the blog that nominated you;

2) Compile a list of ten blogs you feel are worth reading and;

3) Tell the bloggers you have nominated that you have tagged them.

Here are the blogs that I've chosen for my list.

Barbara Sakamoto: Teaching Village

Burku Akyol: Burcu Akyol's Blog

Diarmuid Fogarty: Tao Te (a) Ching

Jason Renshaw: English Raven - Jason Renshaw's Weblog

Karenne Sylvester: Kalinago English

Luke Meddings: onefortywords

Marisa Constantinides: TEFL Matters

Sarah Hannam: Critical Mass ELT

Sean Banville: Sean Banville's Blog

Shelly Terrell: Teacher Re-Boot Camp

Happy reading!

You might also like to check out my blogroll, as there are many more excellent blogs on there that are well worth taking a look at. :-)

Teaching Unhinged

2010-04-01T08:27:00.011+01:00

In January, my wonderful Twitter friend Shelly Terrell ran a great series of posts on her Teacher Reboot Camp blog entitled The 30 Goals 2010 challenge, which she has since turned into an e-book. Challenge number 1 was to post your first diary entry of 2010.

As the saying goes, better late than never...!

TEACHING TENSES!

image credit: BrittneyBush on Flickr

Monday Morning

Have a two hour meeting with Mrs Hetty Chumbukit, learning skills director of the SmartPrice School of English.

Mrs Chumbukit's funders have been putting pressure on her to integrate technology into lessons, and her salaried staff have responded to this by running screaming for the hills. She has approached me to ask if I could run a short Intermediate level ESOL with ICT course for them. Have given her a provisional yes, as long as it's paperless and she can provide me with a suitable space and the necessary equipment to teach it, etc. We are meeting today to iron out the details.

I ask when she'd like the course to start and her response is the following day, preferably, as they'd like to slip it in before the end of their financial year! Wince inwardly at the lack of notice but agree it can be done in principle, if we keep it simple and the students they've recruited are up to working at Intermediate level. We agree on a six week long intensive course with a maximum class size of ten, and I head off home to begin planning it.

Monday Afternoon & Evening

Put in some serious hard graft planning the new course and knocking together a couple of week's worth of lesson outlines, aided and abetted by a soundtrack by the Very Reverend Al Green and half a bottle of Jacob's Creek.

Tuesday Morning

Arrive at the SmartPrice School of English bright and early to survey my domain for the next six weeks. The word "disappointment" doesn't even begin to do justice to the way I'm feeling right now. Suspect the "tech suite" I'm teaching in was probably a broom cupboard in a previous life. There are ten elderly-looking PC's, a mis-matched assortment of very skanky, battered swivel chairs and just about enough room for a very thin ten year old to walk up and down in the middle. A wobby, miniscule table in the corner, a grubby-looking whiteboard tacked to the wall that has been positionally optimised for use by a Harlem Globe-Trotter, and a peeling "Skills For Life" poster complete the picture. Sublimate a fleeting urge to dash outside for a fag although I gave up smoking years ago, before switching the PC's on and doing what limited things I can to prepare the space.

There are ten students down on the register and six of them turn up for the lesson. It's probably just as well we don't have a full house, as several of the computers are broken and the ones that aren't are running Internet Explorer 5 and pootling along the information highway at the speed of a lethargic snail.

With a heavy heart, I abandon my carefully crafted lesson plan and deliver an impromptu Dogme session.

As usual, the learners themselves are a lovely group and it's a very pleasant first session, although initial impressions suggest that they should be working at Entry Level rather than Intermediate. I email Mrs Chumbukit to inform her of the various issues and head off to teach my afternoon Entry 2 class on the other side of town at the SPLAT Centre (A.K.A "Sound as a Pound" Learning and Technology). Grab an M & S meal deal for lunch which I eat on the bus, travelling en-route.

Tuesday Afternoon

Bump into the SPLAT Centre's learning manager, Connie, on the way to my class. Our conversation goes something like this:

Connie: "Any chance you can do an Entry 3 course for me with the same group of students, once this one is finished?"

Me: "Maybe; although it would have to be paperless."

Connie: "Not a problem, as long as they all pass."

Me: "I can't guarantee that... "

Connie: "Seriously; they all have to pass. If they don't all achieve the funders will penalise us, and we won't be able to cover the cost of running it. They all have to pass."

Me: "Then I'm going to have to pass as well, I'm afraid. Sounds more like a job for Derren Brown or David Blaine than me."

Connie: Fair enough. I don't suppose you've got their mobile numbers or email addresses by any chance, have you?

Tuesday Evening

Put in some more serious hard graft writing a back-up Dogme outline to cover my back for Thursday's lesson, spurred on by Radiohead's "OK Computer" and the remaining half bottle of Jacob's Creek. Have another fleeting urge to take up smoking again but deflect it by cracking open another bottle of wine and liberally dipping into it.

Wednesday Morning

I get a call from Paisley, Mrs Chumbukit's assistant. Paisley is a non-native English speaker, her first language being Scouse. Our conversation goes like this:

Paisley: "Mrs Chumbukit asked me to ring an' let you know that the numbers on the register have growed a bit since you done your class yesterday. We was hoping that this isn't going to be a problem."

Me: "Has the classroom grown as well? "

Paisley: "Errr, No....."

Me: "Then I'm afraid that yes, it's going to be a problem."

Paisley: "Oo-er"*

Me: I don't think that I could physically fit more than ten learners in there at a time unless I organised them into a human pyramid...

Paisley: "Oo-er"

Me: ... and I suspect that would probably breach Health and Safety regulations.

Paisley: Right. In that case, I'll speak to Mrs Chumbukit an' see if she's got another room, though I wouldn't get your hopes up too much.

(to be continued)

*Oo-er: versatile Scouse slang expression, used to register surprise, astonishment, or disbelief

Alice in Wonderland 2.0 - Twitterwocky

2010-03-08T18:57:00.010Z

'Twas brillig, and the SLUrl.y ToThes
Did gyre and Google in the wave;
All bit.ly were the followers,
And the moodle apps outgrabe

"Beware the Twitterwock, my son!
The bits that byte, the JAWS that catch!
Beware the Jamglue bird, and shun
The posterous Bloggersnatch!"

He took his Drupal sword in hand:
Long time the Orkut foe he sought
So rested he by the Xanga tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in owly thought he stood,
The Twitterwock, with whales of fail,
Came trending through the twittersphere,
And toufeed as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The Zoho blade went flickr-flack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He poducated back.

"And hast thou slain the Twitterwock?
Come to my arms, my linkedin boy!
O notely day! #FF! #TT!"
He RTd in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the sLUrly ToThes
Did gyre and Google in the wave;
All bit.ly were the followers,
And the moodle apps outgrabe

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)