Share your lesson idea

• Do you have a lesson plan, a warmer, a game, a controlled practice unit that has worked for you?
• Would you like to be part of a community of teachers who share lesson ideas?
• Would you enjoy having your idea published for all of the interested teaching community to see?

Then join the upcoming 15th EFL blog carnival, the Carnival of English Language Lessons, hosted by Karenne Sylvester.
Here's how:

1. Write up your lesson plan.
2. If you have a blog, publish it there.
3. If you don't have one, publish it on Ask Auntie Web. Contact us at info (at) melta (dot) de. We'd love to publish it for you.

Then register your published post (or we'll register it for you) on the blog carneval site using Karenne's form here.

Deadline: March 21.
Publication: April 1.

With this focus, the 15th blog carnival is sure to be a winner. Come on, everybody, join in!

See the EFL Carnival Archive

What is a blog carnival?
A blog carnival is a tool used by bloggers to promote their work. In a classic blog carnival, one site is designated as the host or organizer, and participants send in permanent links, or "permalinks", to posts on the theme of the carnival. The organizer collects the links in a single post, which becomes the starting point to all of the participating blogs. Good for readers, because it gives them access to a wide variety of blogs; Good for bloggers, who appreciate the publicity. (Summary of this definition)

The 30 Goals Challenge

If you missed Shelly Terrell's "The 30 Goals Challenge" in January, she has made the 30 posts into an e-book. She blogged about a professional development challenge with an essential personal element, each connected to an aspect of paedagogy, online marketing or social networking, every single day for a month. Reflective and integrative. If you're thinking about where you're going as a trainer/ English teacher, and are looking for focus, you will certainly find inpiration here.

1. Keep a Diary
2. Contribute to a Blog Carnival
3. Start an Adventure
4. Support a New Blogger
5. Update Your Online Profiles
6. Set a Google Alert
7. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
8. What’s Your Personal Theme Song?
9. Be a Guest Blogger
10. Make A Connection
11. Ask, Perhaps You’ll Receive
12. Reach Out
13. Give Students Reign
14. Cause a Ripple
15. Create: 40 Writing, Music, & Art Resources
16. Voice Your Appreciation
17. Tell Your Story
18. Let’s Move
19. What Do You Believe?
20. Seek Feedback
21. Have a Bit of Fun
22. 12 Resources for Giving Constructive Feedback
23. Where There’s a Will
24. Conquer a Fear
25. Plant a Seed
26. What Are You Putting Off?
27. Reflection vs. Reaction
28. Capture the Moment
29. Stay Focused
30. Pass the Baton

Calling all collaborators

Hello MELTA members,

Ask Auntie Web is our blog, the online sister to the column in our MELTA Newsletter. Like the print column, the blog is looking for collaborators, and seeking to revive old ones (you know who you are!). Would you like to contribute a blog post? It could contain tips, ideas, reflections, food for thought in the following areas:

• online resources and tools to help build your teaching repertoire
• your experience and questions re the teaching you have done using these resources and tools
• upcoming teacher training in these areas, or reflections on training you've had
• social networking to build professional connections with other professionals
• gadget talk and computer tips that help you simplify or spruce up your life
• the specific experience of trying to make it as a teacher in Germany in 2010
• lamentos, rants, musings, exultations in general, just to have had the fun experience of posting something online for your colleagues to read
  

Please get in touch with me, Anne c/o info (at) melta (dot) de
or more directly on Twitter: http://twitter.com/annehodg

Özge Karaoğlu's Blog

Many members of MELTA (our Munich English Language Teachers Association, which this blog "belongs" to) are getting more and more interested in teaching young learners. Next to Business English, YL seem to be our main target group.

Now, if any of you YL teachers don't know her yet, there's no time like the present to meet Özge Karaoğlu, a kindergarten teacher in Istanbul whose blog ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org is a trove of technical innovations for teaching YL. She won the MEDEA Award for Creativity and Innovation 2009 for Daisy and Drago, a series of animated films her kindergarten pupils made. She had them develop and draw the story, and speak the texts and record their voices, so it is absolutely do-it-yourself, using high tech to create something absolutely delightful and original. It's the second feature of the MEDEA Showreel, following right after the Overall Award Winner 2009 (from 2:23):




She guest-blogged on this project on Ken Wilson's great blog, and I'd like to send you all to her post there. She wrote:

I do enjoy being a kindergarten teacher; it makes me feel I am important for someone else and it is very rewarding. Children inspire me every day. You can do as many projects as you can do with older kids. This amazes you and others more, because they are so young and enthusiastic and can do great things in spite of their limited world, with their limited language. This is the story of how we filmed and fulfilled our dreams.

Also: Visit the Daisy and Drago wiki, which contains information on the book Özge wrote and based the project on, and the making of!

Fiction in action: Whodunnit

From the website of ABAX, an independent publisher of ELT materials in Tokyo and San Francisco:

The World's first free-to-share commercial ELT textbook has just been published by Adam Gray and Marcos Benevides. Their new reading title, Fiction in Action: Whodunit, is available as an eBook for free under a Creative Commons license. The print book will be available this spring.

Download free eBook here

Fiction in Action: Whodunit is something not seen before, a textbook designed to act as a bridge to extensive reading. Over 12 units encompassing two original six-chapter stories, the book introduces students to the hows and the pleasures of reading accessible fiction in English. Fiction in Action focuses on extended and connected passages in one genre—in this case, the detective story—familiarizing students with the language, style and literary conventions associated with this form of story. A special feature of the text is tasks that are not merely supportive of but intrinsic to the stories.



I'm reading it through right now and really like the interactive elements. I've got just the course to use this book in: a company course that wants a bit of reading on the side!

If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online

From the NYT:

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.

And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

... The report is based on a survey of more than 2,000 students in grades 3 to 12 that was conducted from October 2008 to May 2009.

On average, young people spend about two hours a day consuming media on a mobile device, the study found. They spend almost another hour on “old” content like television or music delivered through newer pathways like the Web site Hulu or iTunes. Youths now spend more time listening to or watching media on their cellphones, or playing games, than talking on them.

“I use it as my alarm clock, because it has an annoying ringtone that doesn’t stop until you turn it off,” Francisco Sepulveda said of his phone. “At night, I can text or watch something on YouTube until I fall asleep. It lets me talk on the phone and watch a video at the same time, or listen to music while I send text messages.”

Francisco’s mother, Janet Sepulveda, bought his phone, a Sidekick LX, a year ago when the computer was not working, to ensure that he had Internet access for school. But schoolwork has not been the issue.

“I’d say he uses it about 2 percent for homework and 98 percent for other stuff,” she said.

Continue reading here: New York Times, 20 January 2009

PS: Don't miss the readers' comments here, viz. the parents' side of the battle:

"If you define living as experiencing and interacting with your environment then these gadget lovers are not living. They deafen themselves to the world. They notice little, and experience a tiny fraction of the environment they live in. Their interpersonal relationships are mediated by gadgets and thus superficial. Without their gadgets, life is boring, and simply not worth living. The lives they lead are without any real substance and pathetic."

"Family reunion day last month with 23 members present. The five kids who were old enough to be interested in electronic toys (all girls, ages 9 to 15) huddled together in a corner of the living room with their camera phones and i-Pods and spent most of their party time that way. Socializing, to the extent there was any, consisted of the older girls teaching the 9-year-old (mine) how to operate them."

"As a parent I can report that this is NOT news. All of this stuff DOES tend to reduce a child's ability to pay attention and concentrate, and to prioritize the important (school, anyone?) and the unimportant. Problem is, you can't just take it all away once they have it - they go really nuts. It's like a drug."

Getting your students involved in the Read/Write Web

At MELTA we have a workshop coming up on 27 February 2010 with Karenne Sylvester, who has been teaching blended learning courses using Ning, a social networking cum online course creation tool. She's started an online series on how to learn English on her blog. Her first post is on how she gets her students reading blogs, and includes the blogs she recommends to her students, and they include my favorites and introduced me to some new ones, especially Dominic Cole's, a blogger who keeps up not one but three very interesting blogs. Really cool. This is Karenne's list:

1. Dominic Cole's: http://alittlebutoften.blogspot.com/
2. Toby Crawley's: http://bite-sized-english.com/
3. Markus Brendell: http://www.der-englisch-blog.de/
4. Neal Chambers': http://www.englishspark.com/en/blogs
5. Berni Wall's: http://www.gapfillers.co.uk/
6. Nik Peachey's : http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com/
7. Jeffrey Hill's: http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/english/
8. Clare Whitmell's: http://www.theenglishweb.com/
9. Chiew P Nang's: http://acliltoclimb.blogspot.com/
10. Sue Lyon Jones': http://esolcourses.blogspot.com/
11. Anne Hodgson's (yeah! thanks!): http://annehodgson.de/

I'd add Dominic Cole's main blog: http://www.dcielts.com/archive/
Karenne will be starting up her own blog for learners again, too.

And what about the Business Spotlight and Spotlight crowd, who write real blogs, and nice ones, too, but for a magazine? For some reason the blogging world hasn't accepted them as one of their own. I'm not sure why that is. Is it unacceptable to recommend a magazine blog? Or is it that they're not engaging on Twitter, or commenting on other people's blogs? I figure that might be a faux pas in the blogging community. Yet the blogs are clearly directed at a language learner, and are explicitly educational. I don't think that's a bad thing.

1. Debbie Capras's: http://www.business-spotlight.de/blogs/deborah-capras/
   
2. Ian McMaster's: http://www.business-spotlight.de/blogs/ian-mcmaster/
   
3. Eamonn Fitzgerald's: http://www.spotlight-online.de/blogs/eamonn-fitzgerald/
   
4. Dagmar Taylor's: http://www.spotlight-online.de/blogs/dagmar-taylor
   
5. Mike Pilewski's: http://www.spotlight-online.de/blogs/mike-pilewski
   

Teaching the generations

Steve Corbett published a must-read portrait of the four generations learning today:

• "Traditionalists (Born between 1920 - 1945). They are also called the Silent Generation, the War Baby Generation, or the WWII Veteran Generation.
• Baby Boomers (Born between 1946–1964). They are also called the "Me" Generation because their Traditionalist parents wanted to give them a good life.
• Generation X (Born between 1965–1980). This generation is the children of both Traditionalists and Baby Boomers.
• Millennials (Born between 1981–2000). They are also called Generation Y, Generation ME, Generation WE, or Nexters."

He created a Venn diagram summarizing the generations' learning styles, saying that it's a generalization. But much rings true.

I recognize myself as a typical GenXer:

• "the first high technology generation"
• "independent. Will work in teams when absolutely necessary, but would prefer to work alone"
• "Like to use technology as a means for access and sharing information."
• "Entrepreneurial – Prefer to build portable skills. ... Prefer solving problems on their own."
• "Informal Learners - Prefer to be engaged in their learning, instead of being passive recipients. Dislike structured environments."

The points of conflict I see with the Baby Boomers, our older colleagues:
Baby Boomers tend to be

• "Team Oriented - Embraces a team based approach to everything"
• "Competitive - Value peer competition"

The points of conflict I see with Millenials:
Millenials tend to be

• "Collaborative - Team players with a capital T."
• "Structure Driven - Prefer structure in the classroom and are accustomed to following rules."

How about you, do any of these issues ring your bells?

Thank you to Neal Davis.

Richard Wiseman

Shelly posted Richard Wiseman's "Top 10 quirky science tricks for parties" on her blog:



...which led me to Richard Wiseman's lovely blog itself, with his "Friday puzzles", a nice resource if you're teaching people with an interest in science!

David Crystal: Which English?

Are you familiar with the Macmillan YouTube channel? They've posted great interviews and presentations by their eminent writers. Some MELTA members enjoyed going to IATEFL together last spring and heard a talk and a reading by David Crystal. Here he presents the problem of choosing which variety of English to teach:


Which variety do you teach, and why?

I generally teach American English, my native tongue. But when I've been doing a lot of writing and translating for clients who have ordered British English, I am sometimes confused into using British English pronouns and expressions. Just last sumnmer, to my acute embarassment, I found myself saying "at the weekend", which to me sounds wrong, wrong, wrong. Does that ever happen to you? Any experience to relate?

Merry Christmas, allerseits

This was sent by Joan, and I can't resist posting for our German-English teachers' community. :)


A little Weihnachtsgedicht

When the snow falls wunderbar,
and the children happy are.
When the Glatteis on the street,
and we all a Glühwein need.
Then you know, es ist soweit.
she is here, the Weihnachtszeit.

Every Parkhaus is besetzt,
weil die people fahren jetzt.
All to Kaufhof, Mediamarkt,
kriegen nearly Herzinfarkt.
Shopping hirnverbrannte things,
and the Christmasglocke rings.

Mother in the kitchen bakes,
Schoko-, Nuss- and Mandelkeks.
Daddy in the Nebenraum,
schmücks a Riesen-Weihnachtsbaum.
He is hanging off the balls,
then he from the Leiter falls.

Finally the Kinderlein,
to the Zimmer kommen rein.
And it sings the family
Schauerlich: "Oh, Chistmastree!"
And the jeder in the house,
is packing the Geschenke aus.

Mama finds unter the Tanne,
eine brandnew Teflon-Pfanne.
Papa gets a Schlips and Socken,
everybody does frohlocken.
President speaks in TV,
all around is Harmonie.
Bis mother in the kitchen runs,
im Ofen burns the Weihnachtsgans.
And so comes die Feuerwehr,
with Tatü, tata daher.
And they bring a long, long Schlauch,
and a long, long Leiter auch.
And they schrei - "Wasser
marsch!",
Christmas now is in the Arsch.

Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
hear the music, see the lights
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht.
Merry Christmas allerseits...

Edublog Awards, the polls are open

Vote for the blogs of your choice from the shortlists here: http://edublogawards.com.
A great way to see where the education community stands at the moment.
A few distinct communities seem to be evolving, and it's exciting to try and find your feet in them. More hands-on techy? More critical theory of technology and society? More inspirational/ personal mental guru? More paedagogical-analytical? More community-building and sharing? As they say, it's all good. And I'm still stumbling through. Do you notice yourself being drawn more and more to any one community of blogs?

ELTons 2010

Here are the British Council ELTon 2010 Awards Nominees.

Which of these resources do you know, use, like? How, why?

1. Nik's Daily English Activities – Blog – Nik Peachey
2. Vocabulary Matrix – Book – Heinle ELT, Cengage Learning
3. Teaching Unplugged – Book – Delta Publishing
4. www.teachertrainingvideos.com – Russell Stannard
5. Fast Track to Reading: Accelerated Learning for EFL & ESOL Students – Book – Garnett Education
6. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th edition – Pearson Education
7. Teaching with Bear: Using puppets in the language classroom with young learners – Book, DVD, Bear Puppet – Oxford University Press
8. IH Online Teacher Training Institute – International House World Organisation Ltd (IHWO)
9. The Bell Online Delta – online training – The Bell Educational Trust
10. Primary i-Box – classroom presentation software – Cambridge University Press

Edublog Awards, take 5!

I'd like to nominate the following blogs for http://edublogawards.com

Just keeping it very simple and on the ground, I've left some of the categories out. I'd like to express my deep gratitude to all who have networked with this blog and my home blog, the Island Weekly. There are so many bloggers around now that it's quite hard to keep up, and most of the blogs I read don't really fit into this grid; they're more personal and individual. Blogging isn't really about the best and the brightest. Never mind. Some of the main movers and shakers whom I owe a great deal to are:

Best individual blog:
Alex "I don't do Twitter" Case http://www.tefl.net/alexcase

Best collaborative blog:
It's his blog, but he invites many guest bloggers, so it seems very collaborative
Lindsay "Six Things" Clandfield http://sixthings.net

Most influential individual post:
Karenne "Here, There and Everywhere" Sylvester
http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2009/08/blogging-english-language-teachers-tech.html
Her blog carneval and her Ning for bloggers in EFL, BELTfree, kindly put little blogs on the map.

Best resource sharing blog:
Nik "Tech Tools" Peachey http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com
...but there are so many fabulous newcomers, e.g. Ozge Karaoglu
(for Young Learners)

Best individual tweeter:
Shelly "Reboot" Terrell http://twitter.com/ShellTerrell

Most influential tweet based discussion:
Teacher Tuesday, #edchat

Best teacher blog:
Marisa "Let's think this through properly" Constantinides http://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org

Best student blog:
Markus "Englisch mit sch" Brendel http://www.der-englisch-blog.de

Best new blog
There are so many, so I'm saying, since September:
Darren "Lives of Teachers" Elliott http://www.livesofteachers.com

Best elearning / corporate education blog
Deborah "Wise Words" Capras http://www.business-spotlight.de/blogs/deborah-capras
and my great colleagues at Spotlight, especially Dagmar Taylor (whom I suspect I'm not allowed to nominate, but she's great.)

Best educational use of audio:
Sean "Listen a Minute" Banville http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com

Best educational use of video / visual
Jamie "Say hi, Dad" Keddie http://www.teflclips.com

Best educational use of virtual worlds
Nergiz "SLExperiments" Kern http://slexperiments.edublogs.org/

Lifetime achievement
Larry "Community" Ferlazzo http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

Also see Shelly's shortlist - her blog is getting more populated and lively every day.


Looking at this list I'm a little dissatisfied. These blogs are great, don't get me wrong. It's just... So where are the categories that move me just a bit more, if I'm honest? The blog I read when I want to laugh? The one that has the songs I love? The one that has the news from a slightly different perspective and gives me the idea I need to jumpstart my lesson? The one that is charming and reminds me how different we all are? The one where there is sure to be a rollicking good fight? Or the one that is simply beautiful to look at? The one written by someone who really knows how to write (those are my favorites)? The one that has intellectual stamina that just reading it gets my brain into gear? The one where I find the best book tips? The one whose writer I'm secretly in love with? Or whom I'd like to meet because I think I've found a kindred spirit? Or the one who's been around the world and makes my feet want to go?

Do you read blogs like that, too?

Russell Stannard

Russell Stannard has written with this request:

"I have been shortlisted for ELTons British Council awards
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-innovation-awards.htm
I need to send in some examples of what people think of www.teachertrainingvideos.com and why they like it. If you like the site and use it, can you just write a few lines explaining why you like the site and how it has helped you?"

Give Jamie Keddie feedback

Jamie Keddie, now known to MELTA members through his recent workshop (which I, sadly, missed), is revamping his website and has asked for feedback. Can you give him some?

• Which lessons have you found promising?
• Which have been useful? To which effect?
  
• Have you carried any of them out to the letter?
• Or have you used them, but adapted them in some way?

I think we are probably all ready to move from the mere fact that YouTube videos can be used to using them to promote learning as effectively as possible. Jamie is at the leading edge here.

http://www.teflclips.com/?p=260#comments

What should we do with this blog?

Any suggestions welcome. But do be polite ;)

Sue Lyon-Jones and esolcourses.com

Sue Lyon-Jones heads a small team that is in the process of producing a complete set of free graded online self-study lessons in British English, and Unit 1 of her Beginners Level courses is now complete, at http://www.esolcourses.com/uk-english/beginners-course/unit-1/unit-1.html. To get an impression of what the other levels will be like, see the overall website at http://www.esolcourses.com, and the new lessons she rolls out on her esolcourses blog, http://esolcourses.blogspot.com. The icing on the cake is that she's just started a blog for EFL teachers, called The PLN Staff Lounge. If she's not a part of your PLN - or "Personal Learning Network" in newbie-speak, it's high time you hooked up! Follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/esolcourses.

What is a resourceful teacher?

Scott Thornbury has led a course entitled "Teaching WITHOUT technology" using Moodle at SEETA. In his intro blurb, he posited:

"For many teachers sophisticated technology is not a viable choice in their context. Others have chosen not to use technology out of principle. What principle? That language is a social tool and that language learning is best mediated through the direct contact between real human beings." He asked "Are anti-tech teachers "in denial"?"

Visit the course and look back on the discussion here. The mere fact that this course took place in Moodle and brought together people from many different countries, including people with little money but great ideas, speaks for itself, wouldn't you say?

Marisa Costanides from Greece commented the wrap up with Neil Postman's "Six questions for every technology":

1 - What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
2 - Whose problem is it?
3 - What new problems might be created BECAUSE we have solved this problem?
4 - Which people and what institutions might be more seriously harmed by a technological innovation?
5 - What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies and what is being gained and lost by such changes?
6 - What new sources of economic and political power will emerge?

See the Neil Postman talk on YouTube (part 1, with links to the following parts) here.

Did you know 4.0

This is another official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com/ and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/.



What does it have to do with teaching? Do you notice anything new over what was going on last year around this time? Your comments are welcome!

What's the digital divide? It's women against men

James Clay has been named digital technologist of the year at ALT-C 2009. He was the voice of reason yesterday. Here's a funny video he and collegues made at the Digital Divide Slam at ALT-C 2008, referred to on his blog, http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com, today:

Hot debate on Virtual Learning Environments at ALT-C

There was a hot dedate on Virtual Learning Environments (like Moodle) #vle at the ALT-C conference #altc2009 in a session entitled "The VLE is Dead" . With a good degree of inside cheekiness the first speaker summarized that the "e" in elearning stands for evil as a result of VLEs being the normal way education technology is run in schools and colleges. This, he said, is because:

1. One size does not fit all - but VLEs tend to homogenize
2. The student/user does not "own" the VLE - but users want to own the tools they use
3. The VLE is conning academics into creating content (not constructivist approach) which creates an unproductive learning model
4. The VLE is not helful for discoursive teaching, it prevents students from discussing with people outside their institution
5. Teachers can do most stuff with outside, free tools
6. The PLE (personal learning environment) is flexible, while the VLE is cumbersome

Martin Weller tweeted: "if a bomb went off in this room, the UK ed tech scene would be wiped out" - and he is one of the ones to have started the whole debate in his blog.

Yet schools and colleges have to deal with not all teachers having the necessary skills in alternative tools, and not all students using social networks like Facebook and Twitter that would make VLEs obsolete for most student work. (Noone seemed to be debating VLEs as a good place for quizzes and tests.) But the feeling was really quite strong that VLEs are more counterproductive than conducive to learning.

How to blog? Why Blog at all?

In August Karenne Sylvester published what is called a "Blog Carneval", which is a collection of blog posts by many different people, answering her question, "What advice would you give to another TEFL teacher interested in becoming a blogger?" The results at http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2009/08/blogging-english-language-teachers-tech.html are organized under these headings:

• On getting started
• On blogging with students
• On finding inspiration & writing great content
• On the effect it can have on your career
• On stuff to know about
• On audience
• On community
• On commenting
• Why I blog

The list of bloggers she was able to round up is really impressive, and Ask Auntie Web got in, too. Thanks, Karenne! But go and see for yourself.

English Language Teaching Blogging

View more documents from Karenne Sylvester.

ALT-C 2009

The ALT-C 2009, the 16th International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology, will be held at the University of Manchester, England, from 8-10 September 2009.
The keynote speakers are:

Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor Designate at the Open University, UK

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, USA

Terry Anderson, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at Athabasca University, Canada.

Other invited speakers: Jonathan Drori, Heather Fry, Diana Laurillard, Matthew McFall, David Kennedy, Richard Noss, Vanessa Pittard, Aaron Porter and David Price.

Wishing you were there? Watch most presentations, which will be made available in real time using the video conferencing service elluminate at http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk/. The events calendar is here: http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/calendar

Storing your files on the www

I know that most people are rather sceptical about the idea of putting their documents on the www, but if you think about it, the www is far less likely to disappear than your hard disk and nowadays you can store a lot of data on sites such as Box or Dropbox for free.


Why bother?

Well, as I've already said, the www is not going to go phut or disappear - you may back up your files on an external disk or USB stick, but external disks cost money whereas these sites don't - well, if you keep the size of the files stored there to between 1 and 50GB (ADrive will let you store and share up to 50GB for free).

If you have a PC and laptop or files that are stored on more than one beast being able to update and sync files can be really useful. Ditto if you work together with other people and need to collaberate on the documents you are putting together. If A updates the document, B automatically sees the latest version without A having to email it to B.

I've just co-authored a book for Longman and whilst we were writing it I uploaded my materials to the Box. Everything was in one place, my co-author could see what I'd written and the editor could access the latest version of the manuscript as well as earlier versions.

I lost about three units and a couple of weeks' work when my hard disk died when I was writing another book, so it was reassuring to know that everything was stored on my PC and the www this time round.

I dare say someone could crack the passwords and get at those materials, but then I dare say someone could also hack my PC if they wanted to, but I don't think the data they'd find there would be worth the time or effort.

Lingorilla wins 2009 World Summit Award

The Berlin-based LinguaTV GmbH today won the coveted biennial World Summit Award (WSA), selected by the UNESCO, the UNIDO and the Internet Society, in the category 'eLearning and Education' for its multimedia language learning platform lingorilla.com. The jury called it a "state of the art e-Learning website combining all media as well as all functions of the web."

LinguaTV features broadcasts in several languages including English. This web TV station produces language training videos with subtitles and features vocabulary. Users can use professionally produced videos, dictionaries and lessons. Contents licenced by LinguaTV include travel reports and music videos. Interactive exercises allow users to study on their own.

A game-like point system shows how much progress a learner is making and invites learners to compare and compete with each other. The community idea is central to lingorilla.com, and learners are invited to find language learning partners from over 150 countries worldwide and to communicate using the integrated video chat function. Groups can hold virtual meetings here, too, e.g. to get together again following a language course or trip.

Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, German Minister of Education and Research, congratulated LinguaTV, saying, „Ich freue mich, dass LinguaTVs Bildungsangebot die internationale Jury überzeugen und sich gegen die Konkurrenz aus 170 Ländern durchsetzen konnte. Dies ist auch deshalb so herausragend, weil LinguaTV das mit einer kleinen und noch jungen Firma aus eigener Kraft erreicht hat.“

Lingorilla is currently relaunching their platform, which they have announced will be completed in the next few weeks.

I've signed up as http://www.lingorilla.com/eng/users/annehodg. Hope to see you there!

Electronic dictionaries

Do you sometimes think your students think you are a walking dictionary and can translate all the words they need from German to English and vice versa?

Yes, you must have the same kind of students as I do, but I've now bought an electronic dictionary which is a lot lighter than a decent paper dictionary, in fact, the manufacturer claims the number of entries it contains are from paper dictionaries weighing about seven kilos.

I bought myself an upmarket model because I teach a lot of ESP courses and am often confronted with words that my students ask me for, but I've never heard of, e.g. entgraten (deburr) or Ducker (inverted siphon).

I've got a Hexaglot Attaché which costs around €200 (if you shop around for it). It is probably one of the most expensive electronic dictionaries on the market, but it does let me put my own 'dictionary' onto an SD card and I can also download other dictionaries. e.g. English - Portuguese, Portuguese - English onto the SD card which I've found useful for holidays.

If you're a freelance English teacher and running from one company to the next with bags full of heavy books, you might find you can reduce your 'workload' without having to cut down on the number of courses you teach.

Have a look at whether there's a good or free electronic dictionary out there for you.

Btw, I'm happy with my dictionary, but I wouldn't recommend/buy it unless you really do need to translate fairly specialised terms and on a regular basis. There are some really good electronic dictionaries out there that cost a third of what I paid.

Chatbots

Shelly Terrell has recommended a great site where students can communicate with chatbots: http://www.eslfast.com/robot. Developed by Ron Lee, a Chinese artificial intelligence scientist working in LA, the ESL Robots Project creates online electronic tutors to help English language learners practice their productive English speaking and writing skills. Users study the conversations first by reading and listening to them several times, and then practice these conversations with the robot.

Learners can type in a question, and then click the SAY button or hit the ENTER key on their keyboard, and the robot will reply. So far I haven't actually managed to get the robots talking to me in direct response to what I'm typing in, they just respond in writing. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong.

If a learner has speech recognition software installed, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, he or she can speak into the microphone instead of typing in questions.

The robots are capable of learning. They are being trained by the users in response to the input they receive, so they are getting "smarter" with every "conversation". They have learned many idioms and proverbs. The robots can even point out some spelling and grammatical errors in a learner's writing. So they can also be considered a good tool for ESL students to practice writing.

This project is being developed at Pasadena City College, California, USA.

A second very nice site is A.L.I.C.E. Artificial Intelligence Foundation. While full membership is $99 for a year, you can chat with the D.A.V.E. chat robot for one month for $9.99. For more information on the project, see their blog, http://alicebot.blogspot.com.

Do any of you have experience with chatbots to share?

Quality in online learning

Do you ever wonder about quality in online learning, and where we are headed? For a very sceptical and thought-provoking discussion see Jerrid Kruise's blog article "Concerning Online Education".

What are your favorite sites for interactive games?

Help us collect your favorite sites for crossword puzzles, hangman, matching etc. in EFL.

Just to get this started:

• The MacMillan games on the Spotlight website: http://www.spotlight-online.de/language/games
• The English Club games page: http://www.englishclub.com/esl-games/index.htm
• Activities for ESL/EFL Students: http://a4esl.org/
• Taiwan Teacher Games for children: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1979/games.html
• TEFL Games: http://www.teflgames.com/games.html

Please do contribute by leaving a comment!

Top language teaching blogs to follow

Bab.la has just published a top 100 blog list, and the top 10 blogs to read if you are teaching a language are:

Overall Top 100 | Language Learning | Language Technology | Language Professionals

1. Listen to English
Podcast and blog for learners of English. Topics include current events, items of interest and cultural quirks.
2. Inglês Online
Tips, experiences and websites for people learning or teaching English.
3. Grammar Girl
Blog with quick and dirty tips for better writing.
4. Angela Maiers
Putting Learners and Learning First
5. todo ele 2.0
Spanish as a second language, resources, lessons
6. Better at English
Real English for real people
7. English Spark
Putting a spark in the English learning community with tools to learn, share, collaborate and connect.
8. Confessions of a Comunity College Dean
Education and teaching blog
9. Kalinago English
Teaching EFL Teachers How To Teach Speaking
10. Tecla SAP
Blog created to help English learners with their studies focused on common difficulties that Portuguese speakers have when learning English.

Congratulations to one and all. I like competitions like this, because it's lovely to see bloggers you follow get the appreciation they deserve, and exciting to discover new ones. Spanish, anyone?

See Lexophiles, the blog project run by Andreas Schroeter, Thomas Schroeter, and Patrick Uecker, the managing directors of Bab.la, the language learning networking site based in Hamburg that ran the competition.

A networking natural: Karenne Sylvester

I first heard of Karenne Sylvester through my colleagues on the Board at MELTA, coming back from an InterELTA meeting. "She's really active and savvy", they said, "and she could write a blog for all of us ELTAs." Unfortunately, setting up anything like that is a major challenge in many ways, and we really wanted to do something downhome and local first. But at least the discussion introduced us properly to her blog.

And what a blog it is. Frankly, she is already doing far more than providing a blog to an institution. She is an institution.

Based in the Stuttgart area, she divides her attentions between teaching on the one hand, and mentoring and training other trainers on the other, which she has built into being a one-woman networking hub. She's also the originator of the 27 hour day, as you can tell from her two blog setup, her network of EFL bloggers on the social networking site Ning, her activities across the blogosphere and world of Twitter, and her covert allusions to deadlines and projects.

She's on top of things and has everyone's attention thanks to her very punchy sense of humor, and what she calls her "rants". A refreshing brand of tough love. No tired old stuff here.

Friends, you can do no better than to join her network.

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/kalinagoenglish
For teachers: http://kalinago.blogspot.com
Her other activities and products: "About"
Her social network for ELT bloggers BELTfree explained here.