I think this video says it all....

Don't worry if you missed the Web 2.0 starting gun. I think most folk who are are over thirty did, but we can still catch up if we want to!

CLIL in the classroom

Here’s a nice way for your business English students to practice their English, talk about their course/ jobs, and learn about a nice Excel application all at the same time. I recently played this video downloaded from YouTube in new class with a small group of business students. It shows how to make a rudimentary Gantt chart using an Excel spreadsheet. It’s very clearly explained in a step-by-step fashion.



Afterwards the group then made a Gantt chart to outline the stages planned/goals set for our course.

In order to do this in your lesson you will need a computer and a projector. If you don’t have YouTube access in your classroom – possibly due to a company firewall – you can always download the video to your computer at home first. See Anne’s post from March 19th on how to do this. http://askauntieweb.blogspot.com/search/label/YouTube

Finally, for homework, students make their own Gantt charts on business or personal topics relevant for them to present the following week. It was quite fun and the students not only learned how to do it, but also through English! :-)

Let me know how it works out for you.

The Flip video camera

If you sometimes use a video camera in the classroom, you've probably hit the same problem as me, namely it takes quite a lot of time to set everything up and familiarise yourself with the equipment (especially if you teach in different companies and have to use different TVs and DVD players or video players).

If that's the case, maybe you ought to look into buying The Flip - a video camera that's simple to use - and easy to carry around.

I've decided to get one myself, so watch this space to find out more about using it in the classroom.

For ESP teachers

Here's a link to blog written by an EFL/ESP teacher called Jeremy Day aimed at those of us who teach ESP (English for Special/Specific Purposes)

Specific English

It's a relatively new blog, but it already has some brilliant tips and links on it and I wouldn't be surprised to see it being 'followed' by many an ESP teacher in the not too distant future.

TEFLclips

Here's a great site for EFL teachers who like to use YouTube videos in the classroom.

TEFLclips

The site offers videos and lesson plans.

The project was set up by Jamie Keddie.

Thanks, Jamie! It's a great idea and wonderful resource.

Twitter Search in Plain English

Lee Lefever explains how Twitter Search creates new opportunities for business feedback, tracking news in real time and discovering trends.

Organizing your reading list

I follow a lot of blogs written by EFL teachers, people in the media and political movers and shakers I find interesting. The easiest way to organize this reading list is Google Reader (http://www.google.de/reader). It lists the blogs in alphabetical order, shows you which posts have been updated since you last looked and allows you to read the posts in the reader window without actually surfing over to the site, then marking it as read. You can also scroll all the way through the Google Reader listing chronologically in a matter of seconds to find an old entry. I find it a very neat and quick solution. I used to subscribe to blog feeds through my web browser, but it slowed my browser down significantly every time the browser went off to look for feed updates. Using Google Reader keeps the updating process separate from your other online activities.



Take the Google Reader tour in English here.

Lindsay Clandfield poll: Who are the most influential people in ELT today?

Lindsay Clandfield, EFL teacher trainer and author of the wonderful Six Things blog, is inviting you to vote on which authors have had the greatest influence on you as a teacher. The list is excellent. You'll find the poll here.

Digital storytelling

Digital storytelling is the art of creating a story in multimedia using any of the myrads of tools currently available, and sharing it online. One of the most famous and inspiring sites was created by Alan Levine and tells the story of one man's relationship with his dog, Dominoe, in 50 different ways. http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/Dominoe+50+Ways

SlideShare, one of the best sites for uploading presentations (create source material in Powerpoint or other presentation software, upload for conversion to Flash. To include a soundtrack, record audio as mp3, store on external server, and link to create "slidecast", synchronizing audio to slides), and Fuze Meeting, an application for virtual meetings using a shared desktop, are currently running a Tell A Story Contest, the winner of which will get $5,000. Participants tell their story through a slideshow using 30 slides. (Contest information passed to us by ELTWeekly blog (India's first weekly ELT eNewsletter).)

Fuze Meeting & SlideShare "Tell A Story" Contest

View more Microsoft Word documents from Amit Ranjan.

Anyone can view the entries on the contest site. Registered SlideShare users help decide on the winning entry. Most of the entries are, quite frankly, disappointing. Hardly anyone used audio - pity!

you have a choice

View more OpenOffice presentations from Laura Vargas.

Update: Karenne Sylvester has posted a nice presentation entitled "Plenty of Fish".

Plenty of fish

View more Keynote presentations from Karenne Sylvester.

If you like it, vote for her here: http://tinyurl.com/myc7t3.

Simple picture + text presentations are something your EFL students could make. Caveat: Experience shows that your students will spend quite some time learning how to use the tools, and (at least in the first project) a relatively small amount of time on the actual production of English - which is why I haven't used it with my students. Still, if your students are interested in acquiring or developing their creative digital skills it can be very motivating.
Do you have projects to show and inspire other teachers to use SlideShare? Please add links to them to the comments below!

Twitter for teaching or for staffroom teacher talk?

Twitter, the microblogging tool that allows you to relay short updates in real time and see what others are saying, has yet to really take off here in Germany. My own students (mostly business people whom I teach in small classes or one2one) don't use it, so I don't currently need to develop didactics for it. But if you are teaching at college and have classes with over 20 people, you should really think about using it to allow all of them to express themselves and to let everyone see what they are saying. Look at how Monika Rankin used Twitter at the University of Texas at Dallas in a history class of 90 (!) students, where "small class quality" simply is not an option (from Read Write Web; see Rankin's own summary here):


Burcu Akyol wrote a nice reflective summary on Twitter in her blog.

Shelly Terrell is setting up a free EFL discussion group called Twitter Discussions on EduFire and is discussing the procedure and her experience in her blog. Very interesting!

My colleagues here in Munich have expressed many, many reservations towards Twitter, primarily that it's a huge waste of time. I'll admit spending too much time on Twitter myself. In fact, I've already experienced Twitter burnout from getting too much valuable input that left me feeling totally stressed out by a huge to-do list. Yes, you read correctly: Too much valuable information. Because Twitter is anything but a medium for hollow chitchat. On the contrary, it is very dense communication, a few words and a link among people who have chosen to follow each other because they share the same kind of interests. It's very much like being at a perpetual Special Interest Group subconference. What turns me off is too much reciprocal back-patting and grooming. You tend to lose perspective when you keep reminding your in-group how brilliant you all are. But that comes with the terrain and you sort of need to filter it out. Once you've got that down you can concentrate on getting fabulous tips from colleagues, staffroom style.

Update: Nik Peachey wrote an article on building a useful Twitter network here: http://tinyurl.com/qzyfgo. He also wishes us good luck with the blog. Thank you!

Telephone training using a built-in video camera

If, like me, you are married to someone who speaks English as a foreign language: Have you ever tried to teach them your native tongue? Until last week I would have said that it can't be done. But then we had a brainchild:

My husband is a bit of a ham. He's had video training to gear up for TV interviews, and is interested in learning how not to make a complete fool of himself when they home in on him and ask unpleasant questions. I was trying to make a "talking head" video for a project of mine on cellphones, and he saw me and said, "Let's do it together. You call me, and you'll film yourself and I'll film myself using the cameras on our laptops, as we speak on the phone." And that's what we did. We thought up a phone scenario together and scripted the dialogue. Then we went into separate rooms and each of us set up our laptops. Each of us had a cellphone in hand and told the camera what we were doing, and then I called him and we went through the moves, and he called me back. We then compared the two films (and laughed our heads off) and then did it again (he actually put on a tie to make himself feel like he was at work), and this time he had some food for thought about his expression and tone of voice. After that, satisfied, we decided to call it a day. But if we'd wanted to create a "product" and not just a "learning experience", we could have recorded the scenes until we and they were perfect, then cut them into one film using moviemaking software (we have Macs with iMovie; on a PC you'd use Windows Movie Maker), and then published the finished film to YouTube. I might just do that with a class one day.

Anyway, he's hooked, we had lots of laughs and a good think, and I think we'll be doing this again. Oh, and I've got a new shtick for one2one classes :)

Russell Stannard

Russell Stannard is a teacher trainer who runs a very helpful site where he presents videos on how to use tools for teaching English, like creating and editing audio files, using photos and working with mindmapping tools. His site is here:
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

He also sends out a newsletter where he updates you on his latest videos, which you can subscribe to by writing to him at russellstannard@btinternet.com

Thanks to Andi White for this tip.

Online teacher training to boost your tech skills

Nicky Hockly at The Consultants-E has just sent out an email update on the teacher training courses she and Gavin Dudeney run 100% online on their Moodle platform. Each course lasts 2 weeks (10 hours), costs 135 Euros and focuses on a different free ICT tool: blogs, wikis and podcasting.

In each 2-week course you:

a) learn what the tool is and how it works
b) discuss and create projects to use with your own learners
c) create your own sample blog/wiki/podcast for your learners

BLOGS [15 - 30 June 2009]
http://www.theconsultants-e.com/courses/blogs Participants set up their own blogs during the course using web-based blog software, such as Blogger. Also examine RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and learn how to use this to subscribe to blogs.

WIKIS [1 - 15 July 2009]
http://www.theconsultants-e.com/courses/wikis By the end of the course you will have set up a wiki to use with your own students, using web-based wiki software, such as PBworks and WetPaint.

PODCASTING [15 - 30 July 2009]
http://www.theconsultants-e.com/courses/podcast Participants will create their own podcasts during the course, using web-based podcasting software, such as VoiceThread and Audacity.

Become an online teacher

I hadn't looked at the classifieds on the www.melta.de website for a long time, but just noticed that there was a job offer for an online teacher a few months ago - the first I'd seen there. Well, if you're not getting enough face to face classes you may really want to consider becoming an online English teacher. There are many services to choose from. Read this blogpost in German by Ibrahim Evsan, the founder of the video platform Sevenload.de, who summarizes many of the services. Then have a look at them in detail. It's quite interesting to check them out to get a better sense of how language services in general are becoming globalized.

Tech basics: You need to have a video camera installed on your computer to give real-time lessons and you'll be using a service like Skype, with video and text messaging. Other tools such as Twitter can be very good for students tasks. But have a look at the sites first and try applying for a job - you'll be far wiser after that!

Shelly Terrell recommended Myngle, Edufire and italki. These are social networking sites that allow people who are looking for a teacher to find you, based on the information you post. The sites take a service charge out of your fee, but really it's up to you to state your conditions. So there is no middle man here. Schools providing blended learning, such as the ones advertizing on the MELTA website, will of course have to take a larger chunk out of the fee they charge the customer. Follow Shelly on Twitter and read her blog Teacher Bootcamp to find out more about how she teaches online.

Also have a look at The English Teacher and read Aniya's post on The Art of Teaching Online. You can also follow Aniya, who currently teaches online through Myngle on Twitter.

Karenne gives the the Luddite teacher a dressing down

Karenne Sylvester tells it like it is in her guest article on Alex Case's blog (revisited in Karenne's own blog here), challenging

"ELT teachers who are simply too chicken to try out some of the new media and technology tricks in their classrooms while the Digital Natives progressively enter the market... A lot of them are whining about whether or not it’s good teaching practice or just flash and dash. However while they continue to be afraid, they’re missing out on what’s on the other side and in the end, consoling themselves with friends who are equal Luddites, will find themselves replaced by the those who can."

She goes on to tell you exactly where to start - right here in her article. Follow her advice. Time waits for noone.

Questions? Comments? Just click on the "comment/s" button below.

Learning tools

Here's a link to a site which lists and has links to almost 3,000 tools (most of which are free) 'for learning'.

Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

I'm not sure all the tools are for learning, but many of them are very useful for teachers.

And here's the site's top 100 learning tools for 2009.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

VocabGrabber

The VocabGrabber, part of the Visual Thesaurus, is a nice resource for presenting and building vocabulary. Just copy in any text and the system will:
show the number of different words used
sort them by relevance
sort them alphabetically
class them according to subjects
show a thesaurus word web for any of the words you choose
present the sentence(s) the word appears in.

All of the words are hyperlinked, so your students can really explore meaning and collocations. I put in text from a blogpost of mine:



Using the Visual Thesaurus online is free. If you want to save and download wordlists, you must be a subscriber.

The Auntie is in

Have a question? Ask Auntie Web, we'll be delighted to see what we can find out for you.

PrintFriendly works with Blogger

Want to read and print out a post on Auntie Web on a white background, saving ink and not worrying about reformatting? True to their word, PrintFriendly has updated their service to work with Blogger. Yeah!! Just have a look at decline and fall's latest post in PrintFriendly. Do it yourself by going to http://www.printfriendly.com and pasting in the URL you want to print out.

Update June 10: PrintFrendly does NOT work with Blogger when a blog post has a comment.

Getting it up (3) - the trouble with browsers

The story so far: If you want to get a proper website up, you need to know about how the text, pictures etc. on web pages are organised. Web pages are text with tags. The tags are bits of text inside pointy brackets which tell a program (the browser) on your computer how to display the page and, most importantly, what parts of your text are links to other pages. The tags are bits of code inside pointy brackets, as in the example that Anne included in another post:

Interestingly, there are problems with most or all of the tags in the graphic. ("b" and "i" are no longer regarded as the best way to achieve these effects; the "p" tag is a problem in an html editor if you try to use the carriage return to start a new line, as in a word processing program; the "br" tag written like this will cause a line break at the beginning of the line, not the end, and will probably generate an error; putting "text-decoration" inside a "span" tag would be a bad idea if you're doing it more than once on a site, and so on.)

The reason for the trouble is the history of html.

It started off as an academic research tool, to organise the cross-references between texts and avoid all that tedious business of ibid and op. cit. and passim and cf. and q.v. and librarians hating you because you dropped biscuit crumbs in their card indexes. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Timothy, and should be at very least Lord Berners-Lee of Cyberspace if you ask me). He was a researcher at CERN, a big atom thing, on (or more precisely under) the Swiss-French border. Around 1990, the new-fangled internet was being used by nerds and soldiers to send messages to each other. St. Timothy realised that it would also be handy for distributing scientific documents. So you would store the text, illustrations and the references to other documents on your server, then others could call up the document using his clever system of addresses (URLs), read the thing and, gloriously, add to it, resulting in an explosion of collaborative human knowledge, progress and happiness.

Mr Berners-Lee (now the Earl of Url) then made three decisions which, with hindsight, appear unfortunate. First, he called it the "World Wide Web", giving the system (and hence the addresses) a tongue-twisting twelve-syllable abbreviation in English. Second, he didn't use his invention in a way that would make him fabulously rich. And thirdly, he didn't give serious attention to the browser issue.

Recall that all that was stored on Mr B's subterranean servers was essentially the elements of a scientific text on paper: the text itself (organised into headings, paragraphs, lists, tables etc.), the references (now in the form of handy embedded links), and the illustrations. To read the stuff, users needed software that displayed the text, lists, tables, illustrations etc. in a readable format, and had some mechanism to call up a new page from a coded link. Plus - the really tricky bit - the software had to allow you to edit the text - add new references, comments etc. - and save your edited version back onto the server.

The vital requirements for a browser were, then, 1) it had to be standards-compliant (i.e. respond to the agreed set of tags to display reliably any text written in html), and 2) it had to work as an editor. After a while, vital requirement 3) became apparent: the browser had to avoid being a means for the writers of the webpages to access a user's computer via naughty bits of code.

The first decent browser was created at the University of Illinois. Under a succession of names - Mosaic, Mozilla, Netscape, Mozilla again, and Firefox - it's been around ever since. It was the first attempt to monopolize the web. Visiting the NCSA in Illinois in 1992, Berners-Lee was dismayed to find "that the people at NCSA were attempting to portray themselves as the centre of Web development, and to basically rename the Web as Mosaic. At NCSA, something wasn't 'on the Web', it was 'on Mosaic'". This meant that the Illinois people felt no obligation to comply with the html standards. And they were uninterested in the more difficult requirement of a browser: that it should also be an html editor. As Berners-Lee puts it, they "were more excited about putting fancy display features into the browsers – multimedia, different colours and fonts – which took much less work and created more buzz among users".

The most flashy design feature was a tag which drew a horizontal line across the page. So as the web grew, initially in America, into a mass consumer activity, browser designers started increasing their market share by inventing their own tags, effectively inviting the writers of web pages to write html that would only work in particular browsers. What didn't help was the approach that U.S. companies took to the commercial development of the internet. The model was that of a TV network: people would pay a monthly subscription to companies like America Online, Compuserve or Prodigy, and in return the company would provide a full internet service: email, newsgroups and all the web-style content you would ever need – weather, news, entertainment, local information and so on. Since the content was produced by the internet provider, there was no reason to make it compatible with the international html standards. Users installed the provider's software from a CD. The less standards-compliant the "browser" part of this software, the more differentiated was the provider's product.

The next few years are known to infamy as "the browser wars". With a business model that staked everything on market share, the Netscape browsers introduced a succession of new tags. Some were useful, some unreliable (they didn't display properly, or crashed the browser), and some – notably the "blink" tag – were so hideous that web designers distained to use them. One – the "font" tag – seemed like a really good idea at the time but has had disastrous effects on the ability of non-specialists to create workable web pages.

Microsoft's influence on this process has been surprisingly benign, though this has been more a result of bad judgment than philanthropic instinct. Initially they failed to notice the web. Then, as Netscape got worryingly popular, Microsoft produced its own browser. Aside from the occasional silly tag – "marquee" to scroll text rather than blink it – Internet Explorer was less whizzy than Netscape, but thereby more standards-compliant. After the failure of a half-hearted attempt to rival providers like AOL with their own "network", Microsoft settled into a strategy of bundling its dull-but-sensible browser with the Windows operating system. They were subsequently expensively punished for this decision, but it had the effect of accustoming the world to receiving web content in standardised form from any source, as part of normal computer use.

By around 2000, Microsoft's Internet Explorer had become dominant, and Netscape's browser had collapsed under the weight of its own idiosyncrasies. By then, the battlefield had become online security, with rivals to Internet Explorer claiming that their browsers offered less openings to hackers. As to html, everybody now claims to be 100% standards-compliant (and everybody lies).

Apple, by the way, has generally stayed aloof from the browser wars: its strategy of modifying an area of computer technology to create a local monopoly didn't seem to apply here. Until 2003, Macs used Netscape or Internet Explorer. Since 2003, Apple has had its own browser, Safari, which is pretty standards-compliant but apparently dead insecure. Fortunately for Mac users, malicious hackers seem to expend most of their energy on attacking Microsoft's browser. Presumably the cybercriminals reckon that it's not worth targeting Mac users because a) there aren't enough of them, and b) those that there are have already spent all of their money on flashy digital bling.

Illinois eventually redeemed themselves by electing Senator Obama.

The browser wars continue, but in a less destructive form, as the surviving belligerents converge upon full standards-compliance and bicker about their relative security. The legacy is that it's always been tricky to create html that will work in all browsers and on all main computer systems, and that will continue to work in a few months when the next security parches are issued, and next year when the new browsers are released.
The other resultant problem is that it's never been easy to find a program to edit html – i.e. to create web pages. More about that in the next post ...