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
   

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?"

Scholarship for Cert IBET

An email arrived from Eric Baber, Joint Coordinator of BESIG, reminding members that the deadline for the Cert IBET course scholarship is this Friday, 17 July. The new Cert IBET aims to meet the needs of business English trainers to enhance their skills and expertise, to increase their employability prospects in the sector, and improve their ability to deliver a quality product to potential clients. The Certificate is awarded jointly by Trinity College London and English UK. For details on the online course delivered by The Consultants-E, which will give you practice in using ICT and is a way into blended learning courses, as well as the scholarship, please visit http://www.besig.org/certibetscholarship.htm.

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.

Webinars for beginners

We already pointed out that Classroom 2.0 (the social networking site for teachers on Ning) provides webinars on a wide range of online applications for teaching. Now Steve Hargadon, the founder of Classroom 2.0, has announced a new Classroom 2.0 webinar series for beginners:

"While our beginner series focus is helping educators new to web technologies learn more about how they can use these tools with their students it will also provide 'takeaways' for the more experienced users. All sessions will be recorded and archived at http://live.classroom20.com."

It kicked off on Wednesday at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time ... or today, Thursday, at 2 am our local German Time. Yawn! Fortunately, the Classroom 2.0 team do a great job of documenting their webinars:

The first session was one of three dedicated to wikis, facilitated by Sue Waters of Edublogs (she's from Perth; her blog is here). For an mp3 recording of the session, the chat log and further information on the series, visit Classroom 2.0 Live!


Visit Classroom 2.0