I'd like to think that I help people to learn English

Taking out the textbook

2012-01-25T08:36:00.000Z

I was involved in a conversation recently in which we discussed the possibility of offering first year secondary students a far more flexible course: textbook-less and exam-light, perhaps project-based. While discussing the problems and throwing various opinions around, two things stood out to me. The first was that in many ways, the default position for planning a course is to talk about the materials more than the learners. Another default is the belief that new or inexperienced teachers need directing to materials or need to have a ready supply of materials to choose from, rather than seeking out their own and building the course for themselves.

Personally, I consider myself to be in a similar position to that described recently by Neil McMahon, who referred to starting out as a teacher with few materials in a less than well-supported environment. I learned to get by on my own without materials and was employing some techniques associated with Dogme before I'd ever heard the word. I wonder to what extent spoon-feeding and over-supporting new teachers leads to materials focussed teachers?

It was also suggested that students prefer having a book, or at least a clear syllabus, because they can tick things off as completed. It was felt by some that this path to follow was needed to provide structure. I can't help wonder to what extent this is coming from the preferences of the teachers, as teachers and as learners, but also that perhaps the students really do, but only because this is what they have become used to.

When one proposes ideas from a Dogme-influenced perspective, I believe that these defaults are common in many (most?) schools and teachers. I found myself arguing (in a very polite way) a few points related to these positions and on occasion, I found myself unable to explain myself (sometimes I'm not very good at debating!). The discussion itself was very interesting and provoked much reflection.

What was particularly interesting, is that when a relatively inexperienced teacher was asked about workload, materials and stressfulness in terms of what type of course she would prefer for this level and age, she suggested it was more difficult and stressful to have to get through a textbook syllabus. She proposed that it would be much better to have a framework to follow and then be able to make her own decisions as to what would be included.

There is a balance, though. The framework provides structure that the school, the students and the teacher can rely on, with the added flexibility that the teacher can develop the course to fit the students, him/herself and the environment. I would say that is a good decision, rather than chucking everything away and making it up as you go along.

Train. Educate. Develop

2012-01-15T17:47:00.000Z

I led a workshop at our school the other day which I started by encouraging some reflection on reflective practice and continued to propose and discuss some ideas for peer observation.

I started off with a quote from Julian Edge, whose ideas and writings I respect and who was my tutor on a module entitled Teacher Education on the MA course I finished last year. The quote is:

"You can train me and you can educate me, but you can't develop me. I develop."

I asked the teachers present to discuss this quote in groups. I asked them to consider what the difference is between the words 'train', 'educate' and 'develop'. This produced a lot of discussion, which I felt could have lasted a lot longer than the few minutes I allowed. As a result, I thought I'd share it here to find out what anyone else thinks.

Over to you...

References:

Edge,J. (1999) Managing professionalisation or “Hey, that's mydevelopment!” IATEFLIssues,149, 14-16.

It's that time of year again!

2011-12-19T19:15:00.000Z

It's that time of year again. In most countries there is some sort of celebration, whether it's Christmas or New Year (or the feast of the Epiphany in Spain) and we teachers tend to do something to mark the occasion; a 'special' class for Christmas. The staffroom is often buzzing with ideas, with crafty plans, songs, videos or festive stories. At least this is true in my experience. Often, it means teachers making more effort than normal, despite their end of term tiredness and a million and one other things to be done before the holidays begin.

Traditional turkey
by Sandy Millin on ELT pics

As a result, there is often a special 'Christmas' folder, or a drawer of festive plans in plastic wallets (or 'slippery fish' as they have recently been labelled by one of my colleagues!). Maybe there's a selection of video clips available as well. Most of all however, it is a time of worksheets: song lyrics, activities for before and after watching a video, vocabulary that will (generally) not be recycled in January lessons, crosswords, word searches, Christmas quizzes and photocopiable board games.

However, it's also often a time of year when attendance can falter and a class of eight suddenly becomes three. Classes can be cancelled completely, at the last minute - which is why I'm writing this at 7 o'clock on a Monday evening when I'd normally have a class. After Christmas, there can be piles of leftover worksheets, chopped up paper that was never used and 'photocopiable resources' downloaded from the internet and saved onto computer desktops. They may be dutifully added to a folder, a box, a drawer or an electronic file, but will often be left gathering dust until the staffroom gets cleared out, because most of the stuff won't be used the following year as the teachers will have found something new and exciting to do: Gavin and Stacey instead of Mr. Bean.

My own feeling about festive classes is that it is almost a crime to not just talk about what everybody does over the holiday season*. It is one particular time of the year when many people do something special and it is not only governed by national or religious tradition. Most families seem to have their own particular way of doing things. People eat special meals at different times, have different things on the menu and may have peculiar family traditions passed on from previous generations. In general, there is a genuine information gap to be exploited and not just between the class and the foreign teacher (if that is the scenario), but between each individual, regardless of how well they know each other and how similar their background is.

For instance…

We don't do anything special on the 24th December, even though many people in Britain go out to midnight mass, or go out drinking, or both! We get up and go to mass on the morning of the 25th December (my one time of the year, just to keep the peace). At this mass I usually see old school friends who I otherwise never see, so we have a natter and catch up, then I return home with the family. We put the kettle on and start opening presents with a cup of tea or coffee and some biscuits. My mum, still, regardless of the age of my brothers and I, prepares a Christmas stocking for each of us and my dad, who also fills a stocking for my mum. There are always small bottles of booze, chocolate money and a Terry's chocolate orange, every year! There will also be a stocking each for my niece and nephew and each of our visiting partners. After opening the presents, we play with the children and their toys, open some chocolate, because we'll be peckish, and soon enough we'll get into the sherry or gin and tonic.

This is a quick introduction to my Christmas morning. What we do has changed over the years, but some things remain the same, year on year. Even if you have a similar background to me, I'll bet your Christmas is different. You may not celebrate Christmas but do something for New Year, or perhaps you don't celebrate anything at all.

Conversing about these differences highlights the richness of individual lives and family quirks. It also means raising awareness of how it is not possible to explain succinctly what people in X country do, because people in X country all do something different, regardless of similarities. We don't all eat turkey in Britain, we don't all open Christmas crackers, we don't all celebrate New Year, we don't all celebrate Christmas, not everybody ignores the spiritual message and not everyone goes out and gets drunk on Christmas Eve, though many people do all of these things.

I was told by a colleague recently of how some of her former workmates, in England, were so keen on forcing the Christian seasonal message out of the classroom that they made a point of teaching their multi-lingual foreigners that Christmas was a pagan festival in England, highlighting facts about the date and the tree, while arguing that not many people in the UK are religious any more. This sends out an incorrect message and is just as wrong as pushing religion or other beliefs in the classroom, in my opinion.

So, my advice for festive classes, for what it's worth, is to talk about what everyone is doing, by whatever means is possible in your context. The language they need will emerge through conversation and will not require a vast amount of planning and copying that will fill up those dusty boxes of 'special' Christmas lessons!

* Very young learners are different, I love doing the crafty stuff and sending them all home with something nice, even if it's just a card or something to stick on the wall.

Storify - compile news stories from social media

2011-12-08T15:43:00.001Z

This site has already been shared by Nik Peachey and Helen's EFL 2.0 but I thought I'd share this project that I've just knocked up in a matter of minutes. I think it could be a great tool to use in order to share current media stories with students on a blog, or to get students to compile their own and share them.

Realistically, it could be used to compile information on anything as you can add notes and images, as well as search Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to find information shared online.

It is extremely easy to use and can be embedded in other pages or shared easily to a variety of social-media sites.

See below for my story, which was slightly painful for me to compile!

Where in the World?

2011-12-06T19:19:00.000Z

Where in the world? Any ideas?

I love aerial photographs and I and I've just come across a nice page here that was shared on Richard Byrne's blog. I couldn't help thinking that it would be a good selection of pictures to discuss. There is a quiz element in that you are supposed to guess from a choice of three places where the photos have been taken. However, I think there could also be a whole load of discussion over what can be seen in the pictures as well.

#ELTbites Unplugged Challenge

2011-11-25T18:58:00.000Z

Note to reader: this post is not within the 200 word limit set by the challenge! ;)

To go along with the unplugged challenge initiated by Richard at #ELTbites, I'd like to share a first lesson idea (although it can be adapted for other uses) that came from I dunno where but I have used it many times over the years and have often shared it with teachers at summer schools. I get straight into this after a brief name learning activity.

Mr. Lennon

First, draw a quick head and shoulders self-portrait on the board (preferably a bit crap - for comedy value and to model the idea of 'quick sketch', otherwise you might be there all day waiting for the new Rembrandt), then ask the students who it is. After the mirth has subsided, give out small pieces of scrap paper, a bit bigger than passport photo size, and ask them to draw their own self-portrait. Collect these in and tell them they will be used later on.

Next, ask the students to write one question at the top of a piece of paper, notebook or A4 or whatever. This can be tricky, because ideally they will be creative and not just write simple things which can make the activity a bit limited. As a result, I tell them that I will check their questions for accuracy (I go round the class and talk to them individually), but will also insist on them writing another if I think it's too boring. Also, all questions have to be different, in the event of two being similar, one has to change.

After this, they mingle and ask all the other students in the class that one question. They must write each students name and their answer on their paper, in a list under the question. Then, when they've finished, they sit down. I get them to ask me as well, so I can interact with them and check their pronunciation.

The next stage involves another mingle. First however, I randomly dish out the self-portraits and each student tries to figure out whose they have received. This student is then the focus of their attention. They then mingle again and ask every student what question they asked and what this person's answer was, noting it down for later.

Finally, each student produces a poster containing all the information about 'their person'. They glue the self-portrait on a piece of A4 and write a profile based on the information they have obtained. I let them ask the student a few more things if they wish, to get a bit of extra information, which after all those 'interesting' questions may be the more straightforward ones that make the profile more realistic, i.e. about where they're from, their family, their hobbies etc.

At the end of all this, you've got some written work to have a look at, to do a bit of diagnosis and also a wonderful beginning of term wall display. I've had some good experiences while using this lesson so I hope others will as well.

Problems, problems

2011-11-04T09:56:00.000Z

from blackborder.com

I've got a really difficult class (or two). I would like to write about it in order to share my problems and ask for advice, but also because I don't think there is enough blogging about problems and failure.

At the moment I am experiencing the frustration of battling with a couple of my primary classes, trying to get control. The very idea of having 'control' feels like something I don't want and that I don't agree with, philosophically speaking. A couple of my students, when asked to move to a particular place, have decided that it is amusing to do it in the style of a soldier, demonstrating their feelings towards being treated in such a way (you know, asking them to move one by one or in small groups, or stand in lines or circles, the normal stuff).

Rather than being angry at this, although it is annoying in a difficult classroom context, I DO actually think it is funny. I appreciate their humour and I recognise the need to rebel. Unfortunately however, I am the teacher who is attempting to get the class (there are around ten of them), to be quiet and listen to my instructions, follow my examples, do what they are told and carry out the activity that I have prepared for them. The problem is, I seem to spend the hour not getting very much of this done.

I have two classes that are problematic, one after the other, so the by the second hour I'm feeling less than 100%. The first are 6-7 years old and the second are 8-9 years old. We use the Bugs books, from MacmIllan and these classes are Bugs 2 and Bugs 4, although we've only just received these from the publishers, which I don't think has helped matters.

We are teaching these classes in a state school and so our time and control of the situation is limited. For instance, there is no break between the classes, one goes and another arrives. The classrooms we are in have single desks separated into rows and have other children's folders, bags, jackets and pencil cases in or around them. The teachers whose classrooms these are can be touchy about their things or the desks being moved and in general, it feels distinctly like somebody else's space (though fortunately the teacher who I share the room with has been very friendly and accommodating).

The children are not taught in their own class groups, they sign up like they would for our in-house academy classes, but we go to teach them in their school classrooms. As a result, some of the children are taught in their own classrooms, but most are not. I think only one of my students is in her own classroom. However, the single biggest issue for me is that we teach these children during their lunch break. They have a morning of normal classes and then either come straight to English class, before having their lunch, or go to lunch before coming to class; then return to their tutors for further lessons. I know how I would have reacted at school if my parents had signed me up for an extra class that took away valuable 'running-around-like-a-lunatic' or sticker swapping time. So I feel for the little blighters, really.

My main issue is that I have yet to experience a lesson in which things have gone to plan. I know full well that plans need to be flexible with YLs, but still, SOMETIMES, things are supposed to go well. I have reflected on things I have tried, decisions I have made and the needs of the students, but so far my forehead is feeling the effects of the proverbial brick wall.

Routines are essential (according to just about everything written on the subject) in the YLs classroom. I have been attempting to establish routines for approximately one month now. A couple of things they liked, but they got over-excited, so I had to cut those out. I tried an opening song with actions, but this was ruined by some boys taking the piss after it had taken me a good few minutes to get them into a circle in the first place. I felt that I needed to establish some control (that word again) over the start of the lesson, so that in future lessons they might settle faster and we might get more things done.

Boys - possibly a part of the problem. There are more boys than girls in both classes. This is too many. Girls make better students: they sit down and draw or colour, they sing songs, they do actions and dance and are generally better behaved. Of course, this is half the problem with schools. They are not designed for boys, hence the exam stats and higher levels of failure and expulsion. If I could take the boys outside and coach football in English, we'd probably all be happier.

The lack of control and time issues are such that even switching on the computer in order to get a CD playing, or writing the names of the students on the blackboard (Chalk. I hate it), is a challenge, because as soon as my back is turned somebody is doing something they shouldn't. I wanted the names on the board so that I could give them ticks for good English or good behaviour and remove them, or threaten to remove them for bad behaviour, although this is a system I've never felt comfortable with (I'm reflecting a lot on this and whether to use them or not and how, so I hope to blog about it in the future). Anyway, I haven't been able to get any ticks up there in the first place for some of them and they don't seem to care whether they've got any ticks or not. I suppose that threats need to escalate and parents need to be contacted, but I'd much prefer to sort things out without it coming to that, though I doubt that's going to happen unfortunately.

As a result, the other day I had our DoS come in to help out for the first few minutes while I got sorted, so that I could hopefully get the class off to a good start and at least establish a couple of routine introductory activities. This started off reasonably well with the students involved in an activity with him at the back of the room, but then when they were asked to go to the seat with their name cards on (they made these in an earlier lesson), some of them just picked up the card and went somewhere else, others came to me and complained, one boy ripped up his card and another hid under a desk at the back of the room. It isn't as if they have established seats anyway. Most of them have moved around in previous classes, but I wanted to group them more closely and have certain students nearer the front.

These children are eight years old. I have never previously had children of this or any age be quite as rebellious and it isn't pleasant.

I had been focussing on the fact that it was all my 'fault' and my responsibility to sort it all out. I had been trying to cover my bases in order to be in control of the stages at all times and so that stages would merge and my attention could remain on them all the time. I wanted them to sit at the seat with their name, then I would ask each one of them to come to the front and stick their name to the board, then I would give everyone a tick for getting through this stage. I would then ask them to come to the front to do an introductory activity to practice the alphabet and then sing an alphabet song from the book. Then I planned to settle them by getting them to their seats and practicing the lexical set of school subjects that we have been doing, using flashcards. Following that, I wanted to create teams, stick the flashcard pictures and the words to the board in two separate grids and have them try to pick out the pairs as a competition.

What happened, of course, was the disaster of the seating arrangements described earlier. Having finally got them sat down, in a slightly flustered state, I glanced at my plan to see what I was supposed to be doing next.

'Form a circle at the front of the class for the alphabet revision activity' it said, or something like that.

My brain processed this slowly as I was exhausted already and I was being observed, albeit very informally. So, according to my plan, I should get them up again to the front of the class and try to do this.

I thought, 'No'. I am not going to get them out of their seats now, because I am fairly sure that it will be an unmitigated disaster. Therefore I did a really dull seated alphabet drill, but at least they stayed in their seats and most of them did actually repeat the letters of the alphabet. Then I played the song as they sat in their seats, I pretended to sing along (I didn't really know it very well, unfortunately) and some of them tried to join in when the A, B, C bit came along.

This, I thought, is a pile of crap and my boss is watching from the back of the room. I don't think I've felt like that since making a mess of a grammar focus on my IHCYL course about 5 years ago. In my more positive moments I look upon this as a challenge that I must face up to and in which I hope to succeed. In less positive moments, I can't sleep, feel stressed and worry about long-term failure. But there you go...

Feedback and advice gratefully accepted!

Projectors in the language classroom - ideas?

2011-10-12T08:39:00.000+01:00

Our school has recently installed projectors into every classroom and I have the task of introducing them to the teachers in a workshop on Friday. I will be helping everyone learn how to set up and switch on etc, but I also want to introduce some ideas for what can be achieved using a projector (Note - these are not 'interactive' boards).

I have some ideas already, but I thought it would be remiss of me not to crowd-source for some wonderful ideas from the ELT community online! So, if you have done any great things with a projector, let us all know, or pass on the links to any blog posts that write about using projectors.

Please post your ideas on this blog, or add a sticky to the linoit here.

Many thanks in advance to all contributors. : )

My first week with the four year olds

2011-09-26T19:07:00.000+01:00

I've completed one week, with two classes of an hour, with my class of 4 year olds so far. I kicked off both classes with a 'song' I made up because there wasn't one like it in the book we use, which is called "Little Elephant". My extremely simple song repeats the phrase "Hello, hello! What's your name?" three times, before I ask one of them "What's your name?". Then we all wave at them and shout "Hello!" in a very happy, noisy and friendly manner.

In the second class they were easily able to recognise the fact that I was asking for their name, though in the first one it took some repetition, gesticulation and encouragement before any of them responded. In the second class they also responded quite confidently by saying their name. As expected though, none of them has yet attempted to use the "My name is…" part which I model for them when giving my own name. After they say their name I say "Ah, your name is X!" and say "Let's say hello to X", so they are getting a lot of repetitive language input.

In the first class, after this intro routine, I continued by introducing some colours. I used flashcards and we did a whispering/ shouting drill, so (most of them) repeated the words I was saying at different volumes - they loved the shouting and the whispering part brings back the calm. Some of their attempts bore little relation to my example, but never mind! I attempted an activity which had the flashcards on the floor and them touching the cards as I said the words, but only one or two of them could really manage it. Then I invented what I'm going to call the 'Helicopter Pointing' activity on the spot (it's amazing what comes to you in the classroom!). We sat on the rug in the centre of the classroom after I had stuck the colour flashcards to the wall. Then I demonstrated how they should point their index finger out and spin their arm round while making a "woo, woo, woo" siren type of noise. Then I say a colour and they have to point to the correct card! Great fun, I tell ya! Some of them could manage this ok (copying my pointing rather than recognising which card was which), but most of them either sat and watched or just did the spinning bit. This is all fine, of course, because I'll repeat the activity in the future and eventually they'll all become more familiar with it and the language.

The rest of the class was based around an idea given to me by one of the other teachers - it's always nice to get a first class activity from someone who knows the level well. They drew round their hands (as best they could, copying my demonstration), coloured the fingers and palm with different colours, cut the hand out (sort of! I wasn't expecting them to manage the fingers, so I modelled it as a big circle really) and then I stuck the hand to a straw with a piece of tape. Then they could wave their hands and say hello and goodbye. This task was actually too difficult for most of them, but it gave me a very good idea of their abilities in terms of colouring, cutting and following demonstrations and instructions. All but one of them (who destroyed her own hand as well as my example that I'd given her!) ended up with a coloured thing that to a greater or lesser extent resembled a hand and so they could wave to their parents when they were picked up from the classroom and say hello, while saying goodbye to me and each other.

In terms of behaviour, there have been moments when some of them either pay little or no attention, wander off by themselves or sit and sing to themselves in their own little world. One of them likes to shake his head from side to side while occasionally making a humming noise! As far as I can gather, this is all par for the course and my expectations for an organised classroom should be tempered to allow for this individualistic behaviour. The philosophy we have at our school with these youngsters is that we are giving them exposure to English by giving them an opportunity to hear the language and get used to its sounds and rhythms. It is very informal and the number one priority is for them to ENJOY the experience of being in a classroom where a different language is spoken. There is no point in me having high expectations and a formal lesson plan is unlikely to ever be completed perfectly with this age group and that's what I like, I love the flexibility. When they were getting restless I just got them up and had them jumping, running, walking (while I chanted "jump, jump, jump", for example) then standing completely still when I said "Stop!" TPR - you can't beat it!

By the end of the year they will all have learnt something, I hope, possibly with a significant difference between the weakest to the strongest, I'm not sure yet. By the end of the year, if they have enjoyed the lessons and become comfortable with an English speaking teacher, then I think that is a good enough start to their language learning experience.

Thanks to Simon, T and Nat for help and ideas! : )

Hello Little People!

2011-09-22T20:56:00.000+01:00

Well it's been a while, but I'm going to get back into blogging now that I am actually teaching again and so far enjoying every minute of it!

This year I have been given a class of four year olds. It is my first year at a new school and although I have a lot of experience of different levels and ages I have never taught any group lower than six years old. Obviously there are similarities with teaching children of this age, but there are also significant differences. For instance, most six year olds can write something in their own language and use a pair of scissors reasonably well, but many four year olds (certainly here in Spain) will not have learnt to write and struggle with the necessary motor skills required to cut shapes out of paper with a pair of scissors.

I feel like writing about this situation, as despite being an experienced teacher with various qualifications, this is a little bit of a jump into the unknown. I have observed classes of very young learners and seen them around other schools and they all appear to be constantly hyperactive and noisy! I've always thought that it must be a nightmare to get anything done with these classes. Having knowledge of young learners behind me, I have a head start on someone completely new to the situation, but I think that this will be a great learning experience and I hope that I will still be positive about it after my first classes and beyond.

I want to keep a sort of journal of the classes on this blog in the hope that the reflection will help me get the best out of myself and also that I might attract some comments to assist me in my very young learner teacher development! So, here's to routines, songs, miming, drama, fun, noise, hyperactivity and hopefully, some learning!

I've had the kids for two 60-minute classes this week and it has been a lot of fun, I'll blog about my experiences so far as soon as I can. If anyone reading this has experience of pre-school teaching and wishes to share some 'top-tips', please do, I'd love to hear from you!

Birthday greetings - thank you!

2011-08-08T20:45:00.001+01:00

It would be a rather time consuming job to thank everybody individually who left a nice message on the linoit wall here that the lovely @CeciELT started for me. I feel slightly ashamed to be doing a big group thank you, rather than thanking everyone individually but I'm afraid it's just going to have to do at the moment!

First of all, special thanks to Ceci for setting it up and thanks to everyone who left a message for me! It was very kind of you all and it was one of various things that helped make a very happy birthday. It was particularly nice since I've been a Twitter recluse for the last few months and I thought I'd probably have been forgotten, but I will be back, I tells ya!

Come September, I want to be back on twitter, having stopped writing about it and I hope to be blogging regularly again, as I'll be back in the classroom rather than sitting on my @rse reading and writing about stuff.

cheers all

Richard

Can you help me with my dissertation?

2011-06-07T16:12:00.003+01:00

Huge thank you to everyone who responded to this post and volunteered. Obviously I couldn't choose everyone, so sorry if you feel you're missing out!

Hi all,

I've been out of [online] action for a few weeks, due to being hard at work with presentations and assignments for my MA course. That's why there has been a distinct lack of posts to this blog. I can happily say that I've got through all the work for the second semester and it's time to move on!

This means, however, that it has reached the time for me to embark on my dissertation, and for various reasons I have decided to focus on the use of Twitter by English language teachers.

The title of my research project is:

Teacher tweeting: Exploring the role of Twitter in teachers' professional lives.

I'm going to conduct three case studies of English language teachers using Twitter as part of their professional activities. I would like to find out what reasons exist for using Twitter, how other teachers use Twitter and also gain some understanding of peoples' experiences of using Twitter.

Criteria

The criteria for involvement are:

You must be a practising English language teacher, in any context.

You must currently use Twitter to interact with people or obtain information in a way which you consider to be part of your professional life, however you do not necessarily have to be an extremely active participant. In fact, I am looking for volunteers with different backgrounds and experience in using Twitter.

You must be able to engage in the project for a period of one week.

You must be able to connect on Skype for interview, with or without video.

What's in it for you?

I firmly believe in the benefits of reflection and I hope that you will find the process insightful, enjoyable and informative. Perhaps it will help you gain awareness of how Twitter affects your practice and development as an ELT professional. Also, you are entitled to an e-copy of my final research report, once it has been completed, marked and graded. Furthermore, understanding that this will involve a time commitment, I would also like to offer you a £10 Amazon gift certificate to thank you for taking part.

I now have my volunteers so it's on to data collection/ generation for me!

Thanks

The Internet is for Secret Learners

2011-05-17T11:54:00.000+01:00

I think this is one reason why the internet is so powerful for young learners.

Hands up? Not likely. By theirhistory on Flickr

At school, the child-generated, psychological strategy of self-preservation = stay quiet, don't get noticed, don't get bullied. Because, if you work hard, you're a swot and swots get abuse. So, you have a question? Don't ask the teacher, not in class because everyone will groan, or throw something at you or pick on you at break time and definitely not after class because you're obviously trying to be a teacher's pet. We want kids to be curious, but how can they get answers to their questions if they feel intimidated and can't do it at school? Parents aren't always in a position to help and some of them won't be able to or won't want to. Nobody knows if children are doing extra study if they're on the internet. They might get all the homework answers right, they may get some ribbing, but the secrecy of their study could be a comfort.

I've just been nosing around this BBC Bitesize learning area checking out some of the exercises. It's great! I've just done an algebra exercise to test it out. I could never get to grips with algebra at school, the basic stuff I suppose I must have been able to do, but I remember finding it difficult. Quadratic equations? You must be joking. I scraped through GCSE maths with a C, I never got my head around equations, it was like a foreign language. It is a foreign language!

The funny thing is, I remember winning a maths quiz thing at my school when I was about 14. I hadn't thought of this for years, but BBC Bitesize brought back some memories. It was (is?) some kind of test of various problems and things, similar to IQ test questions. I got the gold award for my school, and I believe it still resides in an album at my parents' house somewhere that contains other things like a 50m swimming certificate, a cycling proficiency award and some cub scout paraphernalia (stuff that parents like to keep). 'Stick that in your pipe, Mr, Jones', I thought! 'How did you manage that?' said the clever mathematicians. I had no idea, there was no pressure, no study, no revision and nothing at all to prepare, it was just a test of problem-solving skills, I suppose. Of course, the head above parapet moment relating to this success wasn't entirely enjoyable, I might as well have put myself in the stocks in a medieval market square.

If I'd had BBC Bitesize to play around with, who knows what I might be doing know? I might be a mathematician instead of an English teacher, ha ha!

The other thing I noticed on the site is the fact that there are message boards for the kids using the site and guess what? They're helping each other out. They are discussing algebra and sharing strategies for understanding how it all works. Look at message 10 in this thread (and 14 to see her confirming her age!). In fact, who is learning more here? The girl who posted the original message asking for help, or 'Esme' who has successfully articulated her understanding of the issue, which should have allowed her to reflect and to consider how best to explain it, thus deepening her own knowledge.

There are many things wrong with education today, but things like this make me wish that I was at school now, although I'm glad I've already done a degree and I'm halfway through an MA before they put the prices up! Opportunities for learning are so easily accessible online and the kids don't necessarily need a teacher to answer their questions. What does help, of course, is if the teachers are guiding kids to these resources and enabling them to find out for themselves.

Joliprint - A cool tool for creating PDFs from web articles

2011-05-03T17:37:00.001+01:00

This is a really useful tool I found to create PDFs instantly from website articles. For my studies I have often found that interesting articles on technology are written on the blogs or websites of ed tech movers and shakers and are only available to save as a web page. Although I know that there are tools to annotate these pages I want to save them as PDFs and use Preview on my mac to highlight and make notes. I'm not sure how I stumbled across it, but somehow Joliprint found its way on to my radar and I have since used it a number of times, so I thought I'd share.

I know that when teaching I have sometimes wanted to use an article from a website and have copied and pasted it into Word, played around with it until it looked nice, perhaps copied a picture or two over as well, which all takes a while to do. Using Joliprint, however, makes it something that can be done in an instant. I've tried to give a quick summary of how it works in this Jing screen capture, but hey, I'm no Russell Stannard, so it's only a quickie.

I hope you find it useful.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Shelly's Young Leaner Blog Carnival

2011-05-02T12:39:00.000+01:00

Big thank you to Shelly for including me in the YL blog carnival video. I don't always write about YLs but that is certainly the context about which I am most experienced. You can see the blog carnival video at the end of this post.

Here are some posts I have written that are relevant to the teaching of younger learners.

Let's see what the magic bag thinks

Revision workstations - An old favourite

A more interesting menu project

Can children teach themselves?

The Classroom Garden

The Classroom Garden - update

Classroom Routines

Dictation #1

Dictation #2

The 'Grandma's Duck' hatches

Writing about thinking about thinking about a lesson

2011-04-29T10:59:00.000+01:00

Photo by xrrr on flickr - fotopedia

I've had discussions before with people about whether David Beckham is intelligent or not. Personally, I will defend his dignity and not just because he was a Manchester United player, honestly. What it all comes down to is how we actually evaluate intelligence.

This thought entered my mind today for no particular reason, in fact it was while I was making a cup of tea. I starting to imagine a lesson based around comparing some famous people and deciding if they were intelligent or not and ranking them in order of intelligence. In this post I am going to share what I came up with, but it isn't a lesson plan, it's a description of my thought process, through which you can choose something to use in a lesson, that is, of course, if you actually want to. Basically, it exists and you're reading it, so make of it what you will!

The context in my head as I am writing this is a smallish class (up to 15 students) in a private language school, or a UK summer school. I'm thinking of teenagers from 14 years upwards and at least a lower-intermediate level. This is the context I am most familiar with and I'm sure that these ideas could be used in other contexts, perhaps with further adaptation, but this is what is in my head as I write. If you do think of areas for improvement or adaptation, particularly for a different context, please comment below.

I first thought, ok, that's a good idea. Which famous people could I ask the learners to compare? In addition to Beckham (although I wondered if he was a bit 'out of date' now) I added Heston Blumenthal (self-trained über-chef) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook bloke). I then started to think of the students researching these people on wikipedia to find out about them, in order to make their decisions and present them in some sort of way. Then I thought, why did I choose three people? I thought of Lindsay Clandfield's 'Group of 3' reference at IATEFL! Then I thought: not only are these all men but they are all English speakers, which is fairly typical of much textbook material, the native speaker thing, not the gender; as far as course books go, I don't think there's a gender imbalance, but I may be wrong. I suppose the choice of male celebrities is probably down to the fact that I am one, a male, that is, rather than a celebrity. Anyway, my thinking moved on to women (not like that, behave yourself) and I thought of Lady Gaga and Zadie Smith (I don't know, alright?!) before remembering that I felt uncomfortable with the chosen people all being from Britain or the US, although I know that Zadie Smith is half-Jamaican and I think that influenced my brain into thinking of her in the first place.

At this point, I started considering that the students might wish to speak about famous people from different contexts, not just the imperial centre of English language teaching course books. In fact, I realised that they might like to discuss people from their own context and how would I know who they could be, if I don't know their context? Aha! They can choose the people themselves (amazing). However, I couldn't just get them to brainstorm famous people randomly (well I don't think so at this point in time, maybe you disagree), there needs to be some control that would bring out a balance of intelligences (remember the purpose of this exercise?). Ok, I thought, why don't they choose some categories of famous people first, let's say five categories, for example; they might think of sports stars, TV celebrities, singers, politicians and film stars. That would be a good start and then they could think of some famous people to go into these categories before deciding as a class on the five that they want to focus on, without having been told the objective of the exercise. At this stage the teacher could impose some light control over the choices of the categories, if desired.

I had thought of this being a simple activity in a dogme style (whatever that is), but I decided to brainstorm the whole process and think about a variety of possibilities and it was then that I conceived the idea of writing a post like this about it on my blog. I thought of three questions (three again, maybe there's something in this song after all).

Can you rank these people in order of intelligence?
What criteria should you use to decide?
How do you define intelligence?

All the while, I was thinking about the idea that critical thinking is an important part of education, whether in an evening class at a language school or in a more formal state school context. Lindsay Clandfield's talk on this at IATEFL was really interesting, by the way (btw I've looked at the Brighton online website for a link and can hardly find any mention of him, it's almost like he wasn't actually there).

Cartoon from www.fallingfifth.com

As I started considering the outcomes of this activity and the length of time it would take, it was definitely roaming further away from a simple conversation. I decided it could definitely take more than one lesson and that research on the chosen celebrities could be done as homework. However, in doing this you lose control over the students' choice of online material, e.g. would they really use wikipedia in English at home in order to make notes?! However, would that actually matter? If they are asked to prepare notes in English then the exercise in translation from their L1 could be a worthwhile experience. Also, it's always a danger that you ask groups to do this stuff for homework and the ones that don't can cause organisational problems. There's an element of classroom management and discipline here that would be going too far off topic for this, I reckon, suffice it to say there are ways of attempting to ensure homework gets done.

In terms of productive outcomes, I thought of a presentation, given by each group to the rest of the class, attempting to persuade the other groups that their ranking was the best one. By doing this they'll have to structure a solid argument with reasons to support their decision making. Then I wondered about language (this is more or less the chronology of the process, but all this thinking took about 5 minutes while I was drinking tea and eating cake, so it wasn't entirely linear). Hang on, I thought, this is moving towards a task-based approach, if I'm not mistaken.

(Ok, I also realise that this post is long. Very long, in fact, it's going to carry on for a while yet. You may decide to bear with me, or just move along, you can always rate it one star on the widget below if you really want.)

What about we start, I thought (after the choice of celebrities stage) by asking: are these people intelligent? Why, or why not? This could be a group or pair discussion and could allow for a task-based framework, this task as a diagnostic of language to be scaffolded, after which relevant language could be elicited or introduced along with help with relevant language structures. Following that, the students could do their research and prepare a presentation. Of course, if the students all knew enough about the famous people they had chosen, then maybe they wouldn't need to do any research after all. However, despite 'knowing' the celebrities, there are usually new things to be discovered.

I thought about the stages required to prepare for their presentation. The groups would first have to discuss the people and rank them into an order they could argue for, this could even happen before research and after, in order to re-evaluate and allow for the research to 'hit home' and affect their thinking, either confirming or contradicting their original thoughts. Actually, the original thoughts could provide a framework for them to use to do the research, perhaps giving rise to disagreements that new information could clear up.

I supposed that the presentation itself could be done with a powerpoint (or similar) presentation (although this is a bit 'obvious' my students, or at least some of them, have tended to know how it works, so no IT training required), or obviously just orally, without the visual support. However, using the technology is cross-curricular and allows for students to demonstrate their IT skills, perhaps encouraging weaker (in English) students to get more involved if they are better at IT. This made me think of the groups themselves, who would choose the groups, the teacher or the learners? There are benefits to both, but I would often prefer to choose the groups unless the groups the students choose had a reasonable balance of skills. Also, for the presentation, another idea I like to use is to get the students to write some (maybe 3!) questions for the other students, to try to ensure that they are listening and focused during the talk. (It did cross my mind that the students could produce a mini-TV or radio programme based on a documentary format discussing intelligence, although for most classrooms this would be a bit much, at a summer school it would be perfectly possible as a longer project).

At some point I decided that the presentations could be video-recorded and shared with another class (on a blog), perhaps from another school, or country and those students, perhaps having done the same activities, could award points for each one, in order to determine winners (no, there doesn't have to be competition, but I think it tends to focus this age group). They could also write comments on the blog which could continue the discussion, perhaps out of the classroom (hey, learner autonomy!). This could mean also spending time on how you can evaluate a presentation, which would provide ideas for the students on how they could evaluate their own work as they are preparing it. This learner training could feed into future presentations and as my students have often had to prepare these for their main school, this could help them out there as well. Also, (aha!) I realised I could get the students to write some thoughts on the process in a learning journal, which could be shared with me (as the teacher) so I could respond, as part of a continuous process of reflection taking place throughout the course. I also considered that the students could do this project as an assessed piece of work and (wholly or partly) self-evaluate based on criteria that they could choose, not just on the presentation (I mentioned criteria for evaluating that earlier) but on their language use (their learning?) and group participation during the process.

After all that, I thought about how the idea could simply be used as a discussion topic for a dogme lesson. It would have been much simpler, but this was a process not a product approach for me!

Image from www.stupidfresh.com

I suppose that this post is a reflection on action, through being a reflection on a past process, but also in action as I was further thinking of possibilities as I wrote the post. There's a whole lot of cognition and metacognition going on here, I can tell you! This felt like gathering think-aloud data on myself, which is a bit odd. All I can say is that this process has been very interesting for me on various levels, the main one being the metacognitive process of reflecting on how my thinking proceeded during the lesson planning. (I have realised since finishing the post that there isn't much talk about language points, what does that betray about my thinking?! Is it important?! In many ways I'd rather work with what emerges.)

As a blog post, I thought it would be nice to get some further ideas on what could be done with this idea, also to get some feedback on the idea and to allow my thought process to provoke your own thinking about how you come up with ideas for lessons. I'd love to hear some thoughts from other people on this idea and my reflections. Maybe somebody might take up a challenge and write a post like this about their own lesson planning idea?However, perhaps you have a job (and a life) and don't have time for such things. I suppose I've only done it because I'm procrastinating about reading for my MA assignments and avoiding the media attention of a certain wedding. Ok, that's it, must do some work.

If you've read all of this, I say 'awfully well done', wish you a good day and I hope you might have gained something from the experience.

Panic on the streets of TEFL?

2011-04-27T18:43:00.000+01:00

Panic (ELT unplugged)

by The Bonzo Dogme Band

(to the tune of 'Panic', a very high quality tune by The Smiths, see below)

Panic in the institutions,

panic from the coursebook publishers,

I wonder to myself.

Could we be able to teach this way?

The materials light conversation,

I wonder to myself.

Hopes may rise over dogme,

without paper we'd save trees.

Should we teach bland

with a coursebook in our hand?

But there's panic at the British Council,

Bell, EF, International House

I wonder to myself.

'Tell all the teachers

to burn the blessed coursebook,

because the syllabus they always obey,

it says nothing to me about my life',

said frustrated students.

Does the lesson have to be this way?

The materials light conversation,

the emergent language, facilitation.

Burn the coursebook, burn the coursebook, burn the coursebook

Burn the coursebook, burn the coursebook

Burn the coursebook, burn the coursebook, burn the coursebook

Burn the coursebook, burn the coursebook

Random extra bit

I don't agree or not agree,

it's just a tune that came to me...

Let's see what the magic bag thinks

2011-04-22T13:58:00.001+01:00

We've all been there

Sometimes in class we want to choose one child to do something and often this can be difficult because the kids get annoyed if they aren't chosen. What criteria do you use to choose which child is going to do whatever it is, or go first? I was just watching a video in which the teacher was surrounded by kids desperate to have a go of something, it reminded me how stressful this can be, particularly when you're having a bad teacher day.

I recommend a simple technique that I learnt a couple of years ago. Incidentally, it was while observing a teacher who really didn't want to be observed, but had to be to comply with school procedures. In the end, I was able to help her feel more positive about the experience as I told her some things that I was going to take away and use in my own classroom, which she was really chuffed about.

The main idea I took away was having all the children's names on small cards in a bag. At the start of the course I asked them to write their names on the card, using nice colours and making it personal, then they are put into a 'magic' bag. During each subsequent lesson when I need to choose one student, out comes the bag and I take one name out of the bag, this child is 'the chosen one'! After that, the previous child will take the next name out of the bag.

I generally have classes of up to 12 students and this has worked well for me with my classes of primary children. The kids often still huff and puff and get annoyed, but the choice is pure chance and is more objective, so I feel less under pressure to be 'fair'. The kids tend to call it 'the lottery' and through doing it they also learn lexis such as: lucky, unlucky, bad luck, hard luck, good luck and even 'keep your fingers crossed' which they like to do while waiting for the name to be read out.

I know that some teachers like to choose based on behaviour and I have tried this, but I always felt under a lot of pressure and I like to reward the kids in other ways. Behavioural reward requires such consistency that I don't think that it's a good idea to put too much importance on behaviour in teacher decision making, it can lead to frustration on the part of some students who end up feeling hard done to. I prefer to work on developing a group dynamic and not over-praise individuals. Also, I often feel that the teacher's perception of which child is the best behaved is not always the right one. I have rewarded kids at times but have been shouted at by other kids because they have seen this child doing things that I hadn't noticed, I don't know about anyone else, but contrary to the popular saying I know that I don't have eyes in the back of my head.

What is 'well-behaved' anyway? Always shouting the answer is annoying, but if it's always in English, is that bad? Likewise, quiet is often considered good, but does a child who never speaks out in class deserve the reward just because of this? What messages are being given out to the students? I think it's important to think about the way we react to situations and I don't feel bad about saying that I find this very difficult. I want all the children to be happy and I don't want the reason they aren't to be me. I'll be a really soft dad one day I'm sure! ; )

As a result, I like to work with chance, I think it's objective and fair (mostly) although I must also admit to 'rigging it' occasionally if I think one child's luck has been particularly bad. Also, if someone has been badly behaved, their name is removed from the bag.

Things I use this for involve the opportunity to write on the board, to go first in a game, to hand out scissors, paper, glue or other equipment. An activity it worked very well for was ordering turns to play an IWB game, such as those from classtools.net or the British Council Learn English Kids site, ('Monkey Alphabet!') games that they got so excited about but had to wait their turn. In this context it also fits in with the idea that the kids shouldn't know the order in advance, such as when choosing students to answer questions, because they'll switch off until their turn. using the bag after each turn brings the students' concentration back as they focus on who will be next. Having said that, it's always a good idea, in my opinion, to have them all involved in doing something after their turn, whether it's shouting help, counting down a timer or writing down scores, something to keep them occupied in a useful task.

Ok, that's that. This all just sprung to mind after watching a video of a teacher being swarmed by a gang of young 'uns, it brought back the feeling of being back n the classroom, surrounded by excitable children. It made me miss teaching, but it also made me think about what I would be doing to overcome that situation, which is one that I find uncomfortable, especially when accompanied by high-decibel shouts of 'me', 'me', 'me'!

First? You?! Let's see what the magic bag thinks, eh?

IATEFL here I come!

2011-04-14T16:39:00.001+01:00

This weekend is the IATEFL conference in Brighton and tomorrow I will be heading down there. I am extremely excited about meeting so many of the interesting people I have met and interacted with online over the last year or so as well as finding out about new and exciting things from the sessions I attend. I've been looking at the conference programme and I'm already completely overwhelmed by everything on offer but I've prepared a little bit and made some choices about which sessions to go to, so I hope to hit the ground running.

I am delighted that my blog was chosen to be shown in the ELT Blogosphere Symposium video. I fully intend to go along to the symposium but I'm torn by the fact that Manchester United are playing Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final at the same time! Thank goodness for smartphones - I think I'll sneakily be following the BBC updates on the internet during that.

I am planning to make notes and post some conference journal style articles here on the blog, but I'm sure I'll be kept busy by all the sessions and some social action. I'll try my best, but I'm not promising anything. I'm already panicking a bit about the amount of work I need to do for my MA over the next few months, in May in particular, so there won't be much time for blogging.

Ok, well, if you're in Brighton and you see some tall bloke who looks a bit scruffy and might need a hair-cut, it might be me, so come and say hello! : )

Late addition: I'd also like to point out that after my MA finishes at the end of August I'll be looking for a job, so if you have any ideas, suggestions or offers, let me know! ; )

Larkin' about

2011-04-11T15:40:00.002+01:00

I wrote this post for World Poetry Day, but couldn't quite find the words to finish it off, having revisited the text and edited it a little I am now happy to share! : )

This Be The Verse

by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

I really like this poem. It is the opposite of positive thinking! it is cynical and critical and it is not really about parents, but about how dreadful society can be. To me, the poem demonstrates how parents are a product of a society, and as they were, so are we. If society stifled their creativity, freedom and desire to work towards change, then so will it stifle ours. Of course, we should try our best not allow this to happen.

The reason I'm posting this here on my blog, apart from the fact that it is [Ok, it 'was' - Ed] World Poetry Day, is that I can't help thinking how much this situation is related to education. As education is a huge influence on the knowledge and motivation of a society, lazy teaching or restrictive institutions are only going to further the deepening of the 'coastal shelf'. The poem goes some way, I think, to describing how many people are experiencing and have experienced education. I'd like to think that the weight of feeling within the teaching communities of the world will change the outcome of deepening misery described in the final verse.

Teachers are so often seen as figures of hatred and schools are to be feared and loathed by young people, while currently teenagers are targeted by the media and demonised, creating an image of devils-in-hoodies in need of stricter controls. So many TV debates and internet discussion forums talk of a 'return to the old days', meaning stricter classrooms and sometimes a return to corporal punishment. The purveyors of such opinion are the 'fools' mentioned in the poem and they should not be allowed to hand on any more misery to anyone.

Revision workstations - an old favourite

2011-04-08T15:50:00.000+01:00

I was asked today for some examples of activities to use with an exam class tutorial, PET and KET, specifically. I must admit to not having taught PET or KET classes before, but I'm aware of the style of test and some of the activities. Something I learnt some years ago (it was an IH Braga favourite, where I used to work), was the concept of revision workstations. It's possibly quite a well known activity, but it's been a favourite of mine for a while and my students have usually enjoyed it, so I thought I'd share. You can use this activity for various things but they are ideal to make those end-of-unit, dry as a bone selection of text book revision activities come to life. A competition element helps, although I've had to abandon competition with some classes as some of them were really bad losers, or bad winners!

You need to photocopy a selection of activities, usually the gap fill, word ordering, vocabulary categorising style exercises so that you have a number of them, between 6 and 10 should do it, depending on time limits. They should be cut up to be on separate pieces of paper. It's often useful to have them on coloured paper for aesthetic value and laminated for reuse and damage protection, well, limitation anyway. However, if you don't think it'll be repeated, then don't bother. I've known some teachers like to create an organised answer sheet, but I usually just have the students write the answers in their notebooks. In terms of the exercises, they could always be created by students, rather than taken from a book, one class creating challenging activities for another class, for example.

In the class, these activities can be placed in different areas of the room, either on a table or stuck on the wall or even just on a chair at the front of the class. It depends if you want the students to move from activity to activity or just to take one at a time back to their seats/ desks.

The students complete one activity after another, in any order, but after they think they have completed each one, they must check with the teacher. If their answers are correct, the students can continue to another activity. If not, they must try again and, depending on the situation, the teacher can give them clues of some description. I tend not to give them help the first time, as their mistakes are often the product of rushing and they can correct them alone, simply by concentrating a little harder. I'd like to think this will encourage them to correct their work more when it comes to exams. Beware of activities that potentially require the students just to list letters, e.g. 1) a, 2) b etc, I tend to ask them to write full answers.

An example 'digital' race track

In terms of the competition element, I like to make it a race across the whiteboard with flashcards or something representing each team. Obviously, this sort of thing can now be done cleverly with the affordances of an IWB (see example, the animals can be dragged and dropped), but there's nothing wrong with flashcards and blu-tac! Draw a race track on the board, separated into sections, enough for each activity, with a start and a finish line. The students can choose a flashcard, I usually use animal ones but they can draw their own (though it can be time-consuming), drawing a simple snail is a good plan which I've used a lot. The winners are the students who finish all the activities correctly first, therefore their team symbol/ animal reaches the finish line ahead of the others.

In terms of feedback, a good side to this activity is that the students receive instant, personal feedback on specific language items, although it can be a bit of a challenge to keep everything under control if the students are running to you at the same time with their answers. Any issues common to the class can be discussed together at the end, with a remedial language focus if necessary and it is also possible to follow up with homework specific to individual learner's problems.

Another thing that springs to mind is the opportunity to feed in incidental language during the activity. The kids love to shout 'finished' or 'first!' and this sort of language can be worked with in competition activities by feeding in phrases. Some things I've tried to introduce include: 'Get in!', 'We've finished!', 'One left!', 'runners-up' and some favourites for the 'losers' - 'the wooden spoon', 'Never mind' and 'Better luck next time!'

Right, I think that's everything and I hope it all makes sense! If you have any suggestions, similar activities you've used or ideas for adapting my instructions above, please leave a comment, all thoughts are, as always, extremely welcome.

Cheers.

Guest Post: Do as I say, definitely not as I do...by Iain Fuller

2011-04-05T15:41:00.000+01:00

This post has been written by my friend and former colleague Iain Fuller, teacher, traveller, photographer, football writer and Watford fan. I suggested he write something reflecting on his Spanish learning experiences much as I have in some recent posts about my Spanish classes. This post is available here and on Iain's own relatively new blog on which he also writes about his experiences in Libya last year, before the current trouble kicked in. I think Iain makes some really good points here and certainly made me laugh with some of his wry humour.

Ok, there's the intro, over to the esteemed Mr. Iain Fuller...

The tables were turned... and I'd lost control of the board marker and I didn't like it.

Envious of watching students pack up their books and notes whilst deliberating where to go for lunch together or in which pub to meet later that day I decided to become a language student for two months. Oh, and to learn something... of course.

Before reading on, there is a disclaimer, I learned a lot, both linguistically and also in terms of picking up new ideas for things that I could do in class, a beneficial experience in many ways and money well spent.

However, in a sense it was akin to having a good look in the mirror and I saw some ugly things. Over the course of two months I was taught by three different teachers of varying levels of experience, quality and approach. It was a subtle reminder of things not to repeat in my classes once back on the TEFL horse.

'Don't patronise your students'

Ehem, I'm a 47 year old Lawyer...

Now, maybe I'm alone here but on answering a question correctly, a nod, a wink, or just a simple 'yes' will suffice. High tempo clapping served with a beaming smile is over doing it, receiving a sticker with a smiley face is quite frankly superfluous. I think I may have even witnessed the teacher in question raising an invisible trophy aloft in celebration of 'winning' a warmer, bare in mind that the average of the class was in the early 40s.

It's like cracking a risque joke, evaluate your audience first. None of us were 8 years old. Also, a dose of sarcasm in the face of a wrong answer will be humoured by a few but discouraging to many.

'Revise those basics'

Can we speak please?

The devil's in the detail. Throughout the course I was often left wanting to compare my answers with my partner before announcing them in naked form, safety in numbers and all that... a partner can often reel in a schoolboy error before you cast the line of embarrassment.

Time limits, how I missed them... countless times I was left wondering with what kind of depth I should be approaching the task at hand, 'prepare your argument for why the candle was a more important invention than the cinema' is abstract enough without knowing if I'm about to embark on a castaway filler or simply pad out the rest of the lesson.

Going around the class one by one gave us plenty of time to work out which question was on its way to slap us in the face, peer election however would have eliminated this. Random selection keeps people on their toes, focuses attention and stops students switching off after 'their turn'.

Oh, teacher talking time, as interested as I was in hearing about the teacher's ex-boyfriend... actually, I wasn't. There were plenty more examples of how those 'basics' were neglected but with TTT in mind I'll draw a line under it for now.

'Don't bring school politics into the classroom'

Can't have the credit going elsewhere...

So... Iain, how did you enjoy the lesson with Paula (name changed to protect the identity of victim), 'very good' was my reply anticipating genuine interest from her fellow educator. 'Yeah, well the idea for the lesson was mine, I told her what to do before the class, you know, she
doesn't have as much experience as me so...

What 'Paula' lacked in experience she certainly made up for it in personal skills, charisma, natural talent and modesty.

You'll not be surprised to know that some members of staff are unpopular, some are paid more than others, somebody else once interrupted another during the meeting, so and so only arrived two minutes before their class etc etc... Jesus wept, well I wept anyway, the class seriously doesn't need to know about the inner workings of the academy.

'Conceal linguistic knowledge'

Yeah? Well your face is muy annoying...

I uttered a phrase during conversation practice when suddenly the thunder clouds of correction gathered... and before I had the chance to take cover, a the lightening bolt of smugness had struck me down. 'That mistake was veeeeeerrrry English' came the correction in an unctuous manner.
Now, being English, by default any error I commit will always be English, I mean, as much as I tried I just wasn't able to make a 'very Japanese' mistake.

As innocent as the comment may have been intended it left me with an urge to kill myself and everyone around me. What made it worse was that I'mfairly sure I'd been guilty of doing this in class myself.
As a result, I'm going to follow the example of moustachioed chap Earl from the 'My name is Earl' series, I've made a list of all the students that I might have done this to, I will travel the world apologising and won't rest until every last request of forgiveness has been accepted.

I am of course exaggerating for comedy effect...

You've just made a general error no obvious signs of first language interference whatsoever...

Please feel free to leave any comments, a confession of guilt, a similar experience, don't worry, nobody reads this anyway... not even me... and hopefully not any teachers of Spanish to foreigner learners anyway, it could well be that I've made a very English error...

There you go. Please feel free to comment here or alternatively, pop over to Iain's blog, comment there and make him feel like he's not talking to himself!

There goes the fear: taking the anxiety out of observation

2011-04-04T17:49:00.002+01:00

Observations, eh? The cornerstone of teacher 'development' throughout the world. Well, in the contexts I've worked in anyway, along with the obligatory weekly workshop; carried out by the DoS, ADoS, Senior Teacher, perhaps a colleague as a peer observation, maybe a critical friend or a trusted mentor. The potential benefits of observation are great, hence their ubiquity, but as far as I'm aware, and certainly in terms of my own career development, just as teachers get promoted to managers without knowing much about management, teachers are installed in positions where there is a requirement for them to conduct teacher training and carry out observations without having much knowledge or receiving any training about what they are supposed to be doing.

Does this matter?

Just as many teachers adopt the habits and approaches of their own teachers when they were on the 'receiving end', teachers as trainers will perhaps adopt the methods and habits of their trainers. Perhaps somebody will come on here and tell me I'm talking nonsense, but I am speaking from personal experience, as the teacher and the observer. I'm not saying that all the feedback I've given and received has been useless, far from it, but I do think that my past trainers and myself could have done more to foster more positive feelings towards observing and being observed.

Most teachers will have been observed plenty of times before reaching a senior position, so they can use what they've learnt from their previous experiences. The problem is that this is a perfect way of perpetuating a trend, wherein the feedback process is the same. Forms are filled in, boxes are ticked, reports are written, records are kept and the teacher breathes a large sigh of relief; they've got through another one and they're safe from intrusion until next term. There are more options for conducting observations, such as those suggested by Ruth Wajnryb, but in this post I just wish to focus on the potential for changing our feelings towards observations.

We're watching you! - By Canadian Veggie on Flickr

Observation means fear and anxiety to many (most?) teachers, because it is immediately associated with judgment and assessment. Would it not be better for everybody if observation was not connected with judgment and evaluation? Teachers could make the most of observation as a stress-free, developmental opportunity and trainers wouldn't have to deal with the affective, (sometimes personal and professional) barriers created by anxiety and fear, so that colleagues could be comfortable popping into each other's classrooms. As a result, the students would become more comfortable with an observer being present and thus remove some of the issues created by the 'observer's paradox', which suggests that any observation gives a false representation of a situation as it is altered by the mere presence of an observer.

In many schools the rank and file teacher is observed by his or her superiors, for the purpose of evaluation, though it is often couched as development. In some cases that is what observation means, full stop. Some schools talk of peer observations, but in reality it rarely happens, because the teachers are afraid of opening themselves up to colleagues as much as they are of allowing a superior to watch - because observation means judgement and we don't like judgement.

What about allowing inexperienced teachers to watch their more experienced colleagues? This could give a novice some valuable insights into the classroom approach of a senior colleague: what they do, the decisions they make, their classroom management approach, perhaps merely the fact that sometimes activities go pear-shaped even for experienced teachers. However, experienced teachers have a knowledge-base that inexperienced teachers don't have, available to them to use as knowledge in action, enabling them to overcome potential difficulties or minimise the effects of something that doesn't work. During a cooperative feedback session the novice could ask the 'expert' questions about his or her decision-making, which could give some valuable insights into the working mind of the experienced teacher. This, of course, relies on a lot of trust and I think that developing trusting relationships between colleagues is at the heart of creating an effective teaching team. As for what's in it for the experienced teacher, I'll quote Ruth Wajnryb:

"The relationship between teaching and learning is a complex and fascinating one, generating ironies as well as beauty and reward. The overwhelming impression in my mind today, after more than twenty years' work as a professional teacher and teacher trainer, is how much I have learned from those I set out to teach."

A problem with the suggestion that 'novices' should observe 'experts' is that experienced teachers often still carry 'the fear' and don't wish to be embarrassed in front of their junior colleagues. A rarely admitted 'bonus' of attaining seniority is the escape from being observed, is it not?! The anxiety of being observed is natural, it is like a performance and nerves are a common part of many experienced actors or musicians performing lives and they are more judged than teachers. However, I would like to think that a school which nurtures a staffroom community of practice engaged in more regular observation, free from the fear of judgement, with an atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation, could benefit greatly in terms of teacher development, for teachers of all ages and levels of experience.

Teacher development is arguably of greater importance in EFL than other areas of education, particularly for NESTs, as teachers go through a minimal pre-service education. Therefore, a collegial atmosphere in private language schools should be encouraged so that the teachers can work together as a team to raise the standard of teaching in their school, to the benefit of both the staff and the students and potentially the bank accounts of the owners, which maybe something worth pointing out to some school owners out there. ; )

I'm hoping that some readers might be up for sharing some thoughts on observation as I'm preparing to write an MA assignment on non-judgemental approaches!

Related posts

Ceri Jones - Every Lesson Tells a Story Part Two

Uk Government and British Council propose costly 'TEFL Licence'

2011-04-01T09:16:00.002+01:00

This is crazy news! Check this out, quoted from the Guardian today:

"It has been revealed that the UK government and the British Council are working together to introduce a licence for English Language teachers both at home and abroad. The scheme would see all teachers paying up to £100 for the licence, for which all teachers would require a good standard teaching certificate, such as the CELTA or Trinity certificate.

The BC stated that this was a move towards raising the standards of global English language teaching and suggested that schools without licences teachers would suffer the consequences of offering cheap courses led by poorly trained and incompetent staff. A government spokesman said "The backpacker teaching culture just shows our nation in a bad light, we need to make this industry more professional."

Critics at the IATEFL and TESOL organisations stated that charging teachers for such a licence was a disgrace. They questioned the point of the scheme unless other native English speaking nations were involved and denounced Richard Whiteside's ridiculous attempt at an April Fool's Day joke, saying that it would never wash with all the supremely intelligent teflers in the blogosphere! ; )"

Did you? For a moment? ; )

ELT Chat Summary - 30th April

2011-03-31T23:20:00.000+01:00

How do you use mobile devices in the classroom? Tips, apps & best practices

Introduction

This was the initial question for the evening's discussion, although there was some debate about the definition of mobile devices. Some people suggested digital cameras, laptops, tablets – there are also dictophones and digital video cameras. This definition question was never really concluded but the focus eventually headed towards mobile phones and smartphones. I think there was some overlap with the recent topic 'How do we cater for the needs of our learners in a digital age?'

Uses of mobile phones for the classroom eventually became the main focus, although I felt that the chat roamed around a number of areas, including the possibilities for use, teachers' feelings, issues and potential problems and useful apps. As a result, I'm going to attack the summary from four different angles and then I'll present a list of useful links that were shared during the chat.

I would like to point out that I was asked, ever so politely, to do this summary because of my summarising tweet...

...and I think it's really important that these things are kept in mind whenever choosing technologies to use. To be honest I was surprised to be asked due to my obvious skepticism and critical stance during the chat. But, hey, I think the technovangelists need to keep at least some toes clinging to terra firma! ; ) Having done this summary and had some chance to reflect, I really can see some great potential for some of the apps and tools mentioned, but I do have some of the issues being a problem when I consider the contexts in which I have experience.

[Critical Ed. btw I think it's worth pointing out that a few pro-technology participants do not actually seem to have any connection to ELT, but have some investment in technology.]

Summary

1) Why bother?

2) What can be done?

3) What could possibly go wrong?

4) What can be done to overcome issues?

1) Why bother?

@Shaunwilden : How do we feel about using them? I'd say why not we use them in life, well I do all the time

@ShellTerrell : Mobile phones allow students to carry the learning in their pocket & study when convenient, 5 min on bus, while in line, etc

@ShellTerrell : I believe it's portable, involves learning anywhere anytime, & involves the learning taking charge of the content

In some places most people have a smartphone and use it regularly
In some places more people have smartphones than computers
In some places it seems that every adult and every child has a smartphone
There is a lot of potential for extra practice with a one to one student
Using this technology could be motivating
Many students try to use them in class anyway, why not allow it?
Students could be more autonomous if guided to use mobile technology
Smartphones can do loads of clever multi-media things

2) What can we do?

@ShellTerrell : Best ways to use mobile phones for language learning involves audio/image/video recording, & sms features common to most phones now

Make short films - in or out of the classroom.
Use dictionary apps, such as SnaPanda for Android
Phones can be used to take photos or video for a scavenger hunt activity
Take photos of the whiteboard
Text students information (or receive it from them) about class or news about practical stuff like lesson cancellations or room changes
Get ss to take photos of stuff for hwk, bring to class, show them to a partner and chat about them
Create QR codes of things you want students to find on scavenging using mobile devices
Use mobile phone to record/ video the ss speaking and they can listen to themselves
Use of the audio or video recording devices could overcome a school's lack of resources
Adult learners could use language podcasts, record themselves, create videos, use search functions & dictionaries
Students can watch videos, perhaps from youtube
Use these apps with young learners - StoryRobe, StoryKit, Talking Tom, Mouthoff, Pubppet Pals, Sticki booth, Fotobabble, Animoto, Audioboo, Woices, 43 Things – see links below
Use fotobabble to take a picture and record audio talking about it
Students can share music with the teacher to be played in class
The technology can be used anywhere, so leave the classroom and go somewhere else!
Use Newsy app & Video Vocab apps for Business English

3) So what's the catch?

@efl101 : problem is not all sts have smart phones so fairness/equal access issues arise

Some schools have banned them – in some countries phones in school are a big NO!
In some countries smartphones are not used by most students
If some students have them and others don't there could be issues causing negative feelings or behaviour
Smartphones can sometimes be a distraction as much as a learning aid
Students could use them to cheat in tests
There could be problems with ss feeling inadequate for not having the 'right' phone
Ss could start thinking they can use the phone all the time, not just when you want them to
Not so good for exam classes – ss can't use them in exams and shouldn't rely on them
Kids could start begging their parents for a phone when the parents can't afford one or don't feel that it's appropriate
It might take time for some students to learn how to use their phone in different ways
The teacher may have to teach how to use an app
Sometimes it's a problem getting students off the phone, no need to encourage them!
Do the phones have roaming internet access or would access to school wifi be needed?
What about the financial cost to the students of internet access and SMS?
Teachers don't know what to do with mobile phones
Many teachers don't even use much technology
Is it ok for teachers to expect student to be connected to learning all the time?
Training opportunities for teachers may never arrive
Can teachers actually afford to own good quality mobile phones?
Many teachers don't even use computers very much, let alone smartphones

4) Responses to issues

If parents have issues, invite them into school and do a show and tell to explain the benefits
If not all students have one, get them to share or work in groups
Students sharing devices could help YLs develop better collaborative skills
Using a contract phone should mean there is no cost to the learners and apparently 'mini top-ups [are] now given away with soda cans'
Teacher training courses – there's one online soon, see links
Don't wait for training, just dive on in and try it out
Huddle round phones in groups if necessary

Some different viewpoints

@ShellTerrell : Also mobile learning allows the learner to apply the language & vocabulary in a contextual setting & with others. Authentic!

@familysimpson : @efl101 how do your students learn? Individually or by discussing in a group? Mobile opens up discussion to all - confidence booster

@japglish : @rliberni I'm afraid I think m-learning is being overhyped

@rliberni : key to efficacy or not of mlearning is whether or not they are learning - having fun is good but learning must also take place

@AnthonyGaughan ...reluctance to use private resource for work.. which schools provide mobile devices for staff?

@rliberni : mine prefer time away from their laptop - 'an oasis of calm' one std called his English lesson

Links

SnaPanda - wonderfully innovative dictionary app

QR Codes - barcode thing

@ianchia: McGraw-Hill's mConnect will offer vocabulary lessons via SMS, plans for Africa and Asia. http://j.mp/ePCSOT

@ianchia: English in Action: Mobile Learning in Bangladesh ? National Geographic News Watch http://j.mp/hjhBPT

Free 'about mlearning' course taking place in april?

@ShellTerrell: This created with free StoryRobe app for @CeciELT 's 6 year old son in Brazil http://youtu.be/Kl5p8owr2M0 for 1 of my upcoming pres.

Great video of using speak & repeat apps with kids learning Chinese here: http://www.technolote.com/?p=946

Good ideas here: Audio Apps for the iPod Touch - Handy for the Languages Classroom. http://www.technolote.com/?p=976/?

StoryRobe
StoryKit
Talking Tom
Mouthoff
Puppet Pals
Sticki booth
Fotobabble
Animoto

Ok, there you go. I hope I've managed to cover everything satisfactorily and give a balanced review of the chat transcript. Thanks to all participants for another really interesting #eltchat!

A little comedy to finish off

Reflections of a language learner #3

2011-03-29T23:16:00.000+01:00

I missed the last class, but was informed via email by my teacher that they had 'done' the 'pasado perfecto' (past perfect). Unfortunately, the worksheets they used were trapped on her virus-ridden laptop, which has had to be sent off to the repair shop, so she was unable to send then to me. However, as she was helpful enough to let me know the topic of the lesson (grammar McNugget), I was able to pay a quick visit to this site in order to grasp the basics before the class today, though I obviously have no idea whether this language will be revisited. [It wasn't - after class Ed]

Anyway, attending a weekly class but not spending much time attending to the important time in between the classes has me feeling that it's not actually worth the effort. Although when I reflect on the basic grammar that we have covered (definitely, rather than 'uncovered'), I am able to recognise structures and patterns I didn't previously know and so I notice these in texts and sometimes in speech. However, as I haven't really done much practice my evidence for this is flimsy, to say the least. So hey, maybe a basic, once a week, grammar McNugget class does have some use!

The class that I last attended, a fortnight ago, was moved to a different room in an adjacent building due to the normal classroom being booked by another University organisation. Then, two other students appeared, requesting to join in, because their teacher had gone back to Argentina and the school had suggested they go to our class. Typically, just to make things more challenging, they were from a lower level than our group. The teacher, however, was wonderfully calm and accommodating I thought, even though it affected her plans a little. As this incident played out, I couldn't help reflecting on the interruptions that teachers have to deal with and how multi-tasking and problem-solving are such essential skills in teaching.

Flamenco auténtico de Sevilla!

For that lesson she had planned around a topic, including an opportunity to practice some of the language we had recently covered - directions and imperatives; the topic was Seville. We worked with a map and practised understanding and giving directions, we read a text about Seville and then at the end, because the teacher said she thought it would be fun, we were going to listen to a song associated with Seville (see video below, you might recognise the fellas from a certain irritating popular song). It was quite an enjoyable lesson, although the fact that we had to spend time at the start trying to get the newbies acquainted with the language gave us less practice time than we could have had.

Clock Face - Free Foto

Speaking of timing, I have noticed that in these classes, our teacher likes to make sure we do all the activities she has planned. Her method of dealing with timing is, I feel, the same as countless teachers the world over; get through the plan. As a result, tasks start and finish abruptly without an easy flow and there is little time for questions. Often we are told, 'don't worry about it now' and she suggests that we only need to recognise the language at this level, we'll be able to use it later, betraying an interesting belief in the idea that learning a language is a series of fences to be jumped like a horse in the Grand National.

Anyway, towards the end of the lesson, as we were attempting to squeeze the song in (obligatory gap-fill on desk) the wi-fi signal failed and the connection to youtube wouldn't work. I was very pleased to be able to help out, finding the song on youtube via my mobile phone and playing it from there, which was nice because it was actually quite an enjoyable activity, despite the fact it was 'only' a gap-fill and by luck or design, it was a challenging but achievable task. The other thing was that due to not having enough worksheets, thanks to the appearance of the new students, I found myself working in a pair. This was the first time that pair work had occurred in the class.

I have observed inexperienced teachers doing exactly the things that I pick up in this post: rushing through the plan and teaching it rather than the students, jumping into tasks rather than staging them, not allowing for enough time to practise language and not employing pair or group work to make the class less teacher-centred. None of these things, I would say, from experience, are particularly unusual in private language schools the world over.

#WelcomeWednesday

2011-03-27T22:58:00.004+01:00

Helping Hand - by leodelrosa on Flickr

On a recent post about what a PLN means to me I mentioned my idea of Welcome Wednesday, a hashtag for twitter (#WW) which more experienced twitter users could be used to give a welcome to new teachers on the platform. This can help them get involved in tweeting as a means of building a PLN (or joining an 'eCommunity of practice').

LATEST NEWS! It seems #ww is also weightwatchers, weddingwednesday and some other stuff. Therefore it would be a good idea to think of something different, so please vote on your favourite, or suggest another option on this poll.

Even more up to date news: The hashtag #ttww has been chosen to be the hashtag to welcome ELT twitter newbies to twitter.

I think most of us can remember what it was like at the beginning, it ain't easy that's for sure! I joined and tweeted, but I had no response - I didn't know what the hell to write and I didn't have an audience in mind. Recently, I've chatted to a few people who have expressed interest in using twitter, but I remember the initial barrier to involvement and the need to build connections, so how can we be more inclusive and help people join in?

I suggested #WW on twitter a few weeks ago but it disappeared without echo into the great chasm of unnoticed tweets. Since noting it on my blog, I have received some feedback from others who agree that it would be a good idea to introduce #WW as #TT seems to have run its course (though it played a significant role in the 'early days') and has, in fact, been getting some criticism about its use to self-advertise and to strengthen cliques by slapping the backs of the same friends week in week out. It's a free tweet-world mind you, and people can do what they damned well like, so keep doing whatever floats your boat. However, if this connected group is to develop as a community of practice, then it should certainly try to be as inclusive as possible.

I chatted to Karenne Sylvester this evening and she has written some guidelines (which you can see at the end of her article here), based on previous experience with these matters and I agree with what she proposes.

So, what do you say? Next Wednesday, give a little leg up to a newbie or two (assuming they are happy to receive one!) and help them get over the first step before they give up on twitter without having a real opportunity to find out what's going on and whether it could be useful for them.

My Blog as a Word Cloud

2011-03-27T21:51:00.001+01:00

In response to this challenge from Mr. Dave Dodgson, this is my blog as a word cloud, done with Tagxedo.

PLN: What does it mean to you?

2011-03-25T14:00:00.003Z

A Personal Learning Nebula!

Over on Gavin Dudeney's blog his latest post outlines a critique of personal learning networks particularly in reference to that associated with ELT. He also questions how useful twitter really is in allowing learning to take place from 'the' PLN. Gavin is quite critical of the PLN idea, but I think he might be trying to provoke a debate to encourage everyone to reflect on the situation, which is a good idea, as reflection should lead to positive change where it is necessary. I have been reflecting, so this is what I think. I am, to be honest, a bit surprised to find myself writing this, which is essentially going to be a defence of the ELT network, because I am by nature quite cynical about the occasional self-congratulation, I have some issues with the nature of some online interaction and I see twitter as a great aid to procrastination as much as an aid to learning.

I'm very curious about the criticism twitter gets in Gavin's post and in the comments. I see twitter as only part of the social space that exists as a PLN. It sort of oils the wheels, allowing for rapid sharing, quick discussions, requests for help or advice and advertising blog posts. Furthermore, the #eltchat forum has been hugely successful and offers a great opportunity for learning, despite the fact that I haven't participated as much since the earlier days due to a feeling that most topics are not immediately relevant to my context and what I want out of the PLN. That's my choice and as this is a free, unguided, open and uncontrolled environment I feel under no pressure to do so, it is my choice.

Actually, no.
The circles suggest boundaries
- see the nebula!

The ELT social network also includes a huge number of blogs, Facebook pages, some ning groups, websites, wikis, second life interaction, yahoo groups and probably more things I have no idea about. Through the interconnected use of all these things knowledge is shared, allowing learning and development to take place. I have seen reference to 'the' PLN. There isn't even a single PLN, what is THE (deliberately emphasised definite article) PLN? I have A PLN. It is mine. It consists of the people I choose to interact with, either actively or passively, people whose blogs I read, tweets I follow, ning groups I join or links I follow up. There is no boundary, no set number of people, no consciously constructed group of people around whom I could draw a line in order to define my PLN. Nor do I think that there should be, people float in and out of my radar and I take what information I can from them, I reflect on what I have discovered and will either bookmark their link, follow their blog, add them to my google reader or follow them on twitter.

As for the fact that the term PLN sounds horrible to some people, well, it's jargon, terminology, it describes a concept, which is a network of people you engage with in order to further your professional development. If you don't like that, call it something else. Any idea? 'Hey guys, I have a 'group of interconnected, professionally-related people from and with whom I gain knowledge and increase my potential for personal teacher development'. Not quite as catchy, is it? There is another option, which is going with PLE - Personal Learning Environment, but that tends to be associated with a particular platform and is a closed environment. The idea is to get people to interact in a way that leads to learning. The PLE that I see myself using online is a mashup of various platforms and I like the fact it is open, although some boundaries do exist, most of them self-constructed, due to perceptions of outsider status, seeing cliques where there perhaps aren't any and feeling anxious or inadequate, leading to a lack of interaction. The clique situation could partly be overcome by people being aware of it and trying not to be cliquey. However, let's face it, all professional and social circles have cliques, why is it going to be any different online?

As for whether people learn anything, on my MA course we are introduced to a lot of tools and new technologies, often I have already used, experienced or at least heard of these things. Most of the others haven't. Why? Well, because I learned about them online from people who I consider to be participants in my PLN or people who have floated into my PLN space temporarily. I am also exposed to many teaching ideas and details about other teaching contexts, which I think is a valuable thing. Simply by reading what other people think about things has allowed me to reflect on my opinions, beliefs and teaching philosophy. Not having an immediate teaching context while doing my MA, I have been able to vicariously live the life of a practising teacher through reading the journal-like postings of various teachers in different contexts. Furthermore, while studying and thinking about teacher development, it has been interesting to find out more about how teachers think and feel in different contexts and at different stages of their career.

I think the idea that a PLN has to be guided or controlled (which has been suggested in a comment on Gavin's blog) misses the point that this is an autonomous collection of people ("I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective") who are using each other to make forward steps in their development as more knowledgeable and competent teachers. I don't want to play follow the leader, I don't need or want one. Perhaps for some people there is an issue of not really knowing why they are bothering to develop a PLN, they just thought it was something they should do. Well, without good reason, I would maybe agree that there is no point. Yet perhaps there is a potential reason that has been missed and finding it might be the key to unlocking the point of constructing a PLN. Likewise, if you are happy with the colleagues you have in your staffroom and the professional development you are already engaged in, then this is also a reason not to get involved online. You don't have to. Originally, I got involved because I effectively had no staffroom, there was no opportunity to interact with anyone and being able to do it online really improved my situation.

Having said all that though, I must be honest. There is something about the relentless positivity that gets my goat, although perhaps that's my upbringing as a northern English cynic. Nobody is always happy. Nobody is always positive. I sometimes also get a slightly unnerving feeling about some interaction that borders on self-help guru and religious evangelism, the latter referring mostly to outrageous claims about the wonders of technology and the internet. Furthermore, when I joined twitter I only managed to get going due to the help of a real life friend and former colleague, which was of great help. As a result, I found it quite easy to make connections, perhaps it's not as easy for others and that's why they gave up. As much as I like people including me I'm a bit fed up with #TT and #FF. I tried to start a new # a while back, but nobody responded. I wanted to initiate a #WW - 'Welcome Wednesday', through which new users relevant to the ELT community can be given an introduction and as it's on the same day as #eltchat as well, more people are likely to be around. Any takers?

Anyway, all in all, a PLN is personal, as the big P suggests, so make of it what you will. I for one do not think it is an outrageous claim to suggest that having a PLN online can be a hugely beneficial experience and I think there are people I know who would agree, having perhaps been able to take even more out of it than I have; other people spend a hell of a lot more time online than me. Perhaps people who don't feel like it has worked for them have not found the right people to interact with or the right media to use.

In terms of the wider world, it is true that the percentage of English language teachers online is a small part, but I will happily explain the benefits I have felt of having a blog, reading blogs and from meeting people on twitter. Maybe it's just a start or maybe it's destined to be a small gang, but if it works for me, then I'm happy with my PLN.

Related:

Willy C on social networks
Sue Lyon Jones' Twitter resource links
Gavin Dudeney On PLNs
Connected Principals Why social media can and is changing education

Comic Relief

2011-03-19T14:06:00.000Z

For anyone who doesn't know, every year there is a special event organised by the BBC called Comic Relief, which helps raise millions of pounds for charity and the money is used mainly to help struggling communities in Africa as well as disadvantaged people in the UK. Charity organisations, such as Oxfam, are involved, as are many celebrities, who make idiots of themselves or do sponsored challenges. Even the Prime Minister, love him or loathe him, got involved.

Despite this year being a relatively tough time for a lot of people in the UK and despite the fact many people have donated money to the cause in Japan recently, the event has managed to raise over £70million, breaking last year's record, which I think is a fantastic thing. I'm sure other countries have similar events and I hope that all the money raised anywhere is used as efficiently as possible. Raising awareness about charity work can come across as self-righteous or preachy, but I felt like posting this, so I am.

I think it is always worth remembering that although the recent natural disaster in Japan was unimaginably horrible, it is always the most recent event that draws the attention of the media and therefore the eyes of the world. There will still be people struggling after the tsunami in 2004, but their plight is out of sight now as the media focus drifts away. On a more permanent note, some people live in a permanent disaster zone, but there was no big event that made it newsworthy. That's just how it is.

This video below is one of the most heart-breaking things I have ever seen. Have you ever been asked by a child why these people have to live like this? I don't think I have, but I was just thinking of how I could answer it. Where do you start?

I think it's important to recognise that working in education can help drive change by raising awareness about inequality, though obviously context dictates to what extent this is appropriate. We can encourage children to think critically about world issues and consider whether they are fair and what could be done to help. As for the scramble for the use of new technology, millions of people don't even have drinking water, never mind an iPad 2.

I recently began reading 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which Paulo Freire uses the term 'conscientização' which is explained by the translator as 'learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality'; possessing a 'critical consciousness' in order to recognise and question the reality of dehumanisation. Freire might suggest that charity events such as Comic Relief are a construct of 'false generosity', helping the oppressors feel better about themselves while not really doing anything to alter the status quo. His position seems to be (I have a lot more to read!) that educating the oppressed can enlighten them to their position, leading them to the knowledge they need in order to challenge their oppressors. It's not a comfortable read, through being linguistically difficult and also ideologically challenging, for those of us born luckier than others. We are not the oppressed (well, arguably not as oppressed, depending on your position) but through ignorance and a lack of conscientização we can unwittingly foster the continuation of oppression.

I believe that financial aid is beneficial though I hope that it is used well, as misuse of resources is often a criticism of charity. For me though, the thing is that if you don't give anything, believing charities to be useless or, at worst, corrupt, then nobody is ever going to be helped. However, it isn't the only, or best, form of help. Education is so important in both the developed and developing world, so that the privileged recognise their luck and their responsibility towards helping others, and that the underprivileged are given some tools to challenge the oppression they face.

Quite sobering. Sorry for the depressing subject, but hey, the world is shit for lots of people so it's good to think about them. These are just some thoughts that I wanted to share, there are no answers here.

Over a year since my first blog post!

2011-03-14T21:42:00.001Z

One year on

How time flies?!

I've only just realised that it is now more than 12 months since this humble blog was launched with this post.

The original purpose of the blog was to reflect on the process of initiating my first class blogging project with a group of upper intermediate students, however, I quickly found that there was a lot more I needed to share or get off my chest!

I think the experience of blogging has really helped me to reflect on what I think about what I do as a language teacher. Exposing your thoughts to a potentially unlimited audience is sometimes nerve-wracking, but it has been really nice to interact online with other teachers in different contexts. It is really motivating to receive helpful comments, so thanks to everyone who has been nice enough to leave a comment, apologies if I didn't get around to replying! Actually, that has been something I've really tried to concentrate on as time has gone by.

Rooting through the archives

It was really nice of ESL Library to link to one of my posts the other day and as a result of that opportunity to check out a blast from my past, I've decided to post a list of links to some of my own favourite posts from my first year of blogging, so here they are, enjoy!

Thoughts on a career in TEFL

I like this because it was something that I really wanted to get off my chest at the time and it was nice to have some comments that let me know it wasn't just me.

An Empty Teachers' Room

This post essentially explains why I started blogging and using twitter and man, I'm glad I did!

Dogme for all?

I chose this one because it was the first time I responded to a blog meme, theme thingy and also because I received some interesting comments that I have enjoyed revisiting.

Grammar: is it a dirty word?

This one I remember fondly because it was written after being motivated by a fantastic #eltchat session. This was from the old days when there was an audio follow up rather than the current format of blog post reviews.

The Classroom 'Garden': a bean update

This was a project that I really enjoyed doing with a couple of young learner classes last year. I made a short video showing off the growing beans, lentils and chickpeas and a bit of the work the kids had done. They seemed to really enjoy the project and so did I!

Many thanks to everyone who reads, follows and/or comments on this blog. Let's face it, without the comments, I wouldn't have bothered carrying on! It's been worth it for me, I hope that some other people have benefitted in a small way from something I have posted.

Feedback

Also, I thought it might be an idea to get some feedback on the blog as I'm sure I could do something to improve it. So please let me know what you think is good or give me some constructive criticism so that I can try to do this blogging thing a bit better. If you have a moment, please leave a comment, anonymous or otherwise here. Thanks!

Reflections of a language learner #2

2011-03-11T10:31:00.004Z

This post on my Spanish learning exploits is mainly in the form of a podcast that I recorded onto my mobile phone almost directly after the class. I recorded it as a note in Evernote and then uploaded it to my computer, where I imported it to Garageband, faffed around a little a made myself a little podcast. As I'd never made the attempt to use Garageband before that was a good learning experience as well!

A quick update on general information:

Anyone reading the first post in this series here, will know about the teacher and the students in the first class. The lesson I talk about in the podcast is the fourth out of a total on ten.

In the class there are now only 3 students, myself, the Polish girl who attended the first class and another British student. The Chinese students dropped down to elementary after the first week's diagnostic test.

The last two classes were fairly heavy grammar lessons, focussing on the pretérito indefinido and the pretérito imperfecto. Both feature lots of conjugations and irregularities, but we were exposed to all of these things at once.

Ok, here's the podcast, I hope you find it interesting. As always, I welcome your comments below!

PODCAST (I hope this works ok!)

Animate words and phrases with Wondersaid

2011-03-09T23:18:00.002Z

Wow! This is a post I wrote before Christmas last year, but never got round to posting as I completely forgot about it. Oh well, better late than never!

made on Wondersay - Animate text with style

If you've got an interactive whiteboard, or even just a computer and data-projector the text could be shown to the learners for them to read. I often find myself attempting to make reading texts 'come alive' for younger learners and also have difficulty in stopping them trying to understand every word, using wondersaid could help lower levels gain confidence in reading through being helped to understand short texts that they are forced to read quickly.

The limit on the size of each 'wondersaying' appears to be 2068 characters, which is a limit not imposed by the site itself, but by Internet Explorer, due to the fact that IE urls are limited to this number and any wondersaying that you create includes the message as part of the url. For other web browsers there is no information, so just see what you can squeeze in!

Phrases that the students create can easily be embedded in a blog or wiki and would make a writing task just that bit more interesting. In my experience, when YLs have to display their work they tend to take greater care to make sure that it's correct, so using this could help them to focus on writing accuracy as well.

I'm sure there are plenty of uses for this tool. Please share any ideas here if you feel like it!

Other mentions of this tool:

Leahn at earlyefl

Eduardo at eltbakery

What motivates us?

2011-03-08T14:24:00.001Z

I really enjoyed this video. The notion of freedom being a great motivator really struck a chord with me.

I love the fact that a US economist actually dared to use the word 'socialism'. I also like that he shares ideas that are essentially socio-constructivist - in terms of knowledge sharing by experts for no compensation. I think that many ideas in the video have direct connections to teaching, particularly of how teachers should be treated by employers and managers.

The ideas connect strongly with feelings I have about teacher development. Why is it that so many schools have such difficulty getting teachers motivated to attend workshops? People I've talked to and bosses at a couple of previous schools have had great difficulty getting teachers to 'buy into' teacher development. However, did they ever stop to ask what it was that the teachers would like to do? In many cases, I think not. 'You have to come in on a Friday at 11am for a development workshop (Dalek voice - we WILL develop you!), you should do peer observation, you will be observed once a term and given feedback'. All these things will help you develop as a teacher. Really?

In terms of how I would like to be treated, a good way to work with teachers is to encourage and support their development as reflective practitioners. A school can make knowledge available - a good library is a start. Teachers should be given the opportunity to share and discuss knowledge and experience, not (necessarily) have a workshop delivered to them once a week. Development is a personal thing, you can't be developed, you can be trained, but that's different. I believe most teachers want to become better at their job and be introduced to new possibilities, whether they try them all or not. We want the freedom to be creative, to try new things and I think to an extent we want to do it our own way, because that's the way that feels best to us at any given moment. I don't for a minute think that it's only me who craves this freedom. However, at the same time, teaching should be viewed as teamwork. It is a social profession and good staff rooms reflect that, talking about what happened, sharing anecdotes or requesting support are all part of teaching life. Teachers are often great story tellers and sharing narratives helps to build our experience. It's not about having a bunch of people who merely share the same building. Perhaps you're lucky and your school does this, so maybe you don't know any different, but it doesn't happen everywhere.

I think there is need for a balance - giving teachers the opportunity to act individually as part of a collective. Independence and interdependence. Individual empowerment supported by peers and mentors, not by management imposing methodology or training. In a nutshell, don't tell us what to do, support us to do what we do better and don't judge our decisions. As research evidence in the video suggests, this autonomy could lead to more motivated teachers and a happier staff room.

I think this desire for freedom also manifests itself in the course book argument. Some people like the support of a book whilst some feel restricted by it, but that's another discussion and one for which there are only personal answers.

A non-judgemental approach may of course lead to challenges of opinion and a conflict between institutionally imposed ways of working and decisions made by teachers. I remember having to more or less discipline a teacher in one school for using L1 in class. The school dictated that L1 was not to be used in class, for various reasons which I discussed with the teacher. His view was that this was wrong and it worked for him and whilst taking his opinions on board, at that time I was sitting in judgement, considering him to be wrong and the institution to be right. A few years later, if put in the same position, I may still have to toe the line imposed by the institution, if that was what they wanted, but I would not judge the teacher to be wrong and would perhaps suggest to the institution that their rules may not be entirely fair. Perhaps his motivation was affected by this experience and it was part of a professional development interview, which hardly seems right. It's something that I regret now, despite the fact I was following 'orders'.

Anyway, this stream of consciousness containing my post-video-watching thoughts has found itself on this page, so make of it what you will!

I encourage you to watch the video and let me know what you think.

Cheers.

Reflections of a language learner #1

2011-03-04T14:21:00.001Z

I've recently started attending a Spanish class once a week. It's pitched at pre-intermediate level, which seems fine for me, although I'm a bit of a 'level-freak' really. I've decided to write some thoughts on my experiences of going back into a language class. I'm hoping to keep up with writing a post after each of my weekly classes, but let's see how it goes. (Since writing this I've had two further classes, so I'm already behind schedule!) I'm planning to comment about my feelings towards learning and also towards what the teacher is doing. I'm going to try to write the pieces more or less like a journal, without editing, so I may be forming thoughts and opinions as I write.

A bit of background

I spent the best part of two years in Spain between 2008 and 2010. I spent all of this time in Andalucia, which is renowned for rapid, slangy (some might say sloppy) speech. I didn't have any formal lessons really, but had a brief one to one class with a non-native (Scottish) part-time teacher/ translator and a bit of help from an American friend. I learnt most things from the Rough Guide phrasebook and interaction with friends, both Spanish and 'guiri' (foreigners in Spain). I have a strong knowledge of lexis, single words and phrases - particularly common interactional stuff that I've picked up. I have decent listening ability but have not really practised reading much, can't write for toffee and really, REALLY get annoyed trying to learn verb conjugations!

I live in Manchester with my Spanish girlfriend, who I can practise with, but rarely do, to be honest - meaning that we speak English, not that we don't speak! We often converse in both languages, I in English and she in Spanish, or in our own version of Spanglish. I often use short Spanish phrases in everyday communication without really thinking about it.

The first class

Our teacher spoke in English. She introduced herself and admitted that she is not a trained teacher but a student with a lot of language learning experience (this was expected as these are cheap classes with volunteer teachers organised by a University society). She is native to Galicia and can speak four or five languages herself.

She explained that she thought it would be best to use a mixture of English and Spanish in the lessons, explaining that for any grammar explanations, it would be better to use English as that is the common language of the course participants. I'm not sure yet whether I have a problem with this. As she's inexperienced, perhaps she'd have difficulty presenting grammar in Spanish. However, will going over these things in English just allow student laziness to kick in? In actual fact, with my monolingual classes, I don't have a problem in my classes with lower level students discussing language points in their L1, as long as they speak in English at other times when they are instructed to. I shall monitor and reflect on this situation.

As for the students in the class, there were two Chinese students, a Polish student and me - they're all undergraduates and made me feel quite old! The Chinese are male and female and the Polish student is female, so there's a gender balance. The Polish student seemed quite confident and spoke well in Spanish, but the Chinese students were clearly not comfortable when asked to speak - in fact, come to think of it, this was true of them speaking in English, never mind Spanish.

The teacher seemed to have some considered ideas about how to go about teaching a first class. Following a brief activity in which we all had to introduce ourselves (in Spanish), she proceeded to carry out a basic needs analysis, involving a diagnostic test followed by a discussion of activities we'd like to do in class and also what skills we would prefer to focus on. The results of the diagnostic will be available in next week's class.

Some things I noticed and reflected on after the class

The teacher appeared a little bit nervous and sometimes got a bit tongue-tied when speaking English; she sometimes appeared unsure of her pronunciation.

When the teacher spoke Spanish, she didn't seem to modify her speech, it seemed quite fast (and I'm used to Andaluz!). Sometimes she would say something in Spanish and I thought I understood, but she obviously thought that at least some students hadn't, so she repeated the instructions in English. I actually found this quite frustrating as I felt I could have understood if she had repeated the Spanish words a bit more slowly. However, I didn't say anything.

When we introduced ourselves I said that I was an English language teacher. Now I wish I hadn't said that because maybe I'd like to make some requests, such as asking her to speak a bit more slowly, but I don't want her to feel like I'm telling her how to teach.

When we chatted about what activities we'd like to do in class, I noticed that the teacher didn't make any notes, so perhaps would not remember what we said. It will be interesting to see if our requests are followed up on.

The diagnostic test was a multiple-choice gap fill and was entirely based on grammar, specifically choosing the correct verb forms. As this is my weak point, it could give a false representation of my level, yet I think I was able to do ok due to knowing strategies for answering the questions.

When we were concentrating alone on an exercise it seemed painfully quiet. I could hear a clock ticking and it felt slightly uncomfortable!

All in all

It was very interesting to be back in a classroom as a language learner as it has been a few years since I had the opportunity and I really need to attend classes to motivate me to kick on with my Spanish. I really don't mind (at the moment) having an untrained teacher. I'm just happy that she's Spanish and not South American. No offence to South American Spanish speakers, but there is a difference and I need to converse with Spaniards, not Mexicans or Chileans, for example. I know what 'type' of Spanish I need and I don't wish to be introduced to the 'wrong' type for me at this stage.

I realised it was extremely difficult for me to switch off from observing what the teacher was doing and analysing every part of the lesson. I was even thinking of how I would have approached the instructions to a task or even how an activity could have been adapted, particularly in relation to the worksheets.

Anyway, these are a few of my thoughts. As always, please comment if you have anything to add! I'm interested to hear opinions related to the points I raise or any personal experiences of learning languages. I think it could be an interesting experience that will allow me to reflect on my own teaching beliefs as well as improving my language learning skills.

Related links:

Scott Thornbury's fantastic Maori class diary
James Taylor's Brazilian Portuguese class

Do all your classes get the same attention?

2011-02-27T15:16:00.000Z

I have found while doing my MA course that it is very difficult to give the same amount of effort and focus to all the different modules of the course. Currently, I am engaged in four different modules and two of them are proving to be more interesting and motivating for me than the other two, therefore I spend most of my time focusing on them.

Anyway, whilst musing on this situation, stuck inside working away on a rainy Sunday in Manchester, wishing I was watching England take on India in the cricket World Cup, it struck me that there was a comparison to be made with a teaching timetable. I don't know about anyone else, but I have always found it challenging to dedicate as much time to all my classes. Some classes get more time because I like them more, others because it's necessary to be well prepared for problems.

At the other end of the scale there are those who get less attention. Last year, for example, I had a weird, mixed, changeable group of pre-intermediate students - tweens and teens. I admit to spending less time preparing or planning anything for this group, partly due to the fact that whatever I prepared could easily be rendered useless when only two turned up, half of them came late, the three who attended the previous class were replaced by the others in the next class and also the fact that they demonstrated very little interest, apart from the younger student who was mocked for doing so. All in all, this class was 'one of those groups', that you find (I'm sure it's not just me) yourself going through the motions with. I can't say I'm proud of this and I look back on how my attitude could have hindered the development of a stronger community spirit, yet it was an amalgamation of all sorts of negative influences that created a 'perfect storm' leading to a less than positive experience for all concerned. I don't want to get into the intricacies of the situation any more here - actually, it could make for another blog post.

What I'm trying to get at is that I have always found it impossible to give as much time to every class. Some classes get more attention because they're great, others because they're so difficult it takes up more time preparing for them. Sometimes a class gets a rapidly knocked together plan just because they're last on the list. Exam classes often receive more attention, perhaps justifiably, because they have a stronger objective.

In terms of a development opportunity, I'm wondering how other teachers deal with this. I can recall being given advice in the past that planning can be done on a cyclical basis, with the class receiving more planning time one week gets less the next and things like that. Perhaps its just time-management and as an area of weakness for me I end up in this situation whereas others don't! Maybe a better medium-term plan would help, but I am not a fan of planning too far ahead, I like to be responsive rather than having a strongly mapped out future plan. Is there a balance to be struck between the two?

Do you manage to balance the time you dedicate to each class? If so, what's your method?

'Blended' learning and the social media revolution

2011-02-18T17:54:00.001Z

So, this socio-constructivist, all fingers to the keyboard, online, blended-learning thing is the way forward, isn't? Everybody should get online and interact. It's the business!

I have been considering recently what I will investigate for my MA dissertation and I have decided to research interaction in the discussion forum of a VLE (virtual learning environment) that forms a part of all our courses. The reason however for my interest is not that I think it's a great new thing that everybody should get into. My interest is the people who do not find it useful and have no intention of becoming involved in such a form of interaction. I think this to be far more informative than investigating the people who are so enthusiastic about it all.

In a workshop recently where we discussed the first inklings of our dissertation research ideas, I presented my intention to investigate the on site students of our group and their non-interaction with the discussion forums on Blackboard. To put this in context, this a multinational group of experienced teachers, some of whom are taking the Educational Technology and TESOL course, rather than just TESOL. They know about the principles of socio-constructivism, the suggested benefits of interaction in learning and some are considering the potential of blended learning in their own school environments, whether with moodle, wikis, blogs or whatever.

In the workshop I mentioned above, I chatted to a colleague whose beliefs I will condense into the following vignette.

"I haven't got time to spend on the Blackboard discussion environment. It's a waste of time. There are so many other things to do on this course and with all due respect to everybody else here, I just don't want to spend time in discussion with them, when they don't really know any more than I do. I prefer to spend time reading the views of experts in books or journals and listen to or talk with the tutors, who are experts in their field. I'll learn from them because they know more than me.

How can people spend so much time on the internet, it's so sad, go out and do something less boring instead. Why don't people just get a life? The last thing I want to do is spend my time sitting in front of a computer writing to people. These happy-clappy discussion workshops are bad enough. Ok, I admit I'm perhaps not very sociable, but I have my family and friends and I socialise with them, that'll do me thanks - no offence. Also, on the discussion forum, I don't want to spend time writing my opinions when they might be crap. I mean, then everyone will think, 'What an idiot!', he doesn't know anything.

Frankly, I have no desire to take part in these discussion forums, it's just not for me."

In a nutshell, and interrupted by the group discussion, this is what I understood of his perspective. The words are not exactly the same, though some expressions are. The ideas were not necessarily expressed in this order and he was egged on a bit by another participant with similar views. However, I think this gives a good reflection of this person's opinions.

Is this opinion wrong? Can a person with these opinions be an effective teacher? What do you think?

Considering there will be many teachers and students the world over who share some or all of these opinions I think care needs to be taken with proposing any form of online interaction, either for teacher development or with students. There is never an answer for everything when dealing with people, so it is dangerous to suggest that the internet has as many 'answers' as some people suggest. Some people don't like reading, some people don't watch TV and some people don't want to use the internet or social media. In fact, some people just aren't actually very sociable. Everybody's opinion is valid.

This is a revolutionary time in education, where the internet is being used in many attempts to increase flexibility in course design and modes of interaction in higher education, state education and even private language schools. Is this reliance on the internet as flexible as it seems or will it force those who are not interested into using it more because they have to? Will it discriminate against those who can't afford the technology or a broadband connection? Are the opinions expressed in the vignette above valid, or should this guy just get with the times?

Where have I been?!

2011-02-02T17:18:00.000Z

Hello everyone and happy new (Gregorian calendar) year. Happy Chinese new year too!

It's been a while since I've posted anything here so I just thought I'd let people know that I am alive and well, but have been trying to take some time out from internet use. I spent a lot of time over Christmas and the new year working hard on assignments for my MA course, which was quite stressful and very draining. I have some strong procrastination genes somewhere in my DNA and everything was a bit last minute! So after that, I really needed to take a break from thinking about anything to do with work or studying.

Now the second semester of the MA has just begun and I've got a distinct 'back to school' feeling which is never good. Perhaps it's just because my mum didn't buy me a shiny new pencil case.

Another reason for avoiding the computer is that fact that I've been suffering from some strange and sometimes painful sensations (and creaking and clicking) in my wrists, elbows and shoulders, a reminder that this technology malarkey is not entirely good for your health. Spending long periods in front of a computer screen can damage joints, your back and your eyes, not too mention the headaches. I think it's important that this health and safety stuff, regardless of how boring it is, should be taught to the learners we work with, particularly younger learners. We often discuss how important it is to guide learners in internet safety, but we should remember that physical and mental health and safety is important as well.

Anyway, there you go. I'll be trying to put up some new posts when inspiration strikes.

Cheers.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-20T12:16:00.001Z

Hi all,

I'd just like to wish all the readers of my blog a very merry Christmas, or happy holiday season, a happy new year or just a nice couple of weeks - if you don't celebrate anything at this time of year! I'm travelling to Spain today and keeping my fingers crossed that there won't be any problems flying out or back in a week or so. I'll not really have reliable internet over there so I thought I'd get out a Christmas message now.

For all the Christmas-celebrating people, I'd like to share a video of the greatest (imho) Christmas tune EVER!! Complete with amazing facial hair.

All the best and enjoy!

Richard

Prensky

2010-12-19T18:50:00.000Z

That's it. I've had it. I've tried a couple of times to write a post about this, trying to be satirical and amusing, didn't work, I'm not Diarmuid. Now, however, I don't care any more, I'm just going to say it. So, as a result, this is going to be a bit of a rant.

Some of the people preaching evangelically about the technological future of education seem not to be using the critical thinking skills that they think certain aspects of technology and the use of online research will support. Prensky is a good example. To read into his background and check out his references is to find a complete lack of academic rigour and absolutely no support for the outrageous suggestion that his so-called 'digital natives' have evolved alternative neurological processes. It's a completely useless dichotomy anyway.

Repeated references to Prensky's writings demonstrate that some people blogging about educational technology have not perhaps actually read the writing of real academics investigating the pedagogical benefits of its use. Blindly calling for institutional change without making an effort to consider whether these things are actually supported at all by science. I'm sick of seeing Prensky's quote (as shown in the picture) which is based on research completely unrelated to education and technology and has been conveniently cherry-picked to support his sales pitch.

I'm not saying that there is absolutely no truth or purpose in his ideas, there probably is a need to engage students in more IT based learning, as in general it seems to be motivating, yet all students are not the same and categorising all students below a certain age in the same way is unhelpful and wrong. Furthermore, learning can't be fun all the time, 'edutainment' has its limits.

Prensky has his own bandwagon rolling and the promotion of technology in education is not helped by jumping on it. There seems to be a repeated online call saying that without technology in class you're a bad teacher, which is a massive a guilt trip, a suggestion that some of Prensky's writings are full of, openly attempting to pension off any teachers who aren't suddenly leaping into the digital world. It must certainly make people feel better about themselves if they are one of these amazing technologically enhanced 'super-educators', eh? Since when did a teacher become an 'educator' anyway? But I digress.

Another thing is that it is worth remembering that, as Morrissey once sang: "America is not the world". Just because US kids are glued to a digital screen doesn't mean the rest of the world is, or that it even wants to be. I know from first hand experience that in Spain, generally, teenagers are far more active socially OUT of their house and away from their computers than they are on them. If that's what they want, who's going to make them change?

There is a place for technology in education, but education is not technology, just as education is not a course book. If people want to change the world of education, they might want to support their ideas with a little research first; critical thinking is necessary for teachers as well as learners.

Answer Garden - a fantastic brainstorming tool!

2010-12-12T12:53:00.000Z

Hello lovely people who read my blog.

I'm having a sudden burst of blog proliferousness (not a real word, I know, but it works nicely and there are 156 Google hits for its use) and here I am with another great web tool. Well, it is Christmas…nearly.

I found this tool in use by Paul Koch (who has very kindly followed my humble blog) on his class blog here. I couldn't help thinking that this is such a fantastic tool to use on a class blog! There is huge potential for vocabulary work: brainstorming before a class or after, as follow up, and it's SO simple that even the technophobic or kids with only basic skills can use it easily.

It could be made into an alphabet game: challenge the learners to come up with one word for every letter of the alphabet based on a certain topic - animals, for example. If they can do it before the next lesson they get to play their favourite game or something.

We could also get feedback on the lessons, with the students naming activities that they really like doing.

I'm sure their are more possibilities, so I thought I'd post a version here so that we could try it out, and if anyone has any thoughts about further uses, please comment below and we can create an effective AnswerGarden resource page. Here's my AnswerGarden...

What's your favourite English word?... at AnswerGarden.ch.

Now I really must get on with my MA assignments...