Surviving as a teachers

Liam Brown reflects on how you might 'survive' as an English language teacher and work on your own professional development, in this seminar filmed in London.

 

Podcast in teaching English

 

Twitter in the classroom

Many educators are looking at ways to use micro-blogging in the classroom. Nik Peachey has written about Plurk in language teaching. This tool describes itself as a 'social journal', so posts are arranged on a timeline and grouped into threads. There are some useful tips he writes about microblogging:

As a teacher you could use microblogging to:

• Share resources and links to useful websites or videos (they open in the interface so students don't have to search around YouTube for them.
• Send out prompts and reminders to students about assignments and due dates.
• You could just use the social aspect to share a bit of what you do each day with them
• Send students images to comment on / describe
• Send out words and ask students to respond with a definition.
• Create single sentence assignments that students respond to wit single sentences.
• Create sentences for the students to correct.
• Create a collaborative story. You start the story with one line and each student has to add another using the response feature.

Your students could use microblogging to:

• Create a learner diary, recording briefly their language learning activities and insights through the day.
• Ask questions to the groups and get support with new words they find or things they don't understand.
• Post a short sentence each day using a different one of the verbs in the Plurk line
• Share good websites etc.
• Share a little of their world and what they do when they aren't in class.

And there is a presentation "35 ideas on Twitter to be used in the classroom" at the bottom of this page

IT and teachers

Key skills and attitudes for IT literate teachers

This part is an attempt to define the key skills that teachers using technology for ELT should posses.

The aim of this is for teachers to be able to see what skills they want to develop and work toward and so set themselves developmental goals. Please feel free to add any skills that you think are 'key' ones. I've also added a 'desirable' section for ones that aren't essential but are very useful.

Key Skills

• The ability to evaluate technological resources and recognise their potential and limitations for language development
• The ability to understand and learn how to use new IT resources
• The ability to explain students why and how to use certain technology

Key attitudes

• The willing ness to learn new things and the commitment to keep learning
• The readiness to prepare plan B in case technology fails

Desirable Skills

• The ability to create interactive learning objects

What is a BLOG

What is a blog?

A blog (short for weblog) is a frequently updated website that often resembles an online journal. It's so easy to create and update a blog - it requires only basic access to the Internet, and a minimum of technical know-how. Because of this, it is one of the easiest ways to publish student writing on the WWW. It's almost as easy as sending an email.

Nowadays, blogs can also display photos and some people are using them with audio and even video, but this article will concentrate on the basics, showing how a simple text-based blog can be used to great effect with your English language learners.

Types of blogs used in language teaching
Aaron Campbell (2003) has outlined three types of blogs for use with language classes:

* The Tutor Blog is run by the teacher of a class. The content of this type of blog can be limited to syllabus, course information, homework, assignments, etc. Or the teacher may choose to write about his or her life, sharing reflections about the local culture, target culture and language to stimulate online and in-class discussion. In this type of blog, students are normally restricted to being able to write comments to the teacher's posts. A great example of this is Aaron Campbell's own 'The New Tanuki' http://thenewtanuki.blogspot.com/

* The Class Blog is a shared space, with teacher and students being able to write to the main area. It is best used as a collaborative discussion space, an extra-curricular extension of the classroom. Students can be encouraged to reflect in more depth, in writing, on themes touched upon in class. Students are given a greater sense of freedom and involvement than with the tutor blog. A very good example of what has been done with this type of blog is Barbara Dieu's 'Bee Online' http://beeonline.blogspot.com/) and 'Bee Online 2' http://beeonline2.blogspot.com/

* The Learner Blog is the third type of blog and it requires more time and effort from the teacher to both set up and moderate, but is probably the most rewarding. It involves giving each student an individual blog. The benefit of this is that this becomes the student's own personal online space. Students can be encouraged to write frequently about what interests them, and can post comments on other students' blogs. For examples, see the links to learner blogs from the class blog and tutor blog examples above.


Of course, teachers who decide to use blogs often use a combination of Tutor or Class blog and Learner blogs, with hyperlinks connecting them.

By Graham Stanley, British Council, Barcelona
Read more on  http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/blogging-elt