“Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible – the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family”

Virginia Satir, author and psychotherapist (1916-1988)

My experience as a teacher of English is not vast – I am currently in my third year as a full-time teacher and have taught in Spain and the UK – but seeing my learners as individuals is something I have always tried to do. I actually had to trawl the net for the above quote, but I think it was worth it. It encapsulates for me what a good learning environment, with teachers and learners included, should be.

Individual differences first came to my attention during my initial teacher training, as it was something we trainees had to investigate. I’m hoping to share with you what I think are 3 main differences to be aware of when teaching English as a foreign language, as well as any practical tips for how to think about them in relation to teaching. They might not all apply to every teaching situation, but I hope you get something out of them.

First of all I’m going to introduce J and Z, who are going to help me illustrate some individual differences.

J is 26 years old and from Germany. He’s currently taking a year out from his university course to study English in the UK. He’s also working as a language assistant at a local secondary school. In Germany his studies include English and Physical Education, and he plans to become a teacher after completing his undergraduate degree. In the UK he’s preparing to take ESOL Level 2 exams (roughly equivalent to the Common European Framework level C1/C2). He’s been going out with his girlfriend for 2 years and in Germany has moved out of his parents’ house.

Z is 20 years old and comes from Iraq. She has been living in the UK for about 3 years and studying English for coming up to 2 years. She started at Elementary level and is currently in an Intermediate class preparing to take her ESOL Level 1 exams (similar to CEF level B1/B2). She wants to go on to study medicine and become a doctor. At home she lives with her family, who have also recently moved from Iraq to the UK. She has to take her younger brother to school and so is sometimes a little late for college.

• Background

J and Z come from places that differ in so many ways. On the one hand, the economic powerhouse of Germany situated in Western Europe. On the other, Z from Middle-eastern Iraq. I’m sure I don’t need to outline how different these places are in terms of geography, culture and tradition. Tip: never take for granted where your learners come from. Even if you teach a monolingual group from the same country (either in that particular country or elsewhere) the learners may be from very different places. Get to know your learners and where they come from.

• Education

J is nearing the end of his formal education, and on completing university is likely to find a teaching job in his country. He has probably been learning English for nearly 15 years, perhaps more if he started at primary school. Z’s education was disrupted when she and her family left Iraq. Consequently, her English lessons are her only current formal education, and she has only just come back to education after a gap of a couple of years. What does this mean? Well, perhaps J has better study skills since he is using them and has been using them more recently? However, maybe Z’s motivation to succeed is higher? Tip: remember that your students experiences of education can differ, even if they are at the same school and in the same year in the same city. Additionally, don’t disregard any country’s education in relation to that of another – there are highly educated people the world over

• Responsibilities

J and Z have different responsibilities. J is working as a language assistant. This means he is probably putting in about 20 to 30 hours contact time at the school where he is working. His classes at college are in the evening, so naturally he’s a little tired in the lessons. As mentioned above, Z has to take her brother to school which affects how much time she is actually at college and studying. Tip: remember that your learners are humans! They probably have responsibilities and interests outside the classroom, whether looking after family members or going to an after-school football club. Get to know what your students do outside the classroom and if necessary make arrangements for dealing with or incorporating these into your planning.

That’s just three, I’m sure you could write a whole chapter for a book, if not a book itself, on individual differences. I’ll sign off by explaining the title ‘Individual Differences Count’. I believe not only that these differences are what make teaching so interesting, but also that no one difference is more important or less worth our time than another.

Image from http://layered.typepad.com/antidote_to_burnout/images/2007/10/06/4b14310b020017cf.gif found via a Creative Commons search

Mike Harrison is an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher currently based in South-East London in the UK. At the moment he mostly teaches General English to adults, but also teaches a group of teens. He has previously taught adults, teens and young learners in Pamplona and A Coruña in Spain. Outside the classroom he loves Spanish cinema and tries not to fall over too much when doing capoeira. Find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/harrisonmike/ or at his blog http://mikeharrison.edublogs.org/

Over the last twenty-three years, I have taught English to people in every demographic category other than homeless people. Over that time, the issue that continues to pique my interest is their motivation for carrying their feet across the threshold of my classroom. I have an idea about what gets my college students into class, but what about other hard working folks that don’t need a credit?

On most Tuesday nights you’ll find me with my Community College class from 6:30 to 8:00. Then another group from 8:10 to 9:40. They are there in all kinds of weather, through family loss, marriage, retirement, job changes, and personal illness. I admire them greatly for their initiative, but when I gauge the improvement in their English ability, I’m flummoxed.

For the majority their language ability improves slightly or remains unchanged. When I ask them if they pursue their studies outside of class, most of them reply that they do not.

The rare learner takes advantage of my suggestions to keep an interactive English journal with me, to read and listen extensively, or to make the most of DVD’s. Through informal questioning, my conclusion is that around 20% continue their learning outside of class, while 80% do nothing.

So I have to wonder what brings these people out to my classroom, and these are 10 motives. Some may have more than one when they start, and they definitely change over time.

1. Curiosity gets people into the classroom at least in the beginning. There’s no question that this is at least part of the equation at the start of everyone’s learning adventure.

2. Parents drive young people to start, and may replace all other motivators over time.

3. Social interaction is extremely influential, especially in classes that I teach at the Community College. When there is a break between sessions, they make arrangements to socialize during that period. In some cases, strong personal connections are formed between students.

4. Social requirements sometimes force learners into the classroom, especially retired people. Society expects them to take up hobbies in their free time, and “learning English” can be a low risk, comparatively low cost option.

5. The Boot Camp phenomena is where an employee of a company is going to be sent off to a country where he or she will need to use English, so they come to class to help them prepare. They don’t stay around long, but have been known to return to class after their assignment is finished. (See filling station below.)

6. Prestige is a motivator that I would not have considered as I studied to be a teacher, but in Japan studying English has a definite cachet.

7. New family situations bring a surprising number of people to class. Some have a new son or daughter-in-law that speaks English. Others have grandchildren born and raised abroad that don’t communicate well in Japanese.

8. A filling station pit stop is what some students who have lived abroad seek. They have acquired English after being transferred or studying overseas, and want to keep their ability from running out.

9. Intellectual stimulation through learning English keeps some of my students coming through the door. They enjoy discussing ideas, some even adopting a debating style of interaction for the sake of conversation. Especially in the advanced level class, people have told me that they enjoy a good conversation about weighty themes.

10. Habit has got to be one of the reasons a few people come. I think they just don’t know what else to do with their Tuesday evening, and don’t want to expend the effort finding another gig.

The metaphysical study of the coming and going of students in a classroom over time fascinates me. One night they come, we talk in English of our lives, and sometimes they continue many nights or years. For some our first class is our last. Sometimes they tell me a version of why they are there or why they are leaving, and as a teacher I can listen to what they tell me and learn, but in the end, why they are there and why they go will always be a mystery. These 10 motivations are the closest I can get to pegging down why some of them come so I can arrange learning experiences that will address their needs.

Dan Kirk currently teaches at Yokkaichi Nursing and Medical Care University in Yokkaichi, Japan. Whether he’s in a classroom or his fields, cultivating English as a Foreign Language or rice, horticulture is his work.  He has lived in Japan for 23 years and teaches English as a Foreign Language, Professional Speaking, and Teacher Development. In addition to his career as an educator, he is also a professional farmer. You can follow Dan through his teacher blog, EFL in Japan, his farmer blog, Jinriki, and as yokkaichi1 on Twitter.

I can still remember my first Christmas lesson seven years ago. My 3rd graders were making little Santas from red paper and we were chatting about the presents they expected to get that year. Foolish as I was back then, I suddenly asked ‘Of course you no longer believe in…?’. No, I didn’t finish that question with ‘Santa’ as the bewildered look in my students’ eyes prevented me from doing so. You see, they still believed in Santa and if I hadn’t hesitated I would have made an irreversible mistake. I would have taken away their dreams.

So easy. So simple. That time I understood how vital what we say to our students is. We, teachers, have enormous power because what we say somehow becomes the truth or is seen as such. It’s an immense responsibility.

Here, in Turkey, the situation is even more complex. There are topics that you should never talk about with your students. Some time ago my adult group started a conversation about fasting during Ramadan. Most of the students were convinced that it’s a very healthy thing, the others refused to accept that. Eventually they asked me for an opinion and… I didn’t know what to say. Having two options: a) stating my opinion and b) refraining from taking part in the discussion, I chose the latter. Would they benefit from learning my point of view anyway?

One might call it cowardice or a form of escape but I think it was a wise decision. Sometimes it’s better to step down, listen and observe your students instead of spoon feeding them with ideas of your own. Sometimes less is more – that’s the lesson I learned from my students.

Anita Kwiatkowska holds a M.A. in English Philology from the University of Gdansk, Poland. She has been teaching kids and adults in Poland since 2001 and in 2007 she moved to Turkey. During the week she does her best teaching young learners. At the weekends she performs her duties as a Cambridge ESOL oral examiner, runs workshops for teachers or travels. She is a huge fan of Pedro Almodovar, loves face painting and sometimes indulges in Indian cuisine.

You can follow Anita’s adventures on her blog and on Twitter.

“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow” John Dewey

Kindergarten has always been the place to make friends, paint pictures, tell stories, play games and have fun while learning. Wooden blocks and legos have always been favorites in kindergarten classes. Today, the world is undergoing a digital change, changing our children digitally as well. Marc Prensky says “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach” in his Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants article. I agree with him wholeheartedly.

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time” Chinese proverb

If we can find a way to integrate the new coming technologies into our teaching, we can help our kids to extend their learning and empower their creativity. It is also a way to enhance your innovative skills as a teacher in designing lessons or creating new projects with your kids.

Using Web 2.0 tools in kindergarten may seem difficult to implement but the results can be fruitful. There are enough online tools to bring technology into your classes that can make your children inspire, excite and make connection with the rest of the world. Here are my 5 favorite tools for teachers of very young learners:

Shidonni is a site where students can draw their favorite animal with a world to live in it and see the animal spring to life. Kids take care of their animals by feeding, petting or sending them to sleep. The animal eats the food that kids have drawn for it. They can choose if they want their pet to walk or fly, and they can name it. Kids can draw a background and change it whenever they want. They can play games with their virtual animals or send them to their friends to play with their animals. You can watch this introduction video. This site is great for kindergarten students but I’m sure primary kids will love and enjoy this site too!! This can be a great tool for digital storytelling or describing animals or daily routines.

Voki is a great tool to create a personalized speaking avatar. You can customize your character, change the background. You record your voice or use text to speech to make your avatar speak. Voki avatars can be used to improve listening and speaking abilities. We can use it as an introduction, recording a message for our students, different role play activities, pronunciation of target vocabulary. Kids love to create their own avatars, recording their voices and listening to it. You can read Shelly Terrell’s guest post about using vokis in classes.

TalkingPets is site where you can make the pets talk using text-to speech system. You choose pets from a selection of cats and dogs and accessorize them or kids can choose to upload their own pet’s picture and attach a virtual mouth. You choose voice and write the text for your pet. If you put comas between the words, you can make your pet speak slower. Kids will love to create their own pets and make them talk. If they are learning how to write in English, this can be good for short writing activities, listening the correct pronunciation and integrating technology into your classroom. If you like this site, I’m sure you will love to use Acapelatv as well. You choose from different flash animations and write whatever you want the character to speak and you have many language options.

Voicethread is a must-use tool in kindergarten classes. It’s a great way to integrate technology into storytelling. It allows you to combine voice, text, video, and images to create a digital story. Once you create the voicethread, others can also leave comments on it by recording, filming or writing a text. Voicethread is also a great opportunity to collaborate with other students from all over the world. Kids can draw their own pictures and talk about it, or create their own stories and record their voices while telling it to others. They can talk about their animals by putting their pictures on a slide on voicethread or families. We can record our voices and read stories to kids to listen at home. This tool can help our kids to improve their listening, speaking and writing skills.

Glogster is a tool to create online posters adding different multimedia on it. You can write, grab or record audio and video files; you can upload pictures and use numerous graphics by changing them in size and colors. You can add videos from SchoolTube directly on your glog. With all the colors, graphics and the multimedia, Glogster is a lovely tool to introduce new topics, create collaborative projects, online posters, invitation letters, timelines. You can embed your glog to your class blogs or wikis. This is what makes Glogster outstanding alongside with its visual impact. This will become a favorite in your class.

“There can be infinite uses of the computer and of new age technology, but if the teachers themselves are not able to bring it into the classroom and make it work, then it fails.” Nancy Kassebaum

Please! Let it not fail…

Özge Karaoğlu is an EFL teacher and a teacher trainer in Istanbul, Turkey. She is also the educational coordinator, script and screenplay writer of “Yes, I speak English” DVD series in America. She is currently working on a new “ELT reader series” for very young learners as the content and educational coordinator of this project. She blogs here and tweets here.

]]> http://www.teachingvillage.org/2010/03/09/moving-your-kindergarten-into-web-2-0-with-5-different-tools-by-ozge-karaoglu/feed/ 16 http://www.teachingvillage.org/2010/03/09/moving-your-kindergarten-into-web-2-0-with-5-different-tools-by-ozge-karaoglu/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TeachingVillage/~3/jeFj5MC3Tr4/ http://www.teachingvillage.org/2010/03/06/how-to-create-video-activities-on-a-teachers-blog-by-christina-markoulaki/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:37:12 +0000 Christina Markoulaki http://www.teachingvillage.org/?p=1241 Part of the series: Stuff All EFL Teachers Should Know

The focal point of my previous post on this blog were the potential ways teachers can help their students to organize and practice their knowledge by setting up a blog especially for them. Since video activities on a teacher’s blog seem to be the most appealing ones to learners of all ages, I will now briefly number a series of easy steps for those who wish to take advantage of the potential all kinds of videos offer for making attention- grabbing blog activities. It is to be noted that I have consciously avoided complex educational jargon, having outlined the procedure as it practically happens in an everyday lesson.

1) First, you have to choose a funny or informative video that will match with the subject matter of your latest lessons, current affairs, World Days that are always just around the corner or simply the students’ intense interest in a specific topic. Another great idea is to join the Bloggers Unite movement and pick world events to blog about from there, employing the readily available videos and badges.

2) Think of all the vocabulary or grammar students will need to know in order to complete this activity. Do not be too demanding; allow students to forget about the pressure placed upon themselves by coursebooks and enjoy this alteration to their lesson routine. Once you have gathered all the necessary words or grammatical structures, try to find a way to present them to students in a way that suits their level or age.

For example, when I am dealing with younger learners, I simply write the new words in fonts of different colours right at the beginning of the post, which gives us the chance to explain them and provide oral examples. Older students can even double-click on each of these words to get their English definition in a popping-up box if you have added the answers. com widget to your sidebar.

It goes without saying that all sorts of vocabulary games are possible here or the inclusion of links to the webpages containing these games. My experience, however, has shown that once a student has sat in front of a computer, he/she strives to quench a strange type of ‘thirst’ for some online learning, frowning upon the use of paper or other material in the presence of the most precious (at least to them!) educational tool of all: the computer!

3) Before watching the video, activities that require the students to predict what happens in the story offer them a great opportunity to practice various grammatical structures or the new vocabulary they have just been introduced to.  All the common presentation techniques employed with tapes/ DVDs apply to blog activities with videos, too. Guessing games about the character’s personalities or relationships are also possible in this stage. A good idea is to number all your instructions preceding and following the video in your post so that the whole procedure that is to be followed in the lesson is clear to everyone.

4) Watching the video with a purpose is what matters the most in enhancing the listening skills. Therefore, you should make sure that the students have understood the activities that will be subsequently done and that they bear in mind the ‘mission’ to be accomplished. Are they listening to get the gist or to spot specific details?  The students should also know how to handle all video buttons in order to follow your instructions accurately. It is important that, in this case,  it is not the teacher who operates the equipment; the students do, which gives them an even more active role during the whole process. Consequently, they need to function as a group and make coordinated moves to start and finish all activities together.

5) Finally, the learners complete the activities which can be oral (reproducing the main idea or answering specific questions, roleplaying, etc.) or written (mostly gap-filling exercises, embeddable quizzes or questions to be answered by a written comment under the post). To explain a little more about the quizzes, which ideally serve as a follow-up activity, you can easily create one using MyStudiyo or Google Docs. Either way you do it, you simply choose the type of quiz you wish, build it question by question and then get the HTML code to embed it in your blog. Personally, I was surpsised to see that MyStudiyo could contain timed questions and then provide students with the corresponding score on completion of the quiz. It also offers the possibility for you to insert a video at the beginning of the quiz or pictures relevant to each question to aid younger learners form mental images of the topic.

Apart from practising typing and other computer skills, all the above will additionally result in improved writing and speaking skills in a most pleasant way. An example of such an activity on my blog is Pigeon Impossible, but even more examples can be found in my previous post on the Teaching Village.

More about using video clips

and the required teaching techniques

in the EFL classroom :

• The Best Ways to Access Educational You Tube Videos at School by Larry Ferlazzo

• TEFL clips: ideas about how to exploit the endless possibilities You Tube videos offer in the classroom

• TeacherTube: Another great resource for teachers, added to Vimeo and TED

• Grammar movies for younger learners by the British Council

• Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals: fun grammar practice through movies

• Ideas for using movie previews on ESL Partyland

• Using video in your classroom on the Pearson Longman site

• 100 Awesome Classroom Videos to Learn New Teaching Techniques on Smart Teaching

My name is Christina Markoulaki and I am a certified EFL teacher in Greece, where I was also born. I am fortunate enough to have been trusted with students of all ages and levels within my 4 working years, their ages ranging from 4 to 44 years old! Using modern technology in the classroom to create new learning experiences is what fascinates me.

I have been trying to enhance my teaching with the new technologies since 1997 when I created my first web page while attending a seminar on New Technologies in Modern Language Teaching in Finland. But everything I did over those twelve years was nothing compared to what I have been doing since I joined Twitter and built my PLN in April 2009.

Today my students and I use technology to connect with students and teachers from all over the world. We tweet, we ning, we skype, we glog, we wiki, we blog … we learn, we understand, we respect.

While at my school there might not be many teachers who pursue new technologies, there certainly are many who lead a wide range of after school activities and dedicate a considerable amount of their free time to their students. Our principal likes to say that we are an extra-curriculum school, but she strongly encourages the teachers to connect with the students outside the classroom.

So on the one side we have these enthusiastic teachers who do extra work for no extra pay, and on the other there are students who participate in these activities not because of grades, but because they want to make a difference. What we get are excellent results in sports competitions, creative achievements and voluntary work.

The school’s basketball team has been Croatia’s school champion for years, handball and football teams boast excellent results, tennis and badminton players are on the way to the top and our swimmers have won lots of medals. The dance group “Big Deal” (their PE teacher is called Mrs Diel, hence the name) is invited to all the major competitions in Croatia. The Girls’ Choir has a long tradition of participating in different European competitions and last year they won silver medal at the Bratislava Cantat Festival. The members of the Debate Club regularly participate in teenage panel discussions. The Film Club won the first prize in the Croatian Teen Festival last year. We’ve organized a number of exchange projects with schools from Europe and the US. Our students go on field trips to different parts of Croatia as part of the project “Travel & Learn” on a monthly basis. Fundraisers are a common practice at my school. Last year we bought a mini kitchen for an orphanage, the year before it was a washing machine. The members of the School Volunteer Club play with toddlers in the orphanage and help out in a homeless shelter every week. Students learn French and Croatian sign language together with their teachers. Once a week they gather in the school’s basement to make wheel thrown pottery. In December, students show their creativity in decorating the school’s corridors and on Mardi Gras, a little bit of silliness in the classroom is a welcome break from hard work and seriousness.

The positive connections between students and teachers that we managed to establish contribute to students’ better classroom achievement and their personal growth. The students, provided with support and encouragement from their teachers, feel empowered to make a difference.

I feel greatly honored to be a guest blogger on this blog, especially because Barbara and her textbook series Let’s Go made my sons fall in love with the English language. Thank you, Barbara!

My name is Arjana Blazic and I’m an English and German teacher from Zagreb, Croatia. I’m committed to lifelong learning and I do it with great joy. I’m an avid user of new technologies and one of my major goals is to teach my students how to take advantage of all the possibilities that technology-enhanced learning can offer. I blog in English and in Croatian. You can find me on twitter and join me in my award-winning wiki Greetings from the world.

I think what every teacher needs to know is this simple secret to successful ESL/EFL classes: Students can accomplish so much more if the lesson has proper support. It is very difficult for students, particularly at the EFL level, to stand up in front of the class and spontaneously tell a story or talk about their lives. One great way to provide support is with a simple, versatile craft called a Flap Book. Students can use these as a prop for communication as they hold their Flap Books and then lift the flaps as needed to remind them of what they want to say.

All you need to make a flap book is a piece of paper (construction paper works best, but any kind of unlined paper would do), scissors and pencils or crayons. Fold the paper in half lengthwise. Make vertical cuts on only the front page to the center fold, leaving the back page intact.

Here are two easy example lessons to get you started.

1. Storytelling with The Enormous Turnip.

After reading the story to the students, elicit the characters who were present the last time they pulled the turnip. Then, make a flap book with eight flaps. Have the students write the word “mouse” on the first flap, “cat” on the second flap, “dog” on the third flap, “girl” on the fourth flap, “boy” on the fifth flap, “woman” on the sixth flap, “man” on the seventh flap and “turnip” on the eighth flap. Then, students can draw a picture of a mouse on the paper under the “mouse” flap, a cat under the “cat” flap, etc. (If you think drawing pictures is too time consuming, either assign the picture drawing for homework or make a worksheet using free clip art for all the characters that students can quickly cut out with scissors and glue under the flaps.) Once the flap book is completed, students can now use it to tell the story of the Enormous Turnip. Show the students the page of the book where all the characters are pulling the turnip, right before they finally pull it out the ground. This will be the part of the story that the student will tell. First the student lifts up the “mouse” and “cat” flap and says, “The mouse pulls the cat.” Then, the student lifts up the “cat” and “dog” flaps and says, “The cat pulls the dog.” Students continue going down the length of their flap book, lifting up two flaps at a time and saying, “The ___________ pulls the ____________,” until they finally reach the end of the flap book and say, “The man pulls the turnip.”

Any type of simple story that repeats information or adds information would be ideal for a flap book, such as, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

2. My week

Pre-teach the days of the week and after-school lessons and activities. Then, make a flap book with seven flaps. Hold the book vertically and write one day of the week on each flap. Students will write what they do after school under the flap for each day of the week. For example, if students go to soccer practice on Monday, they should write, “I go to soccer practice.” under the Monday flap. For the days students do not have after school lessons, I teach them the sentences, “I’m free.” or “I play with my friends.” Once the flap book is completed, students can take turns standing in front of the class and talking about their week. The student will lift the Sunday flap and say, “On Sunday, I ________.” and then continue for the rest of the days of the week.

When having the class make a flap book, it is important for this not to turn into an art project and take up valuable time that could be used to speak and practice English. Give the students a set amount of time upfront (around 10 – 15 minutes is ideal), set a timer, walk around the class to check up on how students are doing and let them know when they only have five minutes left.

Flap books are quick and easy to make and students really enjoy making and using them in class. They especially enjoy taking them home and presenting them to their families, which is a fantastic way of bringing their experience inside the English classroom into their real life!

Lesley Ito, originally from Florida, has been teaching English to EFL/ESL students in Nagoya, Japan for over 17 years. She is a teacher trainer, author and the owner of BIG BOW English Lab, a private language school with a unique cross-curricular focus. You can access her articles and free downloads at her school’s website at http://www.bigbowenglish.com/teachertraining.htm or read her blog at http://www.bigbowenglish.com/itolesley.htm. You can also follow her on Twitter.

If you hang out with teachers online, it’s easy to forget that the majority of teachers in the world—especially those working with young learners—do not have computers, much less internet, in their classrooms. If you are interested to see how the presentation turned out, you’re welcome to look at the slides and examples on my wiki.

This picture is an example from my workshop of a Voicethread book about favorites. I like Voicethread because it allows teachers to work on a project in class, without internet. It also allows teachers to save projects in a format that’s friendly for cell phones.

Here are the teachers from the Tokyo workshop using imaginary microphones to record comments to add to the Favorites Voicethread book.

Tokyo OUP Teaching Workshop from Barbara Sakamoto on Vimeo.

In each workshop, I asked teachers about what sorts of technology they had available to them at home, and in their classrooms. A show of hands is far from a scientific survey, but the results jive with my own observations as well.

Approximately 60% of the teachers have cell phones. About 50% of them believe that their students also have cell phones (children don’t generally get cell phones until upper elementary grades). The majority of students who access the internet access it from a cell phone, not from a computer. About 50% of the teachers have computers at home, and most them also have an internet connection of some kind. Just 2% have computers in their classrooms. The number of these teachers who have both computers and internet in their classrooms is less than 1%–one or two hands raised per workshop.  The teachers who have access to both computers and internet at school teach at international schools, or private elementary schools.

While this was a reality check for the state of technology access in Japanese schools, it was also a welcome reminder of the dedication teachers show for their own professional development (spending Sundays at workshops they aren’t required to attend) and their enthusiasm for new ideas. Since the workshops, teachers have been slowly making their way into online communities. They’re also moving beyond the workshop basics and coming up with ingenious ways to use technology to enhance their teaching, even if they don’t have computers in class.

P.S. I thought you might enjoy a glimpse into the “glamorous” life of authors on teacher training tours. This is me with my Let’s Go co-author, Ritsuko Nakata. We’re catching the train in Osaka.

I fell into the world of academic publishing a bit accidentally. After finishing my MA in TEFL/TESL I was interested in maintaining familiarity with what I had learned and was worried that if I didn’t actively maintain my participation in the discourse of the profession, then the MA would become little more than another piece of paper and set of letters on my resume. With that in mind, I joined the staff of JALT’s The Language Teacher (TLT) as a proofreader, and over the course of the past six years have moved through various roles at the publication, including Coeditor. As part of my involvement with TLT I was invited to work with the JALT Conference Proceedings team, where I have most recently served as vetting coordinator. There are a number of other publications that I have been or am involved in, including The Asian ESP Journal.

Barbara originally approached me about writing a blog entry on writing for academic publication, but I hope to expand that theme into an invitation for readers to participate as staff on academic publications in addition to writing articles. One reason I would encourage you to do so is that the face of the profession, and the dialog of its members, tends to be represented through journal articles. Since teachers with posts at universities are pressured to publish academically, and assessment of their job performance is at least partially dependent on securing academic publications, the discourse of EFL in journals tends to be centered on university students, their beliefs, motivations, and changes in proficiency over the course of their studies. Yet I believe this is a small part of what the profession represents, and that if more can be done to describe, measure, and share successful teaching methods and techniques from other age levels and contexts, then that would benefit the field as a whole.

While part of changing the current narrow focus on university English teaching involves teachers of children, adults, and non-traditional students writing for publication, that isn’t the whole picture. If you consider publications as representing the final form of a process negotiated and enacted by a team of people, then the picture of academic publishing becomes more three-dimensional. There is a large team of people (all volunteers in my experience) who process, evaluate, edit, proofread, layout, and ultimately produce journal content. Perhaps, not surprisingly, many of the people that participate in these communities are full time academic staff at universities. But particularly in regional publications, like TLT, and newer online publications, such as the Asian ESP Journal, there is extra space for people from outside university contexts to participate, and through that participation they can shape the dialog of journals.

As an example, while I hold an MA degree and am part of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for English Language Studies Open Distance Learning team, tutoring MA students and evaluating their work, I am not employed full time at any universities, instead working part time at a number of different places, including my own co-owned English school, Noah Learning Center. Thus when I served as editor of TLT I was able to add my perspective as more than just a university lecturer to the journal and I could encourage private language school teachers and teachers of children to contribute articles.

While I may be in the minority now, if more people like me take an active interest in joining the teams of such journals, I’m confident their combined voices will be able to find expression in the dialog of those publications. If you’re wondering where to get started in joining the staff of such journals, TLT editors tend to be taken from the proofreading team, and there is a description of proofreading duties available on their website. For those of you in Japan, other journals include Snakes and Ladders, produced through ETJ, or any of the JALT SIG publications. If you’re outside Japan and are interested in joining a journal or know of a journal that could use more staff, please include that information in the comments section of this post. Before I move on, one more journal I should mention for teachers of children is Teachers Learning with Children.

Participating as staff at these journals also ensures that you see and process texts written by others, which is one of the most powerful ways for you to learn and define your own writing voice, and offers a nice transition into writing your own articles for academic publication. Other advice I have regarding writing for publication is a little mixed. I’ve heard recommendations to write formulaic, lesson sharing articles as a start, such as TLT’s My Share-style articles. This is a potentially compelling beginning, but having just come from editing for TLT, I have to warn you that there’s a long wait to publishing these articles (up to a year), at least in TLT, perhaps because they’re so popular with first-time writers. I would instead recommend you connect with someone who already has some experience in academic publishing and see if there’s a project they’re working on that you could join, or if they are interested in helping you to conduct and write your own research. One place where teachers can meet and exchange ideas is MASH Collaboration (Meet, Ask, Share, Help), which also has a Facebook group you could join if you’re interested in this topic. There are a number of other similar groups, one of which I participate in is devoted to Task-Based Teaching in Japan. Finding someone who shares common interests and has some experience of the academic writing genre would help you to ensure your writing efforts are successful and also offers you an introduction to the genre of academic publishing, which is quite distinct from writing for other mediums.

Another place to search for potential co-researchers and coauthors is the comments section for this blog, which is how I would like to conclude my contribution, by inviting and encouraging you to share your own interests and expertise, and to find your own means of becoming more of an active voice in the discussion of English language teaching. Also, if you have any remaining questions, please feel free to ask them there. Hopefully I or another reader will be able to answer them. I certainly don’t consider myself enough of an expert in your context and situation to offer definitive advice, but I have faith that you understand yourself and your situation well enough that, given the tools for success, you will be able to pursue and attain it.

Thanks for reading this far. I really appreciate it, and am looking forward to reading and participating in the conversation that I hope this post sparks.

I am a teacher and researcher based in Nagano, Japan. My publications include exploration of TBL and academic publishing, and currently I’m interested in exploring reviewer evaluations of academic papers submitted for publication and contrastive analysis of academic writing across languages and cultures. I am active as an editor with JALT Publications and the Asian ESP Journal. I am also part of the University of Birmingham CELS Open Distance Learning team. Starting March 2010 I’ll be teaching a course on Academic Publishing through MASH Collaboration. For information about the course and for sign up details, please see our invitation.

I am pretty confident that a vast majority of EFL teachers relish blogging, but each one employs this practice in his/her teaching differently. I am therefore taking the initiative to write this post to ask and give an answer to this question:  Have you ever thought of creating a blog for your students to use? A blog that will challenge them to think, to produce the target language and subsequently demonstrate their work to the world?

If not, let me give you some ideas by sharing what my students’ page contains and how this content was created. I will mainly stick to the fundamentals of blogging; therefore, if anyone has more tips and tricks to offer, he/ she is welcome to do so in comment form.

It goes without saying that blogs for students’ use are extremely helpful in language learning, since they include:

• texts relevant to students’ interests or to the objectives of the lesson to which students can respond by leaving their comments. Besides, who knows their interests better than their teacher who daily receives their written and oral output? Having browsed the Net for such articles or stories, copy the beginning of the text and paste it on your blog. Do not forget to guide your students to the webpage where the complete article is by placing the link to it immediately after the extract you have chosen.

• link lists of useful sites for learners to practice all skills; thus, all links are being placed under easily accessible categories ( you can see how I have categorised the links I recommend to my students at the bottom of the side bar of this blog.) Forming visual galleries of the web pages you suggest to your students instead of simple lists is another great idea I first read about on ‘Free Technology for Teachers‘.

• photos and videos from school lessons and celebrations so as for parents to be able to download and keep this material which will demonstrate parts of their children’s learning journey. (Be sure to inform parents and get their written consent for this.) Personally, I have created Picasa and Flickr accounts where I upload the school photographs; as for the videos, a YouTube channel is my way of enticing parents and other teachers to take a ‘peek’ into the classroom. You will find a useful link about how to embed these in your blog in what follows.

• embedded slideshows, recordings, glogs, polls or even ebooks used or created during the lesson. In this way, the blog will serve as an excellent reference point for students who wish to go through the material discussed in class once again. They may even wish to vote for the play the class should put on next or check the level of their reading ability by listening to the recording of themselves reading poetry in class. Vocaroo.com is what I have used for recording purposes, while slideshare.net constitutes an excellent means for displaying your slideshows and documents. Team or individual e-posters (i.e. glogs) also appear to arouse everyone’s interest, so the site to create educational glogs will definitely come in handy. For those who are still ‘newbies’,  here is a comprehensive article I have recently come across named ‘How to Embed Almost Everything in your Site‘. It briefly explains how to display videos, RSS Feeds, slideshows, photographs, word documents, to name but a few straight on your blog.

• scanned student’s projects of all levels; as soon as learners of all ages (even teachers!) realize that their work is published online, they immediately feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction. Isn’t this the type of motivation we are all looking to instill in our students? What is more, parents can partially monitor their child’s progress and even leave their comment to encourage him/ her more. Only some basic mistakes should be corrected before publishing the project, since we all want the scanned document to represent our students’ real progress. Besides, mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and this is what all students, parents and teachers should finally internalize.

• all kinds of funny or educational videos, which offer a great opportunity to students who love exploring novel paths of knowledge. Some sites where such videos abound (apart from YouTube) are TED, Vimeo, Sky News and CNN. There is also an intriguing selection of educational YouTube video channels in Karenne Sylvester’s Kalinago English. (I intend to number the steps for anyone who wishes to prepare such an activity in my next post on this blog.)

This is how I have made use of the above features in my Students’ Page. The posts that follow are mere examples of the innumerable ways students can practice, enhance or exhibit their knowledge by regularly visiting a teacher’s blog. You can create any activity suits the objectives of your lessons as well as your personal philosophy of teaching and learning.

1. ‘Pigeon: Impossible‘ video activity followed by a quiz
2. Global warming activities: vocabulary, video and games
3. Ask Alain de Botton a question: a kind of poll, gathering advanced students’ professional worries for the future
4. Scanned junior projects, all combined in a PDF file and embedded in the blog; this was enabled by using Issuu.com
5. Slideshows, an electronic noticeboard ( available on wallwisher.com) and students’ projects concerning the issue of tolerance
6. Christmas games and activities for children: a link list
7. Traditional books vs Ebooks: article and written comments
8. An introduction to Geocaching for intermediate- level students
9. Poetry projects and recordings of students’ reciting
10. Youth crime: vocabulary, video and comments

Finally, you will be able able to find more examples of teachers’ and students’ use of blogging in the slideshow ‘Using Web Logs in the EFL Class‘.  I saved my favourite quotation for the end, as a reminder of what our inner power of will can do if we simply set it into action.

You don’t have to be great to start,

(to blog, I need to add)

but you have to start to be great.

by Zig Ziglar

My name is Christina Markoulaki and I am a certified EFL teacher in Greece, where I was also born.I am fortunate enough to have been trusted with students of all ages and levels within my 4 working years, their ages ranging from 4 to 44 years old! Using modern technology in the classroom to create new learning experiences is what fascinates me.

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