Exploiting online CPD (KOTESOL plenary)

On Sunday 21st November 2020 I took part in the 2020 KOTESOL Daejeon-Chungcheong Chapter Thanksgiving Symposium. The theme was ‘Looking towards 2021’, with the idea of moving beyond the survival skills most of us have been working on in 2020 for the new world we find ourselves in.

My talk took a fresh look at a subject I’m passionate about, online professional development. This was the abstract:

In an increasingly online world, there are a huge amount of opportunities for teachers to access professional development via the internet, but it can be challenging to know where to start. I’ll introduce you to a range of online professional development resources which you can use, and offer you advice on how to decide which ones might be right for you.

I presented without slides, instead using the summary below as my guide and showing the relevant resources as we arrived at them. It’s a whistle-stop tour, with the idea that you can get an overview, then come back to this post as many times as you like to explore the resources.

Why?

This question is two-fold.

Firstly, why is online professional development generally worth exploring? I’ll answer this one.

• It’s (mostly) free.
• It’s available whenever and wherever you can get internet access.
• It’s wide-ranging: there’s a plethora of resources to choose from.
• It can fit around you: you can exploit it as much or as little as you like, at whatever time and location you choose.

Secondly, why might you specifically want to exploit it? You’ll need to answer these questions for yourself.

• Do you want to only consume content, or create your own content, for example building up an online portfolio, or both?
• Do you want to explore broadly and dip into lots of areas, or have a more targetted approach focussing on specific puzzles or questions you have?

When?

Because resources available online are limitless, it can be hard to know where to start, and you may experience a feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) at the beginning – I certainly did! One way to combat this is to decide how much time you can dedicate to exploring, and how often you want to dive in. To some extent this will be determined by your answers to the second question above.

You may decide to set aside a dedicated hour or two a week, or five or ten minutes a day, to make professional development a habitual part of your routine.

Alternatively, you may decide that you prefer to set aside a few hours now and again to do a deep dive and really explore a particular area or resource.

Of course, this can change over time, but having an idea before you start can help you to decide what resources are most appropriate for you to explore, and/or whether it’s really worth starting that blog/podcast/Twitter account you’ve been considering.

It can also remove unnecessary pressure on yourself if you feel like you have to explore everything or produce the most amazing content ever seen in English language teaching – neither of these are likely, so accept it now and move on. You’ll be in a much healthier place if you go in with realistic expectations 🙂

How? What?

This list is in no way exhaustive, and if I wrote it again tomorrow, next week or next year it would certainly look different. Please comment if any of the links stop working or you have other resources to add to the list.

Consuming content: targetted research

If you have a specific topic or puzzle in mind, you have two options to find useful resources.

1. Choose one of the general interest resources below, then search their website for keywords connected to your topic.
2. Explore my bookmarks. I’ve been curating a list on diigo for 10+ years, adding anything which I think might be vaguely useful to anyone else, anywhere. You can try to read my mind and figure out which tag I might have used or do a general search in my bookmarks. Here’s a more in-depth introduction to what diigo is and how it works.

You might not find anything at first, but try different keywords and different resources and you’ll inevitably find something.

Consuming content: general interest

It’s very easy to end up down a never-ending rabbit hole with a list like this. Rather than trying to explore everything, consider your answers to the questions above, and choose the way in which you prefer to consume information, then select one or two resources to look at initially. As you explore, you’ll find that some types of development work for you, and others are less engaging. For me, I spend most time on blogs and blogging, and a little time on podcasts and Twitter, but I know there is so much more out there. As time goes on, you can return to the list and investigate other resources which take your fancy. Bookmark this page 🙂

Listen

Three TEFL podcasts I enjoy are:

• The TEFL Commute – Shaun Wilden, Lindsay Clandfield and James Taylor present the podcast that’s not about language teaching, but the subject always comes up. Episodes are generally 30-40 minutes. In 2020 they did a series of 10-minute episodes covering a range of different topics connected to online teaching, including lots of ideas for the classroom.
• TEFLology – Matthew Schaefer, Matthew Turner and Robert Lowe produce a range of different episode types. The numbered episodes include TEFL news, TEFL history (focussing on historical figures) and TEFL cultures (focussing on a key concept). There are also in-depth interviews, excerpts from John Fanselow’s Small Changes, Big Results book, and other ideas too. Episodes are generally 40-60 minutes.
• TEFL Training Institute podcast – Ross Thorburn presents ‘the bite-sized TEFL podcast’, originally with Tracy Yu, and now with a wide range of guests. Episodes are generally 15-30 minutes. I reviewed the podcast here.

Watch

There are lots of options in this category, but I’ll just explore three: webinars, lessons, and YouTube.

Webinars

A webinar is an online presentation, similar to a conference session. One example is the presentation at KOTESOL which this blogpost is based on. They can range in length from 10 minutes up to a couple of hours, and might be a one-off event or part of a series or event like an online conference.

You can either search for a particular topic e.g. ‘business English webinars’/’English reading skills webinars’, or find providers who have a large collection of webinars and explore their catalogue. For example, here are all of the IH Teachers’ Online Conferences (TOC).

Other providers include publishers like Oxford, Cambridge, Macmillan or Delta publishing, teaching associations like IATEFL, TESOL or EAQUALS (though recordings tend to be available to members only), or schools who run training events online, like IH Moscow or IH Bucharest. It’s generally possible to subscribe to a mailing list to find out about upcoming events.

Here is my diigo list of webinars to give you a starting point.

Lessons

There are hundreds of lessons available to watch online. I compiled a list (warning – clicking on the link opens a very bandwidth-heavy page!) which you can choose from. This is a great way to observe other classrooms, pick up activities and techniques, and hone your observation skills.

YouTube

Apart from webinars and lessons, there are lots of ELT-related YouTube channels. Any large organisation probably has a channel. Publishers often share short tips, like these ones from Cambridge on ideas for teaching outside the classroom. International House has a series of Timeless Teaching Tips. I’d welcome links to channels from individuals which I could also recommend.

You can watch hundreds of grammar presentations on YouTube to get ideas for how to explain grammar to your students, though this comes with a caveat: just because it’s on the internet, doesn’t mean it’s a model you want to follow. Philip Kerr explains. This could be a good way to hone your skills by working out what not to do!

Read

Again, there are various options here. I’ll look at blogs, magazines, and journals.

Blogs

Blogs come in all shapes and sizes, from light bite-sized activity ideas to lengthy in-depth research-based posts. They’re written by people from all walks of ELT: teachers, trainers, materials writers, researchers, lexicographers, and those who don’t fall into any one particular category.

You can find blogs in many different ways:

• Search for topics of interest plus ELT blog, e.g. ‘young learner ELT blog’.
• Look at the blog roll on somebody’s blog (mine is to the right if you’re viewing this on a computer) to see who they recommend.
• Search for a big organisation like a publisher or teaching association, plus the word ‘blog’.
• Explore my list of diigo links.

Once you’ve found a blog you like, you can subscribe to it, either by getting emails when a new post appears, or using a blog aggregator like Feedly to collect new posts in one place. I explain how Feedly works in a paragraph and a few screenshots in this post (press CTRL+F/CMD+F on a Mac and type ‘Feedly’ to find it quickly).

Here are four blogs which are currently active to start you off:

• Kate’s Crate – Katherine Martinkevich links to articles she has read with a short paragraph explaining why she thinks they’re interesting. Good for business English, management and teacher training.
• ELT planning – Peter Clements shares activity ideas and reviews of resources, plus concepts he’s learnt about in his own professional development. Posts vary in length. Good for young learners, teens, and learning about a huge range of concepts and resources across all areas.
• What they don’t teach you on the CELTA – a group of bloggers covering a wide range of different topics, particularly relevant to private language school ELT. Many are aimed at relatively new teachers, but posts often make me think too.
• TEFLtastic – Alex Case is probably the most prolific ELT blogger on the internet, constantly sharing new resources. His blog is a goldmine of resources covering every area of teaching you can possibly imagine.

Apologies to blogging friends who I haven’t included – there are so many great blogs out there!

Magazines

Most ELT magazines require a subscription, but some are free. Even paid magazines tend to have some free content, such as sample issues. They cover a wide range of topics in a single resource. Here are a few to investigate:

• IH Journal – although it is called a journal, it’s more of a magazine in my opinion. Completely free, with articles available separately or as part of full downloadable magazines. Many articles are written by IH teachers past and present, but other writers are featured too. (Disclaimer: I’ve written a regular article for every edition for a few years now.)
• English Teaching Professional (ETp) and Modern English Teacher are both published by Pavilion Publishing and Media. They feature articles from around the world and across the teaching profession.
• EL Gazette – this is more news-based, so is a good way to get a sense of the wider profession. It also has a reviews section.

An alternative source of magazine-type content is newsletters if you are a member of a teaching association or special interest group.

Journals

Journals are generally peer-reviewed and edited, as opposed to blogs where the writers can publish whatever they want to. They are generally more academic and research-based than magazines. Some are behind paywalls, but KOTESOL have compiled a long list of ELT journals with free content available. LearnJam have a shorter list of 5 online journals, including some which are subscription-only, with more detailed information about each journal. Although the ELT Journal from OUP is subscription-only, the ‘Key concepts‘ section of each is freely downloadable, and is an excellent place to start if you want to find out more about research.

Study

So far all of the resources can be accessed in under an hour, but you might prefer something more in-depth or structured, and the internet can provide this too.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free programmes which run for a few weeks. They generally involve you studying at your own pace and participating in text-based discussions. FutureLearn and Coursera both have various courses connected to ELT. I found the Coursera Teaching EFL/ESL Reading: A Task-Based Approach course particularly useful, as well as the FutureLearn Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching one. Courses are free, but you can get a certificate if you pay.

The International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi) is a very active community run by teachers, for teachers. They run a variety of courses, from basic TESOL certificates to ‘Advanced Skills’ courses, with tutors from all walks of ELT. Their Teachers’ Room is open to all members to participate in discussions.

The Association for Quality Education and Training Online (AQUEDUTO) is an accreditation body for online teacher training. They have a directory of courses which have been checked for quality.

Producing content

Online professional development isn’t just about consuming resources created by others. You can also learn a huge amount by sharing content you have created. The act of preparing your thoughts for other people to see/hear forces you to reflect on what you want to say and how best to say it. It can also start conversations which take you in directions you’ve never considered before.

Write

Writing gives you the chance to take time over framing your thoughts, and go back and edit. Looking back over things you’ve written in the past is a fascinating way to track your professional development over time – I certainly couldn’t have predicted where I would be now when I started my blog ten years ago.

Twitter

Writing tweets can be a great way to get started with writing your own content. You can join in discussion in Twitter chats like #eltchat, ask questions, or answer questions from other educators. To find people to follow, find out who is sharing on a hashtag like #eltchat, then see who they are following. You could also start by following me @sandymillin.

Blogging and commenting

Explore your ideas in writing, share activities, and build a portfolio. I’ve written a fuller post on making the most of blogs, including advice for how to start your own and what to write.

If you’re not ready to start your own blog, commenting on other people’s posts with your own thoughts is a good way to start writing too. I don’t think I’m the only blogger who really looks forward to conversations in comment threads on my blog.

Interviews and discussions

The internet gives you direct access to members of the ELT profession from around the world. A polite email with some questions or thoughts about their work, or even a request to interview them, might bear fruit for you. Or perhaps you could write to the author of a book you’ve read about how you’ve used their ideas? Or ask an academic some questions about their research? You never know where these conversations might lead.

Speak

If writing isn’t your thing, you can also use the internet to speak about your ideas. This could be public, for example by creating a podcast or a YouTube channel, or private, maybe by arranging to interview somebody who works in a similar context to you, but in a different country.

Podcasting

The book Podcasting and Professional Development: a Guide for English Language Teachers by the creators of the TEFLology podcast is a good place to start if you want to find out more about how to create your own podcast. A lot of this advice would also be relevant to creating a YouTube channel. (Disclaimer: my blog is mentioned in the book!) (Affiliate links: Amazon, Smashwords)

Reflective practice groups

These are self-selected groups of teachers who come together to discuss a particular topic as equals. The range of potential topics is limitless. All you need is at least one other colleague who is willing to meet you for an hour or two, and you’ve got a reflective practice group. Zhenya Polotosova and Anna Loseva have written quite a lot about participating in groups like this. You can find out more using this list of bookmarks.

So what?

Once you’ve put in all of this effort to start developing online, what can you do with what you learn?

Share

Once you’ve found or created something, share what you’ve learnt with somebody else. This might be in your staffroom, or on social media. There are active communities of teachers on facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. It can take a little time to be brave enough to share in one of these communities (I lurked on Twitter for at least 6 months before I joined in), but if you take the plunge, you have the chance to learn so much.

Reflect

Ask yourself questions about what you’re reading and producing:

• How will you apply what you’ve learnt?
• What else do you want to learn about?
• Who else do you want to learn from?
• What biases might the people you’re learning from have? How can you get a fuller picture?
• Are you satisfied with your progress with teaching puzzles? What other puzzles do you want to explore?

If you’d like more reflection questions to answer, I’ve written two books of them: one for relatively new teachers, ELT Playbook 1, and one for teacher trainers, ELT Playbook Teacher Training. You can find out all the information about how to buy them on my books page.

What’s next?

I hope you’ve found that whistle-stop tour through the world of online CPD useful. I’ll leave you with three questions for you to think about and comment on below if you like:

• What area or resource will you explore next?
• What have you tried above?
• What else would you recommend?

Online CPD (IH Torun Teacher Training Day 2019)

Probably the topic I’ve presented on the most, but this version of the presentation was with a twist: I had no voice! That means the slides are more detailed than usual as they had to do the speaking for me. Thanks to those who attended and read along 🙂 Since the last version (already 5 years old!) I’ve added a little bit about podcasting and about ELT Playbook.

The slides include clickable links, but for ease of blog readers, I’ve also included a summary with links below as well. Feel free to ask me any questions or add other resources you think are useful for those starting out with online professional development.

Twitter

Twitter and #ELTchat are where my online professional development started, and as I’ve written before, they changed my life. The #ELTchat hashtag is one of the most active English-teaching-related hashtags on Twitter. The peak of activity is from 19:00-20:00 UK time every Wednesday, when a single topic is discussed. This continues for the next 24 hours in a slow burn on that same topic. The whole discussion is then summarised by one person in a blog post. All of the summaries are available in the #ELTchat summaries index, a one-stop shop for a huge amount of professional development. The hashtag is active throughout the week as people share ideas, resources and questions on all manner of ELT topics.

To find ELT people to follow, look at who’s posting in #ELTchat and who they follow. I’m @sandymillin on Twitter if you want to see who I follow.

Facebook

If you have a facebook account already, this is probably the easiest way to start your online professional development. Some people have two separate profiles, or a profile and a page: one for personal use and the other for professional use. I don’t, but only because I’ve been using facebook for so long it would take me hours to separate them now – I do only accept requests from people I’ve interacted with though.

There are hundreds of ELT-related facebook pages covering all aspects of the profession. The biggest is probably Teaching English British Council, which has nearly 4 million followers at the time of writing. The IATEFL facebook group, and those of the Special Interest Groups are another way to get an international perspective, as is the #ELTchat page. For those based in Poland, IATEFL Poland has an active page. Ela Wassell compiled a more comprehensive list of Facebook groups and pages back in 2013, the large majority of which are still active.

Webinars

Webinars are online seminars which you can follow live or watch as recordings whenever and wherever you like. Access to some recordings are restricted to members of particular organisations. There are a huge range of ELT webinars available now, covering pretty much every topic you can think of.

The easiest way to find webinars is to put “______ webinars” into your favourite search engine, substituting _____ for a particular topic e.g. “teaching English pronunciation”, or any of the following providers:

• Macmillan Education
• National Geographic Learning
• International House
• Oxford University Press
• IATEFL
• Cambridge University Press
• British Council
• EFL Talks
• Pearson

If you’re looking for something bite-sized, the IH Teachers Online Conferences include lots of 10-minute webinars. You could also look at my webinar bookmarks, or the regular lists of upcoming webinars posted by Adi Rajan on his blog, like this one for February and March 2019. Adi lists webinars both inside and outside ELT which he considers relevant.

Podcasts

As with facebook, if you already listen to podcasts this is a very easy way to add a bit of CPD to your life. My three favourite TEFL podcasts are:

• TEFL Training Institute podcast: 15 minutes, 3 questions answered on a given topic
• The TEFL Commute podcast: 35-45 minutes, magazine style, “The podcast that’s not about teaching, but the subject always seems to come up.”
• The TEFLology Podcast: Two formats:
  • 45 minutes with three areas: TEFL news, TEFL pioneers, TEFL cultures
  • 30-45-minute interviews with people from across the TEFL profession

The guys from TEFLology have also written a book called Podcasting and professional development [affiliate link] which tells you how you can start creating your own podcasts, as well as providing a longer list of podcasts related to teaching.

Polish bloggers

Here are four blogs which are written by English teachers in Poland:

• Lesson Plans Digger (in English)
• Authentic Teaching (in English, Polish and German)
• Trener Angielskiego (in Polish)
• Sylwia Clayton (in Polish)

Thanks to Hanna Zieba for sharing these links.

I didn’t share any more information about blogs and blogging, because Making the most of blogs was my IH Torun TTD presentation in 2018.

Online bookmarks

I couldn’t possibly keep track of all of these links without the use of diigo, an online bookmarking tool. Here’s my beginner’s guide to diigo in the IH Journal. I’m constantly adding to my professional development links on diigo, and you can also see all of my diigo links ever. They are tagged with different topics to help you find your way around (if you can understand my thinking process of course!)

ELT Playbook

Of course, no presentation I do nowadays is complete without mentioning ELT Playbook, my series of books containing tasks to help teachers improve their ability to reflect on their careers. Each task is accompanied by reflection questions and ideas for ways to summarise your reflections in a blogpost, video or audio recording, Instagram-style post, or a private teaching journal.

ELT Playbook 1 was launched just over a year ago, aimed particularly at new teachers, but also at managers and trainers who work with them, or more experienced teachers who want to go back to basics.

ELT Playbook Teacher Training is in the final stages of preparation, and will hopefully be ready to buy in the next 2-3 weeks – watch this space! It’s aimed at those new to teacher training, either in training or management positions, and also has tasks which could help those creating workshops or conference presentations for the first time.

This should give you a good starting point for your own online professional development. What other resources would you suggest? And what questions do you have?

Behind the scenes

tekhnologic commented on 100: Behind the Scenes of Tekhnologic.

in response to Sandy Millin:

A fascinating post, and I completely agree with Svetlana. Your blog is truly inspiring! Here’s to the next few hundred posts 🙂

Thank you Sandy. Let’s see if I can make it to two hundred first! Will you join #ELTbehindthescenes and share with us what goes into making your blog?

How could I refuse? Thanks for the invitation T!

Last week I put together a series of posts about the IATEFL Glasgow 2017 conference. It’s something I’ve started to do every year, and every year I forget just how long it takes 😉

While I’m at the conference I tweet throughout any and all of the talks that I go to, providing I can connect to the wifi. This is for two reasons:

1. As notes to download later ready to put together my posts
2. To help other people feel like part of the conference: I started out on the receiving end of the tweet stream, and I know how lucky I am to be there.

Here are some fascinating graphs from TweetStats that show you when I’m at conferences 🙂

Tweets per day in the last year

Guess when the conference was

If the wifi’s not working, then I use the iPad Notes app, but still write as if I’m tweeting.

I’ve been tweeting throughout conferences for six years now, and it feels fairly automatic. I’m also pretty quick now 🙂 I can take most of it in, but obviously I don’t always notice everything, so that’s where it’s handy when other people are tweeting from the same talk. I also look at the conference hashtag regularly to retweet things from other talks that I’m interested in.

After the conference, I look back at the list of talks I went to using my paper daily planners, and categorise them, so for example this year I had Listening and Pronunciation, Teacher Training, Materials Writing… It’s the first time I spot what the main themes of my conference were. I set up a draft post for each theme, plus ones for Miscellaneous, Things I Missed, and a summary to bring all the posts together.

I use Tweetdownload to get a .txt and a .html file of my tweets. I start with the .txt file open from the beginning of the conference/the bottom of the stream, deleting tweets as I put them into the relevant blogposts. If I want to embed a tweet or follow a link, I use CMD+F to find it on the .html file. Clicking the tweet in the Tweetdownload file automatically opens the original on Twitter. This is when the learning happens, as I have to organise my thoughts into something coherent and logical. It’s also when I go down a lot of rabbit holes, following up on things that I didn’t have time to investigate during the conference itself.

Normally I only have a handful of tabs open in my browser, but when I’m writing up the IATEFL posts, it’s a bit different:

The top right window has all of my posts. Bottom right is the Tweetdownload .html file, and a tweet I’m getting ready to embed. Bottom left is the .txt file to delete things as I write them. Top right has everything else, like the British Council IATEFL links for me to find videos, Amazon if I want to put in affiliate links (the only way I make any money from this), and various other things that I can’t remember now.

Because there were so many tabs open, I didn’t switch my computer off overnight, something I normally do religiously. It would have been too much faff to open them all again! This time round, it took me about five hours on Monday, and thirteen or fourteen on Tuesday to write everything up. It must always take me that long, but I’ve never really noticed it before!

I think in the past I’ve done one theme at a time and looked for the tweets for the relevant talk, so I’ve published the posts as I go along. This year I published them all simultaneously, apart from the last one, so that I could put the live links onto the summary straight away.

So there you have it: that’s how I turn just under 1000 tweets into 8 blog posts. 🙂

If you blog, I’d be fascinated to hear something about how you go about it. Let’s find out more about #ELTbehindthescenes

Online Professional Development – 2014

This week we’re running a series of 90-minute teacher training seminars at IH Sevastopol. The first is about online professional development.

This is a topic I’ve covered many times before, but since I change the slides a little each time, I’ve uploaded the latest version below. To hear the most similar recorded version, go to my October 2013 Online CPD post. July 2014’s version is slightly different from slide 12 onwards.

The only other difference, not included in the slides, is that the Teaching English British Council facebook page now has over 2.5 million likes! What a great community to be part of!

I look forward to connecting to you online!

Photo taken from ELTpics by Ana Maria Menezes, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license

ELTchat podcasts

If you’ve never heard of ELTchat, you’re missing out!

It started out as a Twitter chat on Wednesdays, with two one-hour sessions every week. There’s now only one chat a week, alternating between lunchtime and evening British time, but apart from reducing the number of chats, the ELTchat community has only got bigger and bigger, incorporating:

• the original hashtag, which is active throughout the week, and is full of resources for English Language teachers;
• the website, your one-stop shop for everything ELTchat, including:
• the (amazing!) summaries index: after every chat, some lovely person offers to write a summary of what was discussed, and it’s then linked from this page. After nearly four years of weekly chats, there are a huge amount of summaries available.
• the facebook group, especially useful if you find Twitter difficult (it’s worth persevering, I promise!);
• and, last but not least, the podcasts…

The podcasts are put together by James Taylor, and bring together various topics from the ELTchats that have taken place between one podcast and the next. They also include interviews with the chat moderators and other ELTchat participants so you can get to know them a bit better.

You can find a list of all of the podcasts on the ELTchat site or download them through iTunes, among other places. There are currently 23 episodes available, covering a whole range of topics, including error correction, mindfulness, and teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing students, among other things.

In the June 2014 podcast, you can find my interview with Hada Litim, one of the newest moderators. I’ve also contributed to a few other episodes.

I can honestly say that ELTchat changed my life – it introduced me to dozens (hundreds?) of passionate teachers from around the world, gave me ideas to take into the classroom, made me think, kick-started my blogging and contributed to my professional development in more ways than I can count. Take a look, and see what a difference it can make to your teaching too!

A brief introduction to online professional development (IH DoS conference 2014)

I’ve just returned from my first International House Director of Studies conference, which I will hopefully write about later this week.

I did a ten-minute session as part of a ‘speed-dating’ format, where I presented the same idea five or six times – I lost count! Here are my slides, along with the associated links, with a commentary aimed at Directors of Studies, but which will hopefully be useful to anyone who reads it.

Shelly Terrell

This is Shelly Terrell, one of the most prolific sharers of content online. Her blog is Teacher Reboot Camp, where she has a lot of information about using technology in class, along with other areas of teaching, as well as the 30 Goals Challenge. She also does webinars every Friday for the American TESOL institute. I chose this picture to start my presentation because it sums up why I love online CPD – great people, a caring community, and lots of ideas.

Twitter

This is where my online professional development started. I like Twitter because it’s completely open – you can follow anyone, anyone can follow you. Although I use it less now than I used to, I still look at it briefly every day, and use it a lot during conferences.

A tweet is 140 characters, the same length as a text message. Here’s an example:

‘@’ introduces someone’s Twitter name (or ‘handle’). When it is blue, you can click on it and choose to follow that person or organisation, so that you can read what they are writing about. In this example @KatySDavies and @BCseminars are clickable.

‘#’ introduces a topic on Twitter (or ‘hashtag’). You can click on it to read everything people are saying about that topic. This example includes the hashtag #eltchat, which is one of the most popular hashtags for the English teaching community.

Every Wednesday, at 12pm and 9pm UK time a one-hour conversation takes place using the #eltchat hashtag. The topic for each chat is announced beforehand, and anyone can join in simply by including the hashtag in their tweets. At the end of the chat, one participant summarises the conversation and turns it into a blogpost. The blogposts are collected in the #eltchat summaries index, one of the most useful resources on the web. #eltchat started in October 2010, and previous chats have covered an incredibly wide range of topics. Some chats that might be particularly relevant for Directors of Studies include:

• What makes a good Director of Studies?
• What can teachers learn from good managers?
• Time management for teachers

For a more in-depth introduction to using Twitter, take a look at my beginner’s guide.

Facebook

There are a lot of pages on facebook which are aimed at English teachers. Some are location-specific (e.g. Czech Republic, Turkey), some are by authors (e.g. Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley) and others are by publishers (e.g. Richmond ELT).

As far as I’m concerned, the most useful page is Teaching English – British Council, which has nearly 1.5 million likes as I write this. Ann Foreman, who runs it, posts a whole range of links, starts discussions, and shares ideas. It’s a thriving community.

For many teachers, facebook is probably the easiest way of accessing online professional development, as if you already use facebook, it’s a simple matter of clicking ‘like’ on a couple of pages.

Blogs

Since I started blogging about three years ago, I have changed dramatically as a teacher. While a lot of this is due to the fact I started using social media professionally at the same time and have now done my Delta, blogging has made me more reflective, and forced me to up my game in terms of the materials I produce, knowing they will be used by other people.

There are a huge range of English teaching blogs out there. You can find some of the ones I follow in my blogroll on the right of this page. I also have a Blog Starter List – if you think you should be on there, let me know!

To keep track of the blogs I follow I use a ‘reader’ called Feedly. It’s available online and as a free app. There are many readers out there, and this is just one example. You put the addresses of the blogs you follow into the reader, and it then becomes a one-stop shop, by automatically including all new posts from those blogs, meaning you don’t get a full email inbox, and you don’t have to remember to look at each blog individually on the off-chance there’s a new post. The image above shows you my list of posts to be read at the moment.

Two blogs which are particularly good for Directors of Studies are Be The DOS by Josh Round at St. George International, and The Secret DOS, which is incredibly funny, particularly his post about timetabling.

Webinars

A webinar is an online seminar, normally videoed, which you watch from the comfort of your own home. A lot of organisations provide webinars, including OUP, Cambridge, Macmillan, Pearson and British Council. My favourite ones so far were the 10-minute webinars at the International House 60th anniversary online conference. Click on the picture below to see them all.

 

There are now webinars on an incredibly wide range of different topics, so if you have one or two teachers who need input on a particularly topic, but not enough to warrant a full CPD session, you could refer them to a webinar, which you can then discuss with them afterwards. If you want to find a webinar on a particular topic, use the #eltchat hashtag on Twitter or one of the facebook pages mentioned above to ask people to point you in the right direction.

Questions

The most important thing about social media is how supportive the ELT community is. If you have any questions about anything mentioned in this post, please don’t hesitate to ask. Good luck!

Moving to a new country (Sevastopol)

A few days after I arrived in Sevastopol, Lea Sobocan posted this on facebook:

I have a request for my PLN – more specifically for the segment of you who have experienced living in another country/culture.

I’m currently discussing moving to another country/immigration with my students and I’d really appreciate any thoughts, feelings, difficulties and joys to be found in living abroad. Preferably in audio form, but whatever works for you.

Some of the people I’ve spoken with saw immigration to another country as something you just get up and do and they seem to be certain everyone will greet them with open arms. I’d like to offer a more balanced view and a first-hand account of someone who had this experience.

Any help, in form of text, audio clip or similar will be greatly appreciated.

Lea had helped me before by recording a clip about her favourite TV show, so I thought it was only fair I return the favour. I recorded this audioboo about moving to Sevastopol, then promptly forgot about it:

A few days later I was surprised to get a message from Claire Hart telling me that she had created a series of activities around my two-minute recording. I asked her to share the result with you, and I think you’ll agree, it’s a pretty good lesson. Thanks Claire!

How Claire used the recording

Killing a bit of time before the first class of the day, I found myself reading my Twitter feed. One of the tweets that popped up was from Sandy Millin. It was a link to an audio recording she had posted on Audioboo where she talked about her experience of recently relocating to Sevastopol, Ukraine. The class I was about to start teaching was a C1 group who had asked for practice listening to British people speaking because they tend to find their British colleagues difficult to understand. I’d been using excerpts from BBC television series and BBC world service podcasts with them over the previous weeks, but Sandy’s recording seemed to provide a refreshing alternative to that.

I decided to take a chance and improvise an activity around Sandy’s recording with just 2 minutes to go before the class started. This was a bit of a challenge, but I found that having to think on my feet rather than going through a pre-planned, pre-rehearsed routine made me more present and alert. What was striking is how surprised the learners were to learn that Sandy is a real person and she’s talking about experiences that she has really had. I suppose this just goes to show how learners get used to listening to people playing fictional characters having scripted conversations with each other. When I told them that I actually know Sandy, their enthusiasm shot up even more. I’ve used this recording with several groups at a range of levels and, interestingly, all of them seem to have understood more of what Sandy said than they usually understand when we listen to a recording designed for English learning. Even my A2 group could accurately recount the key points that Sandy made and include some of the detail.

The “real-ness” of this activity was particularly palpable when I used the recording with a group of eight, five of whom have moved to Germany from either Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Poland or Romania. When I asked them to consider why people would move to a foreign country, what difficulties you can face when you make that move and how you can overcome them, the non-Germans in the group were able to tap into their real experiences and share those with the others. When I asked them to write short texts evaluating the benefits and difficulties of moving to a foreign country, what I got back from them were honest and touching accounts of how hard moving to a foreign country can be, but how it can help you to find a better quality of life. They put a lot of effort into writing these texts because the topic was important to them. Even the learners who haven’t had the experience of moving to another country themselves, seemed to have a lot of empathy for Sandy and were keenly interested in what is going on in her life.

The lesson skeleton

1. Look at the statement “I’ve just moved to Sevastopol”

• What have I done?
• When did I do it?

2. Ask the learners if they know where Sevastopol is. Can they find it on a map of Europe? What do they know about Ukraine? Which countries are its neighbours? What languages do they speak there? What food do they eat? Have they ever visited this part of the world?

Memorial to Heroic Defenders of Sevastopol

3. Show them information about the population of Sevastopol, its climate and its landmarks and ask them to say what questions this information gives you the answers to. You can also use this as an opportunity to practise saying long numbers, comparing temperatures or discussing what sights they enjoy visiting.

Chersonesus, an Ancient Greek town in the suburbs of Sevastopol

4. Ask them if they think Sevastopol would be a good place to go on holiday to. Why/ why not?

5. Ask them to brainstorm reasons why someone would move to Sevastopol. Then ask them to speculate about why Sandy, an English teacher who is originally from England but who’s lived in a few different countries, would move to Sevastopol.

6. Listen to the recording and give them level-appropriate questions to answer. A lower-level question could be: What words does Sandy think you should learn first when you move to another country and why? A higher-level question could be: What difficulties did Sandy face when she arrived in Sevastopol and how has she been able to overcome them?

7. As a follow-up or homework task, you can ask the learners to write a text on the benefits and difficulties of living a foreign country.

This presentation has slides connected to each of the steps in the lesson skeleton:

(You can download it by clicking ‘slideshare’ and logging in – it’s free to create an account, and you can link via facebook if you want to.)

What I’ve learned here is that if you make a recording where you honestly describe interesting, unusual or important experiences in your life and share it through sites like Audioboo, you can produce meaningful authentic audio material that learners will respond really well to because it’ll resonate with them and their lives. The response I’ve received to using this recording has been extremely positive and my learners are now keen to know what Sandy does next.

About Claire

Claire Hart teaches general English, business English and technical English to university students and business people in Southern Germany. She frequently presents on topics such as using authentic materials, mobile learning and teaching technical English at ELT conferences. She’s also a course book and teacher’s book author and an online materials writer, specialising in business English and ESP materials.

Online Professional Development

Today I have done an updated version of my Twitter for Professional Development seminar. I have now decided to focus on:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Webinars

…as the Twitter site has improved a lot, although it can still be difficult to follow chats on it, and I now find that I get a lot out of facebook and webinars in terms of professional development.

You can still find my complete introduction to using Twitter for Professional Development, although the information about Google Reader is now outdated as it no longer exists. I have started using feed.ly instead.

Here is a complete recorded version of the presentation:

If you do decide to start using online professional development, I’d be interested to hear from you. I am also happy to answer any questions about it which I can.

Good luck!

Starting the Delta

No, not time travel. Instead, a few questions for Chris Wilson, who’s about to start the Delta. He’ll be dedicating his blog, elt squared, almost exclusively to Delta for the duration of his course. Here are my questions and his answers:

1. Why did you decide to do Delta?

   As soon as I heard there was a higher level teaching certificate than the Celta, I knew I wanted to get it at some point. I heard that I needed two years teaching experience, something that I am grateful for, but I knew I didn’t want to be a “base-level” teacher, although since then I’ve realised there are plenty of great teachers who haven’t done the Delta but still have learnt a lot over time.
   I wanted to really know why I should teach in a certain way and how to craft better lessons. I guess I also just love learning about language, teaching and how the brain works. Really I just want to know more about teaching and help people more.

2. How are you going to do it? Why did you choose this method?

   I’m doing a modular distance Delta, which means I’m taking each module on it’s own when I want, fitting them in as I can. This was largely a practical decision tying in with the financial help that I could get from my school, but also because of difficulties in finding a local tutor for module two. I am probably going to have to do module two intensively at a local centre because of that.
   Also I’m interested in taking a closer look at how the distance delta does the distance learning aspect of the Delta so our school can hopefully steal some ideas too 🙂

3. How much do you feel you know about the course before you start?

   I feel I know quite a lot about the course thanks to ELTChat and the recent “How to survive the Delta” discussion (and the previous “what has the delta ever done for us” one). I’ve also spent the last few months just asking people who had done the course lots of questions. At the same time I don’t know anyone who has done it the way I am about to, so I’m still unsure how it will go!

4. How have you prepared for the Delta?

   I’ve been asking a lot of questions, blogging for professional development and getting my note-taking system in order. At the same time we’ve been really busy here at work recently (and I’ve been finishing off a few projects that I want to get done before the start of the Delta) so perhaps erratically would be the best adverb 🙂

5. What do you think will be the most useful part of the course?

   I am really looking forward to all of it, to be honest, and I am sure it will all be useful. I can’t wait to up my game in both knowledge of terminology and methodology, conducting a research project and lesson observations. In all honesty the lesson observations and classroom practice probably scares me the most and so is probably the part that will be most useful for me.

6. What will be the most difficult part?

   I think it’s connected to the point above, class observations. I am quite clumsy and forgetful at the best of times but with stress I know I can slip up more and take longer to recover.

7. Anything else?

   I guess thanks to everyone who has helped with their advice and recommendation in relation to the DELTA. I hope you don’t mind me asking a few more questions over the coming months!

I’m looking forward to following Chris’ blog over the next few months, and even more, to the end of my own Delta on June 5th! This post is, in fact, procrastination, as I’m supposed to be getting ready for the third of my four observed lessons. Hope you found it interesting!

Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @senicko, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

English UK North

The English UK North conference took place at my school, IH Newcastle, on 6th October 2012. I presented on ‘Twitter for Professional Development’.

Here are all of the links I shared during my presentation:

• Twitter
• Russell Stannard’s introduction to Twitter
• Me on Twitter
• Barbara Sakamoto’s starter PLN: recommendations of tweeters for you to follow
• My list of International House schools on Twitter (please tell me if I have missed any)
• ELTchat
• ELTpics and the ‘Take a photo and…‘ blog
• Tweetdeck – a way to organise Twitter
• Diigo – a social bookmarking site
• Google Reader – a way to keep track of blogs you are following

You can see the slides from the presentation here:

(for some strange reason, slideshare has changed some of the formatting so a couple of slides look a little odd – apologies)

For a more detailed explanation of how to make the most of Twitter, look here.

And if you join, please let me know by tweeting me @sandymillin

IH TOC 50

International House is celebrating 50 years of teacher training courses. The first course took place in 1962, and was the forerunner to what is now the CELTA. As part of the celebrations, a one-day online conference has been organised for Friday 25th May 2012, and I am one of the presenters.

As it is my first webinar, I thought I would present on a topic I am familiar with, so I chose ‘Twitter for Professional Development’.

Here are all of the links I shared during my presentation:

• Twitter
• Russell Stannard’s introduction to Twitter
• Me on Twitter
• Barbara Sakamoto’s starter PLN: recommendations of tweeters for you to follow
• My list of International House schools on Twitter (please tell me if I have missed any)
• IHTOC50 on Tweetchat (IH Teachers Online Conference)
• ELTchat
• ELTpics and the ‘Take a photo and…‘ blog
• Tweetdeck – a way to organise Twitter
• Diigo – a social bookmarking site
• Google Reader – a way to keep track of blogs you are following

For a more detailed explanation of how to make the most of Twitter, look here.

Thank you to International House for providing me with the opportunity to present this webinar, and to Oxford University Press for providing the platform to host the workshop.

Twitter seminar for CELTA students, January 2012

Here is are the most important things from the seminar which I did this morning for the IH Newcastle CELTA students.

Link to the longer post on Twitter for Professional Development

Sandy Millin on Twitter

The tweets which were sent to us from other Twitter users (from newest to oldest):

Thanks to everyone who sent tweets!

duncan_lydburyDuncan Baker

@

@sandymillin Twitter is a really good way to have almost instant communication with all friends and colleagues round the world – friendly!

elizzabetttamartha ador

@

@sandymillin Hi! I love it because you can interact with people any time and get inmediate response! Greetings from Mexico ! Good luck !

1 hour ago

»

WinnersSchoolsWinners Education

@sandymillin #ELTchat Twitter’s great once you find the right connections.Groups you share interests with or “following” belong to are great

1 hour ago

»

leoselivanLexical Leo

@

@phil3wade @sandymillin I was in Paris for best friend’s bday so didn’t hang out much in the eves with conf crowd – so missed all the action

1 hour ago

»

daveclearyczDave Cleary

@

@sandymillin#eltchat New to twitter but finding it great because of the people, it is a social network not a technological one

1 hour ago

»

phil3wadephil wade

@

@leoselivan @sandymillin I wasn’t there but it seemed like a real benchmark in the EFL/Twitter world.

1 hour ago

»

leoselivanLexical Leo

@sandymillin as someone commented yday – attending confs is a whole diff ball game when you get to meet your Twitter followeres f2f

1 hour ago

»

leoselivanLexical Leo

@sandymillin seems half of my twitter buddies were at #TESOLFrance in Nov – I wish I’d been on Twitter then – could’ve met many inspiring Ts

1 hour ago

»

PhilPethybridgePhilip Pethybridge

Twitter brings things to your attention; provides help/ideas; links to blogs/sites; online staffroom; fun diversions! #eltchat @sandymillin

1 hour ago

»

cgoodeyCarol Goodey

@

@sandymillin Hope I’m in time! Twitter’s a gr8 way to keep up w/ what’s going on in ELT world, learn new ways of doing things, & get support

1 hour ago

»

aClilToClimbChiew Pang

@

@sandymillin hi y’all. It’s grt PD bc the world’s open to us. We shr probs, thoughts, reflectns, resources, life, stories,… #eltchat

1 hour ago

»

cerirhiannonCeri Jones

RT @DaveDodgson: @sandymillin  it takes time to build connections & reap the benefits. Definitely worth it though 🙂 #ELTchat > agree

1 hour ago

»

DaveDodgsonDavid Dodgson

@

@sandymillin Twitter IS great for PD BUT it takes time to build connections & reap the benefits. Definitely worth it though 🙂 #ELTchat

1 hour ago

»

michaelegriffinMichael Griffin

@

@sandymillin Been using Twitter for about 2 months N have been really impressed with the active engagement in ELT from all around the world

cerirhiannonCeri Jones

@

@sandymillin  Hi!  twitter offers the most amazing variety of voices & experiences of committed, questioning Ts from all over the world

1 hour ago

»

cioccasLesley

@

@sandymillin Twitter has led me to the fabulous community teachers that is #ELTchat & increased my PD 100-fold!

worldteacherAndrea Wade

@

@sandymillin Hi from Vietnam! I get all my best links and info from Twitter and I meet some great people who can answer all my questions!

5 hours ago

»

marekandrewsmark andrews

@

@sandymillin twitter gr8 to share ideas,resources+ 4 you,entering the world of EFL,it’s gd 2 be in touch w/ people whose books u will read!

A Twitter activity

When I did my Twitter seminar on Friday last week (blog post here) I started with a new activity, and it seemed to work really well. It was something I’d heard about before, but couldn’t find an appropriate time to use.

We started off with a big pile of scrap paper (A4 divided into four were the perfect size), plus a writing implement each. I took a piece of paper and wrote:

Sandy

As a teacher, one of my biggest problems is giving instructions. What should I do?

To prove this (!) I then told the group that they could either offer me advice or add their own problems. There were a few rules though:

• no talking throughout the activity – the only communication could be on paper
• write your name at the top of each piece of paper so that we can see who the message is on
• one piece of paper per message, and don’t write too small (this is to simulate the ‘soundbite’ nature of Twitter)
• you must place your paper at the end of the line (we had them all arranged on a row of tables), regardless of whether the previous piece of paper was what you were replying to (to simulate the Twitter stream)

The resulting ‘discussion’ was about ten minutes long and went really well. Here are a selection of our ‘tweets’ in no particular order to give you a taste of what we were talking about:

After we’d finished the chat I asked the DELTees how they felt during the chat. This is what they came up with:

The ‘chat’ was stimulating and made the rest of the seminar more interesting (at least, that’s how it felt) as they could really feel how Twitter works. I compared the amount of ‘tweets’ nine of us produced in ten minutes to the amount fifty or sixty of us produce in an hour on #eltchat and that got them really interested.

Two of them have already told me that they’ve signed up, and one more said she would sign up next weekend. This is much higher than my normal 1/12-15 hit rate! I really think this activity made all the difference, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone doing a Twitter for PD seminar, or to try out in class.

Enjoy!

Twitter for Professional Development

Today I’m doing another introduction to the world of Twitter and blogs, this time for students following the DELTA at IH Newcastle. For those of you who follow my blog, you’ll know that I’ve done a few of these now, and I’m trying to refine the presentation to make it as useful as possible. This time I decided to create a post, then talk teachers through everything referring back to the post so that they can see where to find the information again (while attempting to avoid Death by Blogpost). All feedback appreciated!

P.S. Even if you’re not interested in joining Twitter, scroll down to ‘How do I remember all this stuff?’ to find a couple of other tools you might find useful.

How do I find out about what I’m interested in?

The amount of information available on Twitter can be a bit overwhelming. To help find the most interesting information for you, people create clickable hashtags, such as #efl, #elt or #learnenglish. Some of the most useful ones for EFL teachers are:

• general: #efl, #elt, #esl, #esol, #tefl, #tesol
• teaching associations: #IATEFL – International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, #TESOLFr – TESOL France
• IATEFL Special Interest Groups (SIGs): #yltsig – young learners, #besig – business English
• conference hashtags: these change depending on the time of year / day, for example #IATEFL11, #LABCI – Latin American British Cultural Institutes
• my two favourites:
  #eltchat: weekly conversations based on various ELT topics chosen by us (that includes you if you join Twitter!) They happen at 12pm and 9pm GMT every Wednesday, and the hashtag has just celebrated it’s first birthday. I’ve written summaries on chats about Homework, Encouraging Teens to Talk, Literature in EFL, Writing Your Own Materials and Spreading What You Learn At Conferences.
  #eltpics: a hashtag for teachers to share their pictures. All images are added to a Flickr account, where they then become available for teachers anywhere to use in their classrooms under a Creative Commons license (where you only have to say who took the picture, without worrying about getting permission) Disclaimer: I am one of the curators of #eltpics, and am very proud of what we’ve managed to achieve so far (nearly 5000 pictures!)

Go to Tweetchat and type in a hashtag you’re interested in to find out what kind of information is being shared at the moment.

What are all of these strange symbols?

Looks interesting. How do I join in?

Watch Russell Stannard‘s excellent step-by-step introduction to Twitter and follow his instructions. If you have any problems, feel free to leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to help you out!

There are so many people on Twitter. How can I find out who is worth following?

Well, clearly the first person you should be following is me 😉 After that there are a few other things you can do:

• Look at the list of people I’m following, and choose a few who look interesting to you.
• Use the search function to look for ELT people you may have heard of. For example Jeremy Harmer, Scott Thornbury and Jim Scrivener are all on Twitter.
• Choose some of the people from Barbara Sakamoto‘s Starter PLN list. (‘PLN’ stands for Professional/Personal/Passionate Learning Network, and it something you’ll often see)
• Don’t worry about following everybody immediately. There’s no rush, and you’ll soon start to work who it is useful to follow. If you walked into a staffroom, you wouldn’t try to talk to everyone on your first day, and Twitter is just the same.
• Don’t feel obligated to follow everyone who follows you – it’s up to you who you choose to follow!

There’s so much stuff here. What if I miss something?

The answer to this is: don’t worry! If something is worth reading, it will be retweeted so many times that you’ll see it. To come back to the staffroom analogy – you don’t try to look at every coursebook and resource book on your first day at a new school. You’ll find the good stuff eventually, and the same is true of Twitter. Don’t be afraid to miss a few days or to lurk for a while before you start tweeting. In fact, as a survey I did a few months ago showed, almost everybody lurks before they dive in:

I don’t have time for all of this!

You can use Twitter for as much or as little time as you like. Nobody will complain if you take a holiday for a few days – we all lead busy lives, and Twitter is just one part of them. Many people in the teaching community have family commitments and busy working lives. Even dropping in for a couple of minutes every few days will show you something useful, so don’t worry if you don’t have hours free each week!

Right, now that’s cleared up I’m ready to say something.

• You have 140 characters. If you can text, you can tweet!
• Talk about anything you think is interesting – don’t worry about what other people might think (within reason!)
• Use URL shorteners like bit.ly to give you more characters to play with. (Some Twitter applications shorten links automatically)
• Don’t forget to include hashtags if you’re sharing information. This will help people to notice what you’re saying.

Nobody’s listening to me!

It takes time to build up a following. Just keep talking, and somebody will listen to you. And don’t worry if you think you have nothing to say – we all have to start somewhere. As you use Twitter more and more, you’ll get the hang of what people are interested in. If you would say it in a staffroom (including the fun stuff!), you can say it here.

Fair enough. How can I make this all a little bit easier?

Download a free piece of software to organise your Twitter. My favourite is Tweetdeck. It allows me to organise everything on Twitter in one easy programme, so that I can see hashtags I’m interested in, tweets which mention me (@sandymillin) and private messages without having to click around the Twitter website. You can even follow multiple accounts at the same time (I have a private account where I follow celebrities like Neil Gaiman and Stephen Fry). This is what it looks like:

Teacher Training Videos has a step-by-step guide to setting it all up.

How do I remember all this stuff?

Do you have hundreds of bookmarks on your computer? What would happen if it died one day and you lost them all? Six months ago I started using diigo, an online bookmarking service, and I haven’t looked back (end of advert!) Without diigo, I would really be lost – as of today I have 1203 bookmarks, with a few more added each day. You can click here to see them all. Here are three links I have added today:

As you can see, every time I add a bookmark to diigo I use as many tags as possible to help me refind the links I need. Then all I need to do is click on one of the tags to find everything under that heading. I can even refine the search by clicking on more than one tag. For example, searching for speaking gives me 71 links, and refining the search by clicking lesson plan reduces that to 7 links, from which I should be able to find what I’m looking for.

One of my tags is DELTA, to which I add anything I think might be useful to those who are studying for this certificate. Feel free to raid the list for yourself.

Watch this video to find out how it all works.

What if I want to read/write more than 140 characters?

Blogs! You’re already reading my blog now. I use it to share materials I’ve created, information from seminars like this one and anything else I think might be interested to the EFL world in general. I then tweet links so that people know what I’ve written.

Here’s a list of blogs which I think might be interesting/useful to those studying DELTA (please let me know if you think there’s anything missing). You can also check out my blogroll, the list of (some of) the blogs I follow, found on the right of this page.

I use Google Reader to keep all of my blogs organised. It’s easy to set up, especially if you already have a Google account. Watch this video to find out how.

As you can see, I’ve been super-efficient recently and only have 6 blogposts to read at the moment (30-40 is much more normal!) As I read each post, Google Reader automatically deletes them so that I can clearly see what is unread.

Those of us who write blogs welcome comments from the readers so that we know what you’re thinking. The comments section of a blog is often a place of discussion and analysis, allowing you to go into more depth. Once you’ve commented on a few blogs, you should start feeling confident enough to start your own blog. If you need help with that, let me know.

Have you finished yet?

I hope so! If you have any problems or would like any help, please let me know by commenting here. I look forward to seeing you on Twitter or reading your blog in the near future. There’s only one thing it remains for me to say:

Welcome to our community!

P.S. From Twitter…

During the seminar I asked my followers to tweet useful links/people/blogs to start new Tweeters off. These were their responses:

• @Marie_Sanako: Hi Sandy, currently in Manchester UK, and I wd recommend Linoit or Wallwisher, and @SeanBanville ‘s resources for starters!
• @SueAnnan: Good morning Sandy and Deltees. I’m in Jersey and my site is bit.ly/u9mj4 . You will find everything you need there.
• @katemillin: Dudley. Any library website is useful
• @cerirhiannon: Hi @sandymillin 🙂 tweeting from Cádiz, Spain – I don’t know if this is cheating but my recommendations are 2 hashtags #eltchat & #eltpics
• @aClilToClimb: 0900! I’m tweeting frm Sunny Canaries. My fave site is my own, naturally 😉 Thr’s a pg of ext links: bit.ly/dEZP90 Anothr fave is anothr blog of mine 😉 It’s a blog roll: bit.ly/qKkzL9
• @shaunwilden: It’s 8am GMT so Good Morning Sandy I am in Oxford and it’s a gloriously sunny day
• @MotherChina: @sandymillin <hello from Taiwan!
• @KalinagoEnglish: Hey Sandy’s folks @sandymillin Check out Sue Lyon Jones @esolcourses and Sean Banville @SeanBanville + their websites. Oh, forgot to say – I’m Karenne in Manchester doing MA EdTech+TESOL
• @mgraffin: Hi from Perth, Western Australia. I’m the Project Coordinator for (http://theglobalclassroomproject.wordpress.com/) and blog @ mgraffin.edublogs.com

Twitter 101

This is an introduction to Twitter and three associated tools (Tweetdeck, Google Reader and Diigo) which I did at IH Newcastle on 18th August 2011. I’ve edited it slightly from the original presentation to make it easier to read online. Hopefully it should give you a basic idea of how to use these tools. If you need help, feel free to ask in the comments.

I look forward to seeing you on Twitter.

You might also find these pages interesting:

• A Whole New World of ELT – for lots more useful links for Twitter and blogs
• Tools for the 21st-century teacher – for other useful tools for your classroom
• Easy technology for the EFL classroom – some tools to use inside and outside the class
• Teaching 2.0 in the one-computer classroom – when you’ve only got one computer available

Enjoy!

P.S. Here is a screenshot of the tweets people sent me when I asked them to say where they are from and what they’ve learnt from Twitter. Click to make it bigger. It’s a good way to find people to follow to start you off!

Update: Here is my comprehensive (I hope!) guide to Twitter for Professional Development

Using lino-it to crowdsource ideas

lino-it is an online noticeboard which you can make public or private. You can add sticky notes (a bit like Post-It notes), links to videos, images and more. This week I’ve made two boards to collect ideas from my colleagues on Twitter.

The first is to collect ideas for practising listening to be passed on to my students. Some ideas have already been added, but feel free to add more and share it with your own students. I can’t embed it, but you can click on the picture below to go to the canvas:

The second is to collect cultural ‘nuggets’ to explore with my Advanced students for their final two classes. For their homework they had to choose an area of English-speaking culture which they find interesting and present it in class (that will happen on Tuesday). I would then like to introduce them to some new areas of culture which they’ve never thought/heard of before, and this is where you come in. So far, there’s only one idea from me on there, so again I need your help! Click on the picture to add your ideas 🙂

Thanks very much for your help, and feel free to use these with your own students.

Enjoy!

How to join in with #eltpics

Made using shapecollage.com

All of the pictures in the image above are taken from the #eltpics photos on Flickr. #eltpics was started in October 2010 when three teachers (@VictoriaB52, @vickyloras and @cgoodey) decided to tweet pictures to each other on a given theme each week. As Victoria said in this interview with tefl.net:

The idea blossomed, so we asked ELT folk on Twitter to join in and share our diversity. In 3 weeks [we had] over 200 images from 20 countries on our Flickr site.

As of this week, we’re up to 3000 images in 30 categories including all of the following:

Made using wordle.net

You can see the 10 most recent pictures in the bottom-right hand corner of this page.

So how can you join in?

1. If you are not a member of Twitter, sign up for free.

2. Find out the topic for the week by searching for the #eltpics hashtag or asking @sandymillin, @fionamau or @cgoodey (the current curators of the site). A new topic is announced every Sunday. (By the way, if you have any topic suggestions, feel free to let us know!)

3. Choose the photos you want to share and upload them to a site like flickr, yfrog or twitpic. You can also use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck. Please ensure that the photos are your own and that you have the copyright.

4. Tweet the links to the pictures you want us to upload. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #eltpics so we can find them! If you want to help us out, you could also mention the set you want us to add the photo to.

5. Sit back and wait for us to tell you they have been uploaded. If we don’t reply within a couple of days, please let us know, as we sometimes miss one or two pictures.

Using the pictures

All of the photos are shared under a Creative Commons licence:

Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

If you’re not happy with your pictures being shared and used in this way, please don’t send them! 🙂

Once they are on the flickr page, all of the images are available for teachers to use in their classrooms, for materials or for teaching-related blogposts. We would love to hear how you use them.

Links

• Ideas for using the 2000th #eltpic on Ceri Jones’ blog
• Ideas for using the 3000th #eltpic on Infinite ELT ideas
• Ceri’s presentation from the 2011 IATEFL Conference on ‘Unleashing the Power of Images‘, including many #eltpics, as well as an interview in which she talked about them
• And another one from Ceri: this time, a guest post on Ken Wilson’s blog suggeting ways to use two of the images
• A ‘weather’ worksheet made using #eltpics
• Phil Bird describing #eltpics and crowdsourcing
• Adam Simpson advertising his #eltpics
• Cecilia Coelho’s lesson plan challenge, inspired by an #eltpics suggestion
• Chiew’s lesson plan and mind-mapping ideas with suggestions for how to use pictures in class
• From my own blog: Story prompts with #eltpics and Emotions wordclouds (including an #eltpics slideshow)
• A post from Denise including ideas for websites which you could use with #eltpics

Tools for the 21st-Century Teacher

This is my take on the tools presented by Niall Creaney during the closing plenary at the PARK Conference in Brno on 2nd April 2011. If you have a problem with any of the links, please let me know in the comments. The tools are:

1. Twitter
2. Blogs
3. Google Reader
4. Social bookmarking
5. Glogster
6. Prezi
7. Dropbox
8. Evernote
9. Quizlet
10. Wallwisher
11. TitanPad
12. Skype
13. Word clouds

I have also added a bonus tool:

11b. Google Docs

1. Twitter (@sandymillin)

Twitter has opened so many doors since I started using it in October 2010. It’s a micro-blogging site, where you send messages 140-characters long out into the world. For teachers, this means an international community full of support, inspiration and ideas. To find out more about what it’s about and how to get started, take a look at this conference presentation I did about blogs and Twitter for teachers. (Update: I also have a complete introduction to Twitter for Professional Development)

It seems scary at first, but if you keep going back and try to spend an hour or so playing with it at some point, you’ll get the hang of it. For the first couple of months I lurked, which is completed normal (find out more by taking a look at the post on the Online Professional Development survey I did in January 2011, through Twitter of course!) Now I spend a few minutes every day having a quick look at the links, and I always find something to make it worth it: useful, thought-provoking and/or fun.

As well as using it for professional development, many teachers use it with their students. I haven’t tried it myself, but here are some links to people who have:

• 100 ways to teach with Twitter (via @JanetBianchini) – blog
• 5 ways to use Twitter in the classroom (via @JanetBianchini and @nutrich) – blog
• Twitter for students post 1 and post 2 (via @harrisonmike) – blog
• The Twitter Experiment (via @CIW_Instructor) – 5-minute YouTube video
• Twitter links (for teachers and students) (via @pysproblem81)

2. Blogs

I started this blog in October 2010, but nothing much happened on it until I started posting regularly in January 2011. Partly through promoting my blog on Twitter and partly through presenting at conferences and promoting it, my stats look like this:

Apart from giving you a great positive feeling every time you see your stats :), writing a blog is an excellent way to reflect on your teaching. You can use it to share ideas, connect with other teachers, get inspiration and so much more! As with Twitter above, you can find out more about what teachers use it for on my Online Professional Development Survey post, and see how to get started with it in the Whole New World of ELT one.

3. Google Reader

As well as writing your own blog, there are hundreds of other teachers in the blogosphere sharing their ideas. To get you started, take a look at the sites in my blogroll (on the right of this page).

The best way to keep track of the blogs you read is to use a reader, such as Google Reader. Once you’ve signed up (free), you add the links to the blogs you want to follow and the reader does the rest. This is what my page looks like:

This is the first page I see when I go onto the site. In the centre are all the posts that have been added to blogs since I last went on the site. As I read them they automatically disappear from the main page, but I can access them again by clicking on the name of the blog in the bottom left-hand corner. Of course, you can also go back to the original blog address too!

Here are some links to help you get started:

• Google Reader in Plain English (2-3 minute video)
• Google Reader Tutorial (10-minute video)

4. Social Bookmarking

So now you’ve had a look at Twitter and blogs and you’ve found loads of great new ideas. How do you keep track of them? The answer is Social Bookmarking. Rather than keeping your links on your computer, where you could easily lose them if anything went wrong, you can use a site like Delicious or Diigo. You can access your bookmarks from any computer, without having to worry about being on the same machine. You can also tag them with as many words as you like, making them easier for you to find again.

This is my page on Diigo:

As you can see, each link is tagged with various key words which I have chosen myself. To find a page again, I have various options:

• I can search for any word I remember from the title / post using a box in the top right (not shown);
• I can search for a specific tag by typing it in the box at the top (where it says ‘filter by tags’)
• I can click on a tag underneath a link
• I can click on a tag in the menu on the left

This is the little bar which appears in my browser (Safari) whenever I want to add a site to my bookmarks:

You simply click ‘Bookmark’ when on the page you want to share, change any of the options you choose, and hey, presto! it’s added to your bookmarks. You can also upload the bookmarks from your computer straight onto the social bookmarking site to keep them all together.

As for the ‘social’ part of social bookmarking, you can subscribe to other people’s links and be updated whenever they add to them. My Diigo page is here if you’re interested.

Here are some pages to get you started:

• Social Bookmarking in Plain English (based on Delicious) – video
• Diigo Tutorial – Powerpoint presentation

5. Glogster

This is the first of the tools which is mainly for students to use. The slogan is ‘Poster Yourself’, and it does what it says on the tin. Here are some examples of work created by 14-year-old boys in the UK: they created glogs about Spanish-speaking celebrities as part of their Spanish studies at secondary school. It is an easy tool for students to use, and the results look impressive quickly. You can include pictures, videos and text, then embed your glog in other sites, such as on a class blog or a school webpage. This one was embedded into a wiki (via @tperran). Students could use it as an alternative to traditional paper-based homework, then email you the link. There is even an option to create a Glogster for Education account, where you can create accounts for your students for free.

Here are some tutorials to start you off:

• Glogster Tutorial – 5-minute video
• Glogster Tutorial for Students – 75 second video, suitable for higher levels

6. Prezi

Prezi is a web-based alternative to Powerpoint, used to create striking presentations which you can either present online or download to your computer. If you’ve seen my Whole New World of ELT presentation, then you’ve already seen your first prezi. As with Twitter, it looks a little scary at first glance, but once you’ve had a look at some other examples of presentations, followed the tutorial you are given when you first log in to Prezi and played around a little, you’ll soon get the hang of it. One tip: zoom out as far as you can before you start making your presentation if you intend to have a lot of ‘layers’ – the default setting is slightly zoomed in.

You can use it in the classroom too. Here is an example of a presentation made with American primary school students (via @surrealyno). And here are more ideas:

• 15 ways to use prezi in the classroom – a presentation
• How do you use prezi? – a discussion board in the prezi community

These are the Prezi Learn pages – an excellent guide to get you started.

7. Dropbox

Dropbox is a free online file-sharing site. First download their desktop application, then drag the file you want to share into the folder on your computer. Dropbox will automatically ‘sync’, making your online Dropbox look exactly like the Dropbox folder on your computer and vice-versa (if somebody updates the file online, it will update in your Dropbox too). You can then invite people to see your files and folders. Here is a video tutorial to show you how it works. This is my homepage:

The free account comes with 2GB of space, with an extra 0.25GB added for every person you refer to the site. I have now referred 3 people so I have 2.75GB.

It’s a great way for students to submit work to you as they don’t have to worry about space limits. It’s a lot easier than traditional file-sharing sites in my opinion. I haven’t used it with my students as yet, but it’s been useful for sharing materials with colleagues en masse.

One teacher (lucky enough to have computers for every student!) used Dropbox to synchronise student presentations. To see an excellent summary of everything you ever needed to know about Dropbox, including links to a few lesson plans (mostly primary and secondary), click here.

8. Evernote

This is the first of these tools which I’ve not used myself, so I’ll let them explain themselves to you:

It seems it’s an easy way to take notes on anything and in any way you could possibly imagine: use it to type notes, take screenshots, store photos and much-more – it’s like an online, searchable filing cabinet. It can be accessed from computers and mobile devices. Here is their guide to find out how to get started. I reckon the best thing to do is just go and play, then come back here and let others know what you’ve been doing with it… (Thanks in advance!)

• Strengths and Weakness of Evernote – a wiki
• Using Dropbox and Evernote together in the classroom. – a blogpost
• Evernote Tutorial – showing you how to use it in the classroom – 10-minute youtube video

9. Quizlet

This is a customisable flashcard site purposely designed for language learners to use for self-study. It is incredibly easy to use, and you don’t even need to create an account if you already have a facebook one. Once you’ve signed in, there are three big blue buttons to greet you:

You can search for flashcards that have already been created or make your own quickly and easily. Quizlet’s own guide is here. Once you’ve created the set, your students can then look at the flashcards and play two fun games to help them practise the words. This set about vegetables (created by @NikkiFortova) is a good example that you can play with. You can also create groups so that all of your students can see the flashcards you create for them. It’s principally designed for self-study, and the makers recommend allowing students to choose when / if they want to use it.

Update: I have created a complete beginner’s guide to Quizlet.

10. Wallwisher

Wallwisher is one of a variety of online bulletin boards. Others include Primary Wall and Lino-It. All of these tools allow you to post notes, pictures, videos and links on a ‘wall’ which looks similar to a real-world noticeboard. This is the demo screenshot they have on their homepage:

Here is a wall I created for students to post suggestions on how to practise English outside class (unfortunately students didn’t get into it in this class, but I know others who have!) Apart from the example just mentioned, I’ve only added to walls other people have made to send birthday wishes, but there are many other uses for it!

• Wallwisher Tutorial – 2-minute youtube video
• Interesting Ways to use Wallwisher – blogpost
• 105 Classroom Ideas for Wallwisher – blogpost

11. TitanPad

This is the only other tool on the list which I have not used myself. TitanPad is designed for online collaboration when creating documents. This is the example they show on their homepage:

As you can see, each collaborator has their own colour, clearly marking who has edited what in the file. You can save versions of the file and export it in various formats. Up to 8 people are allowed to collaborate on each document. The main attraction is that no sign-up is required – you can create a pad directly from the homepage. Unfortunately, it also has some disadvantages, as the pad is public to anyone who has the url. This post explains how it can be useful.

11b. Google Docs (update: now called Google Drive, but still does the same thing!)

If you’ve ever used Microsoft packages, you can use Google Docs without any more effort than simply logging in. You can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online, as well as professional-looking forms. It looks similar to other offline software, making it very quick to learn if you are already familiar with document etc. software. Here is Google’s tour of their docs function.

As with TitanPad, you can view changes made by other collaborators and the documents are updated in real-time. You can also find out who else is viewing the document at the same time as you. You need to sign in, but don’t have to have a Google account to do this.

Google Docs have myriad uses in the classroom. My students used a document to give me definitions of words and a form to answer reading comprehension questions of an online article during a webquest. Here are some suggestions from other teachers:

• Google’s own pages – website
• 34 Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in the Classroom – presentation
• Using Google Docs in the EFL Classroom – detailing one teacher’s experience – a blogpost

12. Skype

Skype is a piece of software which you can download to your computer, then use to make phonecalls to people anywhere in the world. Watch the visual explanation to find out more (they explain it better than I can!):

In March 2011, Skype created an Education section of their website. This enables teachers to set up projects with other schools around the world, as well as finding inspiration for Skype-related projects. Here are 50 suggestions for using Skype, based on real projects which teachers have done. It’s a great way to bring the real world into your classroom.

13. Word clouds

A word cloud of this blogpost so far made using Wordle…

…and the same text entered into Tagxedo

As you can see, word clouds look visually stunning, and encourage students to read and think about what is there. The online software processes the text, making each word appear once in the cloud sized according to how often it appeared in the original text (i.e. the more a word appears in the original text, the bigger it is in the cloud) I won’t go into too much detail here, as I have already blogged and created presentations about word clouds. The posts can be found here, and include links to tutorials for both Wordle and Tagxedo, as well as many ideas on how to use them:

• Easy Technology for the EFL Classroom
• Teaching 2.0 in the One-Computer Classroom
• Clouding my blog

So, that’s it: thirteen (plus one!) tools presented at the PARK Conference, explained in my own words. If you have any more suggestions on how to use the tools, or think I need to make any corrections, feel free to comment on the post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

Enjoy!

25th March 2011: I’ve just discovered that the original plenary session on which I based my list of tools was taken from this page: http://issuu.com/mzimmer557/docs/tools_for_the_21st_century_teacher. You will find more tools and more information there.

Easy Technology for the EFL Classroom

I did a special seminar for teachers at IH Brno today, based on easy-to-learn, easy-to-use technology that they could incorporate into their teaching. Here is the presentation, complete with clickable links:

All of the links and a lot of the ideas came from Twitter, which I would highly recommend joining if you’re not on there yet (see this post for more information)

Please let me know what you think, as well as if you have any extra ideas you can add to the mix.

A Whole New World of ELT (IH Brno Conference 2011)

[Since doing this presentation, I have created a much clearer introduction to Twitter, and done a 10-minute introduction to ten of my favourite blogs.]

On Saturday February 19th 2011, I presented this session on online professional development, with a focus on blogs and Twitter.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback, feel free to comment on this post or contact me on Twitter @sandymillin. I look forward to seeing you again in my PLN!

Don’t end up like this!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I have also included some more links related to Twitter and blogs to help you out.

Twitter

• An introduction to Twitter (screencast – a kind of video teaching you how to do things)
• Twitter for Teachers: A Guide for Beginners (blog)
• How to sign up for Twitter – a step-by-step guide (Powerpoint via blog)
• Twitter at a glance (infographic – similar to a poster, with lots of useful information)
• Why you should start Tweeting by EnglishRaven / Jason Renshaw (blog)
• Anatomy of a Tweet by Nik Peachey
• Expanding your PLN on Twitter (PLN = Personal Learning Network) (blog)
• How to use Tweetdeck (screencast) – Tweetdeck is an excellent piece of software which makes Twitter easier
• #eltchat explained (blog) – #eltchat is a conversation between ELT teachers from around the world. It is a fascinating thing to take part in.
• And a fun video to make you laugh: ‘Twitter madness‘ from Grey’s Anatomy

Blogs

• Why do I blog? (blog)
• What a good idea? (blog)
• How to use wordpress (screencast) – the blog you’re reading right now was created on wordpress, one of the most popular blogging platforms
• How to use blogger (screencast) – an alternative platform
• 7 silly things you really shouldn’t forget to include in your blog
• Blogging and social media: advice for educators
• A list of ELT blogs to follow
• Google Reader tutorial – an easy way to view all of the blogs you’re interested in in one go, without having to remember all of the addresses

Other posts on my blog which you might be interested in

• The Online Professional Development Survey
• What I learnt on #eltchat today – my first #eltchat summaries (I have done a few more since then)
• My first play with Overstream (this was the video you saw during the presentation)

Final thoughts

• A beginner’s guide to building a PLN – a series of steps broken down into breakfast, lunch and dinner
• I love my PLN – how it has transformed my learning – by Russell Stannard, author of the screencasts you may have watched above (audioboo – a sound file online)

Updates

These links have been added since the conference:

Twitter

• The journey of a Twitter Newbie
• A very indepth set of screencasts introducing you to every aspect of Twitter you might need to know (with bookmarks for quick navigating)
• Twitter teaching and learning – a reflection on what Twitter has offered to one teacher
• Nine reasons why teachers should use Twitter
• Quick start tips for new Tweeters
• A video showing you how to make the most of #eltchat
• Breaking down the four walls of the language classroom using Twitter and Skype
• The Who, Why and How of Twitter (infographic)
• A first experience of #eltchat – one quick paragraph to get you interested

Blogs

• Writing quality blog comments – an amazing video by 3rd graders!
• Ways to take advantage of being a blogging no-one
• 11 tips for teachers who start blogs

PLNs and Continuing Professional Development

• What’s a PLN, why build one and how? (Part 1) by Nik Peachey
• Building a PLN through Twitter (a pdf document)
• Prezi on building a PLN (focus on blogs and social networking)
• Continuing professional development – a presentation
• Challenges, PLN and where they have taken me – a blogpost by Cecilia Lemos

Twitter and Screencasts as texts

As a pre-session CAM task, we have been asked to choose one written and one spoken text-type and come up with a plan to develop a (theoretical) one-to-one student’s receptive skills relating to these text types. This is my attempt:

Written: Twitter conversations

• Genre features: short messages. Between typical spoken and written style. Generally quite informal. Many abbreviations / codes. Use of ellipsis to shorten texts (only 140 characters are allowed)
• Schemata: SS needs to access Twitter schema (i.e. Twitter-specific lexis), plus schema related to the type of conversations they follow (i.e. celebrity chat, teachers, businessmen)
• Sub-skills:
  • Identifying the topic of the text and recognising topic changes.
  • Identifying text-type and the writer’s purpose. (i.e. giving information, asking for help, encouraging support for a cause)
  • Inferring the writer’s attitude. (helpful, humorous, sarcastic)
  • Understanding text organisation and following the development of the text.
• Strategies needed:
  • Activating background knowledge of the topic before reading the text.
  • Guessing the meaning of unknown words from context.
  • Seeking clarification.
  • Indicating lack of comprehension.
• How to develop these skills:
  • First, focus on Twitter lexis (RT, ff, via, blog, post, mention, hashtag, tweet, feed)
  • Find out from the student what kind of people they follow. Divide them into groups by the function of their tweeting e.g. Do they generally tweet ideas? links? information? Work with the student to show them how this can help them to understand the messages.
  • Choose some of the conversations which the student has tried to follow. Work with them to look at cohesive devices throughout the text.
  • Using the same conversations, examine how the writer has shortened the text to fit the 140-character limit.
  • Look at example tweets from their feed and examine the writer’s attitude in each. Identify keys to recognising this attitude, including words, knowledge of the writer (are they known to be e.g. left-wing), pragmatics.

Spoken: Screencast tutorials.

• Genre features: Supported by visuals. May include some technical language. Imperatives and other instruction-giving structures (If you click here…) Computer lexis.
• Schemata: Computing schema, schema related to specific tool (e.g. voice-recording software), instruction-giving schema
• Sub-skills:
  • Perceiving and distinguishing between different sounds.
  • Dividing speech into recognisable words or phrases.
  • Distinguishing between given and new information.
  • Using discourse markers and context clues to predict what will come next.
  • Guessing the meaning of words and expressions.
  • Identifying key information and gist.
• Strategies needed:
  • Activating background knowledge of the topic before starting to listen.
  • Using non-linguistic information (situation, context, etc.) to predict what will be heard.
  • Using non-linguistic visual clues to help infer meaning.
• How to develop these skills:
  • Focus on computing lexis, especially related to navigating on-screen (click, hover, press, button, cursor, mouse, upload, download)
  • Watch screencasts with student highlighting instances of these words.
  • Study different methods of giving instructions (imperatives, first conditional…)
  • Watch screencasts focussing on the instruction language.
  • Watch screencasts without sound to predict the content.
  • Transcribe a screencast to work on sound distinctions / divisions.
  • Use the transcription to study discourse markers / cohesion.

Has anyone focussed on these as text-types in the classroom? I’d be interested to know if my strategy reflects your own.

The Online Professional Development Survey

I’ve spent this afternoon putting together the responses to the Online Professional Development Survey I sent out on Twitter this week. 43 very helpful people responded – thank you very much!

I have also included all of the comments as there were so many they didn’t make it onto the final slideshow! I thought they should be included somewhere though, so here goes:

What do you think you’ve gained from using Twitter for professional development?

A great PLN
Loads of new ideas
An invigorating community
– sharing links and ideas
– being motivated to look for new things to share
– being in touch with what`s going on in the ELT world
– following conference updates if I can`t attend in person
– supporting fellow teachers with great ideas by retweeting or spreading the word
– inspiration for developing my own materials
– slowly plucking up courage to join in discussions and voice my own opinions
Motivation; new ideas; reflection on current practices; free training for online tools; connecting with like-minded professionals
A great deal of professional support and advice, lots of amazing ideas and resources as well as help when I need it.
A lot more than one would think. The information that is tweeted out, e.g. on free webinars, ideas, views on edreform, etc. provided me with more opportunities for self-development than in the previous 10 years. It also gave me the opportunity to connect with like-minded people in the profession. As a now freelance ELT teacher and teacher trainer, this gave me a lot of reassurance and further fueled my passion for my profession. Thank you my PLN!
Access to a network of incredibly dedicated and committed ELT professionals, sharing links to innovative resources and creative ideas for teaching, training…Motivates me, and hope to use it to motivate others.
A network of valuable professionals with interesting views and links, which give me something to mull over. Also enthusiasm for my job and new skills.
a whole new range of ideas and materials that I wouldn’t have found on my own
I’ve connected and shared/learned from educators I would never have met otherwise. I’ve learned many different tools and sites. I discovered blogs written by teachers and the millions of activities shared through those, the reflections they incite.
lots of teaching ideas & motivation to continue developing
resources, ideas, follow great colleagues, become a part of the global educational community, share projects, ideas, feel connected.
Access to the latest in ELT and EdTech from the people at the cutting edge.
Networking and friendship with important educators.
Knowledge of the latest in Web 2.0
Almost too much to mention! In brief:
– connections with great educators from around the world.
– discussions on lesson ideas/general ideas about education & ELT
– links to ELT blogs
– links to web 2.0 resources and (perhaps more importantly) discussion, reflection and advice on how to utilise them in class
– the opportunity to attend and present at conferences, both face to face ones and online events.
I’ve learnt a great deal, and met some wonderful educators from around the world.
links to other amazing TESOL blogs through retweets
Much greater awareness of discussions and people in ELT. New ideas & ways to work with learners.
I have gained contact with fellow teachers from all over the world thus expanding my pd network
A chance to meet like-minded professionals
LOTS of new ideas and resources, and can see a constant stream of new ones to come. Am planning on setting up a hashtag to use to stream things to my work colleagues in a new virtual space I’m setting up right now.
Incredible ed resources, a professional network, and an increased blog readership
the abundance of resources sharing which is not possible if I do it alone
I have gained lots of human connections to whatever information I am seeking at the time.
– Gained a really large community of learners/supporters/teachers
– Able to reflect more often
– Great resource for finding useful sites/information/tools/sessions
The latest in education from around the world. Sharing ideas with teachers in a virtual “staffroom”. Often not the time to do this on the job.
PLN, friendships, helping/advising others, getting help/advice, staff (I’m a sub and don’t have a staff, home school)
Lots of new learning tools and links. Following inspiring educators. Lots of contemporary ideas.
I have gained access to a group of really motivated educators who have great classroom ideas and great insight into the current ed policy debates.
A global network of educators who tweet interesting and useful links.
meeting other great educators; sharing ideas, information and expertise; participating in webinars, courses etc..; collaborating on projects; learning
I discovered very interesting web tools and resources to use them effectively
“1. Network of new colleagues
2. So many new resources
3. Ideas about teaching, ideas for classroom activities, ideas about grading
4. Daily professional development
5. A place to bounce ideas around (chats)
6. A community”
The confidence that I am not crazy in thinking that education is changing and has to change. Even though I am passionate about technology in education and have been working with it for over 20 years ( was involved in the ACOT program), I still need a support group!
Differentiated and personalized professional development

What do you think you’ve gained from using blogs for professional development?

“Reflection time; A sense of community – I’m not the only one doing these things”

“- great opportunity to look at teaching through someone else`s eyes- juxtaposing your ideas with those of others – that makes you reflect on the very basic concepts sometimes”

Reflection and clarifying my own ideas and thoughts; blog posts take longer to write and help me sort out my own thinking on various topics and areas.

Responding to useful/valuable blog posts engages me in interacting with colleagues further and at a deeper level.

Again, support, new ideas and being connected to like minded people

Got to know the people from my PLN a little better, especially on what their interest areas are, their thought on educational issues. It also gives me the opportunity to get more insight into where today’s EFL is going, what the trends are, general problems, issues that need to be solved.

New educational platforms, blended learning forms and tools, educational technology that haven’t reached us yet in Central and Eastern Europe (am based in HUngary)…. and a lot more.

I need/want to explore more myself, manage time to factor in reading blogs contacts and new ideas

More confidence in using technology in the classroom, a wide range of lesson ideas based around youtube etc

I’ve learned about new tools and how to use them, I’ve been pushed to reflect upon my practices and experiment in my classes.

lots of ideas

lifelong learning

A greater awareness of what’s happening today in ELT and EdTech

“My own blog has been great for reflecting on what I’ve done in the classroom, both for sharing lessons and activities that worked really well and evaluating activities that didn’t work so well. The feedback I receive from other teachers in the form of comments has been invaluable in shaping my thinking too.

From other people’s blogs, I have gained many ideas to adapt for my own classrooms and plenty of ‘food for thouıght’. Reading somebody else’s thoughts on teaching (no matter what thier context) and seeing things from their perspective is a great way to reflect.”

Again, I feel that I’ve learnt a great deal, and it has certainly kept me much more current with regards to developments in my field that I probably would have otherwise been.Beyond how I’m able to apply what I learn in my ESL classroom at an international school in Cambodia. Most of the students are ELLs so I’m able to forward suitable links to co-workers in various disciplines because of the blogs I follow.

Reassurance that I’m on the right track with what I’m currently doing. Deepening knowledge and understanding of language learning, people’s experiences, and language. Ideas to use in my own practice. I have read about current educational moves and it has improved my reflective practice

A wealth of resources and teacing tips for professional developmentreflectionLots of new ideas, resources, and things to reflect on and share.Blogging is an incredible tool for reflecting on my own teaching practice, and learning from other teachers around the world

“Through other people’s reflections I can feel more connected or like I am doing things on par with others. Finding tools, and getting new ideas to motivate my students with their blogs.

“New skills and tools. resources, networking (reading and commenting), validation (like minds, not alone or not only who thinks/questions that), opposing views, entirely new (to me) topic/method/tool/etc.Being able to look back at my development and changing ideas and practices. Getting ideas for using web tools in the classroom. Professional practice.

Many fantastic resources and ideas. For myself I love the idea of reflective practice. In order to learn, I have discovered, I need to write.

A chance to air my own thoughts and share my ideas, as well as reading about my colleagues’ own thoughts and ideas.

wider access to information and new ideas

Developed an insight into the way to use webtools appropriately

Daily professional development, enriching ideas, being part of a community of practice, a place for professional conversation

Too much to mention here

Reminded how important reflecting is for teachers.

I don’t do it yet. but it is on my 2011 to-do list

New colleagues’ ideas to follow and mimic.

What do you think you have gained from using YouTube for professional development?

Ideas! Seeing how other teachers use their classrooms is good for observations in your own time (especially if it’s difficult to fit them in where you work)
“- appreciating the powerful message of a short video clip in the classroom context- adapting non-ELT related materials to the needs of my sts- observing other teachers at work (recordings of Jamie Keddie`s lessons = a must for every teacher)- ‘attending’ conferences that I couldn`t participate in by watching talks online”

Very useful tutorials on almost everything – especially Web 2.0 tools

“Mostly motivational power, the great feeling of “”I’m not alone thinking that ….””

A lot of quick and handy training videos on e.g. using tech tools for teaching, my blogs, etc.”
more exposure to new theories / ideas – similar to attending a conference session.

I’ve listened to some great lectures discussing education, I’ve discovered/watched videos that can be used in class with the students.
visualization of the data, inspiration
“Mainly, I’ve come to videos from links/embeds in blogs and tweets so the gains have been the same.
I’ve also embedded some videos from YouTube onto my school’s wiki page for teachers so my colleagues can benefit from them as well.”

“I found a book of Ken Wilson’s I believe will take my teaching to new heights usingDRAMA!”

Being able to see other classrooms has been both informative and reassuring. Also, it’s great to be able to see talks and interviews from ELT people. Found interesting materials to use with my classes
“New ideas, new tools, equipment etc. Resources to use with my students (and reviews of these)”
I have found several examples of classroom activities being used in actual classrooms.

“Handy for uploading videos and sharing on blogs.Great for experiment demonstrations for the students.”
same as blogs and Twitter, visual PD, humor, etc.

“Great visual learning for ‘How to …’ videos. Easy to understand when you are confused with written instructions. Can recommend videos to others for easy viewing, high interest level for audiences”
“Resources for students – better than just reading for them.
Professional development for myself – almost as good as going to a conference in some cases.”
the way to use some tools appropriately Nothing like pictures to show you how to do something.

Too much to discuss here
Inspiration, and sharing it with others

What do you think you have gained from using the BBC / British Council Teaching English website for professional development?

This was my introduction to online professional development, although I didn’t take the next step until Shaun Wilden came to our school and talked me in to Twitter!
“- interesting ideas to reflect on (articles)- activity ideas to use in class- insight into great ELT authors` views on teaching (guest blogging)”
This is the one I spend the least time on. I don’t think I have spent enough looking through on what it has to offer to be able to comment here.
Lesson ideas / materials and some good theoretical knowledgeLearned new techniques, activities to be used in class with my students.ideas
Lots of new ideas and resources and information for reflection. I share heaps of this with my colleagues.
New to it, so still exploring it. BBC has some great science resources as awell I have used.

What do you think you’ve gained from using online conferences / webinars for professional development?

“- new challenging experience – gaining confidence to share ideas online- meeting fellow teachers from around the world and sharing ideas with them”

A lot of practical ideas, getting to know both speakers and participants a little better in terms of what their thoughts are on specific issus. How things are done in other countries, ….. long long list. Could repeat everything I said for twitter, basically. Though these are more focussed and give me the opp. to select and join in the ones I would like. It also allows me to stay silent and just listen and read if I choose to.

The chance to listen to leading ELT practitioners without leaving office/home contacts and knowledge about ELT developments

lots of ideas and ability to present online

Confidence to present.

The ability to ‘attend’ a conference from the comfort of your own home is amazing. There is also the convenience of archived sessions if you miss the live broadcast. The main gain has been hearing/seeing what other teachers around the world do in their classes.

Being able to listen to people live while interacting with those around you in the chat or on twitter makes the ideas and information much more memorable and enjoyable.

“As a trainee, I have been able to listen to experts who would have otherwise been impossible to have access to.As a trainer, I have improved my presentation skills and shared my experiences with teachers all over the world.”

Not much so far that I couldn’t find on Google

connection with teachers worldwide

Ideas, resources, connections

I have regained the time that I used to waste in bad real-life conferences!

“I love them. You can multi-task, sit on the couch and add when you like to the chats. Very useful, make twitter friends, find links and websites that are shared. You can share some of your own learnings, and such in the chats or even raise your hand and speak if you are willing. Great place to be involved and learn.”

global/non-local perspective, “staff” PD days, networking, Collaboration. Global ideas. Current/future practices. Building a PLN

They are an easy way to participate in PD without having to leave your school or house. I only attend when the topic interests me (unlike other PD sometimes). The ability to participate from my own home without the expense/time of going somewhere far away.

Live communication techniques , making new connections Immeasurable – new ideas, new techniques, new tools, new technology, expansion of PLN

Directed, specific PD that keeps me fresh and in the “challenge zone” of my own learning.

What I learnt on #eltchat today (Materials / Online Professional Development)

@ayearinthelifeof in the classroom (taken from #eltpics)

Today marked my second attempt at joining in with #eltchat on Twitter. For those of you who don’t know what this is, a brief explanation. #eltchat is a conversation between English Language Teachers (ELT) around the world. The sessions take place every Wednesday at 3-4pm GMT and 9-10pm GMT on Twitter, the social networking site. It’s an invigorating way to explore issues in ELT. This week’s topics were:

• What principles do you follow when you prepare your own teaching materials?
• How can we convince colleagues that online professional development is as valuable as face-to-face?

From rereading the transcript (the discussion goes so quickly), these are the issues which came up, in no particular order. Feel free to comment on any I missed out!

Principles when preparing your own teaching materials

• The learner should be central.
• Materials should be professionally presented. Play with layouts, fonts, etc.
• Materials don’t have to mean paper worksheets: they could also be online, videos, presentations, art, mindmaps, realia…
• Materials can and should generate activities.
• Never do something yourself when your SS can do it for / with you.
• They should be fun, meaningful, practical and motivate SS.
• Try to include visuals, rather than just words.
• They should suit the skill / language point of the lesson, rather than just looking interesting to the teacher.
• They should empower SS to use the language and make connections.
• Materials should be sensitive to the nationalities / cultures you teach.
• Materials should be as relevant to the SS as possible. You can ask SS which topics motivate them.
• Space should be available for learners to take notes, perhaps with the back of the sheet completely blank. Avoid the temptation to do all thinking on paper.
• Open-ended materials can fuel whole lessons.
• Materials should be applicable to a real-life context.
• Inspiration can come from anywhere.
• They should be flexible.
• You can use your own materials to escape the confines of a coursebook, while still covering the syllabus. Or approach it differently, maybe by teaching a unit backwards.
• Use your materials to remind SS that they don’t have to be doing the same thing at the same time.
• Don’t forget about interaction!
• Design materials which make SS think, not just repeat.
• Think about trying the same materials out with different students.
• How much time do you spend planning v. using materials?
• Keep your materials: organise them on your computer, blog them, share them with your students / colleagues…
• Remember the level of your students: important for the tasks and the instructions.
• Trigger laughter and / or curiosity whenever possible.
• Consider SS who may have difficulty with your materials e.g. dyslexia, dyspraxia. For example, use coloured paper for those with reading difficulties.
• When using authentic materials, fit the task to the students, rather than worrying too much about fitting the text to them.
• Reflect, edit, adapt, recycle – don’t give up!
• Play!
• Take a risk!

Convincing colleagues that online professional development (PD) is as effective as face-to-face

• Tell them about all the amazing people you meet / blogs you read / ideas you get / fun you have. Highlight how much you can learn in how little time.
• A big problem is where to start: blogs may be less overwhelming than Twitter.
• Show them a sample of online PD, so they can see what is going on.
• Time is a major issue: many teachers feel PD should take place during work hours, and find it hard to see the reasons for continuing it outside. This is also often connected to the fact that online PD is unpaid.
• Be a stuck record: your colleagues may join in to shut you up!
• People struggle with information overload: we need to find ways to deal with this.
• You could deal with links by favouriting, bookmarking and coming back to them at a later date.
• Not joining in with online PD could mean you don’t really enjoy teaching / joining in with online PD could reinvigorate your teaching when you feel close to burnout.
• It empowers you. You are participating and engaging with ELT.
• Lead by doing: show your colleagues how much your online PD has helped you.
• Share with your colleagues. Send them links that they might find useful. Start a wiki. Use google bookmarks. Post to an Edmodo group. Demonstrate, demonstrate, demonstrate!
• Perception: Twitter is not just for geeks / socialising; You can control your own PD (when, where, how…)
• It changes your practice and your expectations as a teacher.
• Mentor: show someone round and help them take their first steps in Twitter / the blogosphere. Help them move from being digital visitors to digital residents.
• Introduce online PD gradually to give others time to adjust.
• Almost everyone ‘lurks’ for a while before they dive in to contributing on Twitter. This is a good time for adjustment, but many of us commented that people often give up before taking the plunge.
• Recommend people / blogs for newbies to follow.
• The school’s webmaster may block sites, making it harder to join in.
• Access can also be an issue in terms of the availability of PCs, internet etc.
• You end up doing things you never would have imagined doing before [like summarizing a discussion involving people from all over the world] 😉
• Technology v. pedagogy: emphasise the latter if people are reluctant. Don’t forget that technology is difficult for many people.
• Feel the fear and do it anyway! If you keep talking, someone will start listening.

Disclaimer

I would like to reiterate that this is my summary of the discussions which took place today. I have used the words of some of the participants directly, but in no way claim them as my own – I wanted to make it a little simpler to find out what was going on, so have avoided crediting everyone. To find out exactly who said what, and to experience the full joy of an #eltchat, read the transcripts here.

Enjoy!

Plugging In and Tech-ing Off

Over the last week or so I’ve been one of the many travellers stuck at airports, first in Prague, then in Brno. Luckily I eventually got through to England, but not before quite a few hours taking advantage of free wi-fi to do all of the #edtech things I’ve been intending to do for ages but couldn’t because of my teaching load.
Here’s a summary of a week in the life of an #edtech (relative) newbie:

• I’ve just participated in my first ever #eltchat on Twitter (@sandymillin). The topic was “How do we overcome / avoid teacher burnout?” and there were loads of great ideas from around the world. They inspired me to create this wordle, including the ideas which I think came up most often:

From #eltchat "How to avoid teacher burnout?", 22 Dec 2010 (created using http://www.wordle.net)

• I’ve added three new posts to my blog:

1. my first ever response to a blogging challenge – ‘Vocabulary Box-ing (with added monsters)‘: a description of how I recycle vocabulary in response to Emma Herrod’s post
2. my own challenge for my students – ‘Video Poetry‘
3. this post right here! 😉

• I’ve changed the look of my blog. I think the new theme reflects me more than the old one – I like to think of myself as colourful and energetic and hope that comes across from the blog!
• I’ve posted a lot more on Twitter – currently at 138 tweets, of which about 40 were from the #eltchat and another 50 or so have come during the last week. I realised that I had only been watching and not participating. Speak up, or no-one will hear you!
• I commented on other people’s blogs. Here is a couple of the posts I can remember responding to:

1. Jason Renshaw’s “A Christmas confession from an ELT writer in therapy…“
2. Alex Case’s “Using your TEFL skills over Xmas“

• I subscribed to Google Reader, so I don’t have to remember the names of all of the blogs I want to follow. I can just click in one place and find all of the posts immediately and efficiently.
• I’ve also joined vimeo and diigo to share my videos and bookmarks. Still have a lot of work to do to finish sorting the 238 bookmarks I uploaded to diigo though!
• I contributed pictures to the #eltpics group on flickr. I even had the 1000th picture posted to the group 🙂 If you haven’t heard about it already, each week there is a theme. Anybody can post pictures using the #eltpics hashtag on twitter and they will then be shared through flickr. All images are under a Creative Commons license so that can be freely used by ELT teachers around the world.

So the first week of my Christmas holidays has been busy, busy, busy! I’ve really enjoyed finally being able to participate in so many things that I’ve just been watching and thinking about for the last two months. Hopefully, planning and classes will still leave me time to join in now that I’ve taken the plunge.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!