Becoming a Technology Teacher Trainer

I’m really proud to announce the release of the second edition of my Digital Tools for Teachers ebook and also the Trainers’ Edition which should enable any teacher with a basic knowledge of technology to run teacher training and development courses and sessions for pre-service and in-service teachers.

The two ebooks are available for both iOS/ Apple devices as well as in a PDF version that can be used on any reader, smart phone or computer.


The Second Edition of Tools for Teachers contains a new chapter on games and gamification with X links to games and game type resources that you can use with your students to develop their language skills. In addition to this the other chapters have had some 30 additional tools added.

The teacher trainers’ edition includes all the extra materials mentioned above as well as 3 additional chapters to enable any teacher to use the book for teacher training and development purposes.

These chapters include tips and advice for trainers, more than 20 teacher training activities that exploit the resources in the book and a chapter on digital tools for trainers that can enable them to deliver paperless digital training sessions.

The Second Edition of Digital Tools for Teachers is available from

• iOS £3.49
• PDF £3.49

The Trainers’ Edition of Digital Tools for Teachers is available from

• iOS £4.99 
• PDF £4.99

I hope you find these books useful and they help you to develop your own teaching and the teaching of others as well as the learning potential of your students.

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom

I'm proud to say that I've just published another ebook through PeacheyPublications.com

20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom was designed to be the first in a series of collections of the simple activities and ideas I have used over many years when delivering teaching and teacher training sessions that incorporate the use of digital technologies.

The ideas use simple free tools that have stood the test of time and remained consistently reliable. The teaching ideas and activities themselves are ones that I have adapted from my pre-technology teaching days, so they are all built on sound classroom teaching practice.

The activities are ideal for the modern connected classroom in which students come to class with a variety of devices, but they can also be used in a blended context and students can be assigned some parts of the tasks to do outside of the classroom.

I have also included a collection of 8 video tutorials to help less tech confident teachers deal with the technology side of using the materials.










I hope 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom will act as a bridge for teachers who are newer or less confident at using digital tools and materials and help them provide engaging and motivating language learning experiences for their students.

I hope you find this ebook useful.

Related links

• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers

Best
Nik Peachey

Digital books for teacher development

Within the last few weeks I have launched my first attempt to raise the funding for a project to create the first in a series of digital e-books for teachers.

The project is called Digital Classrooms and the e-books will be aimed at helping teachers with both the technological and pedagogical aspects of exploiting new technologies. If the project is successful, the first of the e-books will focus on digital video and will be followed by others on developing digital literacies, using tablets and mobile devices inside and outside the classroom, developing speaking and listening skills with technology and a whole load more.

You can visit this link The Digital Classroom and watch the video below to find out more about the project.


If you think this project is of value, I’m hoping that you will help and support me in a number of ways.

How you can help

• You can share this link to the project http://igg.me/at/nikpeachey/x/4856585 with anyone you think might be interested in it.
• You can back the project by buying an advance copy of the book. (You should receive the actual e-book some time over the summer.) Click here for more information
• If you are really interested in the project and would like to be involved in producing it, then there are a number of ways you can get involved.
• You could write an activity or a review for the book. You would do this with my guidance and support and the piece would be published in the book with full credit to you. You can find out more here: Write an activity or review
• You could also help me by reviewing the finished book before it is published and sending me suggestions for improvements I could make before it is released. Again you would be credited in the book for your contribution to its development. You can find out more here: First look reviewer
• Finally, the simplest and easiest of ways, is to contribute your suggestions for what this first book should include. You can add your ideas for activities or recommend links to sites that should be included etc. on this interactive questionnaire.

If you are just interested in finding out how the project progresses, then you can get regular updates on the Digital Classrooms Facebook page. Just follow the link and click on 'Like'.

If you are interested in finding out how to create your own digital e-book and discovering some of the problems I come across and some of the resources I find to overcome these problems, then you can follow my digital magazine on Flipboard, where I’ll be sharing some of the ups and downs and insights into the project. Digital Classroom on Flipboard

I hope you find this project interesting, follow along and help me to make it a reality.

Related links:

• Publishing 3.0 - A new model for independent educational publishing 
• The Digital Classrooms on Indiegogo
• Digital Classrooms on Facebook
• Digital Classroom on Flipboard

Best

Nik Peachey

Questioning the Role of Technology in Education

Over the last six months I have been involved in a project with Delta Publishing on their development blog as a guest author to produce a series of postings which question the role of technology and how it is applied in ELT and education in general. This has been a bit of a new departure for me because I usually focus on very practical articles and tend to avoid getting into the sometimes lengthy debates that surround technology with ELT.

I'm now coming to the end of this series for a while and so I thought I would collect together these postings and some thoughts on what I've learned from the interaction with the various teachers who have responded to these posts.

Here you can see a short video I created to introduce the series.



Here you can find a brief summary and link to each article.

ELT and the Crisis in Education
In this first article I tried to put ELT into the greater context of general education and what is being described by some as the 'Crisis in education'. I often think that ELT is viewed and views itself in isolation from what is happening elsewhere in education. I used a social questionnaire to encourage readers to reflect on their beliefs and compare them with those of other readers.

ELT and the Crisis in Education – Part 2
In this article I tried to highlight and share some of the reading and viewing that had influenced my own thinking about the problems that education faces today and the kinds of changes we need to make.

ELT and the Crisis in Education: Technology in the Classroom
In this article I tried to examine what I believe are some of the mistakes that have been made in our attempts to overlay technology onto our existing classroom design.

ELT and the Crisis in Education: Digital Literacy
In this article I tried to examine the role of digital literacy within ELT and highlight the importance of improving our understanding of what digital literacy is and how and why we should integrate it into our course design.

ELT and the Crisis in Education: Digital Reading Skill
In this article I tried to examine the way receptive skills and the demands on 'readers' of web based content differed from the traditional reading skills we develop with our students.

It’s time to change the way we test our students
In this article I tried to examine the role of testing and its negative impact on the potential of ELT to move forward and become more innovative.

Breaking down the walls of the classroom
In this article I tried to examine the way that technology could be applied to course work to extend learning beyond the walls of the classroom and support a more blended and autonomous approach to the use of technology in ELT.

Some Pros and Cons of iPads for ELT
In this article I tried to examine the potential of iPads and tablet style devices within the classroom context and look at the way course books and published materials could be enhanced to make digital course books much more interactive and communicative.

The worst thing about educational technology is educational technology
In this article I tried to look at some of the worst aspects of our fixation with 'hardware' and the problems caused by misguided spending on complex gadgets without funding the support to make these work.

Is the 140 character ‘micro interaction’ enough?
In this article I tried to look at our tendency to be obsessed with 'the latest thing' and how this often limits view of what is potentially available to us. I tried to particularly focus on a contrast between microblogging and 3D game playing in virtual worlds.

Augmented Reality and Web 3.0
In one of my last posts I speculated about what could be the next step in terms of the way the Internet is developing and I had a brief look at how this could potentially impact on ELT.

Survey: Mobile Learning in ELT 2011
My final post will be a write up of some research I have been doing into mobile learning. This will be a follow up to some research that I published a year ago into the use of mobile learning devices in ELT.

I'd like to thank all the people who have left comments and questions on the articles and especially I would like to thanks everyone at Delta Publishing for sponsoring this series and leaving me absolutely free to say whatever I want.

I hope you enjoy reading them.

Best

Nik Peachey