Bite-Size Teacher Development from Language Fuel

Over the last few weeks, I have been looking through LanguageFuel's online courses for EL teachers.

They have a great selection of teacher development courses, around 35 at present, with some really interesting content and a great selection of different topics, that vary from basics like Using Flashcards to more complex issues like Intercultural Awareness.

The courses are ideal for short bursts of study on your laptop or mobile as they have been divided into bite-size learning tasks and input. To do a complete course takes between 15 mins and about an hour.

The main content is delivered through a mixture of text, interactive activities and animated videos which visually reinforce the concepts being introduced.

Many of the courses also include some useful practical tasks that you can try to do with students and some templates for classroom planning or activities.

What I particularly liked about the courses was that many of them integrated some digital skills development for teachers and links to useful web-based resources which can help save some time with the day to day business of planning and delivering lessons.

These courses are great for novice teachers or to fill in or refresh some knowledge gaps for more experienced teachers.

Language Fuel is still at quite an early stage at present so it will be interesting to see how they grow and what else they come up with.

You can join their community for free (https://www.languagefuel.com/community-membership) and this also gives you access to their facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/LanguageFuel/

The courses aren't free, but they are very reasonably priced and one price covers all courses. You can get a free 14 day trial at https://www.languagefuel.com/memberships
If you sign up for premium membership you can also get private one to one training through video conference.

Language Fuel is a great way to boost your training, especially if you are working in isolated conditions as so many teachers do these days.

Sign up for my monthly free newsletter and get more tips and reviews like this one and a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/

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

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

Digital Skills for Teachers - World of Better Learning

I’d like to share a short series of articles I have produced for the Cambridge University Press blog - World of Better Learning.

The series looks at the impact of digital technologies on classroom practice and the kinds of skills teachers need to ensure that they help their students to take advantage of the opportunities that increasing classroom access to the Internet can offer.

• Digital skills that teachers need for the connected classroom #1: Backchannels
  In this first article I look at how classrooms are becoming increasingly digital and how this impacts on how we manage classroom interaction and the tools we use to do this.
• Digital skills that teachers need for the classroom #2: Setting up collaborative digital writing tasks
  In this article I look at how we can leverage digital devices in the classroom to make writing activities much more collaborative and engaging.
• Digital skills that teachers need for the classroom #3: The ability to crowdsource information
  In this article I look at how we can use web based tools in the classroom to push more autonomy and learning responsibility onto students.
• 4 Tasks and 4 Tools for Creating Digital Narrative
  In this article I look at how we can use technology to encourage our students to become creative producers or web content rather than passive consumers.
• Creating Mobile Worksheets with QR Codes
  In this article I look at how we can use QR codes to make more of our worksheets digital and accessible on our students’ mobile devices.
• 6 tools and tips for taking control of your teacher development
  In this final article I look at how we can use technology to take control of our own learning and development.

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

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

Exploiting Infographics for Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking

This is just a short post to anounce the publication of my new ebook 'Exploiting Infographics for Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking'.

Exploiting Infographics follows on from 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy, which is a collection of lesson plans based around infographics, and looks in more depth at the genre and how infographics can be used as both sources of information and as creative learning tasks for students.

The tasks that accompany the infographics are intended to encourage students to think more critically about the information they are exposed to and to question the sources of information they find whilst browsing the internet. Exploiting Infographics should help teachers to start creating their own tasks, activities and lesson plans for students and to integrate infographics in a way that will enhance students’ critical thinking, digital literacy, language and communication skills. Exploiting Infographics was conceived as part of The Digital Classrooms Series which started with the award winning Digital Video - A Manual for Language Teachers.

The series is intended to help teachers, teacher trainers, materials writers and course designers integrate digital technologies into their classroom practice in a pedagogically sound and impactful way. I hope you enjoy these books and find them useful. Related links:

• My Lesson Materials

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

Where do you build your PLN?

PLN (Personal Learning Networks) have grown in prominence and importance tremendously over the last few years and with good reason. They are a great way to extend your professional network beyond your physical environment and tap into a huge wealth of knowledge about your profession. This makes them one of the most effective autonomous means of developing your own teaching in a way that is most immediate and relevant to your ambitions.

Building an effective network though, is dependent on knowing the right places to go, which tools to use and how best to use them. With technology changing and new tools developing so rapidly, this can be a challenge to keep up with.

With this in mind I have launched this quick research survey to find out where you prefer to build your networks and what the pros and cons of each of those networks might be.

Please feel free to add your suggestions, pros and cons, and vote for the ones you find most useful. You maybe asked to register when you submit and idea, but you can just click on the X in the top right hand corner of the window and continue.


powered by tricider
I hope you find this information useful and continue to build your network.

Related links:

• Learning technology news portal
• Web Tools for Learners
• How I use social media for my professional development 
• Online Teacher Development Works Best - 15 Reasons Why
• Developing your digital study skills

Best

Nik Peachey

Let us Now Praise Famous Women

This is a post that I have been trying to find time to write for over a year now and the urge and urgency to write it has grown every time I go to conference and every time I hear a few irritating comments.

The comments usually fit into one or more of these categories

• Where is all the new talent?
• Why aren’t there more women speakers around?
• Well technology that’s for the guys.

I think that more than anything, after this years' IATEFL conference these kinds of comments should stop once and for all.

So I’ve chosen focus this post on just a few of the many great tech savvy speakers, teachers, tweeters and of course women from this years conference.

Shelly Turrell & Ozge Karaoglu
One of the great presentations that everyone was talking about this year was by Shelly and Ozge.
Ozge based in Turkey and Shelly based in Germany were reporting on a project they created between their classes of young learners. They shared the results of their work and information about the kinds of tools and the issues involved in running a project of this kind with young students.

• You can find out more about that project here: Engaging Lower Primary Students Through Web2.0 Tools
• You can also watch Shelly being interviewed about the project at: Interview with Shelly Turrell

Shelly publishes her own blog ‘Teacher Reboot Camp’ which focuses not on technology, but on the pedagogical exploitation of technology with students. So be sure to check that out.

• She is also one of the most prolific EFL tweeters with a huge following on Twitter, so if you are thinking of growing your PLN then her twitter page would be a great place to start.
  http://twitter.com/shellterrell
• She also has her own video channel on YouTube where you can find loads of interesting clips to view:
  http://www.youtube.com/user/shellterrell

Ozge also has her own blog 'Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog' where she writes about and reviews Web 2.0 type tools for learning with a particular focus on using these tools with young learners.

• You can also add Ozge to your PLN and start following her on Twitter:
  http://twitter.com/ozge
  

Marisa Constantinides
Marisa was just one of the stars of this years’ Pecha Kucha presentations (20 slides in 6.40 minutes). You can watch the Pecha Kuchas here: IATEFL 2010 Pecha Kucha

• Marisa also has her own blog ' TEFL Matters' where she publishes information on language teaching, teacher education and new technologies. Marisa is a teacher trainer and also runs a busy teacher training school in Athens. Among the things you can find on her blog are links to her recent presentation on animating course books with digital materials and some of her reflections on being an online teacher in a virtual world.
• You can also add Marisa to your PLN and start following her on Twitter at:
  http://twitter.com/Marisa_C
  

Burcu Akyol
Burcu was also one of the star presenters at this years’ Pecha Kucha event and she opened the event with 20 slides of 20 seconds about how Twitter had effected her professional life and its impact on conference events such as IATEFL and the recent ISTEK International ELT Conference (27-28 March 2010 ) which she helped to organise in Turkey.

• Burcu also publishes her own blog 'Burcu Akyol's Blog' on a range of teaching and ELT related topics and I can highly recommend it particularly if you are looking for somewhere to find information about building your PLN.
• Yes you’ve already guessed that she too is prolific producer of tweets, so be sure to add her to your network.
  http://twitter.com/burcuakyol
  

Petra Pointner
Among Petra’s striking contributions to this years’ IATEFL conference was her presentation 'What students can get out of Twitter' on her use of Twitter with her students. Petra talks in this interview about how she became interested in Twitter and how it has impacted on her professional life. Interview with Petra Pointner

• You can watch the whole of her presentation online at:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zOCVqfg4FU
• You can also add Petra to your PLN and follow her on Twitter at:
  http://twitter.com/TEFLPet
  

Karenne Joy Sylvester
Last but by no means least is Karenne Sylvester. Karenne’s presentation was on working in educational online communities and she explored some of the issues involved in being an e-moderator and working online with learners.

• You can also see Karenne doing, what for me was one of the highlights of the entire conference, her Pecha Kucha presentation on the history of the English language.
• Karenne also writes her own blog 'Kalingo English' which explores many of the pedagogical issues surrounding the use of educational technology with a particular focus towards business English. It’s a great read so do check that out.
• You can also follow her on Twitter at:
  http://twitter.com/kalinagoenglish
  

So here are just six of the many great women who were presenting at IATEFL this year. I have picked these six, not just because they are women, not because they blog or tweet and not because they use technology, but because all six are primarily great teachers and educators with great ideas that they want to share and because they critically apply their knowledge of education to the way they exploit technology with their students.

For me this is of key importance and significance. Technology was a huge feature of this years’ IATEFL conference and it’s very easy to be blinded or pulled along by the technology, but in the work of these six women there is for me some sign of the beginnings of a state of normalisation of technology in language teaching. A state when we can move past talking about technology and get back to talking about teaching of which technology is just a normal part and an enabler in that process of learning. I'm sure that time of normalisation will still be a long time coming, but it's great to see that at least it's beginning.

Related links:

• IATEFL Online 2010
• Twitter vs Plurk
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Naming My Sources: Part 2

Best

Nik Peachey

How to Sheets

I've just been creating some training tasks and materials which I'll be using later this week. As part of that I've created a few easy 'How to' sheets showing some basic functions a four Web 2.0 type apps and have published these on Scribd.
There will be more of these to come later, along with the exploratory tasks that go with them, but for now here are four how to sheets that you can either use online or download / photocopy to use with students or trainee teachers.

• How to create online presentations and import videos from YouTube using 280Slides
• How to create an online journal using Penzu.com
• How to create and change the appearance of word clouds using Wordle
• How to create an animated movie using Dvolver

I hope these are useful and look out next week for a few more and for some learning tasks for trainee teachers too.

Related links:

• From Information to Knowledge
• Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers
• 100 + Online activities for EFL ESL learners
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Social networking for language learning
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Creating an Online Classroom

Best

Nik Peachey

Web 2.0 Tools for EFL ESL Teachers

This has been a pretty busy week for me, mainly because I delivered my first online technology training presentation (8th September 2009) using the Adobe Connect Pro platform. I have to thank Jürgen Wagner and Verena Heckmann, e-learning specialists at the Landesinstitut für Pädagogik and Medien in Saarbrücken Germany, for offering me this opportunity to get online and promote and share some of the technological tools and activities I believe can be so helpful to EFL and ESL teachers.


The complete two hour session was recorded and can be viewed online (warts and all), so if you would like to hear me talking and displaying some of these tools then you can go to:

• Nik Peachey on Web 2.0 in the EFL Classroom

My advice is to jump the first 20 mins (Me defining Web 2.0) and get straight into the good stuff (the tools and how to use them).

• I also prepared a 53 page booklet to go with presentation. and you can look over it below or you can download your own copy here: Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers (8Mb PDF)
  

Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers
Feel free to print and share the booklet or sections of it if you find it useful and by all means leave a comment if you have any suggestions for the next edition.

Related links:

• 100 + Online activities for EFL ESL learners
• Bring the News into the Classroom: Online Presentation
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Social networking for language learning
• Build your own Facebook Apps
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Creating an Online Classroom

Best

Nik Peachey

A Complete EFL Teacher Training Course Online

Shaping the Way We Teach English is a fantastic resource that I came across recently. The resource is similar to other online courses from colleges and universities. It's free and accessible through The Online Language Center of the University of Oregon and it is a pretty complete teacher training course that has videos , viewing tasks, transcripts, observation checklists and even recommended supplementary web based reading.

The videos for the course are all on YouTube and can either be watched online or it is recommended that they are downloaded using http://keepvid.com/ for anyone with a slower connection.

Most of the videos ( there is one for each of the 14 modules) is about 10 -15 mins long and the quality is good. The makers of the course have used a range of teachers from around the world and you can see them working with their classes and listen to what they have to say about the way they teach.

Here's a useful example on reflective teaching


These videos and tasks could be used for pre-service or even in service teacher training, or as a self access resource for teachers who want some informal development.

As I said. Shaping the Way We Teach English is a fantastic resource, it's free and it's very complete. I hope you enjoy using it.

Related links:

• Using wikis for teacher development
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Three Views of the Future of English Language Teaching
• Teachers' Stories
• ELT classroom videos
• Would you recommend this?
• Conference presentation videos
• English Online

Best

Nik Peachey

Listen to Coffee With Jeremy Harmer

For those who weren't able to attend Coffee With Jeremy Harmer in Second Life on 3rd May, you can now listen to the complete audio recording online at: http://blip.tv/file/2067218/

During the interview Jeremy shares his opinions on a range of topics including his first impressions of Second Life, how technology is impacting on his work, why he started to Twitter and the role of technology in teacher training.

If you enjoy listening to this interview, then come along on 7th June 2009 and join our interview and have Coffee With Pete Sharma.

To find out more about other events and courses organised by The Concultants-E check out their website: The Consultants-E

I hope you enjoy the interview and look forward to seeing you at the next Coffee With. Special thanks go to Carol Rainbow for the audio recording

Related links:

• Scott Thornbury in Second Life Chat
  
• Coffee With Scott Thornbury
  
• Filming in Second Life 1
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Building in Second Life
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best

Nik Peachey

3 Views on The Future of English Language Teaching

Just been looking through the various guest writers that have appeared on the British Council | BBC TeachingEnglish website and comparing some of the very different views on the future of English language teaching.

There's an interesting cross section here. I often wonder how long a future we have and how long it will be before voice activated translation systems can replace the need to learn another language. I wonder how many of us or our students would still have the discipline to learn a language for the joy of really being ale to speak it, if they didn't have to????

Anyway, here are some differing views.

Mario Rinvolucri

Interview with Mario Rinvolucri

Rod Bolitho

Interview with Rod Bolitho

Jenny Johnson


Interview with Jenny Johnson

There has been a whole series of these interviews with each of the guest writers that have blogged on the site, so others worth checking out are:

• Dave Willis
• Jane Wilis
• Barry Tomalin

Hope you enjoy these and find them useful.

Related links:

• Teachers' Stories
• ELT classroom videos
• Would you recommend this?
• Conference presentation videos
• English Online

Best

Nik Peachey

Blog Carnival

I'm very proud to say that I have been asked by Larry Ferlazzo to host the next EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival which I will be posting here on April 1st 2009, with submissions due in no later than the day before.


If you have a blog and have posted something over the last month which you think would be of interest to teachers of English (examples of student work are also welcome!) you can contribute posts from your blog using this easy submission form.

To see examples from the last Blog Carnival go to David Deubelbeiss' blog and check out some of the entries there at: EFL Classroom 2.0

Look forward to receiving your submissions. Don't be shy.

Related links:

• Naming My Sources: Part 2
  
• Creating a personal homepage
• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Quick Shout
• Nik's Daily English Activities
  

Best

Nik Peachey

Coffee With Dennis Newson

Sunday 15th February 2009 (GMT 18.00 = 10.00 PST) sees the return of Coffee With.

This is the forth in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational chat shows on Edunation III in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.


In this show I'll be interviewing Dennis Newson (aka: Osnacantab Nesterov) Formerly: University of Osnabrück, Webhead and member of SLexperiments

In the show I will be talking to Dennis about his experiences of starting off his Second Life as a digital immigrant, his observations of language teaching within Second Life and his recent foray into teacher training and development.


If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 8 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 10.00 PST and 19.00 CET)

If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar

Related links:

• Coffee With Kim Anubis
  
• Coffee With Kyle Mawer
• Coffee with Gavin Dudeney
• Filming in Second Life 1
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Building in Second Life
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best

Nik Peachey

Teachers' Stories

I've just noticed a really nice new feature on the British Council | BBC TeachingEnglish website. It's called Teachers' Stories and has a small collection of video interviews with teachers talking about how they became interested in English language and language teaching.

You can find the Teachers' stories within the 'Transform' section and at the moment there are 4 videos, two from teachers in Ethiopia, one from India and another from Czech Republic.

Nice features of these videos are that you can leave comments for the teacher, there are a couple of reflection tasks for teachers to do and best of all teachers are also invited to start their own blog on the site and share their experiences and stories. There are even some tips on how to write a good blog posting from your truly!

Hope you enjoy these.

Related links:

• Rod Bolitho on TeachingEnglish
• ELT classroom videos
• Would you recommend this?
• English Online
• Conference presentation videos
• Resources for Continuing Professional Development

Best

Nik Peachey

Resources for Continuing Professional Development

It's great to see that Teachers TV has released a series of video and support materials for for CPD leaders | Teacher Trainers. There's a good collection of quite varied material for the development of both primary and secondary teachers.

Some of the clips look quite long (up to 30 mins) for web delivery, but you can download them if you register and log in. There are also a range of support materials to go with each of the topics explored in the videos.

There are some interesting ones there now on assessment and next month they will be uploading videos and presentations on ICT and modern foreign languages, all of which sound pretty interesting.

There is also a group for CPD leaders which you might think of joining if you'd like to get advice or do some networking with other training professionals.

You can find more information at: http://www.teachers.tv/cpdleaders

This is a useful resource. It's a shame they don't offer an embed code so these could be embedded in other materials, but I guess you can't have everything for free.

Hope you find these useful

Related links:

• Using wikis for teacher development
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• RSS and Personal Homepages for Teachers
• New Social Network Creation Tool
• ELT classroom videos

Best

Nik Peachey

ESL Information Digests

I've just been browsing through the website of the Centre for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) and although it couldn't possibly be described as fun and sexy, there is a lot of potentially really useful information there especially for anyone involved in teacher training and development.


There are 72 quick Q & A digests that deal with a broad range of subjects from methodology to program design and technology.

There's also a handy Tools section that has guidance for Instructors and Program developers.

You can email in a question and get it answered at Ask CAELA and even sign up for a free newsletter.

Hope you find something useful there.

Related links:

• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Using wikis for teacher development
• ELT classroom videos
• Training Teachers to Use Blogger
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best
Nik Peachey

RSS and Personal Homepages for Teachers

I've finally found the time to edit and upload a video presentation I created for a training course here in Morocco. The focus of the presentation is on how setting up personal homepages and using RSS feeds can save teachers time and keep them better informed.



The catalyst for finally getting this done, is a discussion that is taking place between the Learning With Computers group (EFL teachers mainly based in South America, but increasingly becoming more international). If you want to be involved in this discussion you can sign up to join the group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningwithcomputers/
You can also follow the discussion on their blog at: Learning with Computers

You can watch the video presentation from my YouTube channel, above, or if you would prefer a higher quality version, click this link Personal Homepages and RSS.

If you are interested in creating your own personal homepage or doing training to help other teachers create homapages, you can find the tasks and instructions that I refer to here: Creating a personal homepage

Hope you find this useful and that you join the discussion.

Related links:

• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Naming My Sources: Part 2
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Creating a Wiki
• Using wikis with EFL students
• Using wikis for teacher development

Best

Nik Peachey

ELT classroom videos

Videos of teacher working in the ELT classroom is pretty difficult to come by, so this makes this series of videos from the British Council that much more valuable.

As you can see from this example the videos have footage from the real practicing teachers accompanied by expert commentary. This is useful stuff for anyone involved in teacher training.



You can find the full series of 9 videos ( about 5 mins each) within the Teaching English website's Training videos section.

Hope you find these useful.

Best

Nik Peachey

Would you recommend this?

I wasn't sure whether to post this or not, but it does raise some really interesting questions about a number of issues. The site that I'm referring to is Hot for Words! It is presented by Marina and this is how she describes herself;

"My name is Marina and I am a philologist (one who studies linguistics and etymology). I love to discuss the origins of words."

The interesting motto for the site is 'Intelligence is sexy'. Before you jump to too many conclusions have a look at an example episode of Marina describing the origin of the word 'nuclear'.



Marina is quite obviously using her sex appeal to attract users, but despite that she does seem to be delivering the goods and quite obviously has a huge following with more that 77 thousand subscribers to the Hot for Words YouTube Channel and more that 27 Million views of her videos. That certainly is a lot more than my own YouTube channel!!

I found it really interesting to compare Marina's efforts with those of the BBC and their British Council Innovations award winning 'The Teacher'.



Here's an episode with The Teacher introducing idioms connected with the word 'pie'. I have to say that to watch this on my MAC I had to download 44Mb of Mp4 first!
Click here if you want to do the same comparison

Well I'm not really sure which you prefer but I would be really interested to hear your comments.

• Which would you recommend to your students????
• Trainee teachers???
• Will Marina and Hot for Words be winning next years Innovations award?

There's an interesting clip here telling a bit more about Marina and the origins of the show.



Love to hear what you think so please do post a comment.

Best

Nik Peachey