Six Things ESL Resources (Lanternfish) Collablogatorium Nik's QuickShout Life Feast Teacher Reboot Camp Adult Education and Technology English Raven The idea of disintermediation ("cutting out the middle man") in terms of professional qualifications has been slowly but surely gathering steam in a variety of fields. Take a look at a range of Position Descriptions for new jobs these days and phrases along the lines of Tertiary qualifications in a relevant discipline, or equivalent experience and expertise/skills are becoming more frequent. Private companies (as we might expect) have been quicker to apply this in practice rather than rhetoric compared to educational institutions, mired as most of them are in conservative paper-reliant processes for verifying applicants' skills, but even here we are starting to see change. As university qualifications become more expensive and fail to deliver effective ROI for the people who invest their time and money in them, the idea of cutting them out of the picture partly or wholly is becoming not only more attractive, but more feasible. Branding is still important, however. A. B. 1. 2.
Ellclassroom Over the course of my 15 years of teaching in the classroom, there has been a continual debate over management vs. engagement. The argument is that if you create an engaging lesson, then management issues will fade away like a bad stain in the washing machine. The opposite has also been stated, if you have good management then “engagement” (which has been confused with compliance, in this instance), also increases. We need to look beyond the either/or to the both/and. A classroom should have good student management in place, but it should also include lessons/activities that are engaging. The Management Side: It has been my stance for years that each teacher must decide for themselves what type of management system they want to have in their classroom. For those of you that are curious, I have a couple of podcasts of my management plan. The Engagement Side: When we create lessons for our students, we need to purposefully plan for engaging activities. Together in Harmony
The Best ESL/EFL Blogs “The Best…” list is going to be an expanding one. These are the ESL/EFL blogs that I subscribe to now, but I’m sure there are many more out there that I just don’t know about… I hope you’ll contribute their url addresses in the comments section! Here are my picks for The Best ESL/EFL Blogs (not in any order): David Deubelbeiss ELL Classroom Learning the Language Adult Education and Technology Life Is A Feast Learning Technology Blog Nik’s Daily English Activities Nik’s Quick Shout Technology News Burcu Akyol’s EFL Blog Jamie Keddie Kalinago English Six Things TEFLtastic Carl Dowse Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals Seth Dickens Carla Arena Think And Dream In English Teacher Boot Camp Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog The English Blog English Raven Marmara Elt/EFL Resources everythingESL My Life Untranslated: Adventures of a New ESL Teacher in New York City I’ve written a lot about how I use online video games with my English Language Learner students. Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters French Frog’s Little English Pond
Nik's Learning Technology Blog Storyline - Showcase Accident Investigation Demo by Rob Clark for the U.S. Department of Energy, National Training Center Featuring a deliciously dark film noir look, this award-winning U.S. Sales Orientation by ThinkingKap Learning Solutions, Inc. This course takes full advantage of the most powerful features in Storyline, including software simulation, drag-and-drop interactions, variables, triggers, states, and slide layers. SMS Treasure by mashrur.com It’s never been so fun to learn about safety management systems. Broken Co-Worker by eLearnerEngaged This comic strip-style Storyline course tackles a touchy topic with humor and creativity. Avoiding Meeting Missteps by DFLearning This well-conceived Storyline course features a cool customized player, illustrated and photographic characters, drag-and-drop activities, lightboxes, freeform quizzes, and more. DC Fundamentals: The Role of Electrons Enders Collection by Enders Design Six Storyline demos rolled into one. Social Media Guidelines at Hitachi Data Systems U.S.
Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas I am proud to announce the publication of Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas (ASCD, 2010). I had a wonderful time writing this book with Debbie Zacarian, whom I met at TESOL when we both wrote columns for the TESOL publication, Essential Teacher. Writing a book alone is a long, lonely task but co-writing can be a wonderful journey where authors grow as writers. This was the case with my collaboration with Debbie. Our book can be ordered now on the ASCD website. In fact, the table of contents and the first two chapters are available at ASCD Bookstore. Here is what ASCD writes about the book on their site: Taking off from the ideas in our best-selling book Getting Started with English Language Learners (Judie Haynes, ASCD 2007) here’s a book that helps teachers in every subject area become expert teachers of English language learners (ELL).