Follow us on Twitter
Blog roll
- ‘absolutely intercultural!’
- TeachPaperless
- The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language
- Kalinago English
- Teacher Training Videos
- Humanising Language Teaching
- English Raven
- Nik's Learning Technology Blog
- Ken Wilson's Blog
- Burcu Akyol's Blog
- The PLN Staff Lounge
- Mashable
- futurelab
- Seth Godin's Blog
- An A-Z of ELT
- The Freelance Teacher in France
- Jeremy Harmer's Blog
- Business Spotlight
- EMP English for Nursing and Health
Categories
- About (4)
- Assessment (5)
- Communication Performance (6)
- conference (6)
- Features (3)
- Globalization (4)
- Language Learning (9)
- Language Learning Management (13)
- Language Teaching (29)
- Learner Autonomy (3)
- Lesson / Course Design (9)
- News (44)
- Politics (3)
- Presentation Skills (15)
- Research (7)
- Resources (14)
- Second Language Acquisition (6)
- Tasks (7)
- Teacher training (5)
- Technology and Language Learning (39)
- Course design (3)
- Tutorials (2)
- Tweets (1)
Community webinars in September
August 12th, 2011
by Valentina Dodge
Starting in September, you will be able to benefit from our Community webinars.
2nd Sept (16.oo -17.co GMT) English360 - the basics :
- Browse content
- Create course
- Duplicate content
- Use course with learners
13 Sept Sept (14.00 -15.00 GMT) English360 - Online / blended course design
- basic guidelines
- adding structure
- allowing for flexibility
- ongoing course design issues
- folders and task patterns
29nd Sept (10.00-11.oo GMT / 12.00 - 13.00 CET) Giving learners feedback at a distance
- negotiating correction strategies
- monitoring performance
- reviewing learner submission
- giving feedback
- feedforward strategies
Before you join the meeting, please click here to make sure that you have the appropriate players.
For further information, please contact teachersupport@english360.com
Looking forward to meeting virtually!
IATEFL Brighton BESIG Open forum - prize draw
May 11th, 2011
by Valentina Dodge
English360 are happy to announce that the winner of the BESIG* Open forum raffle is Mercedes Viola, who lives in Uruguay and has been teaching English to all ages for the last 20 years, but whose particular area of expertise is business English teaching. Having won the BESIG Facilitator Conference Scholarship, Mercedes attended and gave a presentation at the recent 45th Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition which took place in Brighton from 15-19 April 2011.
Mercedes says: “As head of a business English consultancy firm, I work on the design and implementation of Effective Learning Experiences to our clients. I use the word ‘experience’ since this concept moves us from instruction to actions and interactions. I truly believe we need to get off the content bus and start thinking about using, designing and exploiting learning environments full of experiences and interactivity. We need to integrate learning tools that help situate learning and make it more contextual. Collaboration is vital.
Mercedes Viola - IATEFL BESIG prize draw winner
I’m really thrilled to have won one year’s subscription to the English360 blended learning platform since it offers the possibility of creating tailor-made learning environments for my clients where they can enlarge their learning experience at their own pace together with a network of colleagues. It also offers my organization the possibility of exchanging resources with colleagues from all over the world, a crucial ingredient for our continuous professional growth.
I am really looking forward to starting this experience!”
*BESIG, the Business English Special Interest Group of IATEFL, is a professional body which represents the interests and serves the needs of the international business English teaching community. Its members are based in more than 65 countries, and are mainly teachers of Business English, both native and non-native speakers of English. BESIG’s aim is to help its members to improve their expertise in teaching Business English, and to facilitate making connections with fellow professionals around the globe.
And the winner is….
April 17th, 2011
by Valentina Dodge
Thanks everyone for coming to the IATEFL workshop and for taking part in the raffle.
The workshop slides can be found here:
The winner of the top-prize (a six-month subscription to English360 for a teacher and their 6 students which includes all 12 Grammar in Practice and Vocabulary in Practice titles from Cambridge University Press available in digital format on the English360 platform) is Femke Kitslaare.
Second prize goes to Giedre Budienne
Second prize (six Grammar in Practice titles) went to Giedre Budienne and third prize (the six Vocabulary in Practice titles) was picked up by John Arnold.
If you haven’t picked up your prize yet, please feel free to drop by stand 15 in the exhibition hall.
Six Technology Things
April 9th, 2011
by Valentina Dodge
Pete Sharma's plenary speech at EAQUALS Prague
Here’s Pete Sharma speaking at the EAQUALS annual conference for school directors yesterday. Pete’s plenary focused on Six Technology Things (with acknowledgement to Lindsay Clanfield!) - six statements, six technologies, six controversies and six practical ideas, including ideas for grammar, vocabulary and language skills. And ways in which learning management systems for language teaching - English360 in particular - were radically changing the way in which we teach and learn. In a show of hands, it was interesting to see that more than a third of the ninety people in the audience felt blended learning was the way to go, over face to face and purely online learning.
Prague 8-9 April 2011
Yesterday, 8th April 2011, at the his plenary session on school management, George Pickering reinforced the message by saying bluntly that “English360 is fantastic!” His key message to school members present was that the secret of success lay “in customising the learning at low cost”.
An important conference theme ‘Enhancing Classroom Language Learning: the Challenges for Teachers, Trainers and Managers‘, and many interesting questions being discussed one of which I’d like to copy and share here to get feedback from readers:
“What are the most useful and innovative resources available to learners to continue effective learning outside the classroom during and after their course?”
Explaining English360 at BESIG 2010
November 19th, 2010
by Valentina Dodge
While at BESIG 2010 in Bielefeld, Germany, at Pete Sharma’s Pre-conference event on “Business English materials in the digital age: what’s new?”, the English360 team are showcasing how to incorporate learner-generated content in blended learning programmes and demonstrating how Cambridge resources can be personalised.
Here’s a short video that explains the essence of English360 (made for us by the great folks at Atelier Transfert).
Biodiversity in ELT
October 22nd, 2010
by Valentina Dodge
The International House 50th anniversary conference on “Biodiversity in ELT” got off to a great start today in Rome, Italy.
“2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity - established by the United Nations to increase worldwide awareness of biodiversity and its importance, and to enage more people in its conservation.”
During Margaret Horrigan’s great presentation on Biodiverse Teaching and her learning activities on the theme of “shoes” (see also her article on If I were in your shoes… from the IH Journal) she shared many super ideas on how to promote cultural awareness and sensitivity through respect for what is different among peoples.
The conference presentations will be shared on the IH wikispaces http://ihmanzoni.wikispaces.com/
I have also added mine to slideshare embedded here for your convenience
News & Updates – managing “noise” online
September 9th, 2010
by Valentina Dodge
With the constant stream of information that flows in on a daily basis managing this never-ending overload and carefully selecting what it is that you really want to read or find out about has become an important 21st century skill. This applies whether you are keeping track of your social media feeds or are a teacher managing multiple courses online.
To help get more out of Twitter and channel the tweets I want to keep track of, I use Hootsuite . With its powerful dashboard I can view the information I’m interested in more efficiently via tabs and columns as well as check multiple accounts e.g vale24 or vale 360
Other educators I know are keen users of TweetDeck which is also a “fast and easy way to experience Twitter”. I also find Netvibes fantastic for collecting my favourite online content and accessing it all in one place from any web browser. I use it to aggregate news feeds, blog feeds, social bookmarks e.g. what my followers on Diigo are saving or talking about, secondary pop mail accounts I have and of course Facebook updates.
When using a web-based platform as an integral part of a teaching/learning programme, the same need arises. How can I be more productive and keep an eye on everything that is going on?
There is a lot to track when you use blended or online solutions for teaching; if you are overseeing or tutoring on multiple courses, you might need to access multiple course forums to post timely replies to learners. You might be receiving learner responses to your private feedback on their tasks or assignments and need to know whether comments have been added to pages that you have set up to increase learner interaction and exchanges. Obviously, going into each course to monitor this activity can be incredibly burdensome and time consuming for the busy educator so we are pleased to announce that we’ve just released a new widget on English360 which allows users to select their preferences for receiving these types of notifications.
For a school owner, that might involve tracking school memberships and new courses being created by school teachers. For teachers working collaboratively, receiving notifications on content that has been added, removed or published on the courses being designed can be extremely helpful in keeping everyone up-to-date on changes.
All users can modify and select their own preferences from their profile area by clicking on the Edit Notifications sub-navigation tab. The “News & Updates” notifications can be received directly on the platform from the Dashboard widget or via email.
Select what suits you best and then enjoy your “News & Updates”. Let us know how you manage your streams of information, it’s interesting to compare notes.
CC is for Customisable Coursebooks and Creative Commons publishing
May 18th, 2010
by Valentina Dodge
Lindsay Clandfield over on Scott Thornbury’s blog in his guest post on C is for coursebook outlines what’s wrong with many coursebooks:
- They all look the same.
- They all follow the same syllabus.
- The grammar is wrong or misleading.
- Texts serve merely as a pretext to teach discrete language items.
- Texts and topics are Anglo- or Eurocentric and/or promote a western consumerist ideology.
- Texts and topics are safe, bland and vapid.
- Coursebooks are too big.
The 50+ comments that the post has attracted to date have reiterated some of the criticisms being made by many educators around the world.
1. It’s difficult even for a teacher to identify the aim of coursebook pages
2. Learning is non-linear, by nature course books are linear.
3. Language learning is a dynamic, idiosyncratic coursebook aren’t.
4. Publisher-driven projects often have the wrong focus.
5. Coursebooks are often artificial and a construct of “some other world”.
6. Cost are often prohibitive.
7. Sheer number of different coursebooks can be overwhelming.
8. Content is very often inappropriate.
9. Coursebooks can alienate learners from the process of learning English.
10. Coursebooks often teach a fossilized form of English
11. They can be overly prescriptive and descriptive (to the point of giving the learners ‘nothing’ to cling to).
12. They are predicated on a linear and incremental progression through a (fairly arbitrary) sequence of discrete grammar items.
13. Materials that have been devised for a global market cannot easily accommodate local – and personal – needs and interests.
14. The whole process is very top down.
15. Coursebooks are mostly written for teachers (for parents, and head teachers, and ministries and inspectors and exam bodies ) rather than student
16. There’s a belief that ‘progress’ can easily be measured.
17. Publishers are bound to produce what is authorised by the ministries.
18. After 20+ years of market-led material people are tired of it.
19. Don’t include enough unscripted dialogues featuring non-native speakers
20. …. and the list goes on…..
From the 50+ comments so far we can see some of the suggestions or ideas that need to be incorporated to make the ideal coursebook or course material/resources
- The internet
- More user-generated content
- Make it authentic because it is set up such that the student creates the content
- Adapt and change according to the teacher’s preference
- Make it customisable
- Allow teachers /students to add specific local content / their content
- Integrate with self-publishing elements
- Educators can work with major publishers rather than against them or outside of them
- Throw educators’ support behind innovations
- Push publishers to consider and incorporate more changes
- Teach unplugged
- Use the text book as a grounding and supplement it as is relevant to the learning styles and personalities of the learners
At present the Cambridge University Press material in the system is All Rights Reserved with the setting others may use but not change. I would simply add, real shift is happening now as educators are sharing content too. It’s great to be part of a project that promotes Creative Commons (CC) and seeing authors or course providers selecting “Others may copy and change your work.”.
This is an important move forward and I hope more authors will come on board prepared to do just that so that the 360° degree perspective can evolve further.
Material is currently being authored for the platform under the CC licence, that’s evolutionary I find!
The English Learner Notebook
May 11th, 2010
by Valentina Dodge
It seems Spring is full of conferences and as we reflect or share our thoughts on what makes a “good” conference, I know that for me it’s about the opportunity of meeting online “connections” face-to-face. There’s a great buzz from human smiles and human minds exchanging ideas. It’s wonderful to be able to bump into people you might otherwise never meet.
Although online conferences such as the Virtual Round Table - which has just hosted its second event - are powerful and save on travel time, there is less chit chat over morning coffee or time to sit down and speak to people individually.
At TESOL Spain, held in Lleida in March we bumped into Ken Goméz plugging his wonderful notebook, that was a meaningful start to a super event. Since then, I’ve kept in touch by email and would like to share an interview on the Enlano English Learner Notebook project that Ken introduced us to.
Valentina: What are the benefits for learners using English Learner Notebook?
Ken: The main benefit is that the students will have an organised and structured notebook, this will help immensely when revising for exams or when looking for specific material already covered. It also offers sections such as the vocabulary by topic spider diagrams which students may otherwise not bother doing, and which is an incredibly useful tool.
Valentina : What is the English Learner Notebook (ELN)?
Ken: As the title suggests this is a notebook for learners of English as a second language. The aim of the notebook is to help students take effective and organised notes. This is achieved by dividing the notebook into specific sections for the students to note down the relevant information using pre-designed templates.
Valentina: What are some of the ways in which the ELN differs from an “ordinary” notebook?
Ken: At first sight the obvious difference is that the English Learner Notebook is divided into sections each with its own pre-printed design and each page numbered. There is also a short reference section at the back (grammar glossary, verb tense overview, phonetics etc.) for students to consult.
Valentina : How do you see the English Learner Notebook fitting in with digital vocabulary learning aids e.g collaborative mindmaps or online flashcards?
Ken: E-learning is obviously here to stay and a very powerful tool which should not be overlooked even by the traditionalists. I see the English Learner Notebook complementing this process. The student has the opportunity to note down for future reference the most relevant information which they gain from the e-learning sessions, as in a traditional learning environment. The fact that the student has to physically write down information also helps with the retention of that information.
Valentina: Who is involved in the “Enleno” project?
Ken: Enleno is very much a personal project which I developed while studying a CELTA course at the Hyland Academy in Madrid. I saw the need for students to take effective notes and decided to do something about it. The content of the notebook is by Catherine Morley who was one of my tutors on the course. Some friends of mine, ZAC design, helped with the layout and design. I am now in the process of getting the product out into the market. The notebook was on show at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate at the English Language Bookshop and further details on the English Learner Notebook are available at http://enleno.com/
Copy Editing QA Job Vacancy
April 21st, 2010
by Valentina Dodge
You
You’ll have an ELT teaching background, copy editing experience - previous knowledge of conversion from print to digital would be an advantage - an eye for detail and will be something of a perfectionist. You’ll need to be competent, confident and comfortable working in a Web environment as the work involves on-screen editing and online communication - we don’t work with proofs and we mostly talk to each other on Skype. The projects and number of hours can vary, so you’ll be expected to be flexible and happy to take on new projects at short notice. We have a dynamic and communicative English360 team that you’ll be required to co-ordinate with, so you’ll need to be comfortable communicating and being contactable online. As well as being an active team member, you’ll also need to be able to work independently and take the initiative when required.
The job
The work is essentially copy editing and carrying out QA on ELT material that is published on the English360 platform. This involves ‘traditional-style’ copy editing (spelling, fonts, layout etc) as well as testing the interactive activities as a user (learner and teacher) to make sure that they work. Part of the editing process requires reporting any problems or issues promptly and clearly using the Web platforms that we have in place for this. You will also be required to document the work done and to keep the team up-to-date with project progress. Your role may also involve reporting on the quality and appropriateness of user-generated content. Liaising with the English360 team on all of the above is an integral part of the role. The work is freelance, with the number of hours dependent on the English360 workflow; however a minimum commitment of 25 hours per week is required initially. As the work can be done remotely, your location isn’t important – but a reliable, fast internet connection is.
Please send a copy of your CV and letter of application to jobs at english360 dot com - Closing date 1st May 2010.