Joe McVeigh’s Intro to TESOL course put together a great slang dictionary last month. Slang is a bit like IT vocab - some of it gets obsolete quickly - so this is a nice example of what’s current in US universities. It also has audio examples. Follow the links off the post.

And in case you haven’t checked out Joe’s site, there are some great resources there - he’s the real deal - including some nice needs assessment stuff.

This would be neat for students of a certain ilk. Ask Philosophers posts a philosophical question every day and then has a philosopher give a short answer.

You could probably do some fun conversation and debate activities based on this resource.

Paul Graham is almost always brilliant and I highly recommend his book Hackers and Painters.

Here’s a great essay (and taxonomy!) on how to disagree. The web enables a global conversation, and disagreement will be an important part of that conversation. Of all the forum threads I’ve participated in, I’ve learned the most from the threads that were intense debates, and Graham’s essay shows how to make those debates as productive as possible.

This would also be a nice resource for intermediate to advanced classes.

Via the always-useful blog by Nik Peachey, here’s a link to a site with an extensive collection of teacher training videos, many about using web 2.0 tools.

Guy Kawasaki’s latest project, the blog portal Alltop, just added an education section. You can get the headlines / post titles and mousing over the title gives you the first several paragraphs, so you can decide if it’s worth a read. Not sure how or why this is better than a feed reader, but I do seem to go to Alltop every morning….

And, as a teaching tool, Alltop would be a good resource helping students find content they are interested in.

German author Stefan Klien, in the New York Times:

Believing time is money to lose, we perceive our shortage of time as stressful. Thus, our fight-or-flight instinct is engaged, and the regions of the brain we use to calmly and sensibly plan our time get switched off. We become fidgety, erratic and rash.

Tasks take longer. We make mistakes — which take still more time to iron out. Who among us has not been locked out of an apartment or lost a wallet when in a great hurry? The perceived lack of time becomes real: We are not stressed because we have no time, but rather, we have no time because we are stressed.

From the TED blog:

Ben Kaufman, founder of Kluster, goes on stage to tell what he and his team have been doing — with the help of TED attendees and 1200 people around the world — since the beginning of the conference. Kluster is an online collaboration and decision-making platform. They set out Wednesday morning to develop a product, with some basic guidelines but “we didn’t know what it would be”. They set up a studio in the conference’s venue, and got 208 ideas submitted in 24 hours. Collaboratively, it was decided that it would be an education board game; the content for it was developed; a name chosen (”OverThere” — the logo was submitted by a participant online); the rules set; a tagline developed; a full prototype developed (photo). 72 hours, 1200 participants, a board game “of social awareness” collectively invented, developed and prototyped: a pretty awesome piece of work.

Check out the Kluster site.

Free from Harvard comes this excellent video series on public speaking skills, by Professor Patrick Winston. It has a different focus than many similar resources: instead of the corporate PowerPoint-driven presentation, he discusses the lecture format of universities. But the core principles of how to “give a talk” are  of course the  same. The video is nicely broken up into convenient 2-4 minute chapters.

Hat tip to soulsoup.

A little different take, with a refreshingly informal register. Great advice on what is all too often overlooked: hardcore practice.

Micah Baldwin wrote a wonderful mash-up of the classic frog and scorpion parable, and the post is a nice text that could be used in any BE class that would be interested in discussing the proposed Microsoft + Yahoo! merger.

For a small group class, you could work in some other parables as well, that you select from here. Include the original frog scorpion parable in your selection of parables. Then, for example:

1) distribute a different parable to each S or pair
2) have each S or pair read their parable; you help with vocab.
3) the pairs then relate their parable in their own words to the class as a whole
4) class briefly discusses the meaning of each, to arrive at the “moral of the story” (right hand column)
5) sequence the parable pairs so that the original frog and scorpion parable comes last
5) after the frog/scorpion pair relates their parable and it’s discussed, distribute the Microsoft/Yahoo parable to all Ss
6) Discuss: is the MS/Yahoo merger analogous to the original parable? What business lessons could be drawn from that parable, or any other?
7) For next class: have Ss think of a current business challenge/decision that they or their department or colleagues are making, and find a parable on the parable resource above that relates to the decision, and be prepared to tel the story / present the parable and relevance to the class

Depending on class size, level, and dynamic, it might go to two classes. Step 7 is critical IMHO.

Anyway, just an idea. I think I’m like most BE teachers: everything I read, I subconsciously make a lesson out of!