The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09)

Wrapping up what I wrote,
showing the best I've read,
linking the twop of the tweets...


Summary: Kalinago English August 2009

This month, She-in-ELT kicked off with two great pieces: one from About.com journalist Karen Schweitzer on Deborah Healey, the other by award-winning Business English textbook author, Vicki Hollett, who wrote about her OUP ed, Cristina Whitecross and later on this week we'll have Gavin Dudeney over to do a proper intro to the series telling us about a few of the women who've touched his professional life.

I filmed(!) some of my students giving me feedback and solicited advice from you on doing progress checks.

Covered the steps on how to become an ELT blogger (jam-packed with tips from 27 different bloggers) and also knocked up a quick and simple guide to using Twitter for English language teachers.

Announced the Business English teacher's conference to be held in Poznan, Poland in November and also gave you the heads up on the scholarships available to attend IATEFL next year in Harrogate (submission deadline 18 Sept).

Twittered on about Twitter profiles, in the space of 140 characters, provided a video lesson plan using a Microsoft advertisement as a base for cultural discussion, gave you some ideas for using drawings and/or powerpoint with language learners and at the end of the month, shared a personal story of my own near-death experience, calling for a web2.0 way to write e-wills & last testaments.

And while all of that was going on over here

I also found...



The best of the ELT Blogosphere

Ken Wilson has started blogging!

This is no normal entry to the blogosphere - in fact, you could say, it's the very first ELT autobiographical blog from the youngest ever ELT author, the man who brought us the Mister Mondays songs and the English teaching theatre.

A fascinating and often very amusing tale, making me think of what fun it all was back when the likes of Jeremy Harmer, Barry Tomalin and Scott Thornbury were young lads starting off teaching...

And by the way, Vicki Hollett is calling for you to share your own starting off teaching stories with her.

Another new prolific blogger I'm fast gaining respect for is Chwa EeLoon of the ELT Cafe in Malaysia. Chwa has a very unique and interesting style, short bursting posts about life on the job as a EFL teacher. One posting I enjoyed in particular was I'm black, you're white and she's fat.

Isabelle Jones on My Languages announced a great competition for teenagers to create a bank of language training videos. Vicky Saumell found 12 essential steps to technology integration.

Marisa Constantinides'
behavour model for creating incompetence is an important read along side Andy Hockley's Mangerial reflections.


Gavin Dudeney has been busy reinventing the wheel.

Yeah, well, when it comes to Publishing anyway.

Funnily enough, I actually pitched this same idea to an ELT publisher over dinner about two years ago and um... the Ed took an instant and open dislike to me and to what I considered to be the ideal solution to the photocopying of copyrighted Business English materials problem...

Mmmmm... seems my idea might not have been quite so 'whack' - wonder what's going on in that boardroom today, LOL!

Alex Case is a Papi. Oh, I know that might not be so interesting for you lot, but Case has a special place in my blogger's heart: he's my maestro, taught me what I know - plus, gave me my first break by letting me do a guest piece for him at a time when my blog had like 50 visitors a day! Congrats Alex!

On a more serious note, he wrote a fab guest post for Burcu Akyol on writing articles for the ELT market and Jason Renshaw's been discussing the money ELT authors make on over here.


For more interesting postings currently available in the blogosphere, see OneStopBlogs.




Twop tweets from the Twitterverse


As there are simply so many fantastic links I've favorited and you don't really need my opinions on them, I've simply decided that I'd link them below - in the same way they'd appear within my twitter stream!

Service
monk51295

RT @speters: #TWBC09 More Photos of Teachers without Borders' trip to Africa: http://tinyurl.com/mbt2nk





Learning

cgoodey

RT @barbsaka: Familiar & new vocab processed in same part of brain. http://bit.ly/aScNv #language #esl

icpjones 100 Reasons to Mind Map | Mind Map Inspiration http://bit.ly/11dSIt

cgoodey

"Novelty seems to promote memory" RT @kdwashburn: Learning By Surprise: http://tr.im/x6fO

rliberni

English language learners 10 reasons to choose one to one lessons http://bit.ly/19jKS

TEFLPet

RT @marynabadenhors Change any written doc, RSS, blog etc. into spoken language 4 auditory learners http://www.readthewords.com Incredible!!


Myngler

Thought provoking article: Can switching languages change your personality? http://bit.ly/LO0Tg


TheEngTeacher

TOEFL speaking tips and practice materials online. Very nice too :) via @englishraven http://viigo.im/0Jiy

monk51295

RT @alfiekohn: the case against ed. that's focused on memorizing facts, practicing skills, & producing right answers: http://bit.ly/76obd





Edtech

barbsaka

RT @carlaarena: 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom | Smart Teaching http://tinyurl.com/nuogyd

langwitches

New blog post- Creating a poem with Animoto http://bit.ly/3tYZag

ShellTerrell

Gr8 find! RT @tomwhitby: RT @weemooseus: Education Podcast Network: http://www.epnweb.org/ #edtech #elearning

PeterVogel

RT @JRenold: RT @jsuzcampos: 100 ways to use Voicethread in Edu to Voicethread in the Classroom http://bit.ly/NQMn3


NikPeachey

"In the Web 2.0 world, self-directed learners must be adept at building and sustaining networks." a good read http://bit.ly/DaZ7s


Larryferlazzo

RT @langwitches: For digital storytelling,here is GREAT site @mnjorgensen and wonderful teacher handout 2 download http://tinyurl.com/5uhgaw





Materials


burcuakyol

A great blog post by @englishraven. The last article of the 'Spread Your Knowledge' series -writing ELT materials http://bit.ly/1aEFOb

CotterHUE

18 FREE activities from my resource manual, Better Language Teaching #esl #efl #education - http://bit.ly/1Y9CXP



Business and ESP English

prestwickhouse

RT @GuyKawasaki:12 masters of visual storytelling: http://om.ly/Iohn


sjhannam

@maureenmcgarvey Gr8! Not at all - I am sure we can make use of this great resource Harvard Business School http://tiny.cc/1JkWE

carldowse

Webquest on online brand management for business English teaching: http://bit.ly/1J0ShN

carldowse

Working with figures http://bit.ly/4Bho2 simple online quiz for business English learners -pronunciation of figures practice & balance sheet

mattfirth

English for Law Blog: http://lawee-set2.blogspot.com/




Miscellaneous stuff that made me laugh
or learn or think...


thornburyscott

@kalinagoenglish After that, try The Singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithen: language evolved out of innate musicality?


msgregson

woo hoo! my professor for one of my classes is a SL guru! :)


hoprea

RT @burcuakyol: Probably everybody knows this, but I wanted to tweet anyway. http://www.makeadifferencemovie.com/



For more collections from the Twitterverse,
see Valentina Dodge's excellent reactions to Tweetville,
Larry Ferlazzo's August tweets
& Shelly Terrell's fascinating approach to sharing tweets she's favorited
in her weekly "What did they Tweet? series.


Best,
Karenne

5 Responses to “The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09)”

  • Barbara Sakamoto says:
    August 31, 2009

    What a busy, busy month you had! It's had to imagine that you actually have a "real" job in addition to all you do online.

    Thanks for the great summary. I had forgotten to bookmark a couple of those resources, and now I have a second chance.

    So thrilling to see one of my tweets featured (along with another of me being retweeted). Like getting a cameo on a great show!

  • Tara Benwell says:
    August 31, 2009

    This is an awesome summary, Karenne. Thanks for taking the time to put it all together for the sake of the "staff room". I missed some of these memos! :)
    Cheers,
    Tara

  • Chwa says:
    August 31, 2009

    Thanks so much for including me in your summary and your support to my blog all this while, Karenne. I'll definitely continue to write.

  • Jason Renshaw says:
    August 31, 2009

    Wow - amazing work, Karenne!

    Tell me, how long does it take to put a post like this together? I get the impression days...

    Keep up the fabulous work!

    ~ Jason

  • KALINAGO ENGLISH says:
    August 31, 2009

    Ha, ha! No Jason this is one of my quicker posts... some do take a long time (the blogging carnival was about 7 days - had to do in between everything else that um pays, like teaching)

    But some that look like a lot, aren't - i.e. the twitter guide was only a couple of hours because it was stuff I'd been telling people for months.

    Varies, I guess - depends on how much fact-checking I have to do.

    Hi Tara, Barbara, Chwa,

    Thank you back guys - funny how quickly the month goes by!

 

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