What a mad month! July 2009

The Big News

473 blogs were nominated from 26 countries and 5000 readers voted placing Kalinago English as #9 in the Bab.la/Lexiophiles list of top language teaching blogs!!!

For other winning categories, see :

• Language Learning
• Language Technology
• Language Professionals

Crazy, don't really know quite what to say.

It's a mega honor, so to all of you who voted:

THANK YOU VERY, VERY MUCH
;-)

And if that's not enough, just as insanely, it's currently the no. 1 blog on OneStopEnglish blogs!

Hmmm... are you guys liking reading my rants or it's the pretty picture of the sailboats that keep bringing you back?



Anyhoo, on to

Summary of July's Postings

This month I wrote:

Lessons/ lesson tips:

• Smartphone meetings - authentic, practical activity + the language of arrangements
  
• The God in Marketing - how to use Seth Godin's work in ESP and Business English lessons.

Social-networking:

• LinkedIn - getting the most out of the social networking platform for professionals.
• What is BELTfree - a community of ELT bloggers
• 8 great ELT blogs - notes on bloggers, commenting and my own blog roll
• Gr8 edu-tweets - small selection of some of my fave tweets in early June
  

Rants and musings:

• How do you keep language learners learning?
  
• Open letter to English language institutions
• The problem with e-books
  

Coming Next Month...

The series on She-In-ELT kicks off this month and I've got some seriously fantastic guest-pieces lined up.

Towards the middle of the month I'll be doing a feature piece on ELT teacher trainers who are on LinkedIn (check the discussion pages of the LinkedIn groups: BESIG/ Teacher-trainers for details).

And will also be posting up a workshop review regarding David Graddol's fascinating research into the current state of English and other languages.

For those of you on Twitter, that's how I got to meet @ShellTerrell and @EnglishProfi! Such fun ;-).

The long awaited Advice for NOObie bloggers will be going up early next week plus a really awesome speaking skills game/lesson worksheet in the pipeline.

On Life

Isn't summer supposed to be when everything goes a bit quiet and you get to catch up on important life stuff? Mine's all been a bit nuts and I've had to do quite a bit of juggling to get everything to fit together.

My cousin Pat, her husband and son were here and I discovered that there is actually a LegoLand not far from Stuttgart - we had great fun together and Chris declared that Stuttgart is all about fountains and trains.

He's right.

I started working on a materials writing project for Klett and also confirmed a major client for ESP: IT classes + community based language learning platform to begin October. Very chuffed about this.

Despite all this, I actually had a holiday!

Ran off to Malta for five days of relaxation, recharging the batteries via forced unplugging of the internet and all other electronic devices and instead caught up on some important reading - booked the holiday with a last minute travel agent and somehow ended up staying in a palace built by the Knights of St. John!



Read 5 books.

Okay, 4 and a half. There was a lot of waiting around in airports.



I really enjoyed Hape Kerkeling's I'm Off Then - about his Camino de Santiago - it's funnier in German but still, as I'd listened to this pre-pilgrimage, it was a treat reading about the places that I'd been to myself along the road and recognizing experiences.

On the same sort of theme, I then read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - absolutely recommend this if you're into travel/exploring spirituality books. She journeys through Italy, India and Indonesia and talks about what happens to her there.

Then, of course, I got a bit serious and did my homework. Ploughed my way through Hugh McLeod's Ignore Everybody and Seth Godin's Purple Cow. Both excellent books on creativity.

Lastly, I read most of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers which I'd been meaning to get to for ages.

Now that I'm back, haven't finished it. Pah!

Hope you've been having an awesome summer too!

Best,
Karenne

The God in Marketing

A word regarding the following posting which is an attempt to kill three birds with one stone -

because why knock down two if the rock in your hand's big enough to hit more?

part 1 : aimed at my fellow triiibesters - how Seth Godin has been a huge influence on my life, my way of working -teaching me how to lead online communities, understanding business, learning best marketing practices while remaining ethical, having the guts to make some noise and get my stuff out there.

part 2: aimed at you, one of the great EFL teachers surfing the 'net looking for lesson tips and authentic materials for your ESP and Business English students - on how you can use Seth Godin's blog postings and books in these.

part 3: aimed at you, my fellow BELTfreers and also the N00bies anxiously awaiting your promised carnival - - a quick video about blogging, Seth Godin and Tom Peters.



Part 1: for the Triiibesters.

You, the band of Seth Godin's merry men and women are what make it such an amazing place to be. I have gained so much from being in your company and thank you very much for the laughs, for the discussions, for your sharing.

In honor of the 1st anniversary of Triiibes, this is what I've learned from the guru:


a) to be unique

The name, the pretty picture.

We speak English in the Caribbean, where I'm from originally, hence no imperialistic flags on the header here or website.


b) to answer all my emails

If Seth Godin is able to find the time to answer my emails (which um, was before I knew who he was... I just wrote the odd looking guy with the head you have to click on 'cause I thought his page was cool and couldn't comment), then, well, um...

I can find the time to answer the teachers and bloggers who write to me.

c) to be an amateur on purpose

No mimicry here.

Just Karenne and her rants, tips, ideas and uploaded lessons for teaching English.


d) to listen to my sneezers

Whenever someone out there decides to say something nice about my work, I not only appreciate it, I really try to make sure that they know that I've heard and that I appreciate their time, energy and effort.

e) to lead

I work on connecting people with other people who have similar objectives, goals or needs.

I try to make a difference by (re)igniting a passion for teaching.

Whatever brain stuff I know that doesn't hurt me to share, I give transparently and ethically.


f) to be succinct

Less is often more.

This is an area I'm still working on.



On Seth's books

The Dip saved me from quitting when I really thought I'd made a huge mistake in going solo, Purple Cow's case studies gave me new ideas and helped restructure my marketing plan and product.

Triiibes influenced the creation of my BELTfree Ning group - a passionate and exciting part of my daily activities, connecting me with so many other ELT bloggers from all over the world - bringing much joy!

I could also probably list at least ten other ways his writing has influenced my work but I won't 'cause, really, you need to move on to read the next entry...

Leading from Bob Poole's post about Magic to here, you can now head on over to Pat Ferdinandi on Triiibes.... Special thanks to Megan Elizabeth Morris & Matt Kern for organizing this event, Paul Durban for the blog-ring image.





Part 2a:

Because four birds are way better than three.

Seth Godin's blogs and books are an ideal source for authentic texts in the Business English classroom. He writes succinctly. Single paragraphs lead to hour long discussions so they're ideal texts for practicing Business English contextually.

www.sethgodin.typepad.com


click on his head to get to the blog

Who with?


ESP Marketing
Get your students to subscribe to his blog as should you. You will instantly have much more in common with your students.

Grab his postings - take them into class, these are particularly good:

• Guy #3
• Two ways to build trust
• Leadership is your strongest marketing ability

Encourage learners to each purchase a copy of Unleashing the Ideavirus, Permission Marketing or both.

Read these with them, setting chapters as pre-tasks, combing through for relevant vocabulary in class and discuss language, philosophies and concepts.


ESP IT

As the web 2.0 grows, many of your international developers and designers are investigating the ideas behind communities.

Encourage them to get copies of Tribes and read this with them.



Business English, especially entrepreneurs, management and HR.

If you are teaching entrepreneurs, I recommend the Dip because they're going to go through one.

Purple Cow is also excellent and filled with ideas on how people can approach thinking outside of the box.


Great posts:

• Ignore your critics
• What are you good at?
  
• The posture of a communicator
• Two ways to deal with 'no'
• Social norms
• Three jobs you might want to consider
  

Part 2b:
As a fellow English teacher with an interest in linguistics, here's a few definitions of words and phrases used by Seth, no doubt very soon to be entered in dictionaries everywhere:

• an ideavirus - an idea that spreads from mouth to mouth (or brain to brain)
  
• to sneeze - to tell others about something
  
• a sneezer - someone who consistently shares ideas, news about things they've discovered
  
• a purple cow - someone or something that is not only unique, but is in fact, remarkable
  
• being in the dip - the feeling of wanting to give up on a project
  

Stuff related to themes in our industry.

• On punctuation
• On textbooks

Part 3: for the bloggers and the wanna-be bloggers and the really... should I be a blogger-but-why people

Useful links related to this posting:

• What is BELTfree?
• More videos of Seth Godin and Tom Peters

Best,
Karenne

How do you keep language learners learning?

I have a theory...

I'm sitting in a cafe because the internet went down at home. So even though I guess I could just go pop on over to Google and find some amazing article or find out who's already dug out a perfectly expressed quote from some Second Language Acquisition tome meant for the Dip., written in 1987, I'm not in the mood.

You and I both know, don't we, that it's good old fashioned common sense:


Happy students learn better.

Right?


Whether they're five or fifteen, twenty five or fifty five, motivated people learn more than those who aren't.

So what sorts of things can we, as language training professionals, do to keep adult learners from looking like this?

How do we get them actively participating?

Getting them to feel a real sense of pride in their learning accomplishments?

How do we encourage them to conscientiously do their post- and pre-task activities (a.k.a homework)?

Can we encourage them to enjoy learning English more? How?

Best,
Karenne

p.s Yes... these are totally staged pics but not only do I have permission to use them, this posting was actually suggested by my great students, M & P... and they took the photographs themselves!

8 Great ELT Blogs Plus The Stars On My Blog Roll

Once you've been blogging for a bit... sorry this month is all a bit techie, isn't it, promise will be back to my usual EFL/ESL tips later this week, it's all 'cause of the carnival, see, the one with the advice for newbies - to be published next week...

Anyhoo, you really get a whole bunch of requests to be put up on the blog roll (the list of links on the left side of the screen, further down) so I've decided to establish a policy regarding this.


My blog roll is about my own Personal Learning Network: fellow bloggers who like sharing conversations with me, communicating with me here and over on their own blogs - we talk about different ideas and teaching approaches, discuss opinions, pass on worksheets or tips to one another, that sort of thing. Kinda like a virtual staffroom.

They are a crucial part of my professional development so me listing them isn't just about reciprocal linking but is actually a reflection of the respect I have for them, is a public appreciation of our relationship and it's also saying to you go see the work they do too.

First of all, I'd like to let you into just one small slice of what I get in the mail:

This would be a NO. No, I will not visit.


In extremely poor taste, his blog will never appear on my blog roll and no I will not publish his comments although I definitely will snap a picture of it and show it to you.

This is also a NO. He's got good manners so I actually read the email and just after posting this up will send him the link to this posting.



It's a no because actually the blog has nothing to do with teaching English, ELT issues, edtech issues - why would he want to be on my blog roll?

Oh, it's not at all about my posts, he hasn't actually read any of them... it's simply a nicely written form letter... ho hummm, trash....

This is YES.



Not only has Andy participated in the discussion going on the page (in fact he's disagreeing with me) but when leaving us behind with his own URL, he left it because it has relevance to the conversation and is an invitation for me/us to continue on the conversation.

As a result I am not only looking forward to reading his response but expect that I'll enjoy being a part of his professional community.

He made it to my blog roll despite only having written 2 postings so far!

Now drum roll....

My Absolute Faves

1. Alex Case of TEFLtastic
Alex taught me how to blog. What can I say, it was the first blog I ever read.

It is still the only EFL blog I read every week, often twice a week. This is second only to Seth Godin, who is my hero and whose blog I read daily. More sneezing about Seth later this week, from an ESP:Marketing perspective, of course.

Anyway, Alex doesn't know it but I studied his blog for months before attempting to launch my own.

Witty, very knowledgeable about methodology and the best books to read, he dishes out worksheets like they're candy and there's rarely blowing trumpets of hot air over on his site.

I like his 15 ways to do everything.


2. Larry Ferlazzo
He's the King of Resources. Anything you need when you're planning a lesson, just head on over to his site, look for the search bar and type it in. I guarantee you will find what you want or I'll eat my hat.

I don't have a hat, perhaps I'll eat my sunglasses.


3. Gavin Dudeney on ThatS'Life
He's evil. His satire is often misunderstood. My sarcastic retorts further distort and no one knows which way is up.

I really don't know what he eats for breakfast nor how he takes his coffee (er, he's on twitter) but I do know that absolutely no one else in TEFL has me in stitches as often as he does.

Except for Ken Wilson who doesn't have a blog... yet!

4. Lindsay Clandfield on Six Things
Lindsay knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. He posts nice short structured posts which are imaginative, interesting and one of his special angles is on interviewing the various methodology authors in our field.

Always fascinating.


5. Neal on Neal

So Chambers decided he needed to have another web location to go get tough, let off the steam, off the grid.

But I found him off in the middle of Japan, and oops happen to I love this blog even more than the other (he writes English Spark too, for your students). I might end up volunteering to do one or two of my random rants on his site as a guest writer but he doesn't know I'm thinking about doing this.

The theme of this one is mainly on social media type issues plus general thoughts he's having about Japan or teacher training development etc, do pop on over - in this particular posting he's talking about the importance of the tiny profile picture.

6. Shelley Terrell of Teacher Reboot Camp
Decidely ed-tech. Although Shelly is a relative newcomer to the blogosphere, she has taken a fresh approach to blogging about teaching with technology which I really like.

She also has a really warm way of pulling you into her posts while she talks about tools, how to use them plus sets up regular professional development tasks.

7. Anne Hodgson on the Island Weekly
Anne is very imaginative. She writes on various themes - ranging from using songs in the classroom to discussing reflective learning strategies. Her blog is mainly aimed at language learners but I tend to go over there quite a bit and enjoy her posts.

8. Janet Abruzzo
She always finds fantastic videos, experiments with all kinds of new tools and tricks - I'll never keep up!

Her writing's crisp, clear and very authentic.

For more really great EFL'rs, sneak a peak to the left side of the screen - all top notch stuff!

Best,
Karenne

p.s. What do you think about blog rolls in general, are you glad to have a list of other good sites to look at or aren't you bothered much?

And if you happen to be a blogger, do you agree with my policy? Do you also enjoy the blogs I've chosen? Have any questions?

What is BELTfree?

BELTfree stands for Bloggers in ELT, freelancers.

We're a small, exclusive community dedicated to the sharing and exchanging of tips, tricks, hacks, general information about being both blogger and EFL/ESL teacher.

All active bloggers, we're a mix of methodology authors, materials writers, teacher-trainers, language coaches and teachers.

BELTfree isn't a directory in the usual sense of one, i.e. a place to randomly market blog posts - we're not listed on google and the stuff we say and do there is private.

The function of our being together as a group is to intelligently market, build a learning network of like-minded folks and to help each other: sharing our knowledge and experience.

We will stay small. Our target is not to turn into one of those ginormous, anonymous groups with hundreds or thousands of members which are usually made up of 80% lurkers/non-contributors but instead to form real relationships with each other.

Our mission is to support each others growth as bloggers and language professionals and we're an active and collaborative community.


So do you want to join?

If you're a English language trainer, blogging for at least 3mos, you post more than once a month - in fact your last post was less than 3wks ago and you have written at least 10+ articles plus your blog belongs to you personally, then do contact any of our members with your URL and some details of why you'd like to join us.

www.beltfree.ning.com

If you'd like to know more about what we do, go on ahead and ask.

And BELTfreers, why is it interesting to be a part of BELTfree?

Smart Phones Meeting (EFL Business English Lesson)

These days, at least over here in Europe, smart phones are about as commonplace as, er... um, desks.

So let's use them to teach with...



Lesson objective:
Practice the language of arranging meetings

Procedure (1):

You can easily dogme this lesson - simply ask your students to brainstorm a list of meetings and appointments they regularly and irregularly have with their colleagues and in their personal lives.

• Get them to write these down in their notebooks or stick up on the board.

• Ask them to drag out their computers-in-their-back-pockets a.k.a phones and encourage them to organize meetings with each other. Provide a time frame to work within, e.g within the next 2 - 8 weeks.

• Work on their grammatical weaknesses, supply alternative phrases, correct the common errors.

Procedure (2):

For students who feel more comfortable with a worksheet, download these:

Smart Phone Meetings (students)

Smart Phone Meetings (teachers)

Who's this lesson for?

Employed adults with smartphones or BlackBerry devices.
Elementary (with some vocabulary explanations) to Advanced.
Best with Pre-Intermediate.

Timing

25 - 40 minutes. Longer if you do the extension exercise.

When to use this lesson:

• to support a textbook unit on telephoning or meetings
• as a review of expressions for arranging meetings
• to focus on prepositions of time (on, at, in)
• to practice using ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd..)
• to work on the future structures (will, be going to, future continuous etc.)

after the first time of presenting this lesson, you can also

• follow up weekly/ whenever you need quick ice-breaker or a 5 minute filler

Have fun!

Best,
Karenne

p.s. before you dash off - have you got any other great ideas for using smartphones in class? The other day we google'd and wikipedia'd (we were looking up Farah Fawcett's age) and this was loads of fun too - would love to know how you've been using them too...

Open Letter to English Language Institutions

In response to Scott McLeod's call-out on his Dangerously Irrelevant blog for postings regarding Technology Leadership in education, I decided that I'd write an open letter to:

Directors of Studies and School Administrators of the international Adult English Language Learning Institutions and Centers.

This is my letter:

Dear Sirs and Madams,

This is what the lives of our adult professional students currently look like:

View Full Album

This is what many TEFL teachers' classrooms still look like:

View Full Album

Now, there's nothing innately wrong with the above pictures however to adequately reflect our student real-world experiences and to adequately prepare them to conduct global business, while speaking English, this is what they really should look like, as often as possible:

View Full Album

What are you and your teachers doing?

Technology won't replace teachers but teachers who use technology will.

Robert Copeland

What you could do right now:

1. Read:

• Where are all the horseshoe makers now?

• Iowa - a computer in every hand


• Iowa -21st century curricula

2. Watch:

• Videos saved for you on youtube

3. Invest in your staff… and invest in your institutes' future.

External Options:

a. Consultants-e

Cert IBET Certificate in International Business English Training, Cert ICT Certificate in Teaching with Technology + short courses in moodle, e-moderation, podcasting, e-networks, 2ndLife, webquests & blogs.

b..Lancelot

Offers a 3-month professional development course in the methodology, intercultural competence and technology of teaching a language in virtual classrooms using state-of-the-art synchronous Internet communication tools. They also have 2-3h live online workshops conducted by LANCELOT certified language trainers. These provide concise information about a special set of tools.

c. Pete Sharma & Associates

Combining face2face teaching with blended learning. Blended Learning, evaluating web based ELT materials, blogs and wikis, podcasting, interactive whiteboards, virtual learning environments and new technologies.

In-house Options:

a. Hire a teacher-trainer to work through the various web2.0 based tools with your teachers.

Contact me to see if I can come over and train your teachers (check out examples of my presentations here/sign in to LinkedIn to read my professional references here).

If I'm not available, I'm very "socially-networked" and therefore can easily point you in the direction of another good teacher-trainer or three!

b. Hire an experienced techie teacher and assign IT leadership (or give the task to one of your current employees). Pay him /her to get up to speed and get this senior teacher to train the rest of your teachers.

Whatever it is that you and your team do decide to do, just don't do this:

Useful links related to this posting:

• Teaching with technology tips


• List of Web 2.0 tools

Best,

Karenne

Questions? Don't hesitate to ask.

Gr8 edu-tweets June 1-12, 2009

So, I thought I'd really better start saving some of the fantastic links other teachers share with me - that I "favorite" while on Twitter - but as there's just so much great stuff flying out across the world... am never going to be able to keep up with these unless I organize them on the blog!


Teacher, developing

via @lclandfield:

• Does ELT need its gurus?

via @Larryferlazzo RT @shaunwoodnz:

• Student assessment of a teacher

and:


Teaching in a digital age

via @AngelaMaiers

• Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace Edutopia

via @datruss

• The ICE CREAM Approach to Online Facilitation by Linda Waddell and Susan Byrne

via @reportertanya RT @web20classroom

• Very organized list of Web 2.0 Tools

via @ShellTerrell RT @Larryferlazzo

• Collection of Photo Effects, Online Photo Editor

and:


Teaching: videos

via @sethdickens:

• 25 incredible TED Talks for Educators

via @tomwhitby

• Will Richardson on social media for schools

and:


Second Language Acquisition

via @cgoodey RT @Blythe_Musteric

• L2 Represented In Different Part Of Brain

via @nealchambers

• Do bilingual speakers have distinct language areas in their brain?

via @ShellTerrell RT @via @CotterHUE:

• Using L1 in the classroom

and:


Twitter

via @neal chambers

• Tweetiquette

via @barbsaka

• Twitter users mentoring teachers new to twitter

via @CotterHUE RT @barbsaka @EnglishProfi by @danzarrella

• The Linguistics of ReTweets GREAT!!

and:



Hope these links are useful for you too - the pics are linked as well - don't hesitate to add to the list of interesting tweets or to ask questions!

Best,
Karenne

EFL Teachers LinkedIn - tech tip #9

Like everything else in life, you get back what you put in and LinkedIn is no exception to this rule.

LinkedIn is a social-networking site, in the same way that Facebook, Twitter and Ning are, however, its community function is slightly different and its core objective lies in bringing together professionals.

Whether they are accountants, IT managers or CEOs they're all there on LinkedIn.

English language teachers, institute owners, publishers, authors, bloggers and e-learning site developers.

However, and actually the thing I like best about this site, is that unlike most other social-networking sites on LinkedIn you know exactly who're you're talking to and the profile you build also manages to serve as an online public CV (resumé) .

That may seem a little scary, especially if you're learning all this techie stuff with me step-by-step, but if you are looking to

• expand your clientele
• stretch into new fields of expertise
• state your availability for new projects or jobs
• or you just want to let the world know about your teaching abilities

then it is an excellent space in which to do this in.

Harvesting what you plant...

1. Building a good profile

Spend time filling in all the details about your life, work experience, abilities, qualities and aspirations.

Remember that you are not only listing what you can do but, in a way, just like in an interview you are selling yourself in advance.

Definitely put in the same amount of time you'd spend updating your CV if you were applying for a job next week - LinkedIn is searchable by Google and once you have a profile listed, it is this (if you have a vanity profile) that will most likely be on the first page whenever someone types in your name.

Read these***

• Guy Kawasaki

• Chris Brogan

2. Add applications to make your page attractive

Towards the bottom of the left-hand column you'll see something that looks like a wheel, click on that to add apps (applications).

Are you a great English teacher?

Dig through your hard-drive.

Are there any lessons you could upload into box.net?


Are you running a language school?

Upload your latest brochure so your network can learn more about what you and your school offers and why this is special.

Drop the web 1.0 approach to everything - the web 2.0 works on openness and sharing and you are much more likely to attract clients if they can download your information easily.


Are you a teacher trainer?

Have another look in the dead-files, do you have a good powerpoint presentation you've made that you won't be using again (or at least not exactly the way it is now) which could be easily loaded up into slideshare so that potential teachers or associations can view the quality of your work?


Are you an aspiring or published author?

Stick up a chapter or two up for easy and free download. You will earn respect and if your network likes your work, they'll buy it.


Are you an editor or an ELT salesperson?

Load up your company's catalog. If you're looking for new leads tell the world what you have (but do not spam). If you're looking for writers of materials, say so and openly provide a specific email address for this function.

If you don't want to be bothered with unattractive requests, state this.



Do you have a personal blog or a website?

List it.

Use the "other" function so that you can name it appropriately (google-searchable).


What books are you currently reading?

Add one or two using Amazon, this will make you look much more well-rounded.


Travel a lot from conference to conference?

Let your network know, perhaps you do really prefer sitting in dusty hotel rooms all alone but if you don't, perhaps meeting up for a beer with someone in the same location might lead to further conferences or in-house employee workshops. Or a new friend.

3. Finding a great photograph

Remember that you are in a professional environment and want to look your best but also do make a good effort not to look boring!

Read this

Seth Godin and the power of the tiny picture



4. Expand your network


Who do you know that is already on LinkedIn?

Check your email addresses and send an automatic invite.

Connect with me (Karenne Sylvester - mention the blog so I'll know it's you - my email address for LinkedIn purposes is kalinago.english (at) gmail (dot) com.


Search for old bosses and dig through your last ELT conference's business cards - you know the ones you shoved in the back of your wallet - see it was useful for you to keep these!

Try to build a good-sized network of at least 50 people. Below this and you probably won't be able to experience the benefit of being on LinkedIn.

Take a look at the people in your contacts' contacts lists - have you already met some of those people? If you have, send them an invite to connect.

Read this
10 etiquette rules for LinkedIn



5. Get recommended

After a little while on LinkedIn, say a few weeks once you've tweaked and re-tweaked your profile (it takes a while to get it right), have a look through your contacts - who knows you and the quality of your work?

Would they be willing to say so in a public sphere?

Send them a nice email asking them to write you up a short reference.




6. Join Groups

The very best way to expand your network and find other like-minded professionals is to join in with other like-minded professionals!

Here's a list of some of the great ELT groups available:

• BESIG (moderator: Duncan Baker - Treasurer of the BESIG association)
• Teacher Trainers (run by Dr Kate Mastruserio Reynolds, TESOL coordinator)
  
• ESL International (one of the largest groups with 916 members)
• English Language Services Professionals (group for freelancers and translators)
• Edubloggers (to hook up with educational bloggers)
  

If you're a Tweeter, also join Tom Whitby's

• Twitter-using-Educators

But don't join only education groups - search for ones applicable to the country you live in, the type of interests and hobbies you have as you never know where that next great teaching assignment or professional contact will come in from.

If you're a language institution, do reach out to the HR professional groups and connect with them as well as teachers who you may potentially hire.



7. Getting "known"

The best way to connect with others is to connect with others!

Read your groups' discussion pages:

• If you need help figuring something out about teaching, ask a question.

• Can you help by answering someone else's question? Share your knowledge.
  

There's also an open Q&A section within LinkedIn, search through these to see if anyone wants to know something you know about.

And whenever you really like someone's questions or answers, linkup with them by using the Add to your network (top right) + select the group you both belong to from the drop-down menu.

Whenever contacting pure strangers, try not to use the standard "I'd like to add you to my network" invite from LinkedIn but instead say something like "I really liked your answer on.... blah, blah, and I was wondering if you'd like to connect with me."

The key is to be polite and most people will say yes.



8. Update your profile status regularly

Every time you make a change to your page, your network is notified, so do do this.

Whenever you notice a change on someone else's profile that is interesting, comment - it shows you are paying attention and develops your social-networking abilities.

And of course, the next time you're at a workshop or a teaching conference, you'll have a lot more to say to each other than "jolly good location, the food's great but the coffee's crap."




More links...
See what I've saved for you on delicious - this post will tell you what delicious is. Also read Tony Karrer's blog posting with many more links!


And now for a handful of don'ts

• If you're not a really close personal friend of one of the people in your contact list, don't ask that person to introduce you to someone else unless you have a really, really good reason. It's in poor taste.

• Do not shove your products and services down the throats of others! Be the same nice person/ educator that you are in real life - don't send out random annoying email requests to people you don't really know asking them to do you favors or asking them to advertise your products. It's in poor taste.

• If you have a serious professional offer to make someone, provide a relative amount of detail. "We'd like to work with you" is saying what exactly? ;-)
  

• If you decide to be on online, then be online - drop the old ways of thinking. Load up a real picture of you. Never, ever use your company logo or an avatar - it looks really weird if you don't have a real pic here and you will, effectively, have defeated the purpose of creating a profile.
  

Any questions?

Need me to clarify one of the points or have you got a top tip to add? Share it with us! And don't let my note on the "don'ts" scare you - due to the fact that LinkedIn has quite a closed door approach to networking, as a general rule, the spam factor is incredibly low.

Still not convinced about why this is a good idea?

Here's just one more reason:
personal branding and the google love machine

Best,

Karenne