Melanie Butler on Glass Ceilings in ELT

Is there a glass ceiling for women in ELT?  Let’s conduct a thought experiment. Shut you eyes and walk into a staffroom, any staffroom you know well. Count the number of women’s faces. Now do the...

Powerpointing Grammar - EFL Tech Tip #13b

One of my favourite quotes is : The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.Mark Van Doren PowerPoint is one of those tools - really not quite as fancy as the vast majority of web2.0 tools...

New Year, New Look

aaaaagh, 39 hours of programming later, I've finally finished my attempt at making my blog resemble an online magazine! Lost some bits and pieces of code along the way... the pictures stretch when...

Monkey See = Monkey Do 2

I wonder who first coined the phrase Monkey See Monkey Do after noticing primates copy each other - probably it was someone in a village somewhere who was keeping one as a pet or it might well have been...

Face On or Face Off

Facebook =a) close friendsb) family and family of familyc) teachers I knowd) teachers I don't knowe) people I went to school withf) people I've met along my travelsg) studentsh) people who began as tweeters...

Getting Your Students Reading Blogs, H2LE (1)

This is part of a new series (H2LE) with information you'll be able to share with your adult English language students. Have you had a chat with your students about learning English by reading blogs? While...

Online ESL teaching - how to get started?

I received this email this morning:Hey Karenne!Do you have any advice on how one gets started offering virtual ESL lessons?Thanks!SuzieBefore answering, I thought I'd turn it over to you as I can think...

Blogged (Jan 01 - Jan 10, 2010)

Lesson Plans / Tips Wrote Predictions 2010 - 2019 (dogme-style tips) Bring on the teenies (w/ link to conversation prompts) ELT issues Wrote 2 more IATEFL scholarship(Latin Americans/developing...

Weighin' in

For those of you who aren't on Twitter (yet), regularly visiting and reading blogs or who've been on vacation recently and missed the rumble in the blogosphere...Two TEFL heavyweights recently joined...

2 more IATEFL scholarships!

Dear Latin American Readers,You might be in luck... IATEFL have one more scholarship available, check the link(s) below and apply ASAP!The award consists of: conference registration£1800 towards accommodation,...

Ask for Help - EdTech Tip #14

"sMarty..." I whined to my baby brother busy sitting in the corner checking on his FB friends via his i-touch."Wa' you want?" He didn't bother to look up.I handed him my LG Prada."Can you check this...

L1 in the classroom?

I generally tend to read ELT blogs rather than ELT magazines: I like the authenticity on the page, the immediacy of opinions, the lack of pretension and love all the dialogues which naturally emerge...

Predictions 2010 - 2019 (Lesson Plan)

Probably one of the easiest, getting-back-in-the-groove, sans materials, dogmesque lesson I can think of:Step 1Write 2009 on the boardAsk students to quickly jot down a list of the 5 most important things...

8 radical technological changes which (shock!) rocked education

and caused us to deeply question our pedagogical practices and principles:1. The candleReading was suddenly possible all the way through the night.This was followed by the light bulb and the florescent...

Medius bloggin'

I have these random thoughts...Sometimes they're troubling questions or fascinating revelations - sometimes I decide a few days later that the idea was nothing more than a load of tosh... but sometimes...