The ELT Blogosphere: May 2010

On Friday 28th, 2010 I came home after a really hard day of teaching to find out, via Twitter, that Kalinago English has been chosen as Bab.la's #2 Language Teaching blog!   It's truly an honor and if you're one of my lovely readers or friends or family members who voted for me thank you very, very much!

In fact what I discovered also, once I recovered and looked at the Lexiophiles' round-up was that a whopping 15 members of BELTfree, an online community dedicated to ELT bloggers, made it into the top 100 and, as the group's mistress (moderator) I am even  prouder of this than my own prize.

The thing is, for those who have been following my conversations on Um, I hate to ask, on principle I tend to have reservations about contests of this nature.  

From a marketing perspective, it is important to have these sorts of badges on our blogs - it's part of social proof if you will, which is why we wear them, but what happens whenever these awards occur is that inevitably other blogs of similar or even higher quality are omitted - perhaps they don't have a significant number of contacts who can vote for them, or they weren't able to suck it up and toot their own horns (trust me, there is a certain loss of face involved in doing that) but it doesn't mean that their work has no value or isn't appreciated.

These monthly (or bi-monthly when I'm knee deep in other projects) come without any sort of shiny badge** to put on your blogs...  it's just me Karenne Sylvester, fellow TEFL teacher telling you, my blogging colleagues and professional readers: here's the quality, I've traveled throughout the globe to find it, have saved the best of the best posts I read and organized them for you - so go read and go enjoy!


(Sorry it really is a bit of a bumper edition this time 'round - forgot to publish April's due to IATEFL and the Carnival and some of the posts were just too good to decide not to... so it's probably best to use this list as an online magazine index and choose  to read the ones which sound most up your street!    Or come back later...)

**do you  want me to make a nice shiny badge? Or would you like to make me one that I can share with the stars below? :-)

To catch up posts from this blog see:
Kalinago English summary

In the ELT Blogosphere

TEFL industry

• My first IATEFL conference by Emma Herrod on Ken Wilson's, UK
• Can someone ever teach someone else how to teach? by Willy C. Cardoso
• Becoming a teacher-trainer by John Hughes, USA
• Should TEFLrs have a Back Up Plan? by Leahn Stanhope, Canaries
• Six jobs before becoming a teacher by Lindsay Clandfield, Spain

Methodology, Pedagogy, Linguistics

• E is for Error by Scott Thornbury, Spain
• There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so by Jeremy Harmer (loved Olaf's comment!) 
• Language and words in the news by Kati Suli on the Macmillan English blog, UK
• Watching young learners at work by Marisa Constantinides, Greece

Teaching English as a Foreign Language

• Never under-estimate what your students can teach you by Berni Wall on Barbara Sakamoto's, Japan
• Individual Differences Count by Mike Harrison on Barbara Sakamoto's, Japan
• Do no harm and What beginners need by Alex Case, Korea
• Class without a teacher by Darren Elliot, Japan
• How late is too late to begin lesson planning by Mike Harrison, UK
• Phat English by Chuck Johnson on Hall Houston', Taiwan

On Technology

• Teens and Tech by Henrick Oprea, Brazil
• The Power and Point of using Prezi by Paul Hill, USA
• How ad-Blockers could damage your favourite free ESL websites by Sean Banville, Abu Dhabi, UAE
• How Blogging Helps by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan, Turkey

Lessons using technology

• A lesson plan on phrasal verbs using Xtranormal by Ana Maria Menezes, Brazil
• Bike Theft by Vicki Hollett, USA (videos)
• How to be happy and take care of other people (video) by Richard, Spain
• 60second "Literature" recaps in video by Arjana Blazic, Croatia
• My kid could have written a better ending! Nick Jaworski, Turkey
• What a headache! by Dagmar Taylor, Spotlight magazine, Germany

• Memorize a song by Nik Peachey, Morocco  
• Flash Based Games by Shaun Wilden, Czech Republic
• Using Speech Bubbles by Jen Vershoor, Argentina
• Prefixes and Suffixes online activities by Johanna Stirling, UK
• Google Vocabulary Sets by Cristina, Spain 
• 10 online resources for ESL teachers by Richard Byrne, USA 

• 100 ways to use social media in the classroom by Online University Blog
• Will you Google wave? by Shelly Terrell, Germany

Lessons without "technology"

• More than 5 things to do with LEGO by Emma Herrod, UK on Barbara Sakamoto's, Japan
• World Cup Spelling by Johanna Stirling, UK
• Shadow Puppets by Anita Kwiatkowska, Turkey
• Don't worry about the Euro (reading text) by Ian McMaster, Germany 
• Just improvise! by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan, Turkey

Hidden Gems (Posts from the Past)

• The vast pool of human knowledge, neglected by Darren Elliott, Japan
• #hidden gems by Anne Hodgson, Germany
• My homework by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan, Turkey
• Got to do some blogging research by Mike Harrison, UK
• My blog reading homework by Marisa Constantinides, Greece
• Digital Game based Learning via Vicky Saumell, Argentina + Graham Stanley, Spain

Introducing New ELT Bloggers on the Block

• Colin C Rapshead Spain Funniest blogger I've met online since Alex Case
• Luke Meddings UK Short and reflective posts
• Evan Frendo Germany Getting you down to Business English
• John Hughes USA Teaching you to train teacher-trainers
• George Vassilakis Greece Delivering the grunge and gore of the TEFL industry

Old Bloggers on the block: Why not pick one of these and put it into your google-reader, decide to read all of their posts and comment frequently and encourage them in their new style-writing process...


And if all that wasn't enough...

• Top TEFL tweets
• Best of the ELT blogosphere posts 
• Sue Lyon Jones, pick of the blogs 
• Berni Wall & the #EdChat summaries **Highly recommended

See you next month!
Karenne
image credit: Planet Earth Remix