Aprenda Inglês - Voxy for Portuguese Speakers

Super excited to relay that in less than a month, Voxy for Portuguese-speaking English-language-learners is the number #1 education app in Brazil and has been downloaded a whopping 30,800 times!


If you're a English Language Teacher based in Brazil, do check it out and share with your students:

http://www.voxy.com

Aprenda Inglês - Voxy

What is Voxy?

Voxy uses web-based and mobile technologies to create a fun, flexible, contextual and convenient learning environment, providing interesting supplementary materials which support the language learning experience.



Why use Voxy?

It's free... and all lessons are based on current real-world news stories.  Learners have full control over the pacing and frequency of use and simple repetition games ensure students review the words they've encountered within articles they've read.

Geo-location based phrases provide relevant expressions they want in the moment they need to use them and camera flashcards help students to stay on top of words they're interested in knowing.

How can teachers use Voxy in the classroom?

1. Predict the Story

• Choose a few words related to one of the articles on the Voxy website and put these up on the board/ IWB.
• Before reading, ask students to guess what the story might be about.

2. Predict the Vocabulary

• Choose one of the most recent Voxy stories that has been popular in the local media.
• Before reading, get students to brainstorm the vocabulary which the story may contain.
• After reading, ask students how many had guessed correctly and what words could also have been added.

3.  What's the Grammar?

• Choose one of the Voxy articles.
• Ask students to analyze the different tenses used and discuss the reasons why these were chosen.
• Can they rewrite the story using other tenses?

 4. Choose a new picture!

• Get students to browse through current Voxy stories and to choose one they are most interested in.
• Can they find a different creative-commons licensed picture to go with this story?
• Ask them to explain why they prefer the picture they chose.

5. Rewrite the headlines!

• Get students to browse through current Voxy stories and to choose one they are most interested in.
• Can they write a better headline for the story they chose?

6.  Where in the world?

• Using a world map in your classroom, encourage students to pin-up printed out Voxy stories which have taken place all over the world.

7. Track and update stories

• Get students to browse through current Voxy stories and to choose one they are most interested in.
• Can they create a timeline and continually update the story as it unfolds or develops?

8. Discuss and debate

• Choose a controversial article and then divide up your class into two teams.
• Tell one half they believe in one side of an argument and the other half believes something else.
• Encourage them to debate the issue(s).

9.  Roleplay

• Choose a story with multiple roles
• Encourage students to pick roles and to write up a dialogue (e.g. an interview, a conversation)
• Get them to practice and role play the various events surrounding the situation in the article.

Have you got any other great suggestions on how teachers can use Voxy in their language-learning classrooms?

If you've already used Voxy in your classroom - what do your students think of our site?


Best,
Karenne
Disclaimer:  I am an ELT-Academic Consultant for Voxy


Useful links

• Voxy blog
• Voxy for Spanish speaking English learners
• Voxy for English speaking Spanish learners (in Beta)
• Voxy gets a further $2.8M investment

Teaching English Online: Tara Benwell and MyEC

I was just going through some of the great sessions from the Virtual Round Table last week to catch up on what I'd missed and while on over there, saw a posting about one of the sessions I did attend at the time and which, if you're interested in teaching online but aren't sure where to start, would really like to point you towards. 

The session was with Tara Benwell of MyEC who works with English language learners from all over the world: almost 25,000 of them!  

She sets up monthly blog challenges for them to write, administrates their discussions and also helps them develop computer skills and develop learner autonomy.

One of the best things about MyEC - if you're a teacher as well as a learner is that you're welcome to go onto their site and set up your own group - there are many, many other groups to join in as well.    Many of their members frequently write their own blogs so you can quickly offer your services in terms of general feedback or correction (when/if they ask for this).

So basically if you've been hedging on whether or not you'd like to start teaching online, doing an Masters in Edtech/TESOL and you'd really like to have a free space, a kind of 'sandbox' to test out on strangers who are really keen to learn... or you want to work out whether teaching online is for you before diving in with  creating your own site (or even, like me the reverse, you'd like to see how tasks you set with real students work with total strangers)  then you should definitely watch this video and join their site.  

If you have any questions, Tara is super approachable, she tweets at @TEFL and her page on the MyEC page is here, the creator of their site was Josef Essberger.

Good luck!
Karenne

p.s. Let me just share with you a blog post from one of their members (displayed here with permission):

Mobile Phones + English Language Learning - ya what?

Today, while waiting for my S-bahn to arrive to take me to classes out of the city centre, I observed a young man sporting a heavy backpack, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a small, sleek, black device in the other, running to catch his train.

He didn't make it.   

Not because of the coffee, the phone or even the extra weight on his back but because he was wearing jeans which fell halfway down his bum and well, having no hands free... well, you know what I mean, don't you?  

I feel the same way about Crocs, the Noughties answer to things which really should never be worn on the feet, at any cost, at all, for any other reason than to garden.  They are big, fat, plastic slipper things - yes, indeedy-do, that's exactly what they are.

Perhaps if I had never read Gladwell's Tipping Point, I would have spent the rest of my life in the dark, never quite understanding how the dumbest of concepts ever manage to find their way to becoming popular... but I did read it...  and having read Lindstrom's Buyology  as well, I can tell ya, for a fact that people do what other people do and that's just what people do.

(It's a survival of the species thing).

Getting to be the first though is the trick to making big money in this world, so if that's your dream, then you'll probably have to design the next pair of Crocs before anyone else in the whole wide world would ever wear them or you'll have to create a music device and then attach dangly, tangly white earphones to them (why on god's green earth hasn't someone invented the no-wire-necessary headphones yet???) or you'll have to convince a Rap Star to put on jeans which come up to just below the waist.

Don't do these things though if you don't want to lose money.  Because to be honest, let's face it, not  everyone who dreams up smart ideas wins big. Lots try, lots blow out lots of smoke however lots, months later, years later, lots have heads that roll due to lots of losses incurred in lots of research, development, marketing and production.

Which happens to bring me, really quite nicely, to M-language-learning.

Ya what?

Lots of stuff 'bout that's being bandied about on the 'net recently.

Some back story first though.   Being a bit of a tech nerd, I was the proud holder of one of the first SmartPhones, a Windows powered HTC-Qtek,  a wonderful Taiwanese machine way before its time - pre-dating the i-phone by quite a number of years.   So sometime back in 2005 or 2006,  in class with my one of my students ("a CEO" who wanted to increase his vocabulary) we came up with the grand plan of auto-messages delivered daily: Word-of-the-Day by SMS.

The first problem we ran into... in our mind's eye, of course, we didn't actually follow-through because this was all fictional situational language practice for him, was that due to the absolute lack of market saturation of SmartPhones at that time (he had a BlackBerry) it would be impossible to monetize but rather a lot of work to set up.

Then good old Steve Jobs brought out the admittedly gorgeous i-phone and the whole wide world went berserk for all things Apple (I'm not a fan of 'closed' company workings meself). On top of that, Jobs, rather cleverly set the whole thing up so that necessary apps to make the thing cooler would cost.  

And the world began to see a shift towards monetization from the internet...

And the first people who got on that particular train made lots and lots of  moooooola....

Today, if you watch the ELT twitterverse and read through upcoming conference presentation schedules for the next six months then you'll begin, like me, to notice a bit of a trend forming...  mobile phones are suddenly becoming "hot" learning tools - despite the low level saturation amongst teachers themselves - and these devices are being touted about as the very next big thing in language learning...

You'd be forgiven for thinking that probably one of the ELT publishers or one of the big-name  institutional chains is busy developing an app, you really would.

But, um,  

but uh-hum,

before we go a bit too hastily into that good night, could we take a deep breath and take a little rational peek into what the greater majority of people in the world who own phones (who can afford these things and the access to the 'net) actually use them for, which is:

General phones

• Talking to friends
• Talking to family
• Talking to colleagues
• Playing games

SmartPhones

• Talking to friends
• Talking to family
• Talking to colleagues
• Playing games
• Talking to friends on social networks
• Talking to family on social networks
• Receiving and answering work 
• Receiving and answering personal emails
• Checking calendar and tasks
• Jotting down quick notes (and even recording new ideas for blogs)
• Quickly checking on news headlines
• Find locations on maps quickly
  
• Checking for random information (secretive fact verifying in pub-quizzes)
• Listening to music
• Catching up on the plethora of podcasts you wish you hadn't downloaded
• Watching short TED videos

Internet access is on the rise, it is... but...

where, why, how...how often, what for....

see the thing is, really, the phone is principally a communicative device.  I don't know a single person who has learned a language on one or even wants to... I really don't.  It's just not... motivational.

The phone has successfully made its way into entertainment but as anyone who tried to make the SecondLife or Gaming crossover (or even TV) into real education or language training will tell you the mix between inane, brain-numbing, relaxing entertainment and education for educational sake does not seem to ever reach a tipping point. 

Sometimes people actually want to go about their lives:  downtime is downtime, travel time is travel time and they don't actually want their devices to take over their entire lives...

Sometimes those who have time on their hands (literally) seem to forget this...

 

Sometimes, like my friend with his pants slipping half down his legs, some of us are actually just too much in a rush juggling gazillions of activities and the very last thing on our minds in the conjugation of verbs.  The prospect of sitting on a sofa learning a language with it makes zero sense so until someone stands up and says hey! I learned my Maori and Finnish on my phone and this is how I did it... then I'll be a critical thinker and wonder where the dollar bills are and who's looking for them.

So,

yea...

nope...

just another fad...

Am I wrong?

What do you think?

Do you think other than students checking out Wikipedia and their online dictionaries that there's any kind of possibility and real future in Mobile Language Learning?

Tell me why you think this, am looking forward to sharing your thoughts and experiences...


Useful links related to this posting: 
Previous posts on using Smartphones in the language classroom 

MILLEE: (Indian project)
Text2Teach (Philipines project)
Nokia's program in China
Learning with Apple
Education Apps for the I-phone

Best, Karenne
education



(p.s I downgraded on the Smartphone, last year, by the way - to the LG Prada... and I no longer access the 'net with mine - sometimes life just really has to quiet, filled with inane tasks like watching people catch trains). :)))
p.p.s As I've mentioned elsewhere I do see a future in tablets, net-books and other portable devices just not with small, primarily used to communicate with loved ones, devices that you carry around in your pocket).

Google for teaching adults how to describe statistics

Google is just so useful, isn't it?  But did you know that you can get your adult Business English students looking for their own data, specifically relevant to their own interests, projects and responsibilities?

 For fun, drag the yearly scroll bar!

This incredible site, Google Public Data Explorer, offers statistics from the World Bank, Eurostat, OECD and also includes several more country-specific-options as well (Australian Bureau of Statistics, US Bureau of Labour Statistics and much, much more).

Most of the charts are completely customizable and although the fun factor, when messing about on the site trying to decide just how to present the data, is high (you can change years, colours, countries and layouts),  the very real potential for pedagogical application is even higher!

Screenshots can be taken of each data set, printed, turned into jpegs and inserted into PowerPoint/GoogleDoc presentations, however, what I like best is that the charts can be easily embedded directly on to your students' own blogs/pages/ wikis, Nings or any other learning platform you're using to teach with.

For fun, hover over the country names!

What can you encourage your students to do?  

• Give them the link to the site or show in class if you have internet access.
• Ask them to review the options and to personally choose a set of statistics that they are interested in knowing more about or that they need to know about for their own work/study.
• Show them the various options for presenting information: globally vs. the country they're in/ doing business with/ countries they're interested in knowing more about.
• Encourage them to then work in teams (comparing their preferred data sets).
• Tell them to create essays, blog posts or presentations researching and exploring the reasons which explain the data they'd found.

What language could you use this website to practice?

• the langauage of describing statistics
• expressions for trends and changes
• numbers and financial English expressions
• comparatives and superlatives
• range of past structures and present tenses
• predictions for the future
• asking and answering critical questions about the world we live in

Previously on Kalinago English, posts related to this posting:
Why use Google?
More lessons tips for ESP:Financial
More lessons tips for Business English Adults

Useful links
Statistics for a changing world
Search Power
Google Docs presentation on ways to use the Public Data Explorer
Blog about stats (lots of great tips)

Best, Karenne
education

Blogging, Chatting & Discussions Online

One of the luckiest things to ever happen in my life was being taught by Professor Hein at MLS in the US.

It was his boundless energy, creativity, positivity, dynamism and knowledge which probably most influenced me to become a teacher myself but also, it was he who inspired a love of history.  

A passion for the past. 

I am lucky to have this, I think, because unless we as a species are able to look backwards then we are unable to see forwards.

On Saturday, 17 July 2010, we held Stuttgart's first Tech Tools Day - an interactive, hands-on, full day of workshops where teacher participants were encouraged to learn more about the use of web 2.0 tools in the language learning classroom.

Expert colleagues Carl Dowse, Gavin Dudeney, Anne Hodgson, Mike Hogan, Heike Philp, Dr Petra Pointner, Byron Russell, Shelly Terrell and Andi White reviewed speaking, listening, watching, reading, describing, applying, searching, evaluating, analyzing and creating and it was a fantastic day - we all learned so much from each other.

Details of their presentations: level one here, level two here.

My own presentations were focused around the use of some of the "simpler" and depending on where you stand, possibly the less flashy of the numerous and fascinating web2.0 tools which are available today, however it was my role to look at written communication.

During the workshops, so I could provide an easy online space & exercise for our trainees to experience  threaded conversations (forums) I created a Prezi which asked "why do we write?"

Blogging, Chatting & Discussions Online on Prezi

To look at this Prezi:
click on the play button to start, continue clicking play 
or select More and set to auto-play

Many great thoughts came up and discussions ranged from whether or not we write for the interaction, to record information; to communicate with others when we aren't within hearing; to keep in touch; to share instructions; to create and collaborate.

Then, continuing on the historical theme, I made a video of our species' development of the tools we  have used to write with in the last 500 years - this  led to the qualities of instantaneous chat, asking them to think of the pedagogical applications and purposes of web2.0 tools in our classrooms.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
song by Sue Lyon Jones

I was very proud to be involved in the creation of a TechToolsDay for ELTAS partly because I enjoy sharing my knowledge, partly because I am afraid that those who are shunning technology will be left behind in ten to fifteen years as unemployable adults (or relegated to only base-level service industries) and partly because I have long felt incredibly irritated by the very, non Socratic, question "But what about the Pedagogy?"  

This, personally, to me is an incredibly foolish and fear-based question.   

The creation of the tool, the actual tool and the reason for using the tool are all different and yet all interlinked. 

A lot of teachers around the world who are resistant to today's developments will spout for you Postman - in some kind of pseudo-intellectual argument for keeping life and learning simple.   They criticize the current development of technology in the classroom as if it were something random, something that is only occurring now, in our time,  in our generation.

If we look backwards we will understand our present and see our future:

62,000 years ago we broke off branches and dipped their rough edges into the juice of berries, added chalk and colored stones to tell the perennial story of love and strife.   When charcoal paintings washed away from the walls of caves we learned how to chisel into rocks so our ideograms would not be lost.  

We fashioned clay tablets when we realized that we could not carry giant rocks, when the seasons forced us to move on to our next destinations.

We developed papyrus when we saw that clay breaks.  

When we ran out of papyrus, in a labor-intensive step, we created vellum from the hides of animals and  then finally, we made paper which 1,200 years later we're still doing because Man has an innate need to transcend his mortality, to communicate across time, to leave messages for colleagues, to share knowledge.   

When we understand this then we are able to understand that the time we are living in today is a mere blip, the so-called paradigm shift we are currently experiencing is actually nothing more than the same resource-issues we have always faced, it is no different from at any of our other junctures and it must be solved  - for today, the felling of trees is responsible for a major part of our massive environmental damage and burden.

Writing has always been done in order to reach others, to reflect and review our own experiences.

Blogs, chats, texts, tweets and our other discussions online are simply one step along this long road of evolution.   

It is nothing more than it has ever been - an attempt to harvest fleeting thoughts, to gather experiences, to warn of pain, to share joy and the experience of being a human.  

To teach.

Through our digital web2.0 tools, we are doing nothing more than painting on cave walls.

imagecredit: man of many languages, by eyesplash on flickr

Useful links related to this posting:

• Prezi: Why do we write? (adapted/downloadable as a student/teacher-training exercise)
• Animoto video: The next 500 years+
• More thoughts on technology in teaching

Best,
Karenne
education

Why use Google?

Do you use Google?

Well, of course you do! But how often do you use it in the classroom and/or for setting pre and post-task activities?  

Are you familiar with all the resources they've got freely available to innovate your classroom and motivate your learners?

Here's a slideshow which goes through some of the different apps and tools I've found, plus examples of how I and others have been using the different functions and products in our ELT classes.

Don't hesitate to ask if  you see a slide that you'd like more info on and most of all, I'd really love to learn more from you about what, how and why you've been using Google with adult, teen or young learners, so do please share your thoughts (or links to postings too)!

Best,
Karenne
imagecredit: g-nicole, swiatekj on flickr.com

*click on the small box next to the slide counter to see full-sized

Useful links related to this posting:
Lots of links bookmarked on delicious 
Free 33 page guide to Google from Richard Byrne (General Edu)

 education

20 Top Tweets in #TEFL: 2010-May-12

Tweets I've favorited, visited, commented on, enjoyed and/or recommend in some way...


Teaching English as a Foreign Language:  

Issues/News in our industry

RT @iateflonline: Clicks & bricks help Congo teachers join the global ELT conversation http://bit.ly/cA0hL1Sat May 01 12:31:58 via TweetDeckMiguel Mendoza
mike08

RT @MacmillanELT: We have completed a full overhaul of our anti-bribery compliance policies and procedures. http://ow.ly/1HIatThu May 06 14:24:53 via TweetDeckGavin Dudeney
dudeneyge

RT @paulmaglione: How English erased its roots to become the global language of 21st century. #efl #elt #esl #tesol http://bit.ly/aq7kNiSun May 09 12:23:38 via TweetDeckHenrick Oprea
hoprea

@hoprea Every Sunday we discuss ideas related to language learning and teaching #ELLCHATSun May 09 18:42:53 via TweetGridlinda hahner
readtoday

Lake School of English, Oxford, is recruiting EFL teachers for July and August summer courses https://www.englishinoxford.com/Sun May 09 12:50:15 via webJanet Bianchini
janetbianchini

Teaching English Issues, Tips /Lessons

Young Learners + Teens

Nice games to teach Internet Safety http://bit.ly/rwZS9Sun May 09 12:48:25 via TweetDeckJennifer Verschoor
jenverschoor

Newsround: Outstanding news resource site for learners aged 9-15 http://bit.ly/cvNESIThu May 06 15:16:46 via TypePadJason Renshaw
englishraven

General English Adults

New intermediate English lesson on our blog: UK Politics/General Elections http://esolcourses.blogspot.com/ #esl #esol #beltfree #englishSun May 09 17:31:31 via webSue Lyon-Jones
esolcourses

Darfur is Dying - Critical thinking/educational game for change: http://su.pr/1BU4MD #games #education (via @missiontolearn)Thu May 06 17:04:25 via Su.prSue Lyon-Jones
esolcourses

RT @vale24 Teacher zones: Dictionaries zone #ELT CUP @CambridgeWords: Lesson plans, worksheet etc for... http://bit.ly/943C0ESun May 09 17:59:38 via webEva Buyuksimkesyan
evab2001

Business English

BESIG Webinar: The best teaching resource? Our students? http://ht.ly/1IMx3 Online mini-conference for business English teachers #besigSun May 09 16:00:10 via HootSuitecarldowse
carldowse

Tech Tools + Teaching

Top 10 Wordle Lessons for the Classroom http://goo.gl/fxml #eslMon May 03 14:20:51 via webAlexandra Francisco
alexgfrancisco

via @NikPeachey Create Quick Interactive Activities http://bit.ly/bZMDYK #beltfreeSun May 09 09:56:35 via twitterfeedKarenne Sylvester
kalinagoenglish

RT @tombarrett: 28 Interesting Ways to Use Audio in your Classroom http://bit.ly/9L2D9t <-Love the "Interesting Ways" Series!Sun May 09 18:49:36 via TweetDeckSteven W. Anderson
web20classroom

Social Media

Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline via #NYT http://ow.ly/1IM46 #facebookSun May 09 15:16:15 via HootSuiteBarbara Sakamoto
barbsaka

RT @livesofteachers RT @OzMark17: The Guardian:'Why Twitter is the quickest way from Q 2 A' http://bit.ly/8ZT0YP (very interesting research)Sun May 09 19:57:38 via webCaroline Wilkinson
CallieWallie1

Mainstream Educational Links of Interest

Podstemic: Changing the Face of STEM Education with iPods http://bit.ly/aDf65u #edtechSun May 09 20:45:27 via TweetDeckBrian J. Nichols
bjnichols

"(One of) The Duality(ies) of #Edtech " ( http://bit.ly/cUsFgR ) #edchatSun May 09 21:06:06 via twitthatAaron Eyler
Aaron_Eyler

Frowns /+ Smiles

Twitter sometimes makes me feel like this - http://bit.ly/b5wKXKSun May 09 12:49:21 via webDavid Deubelbeiss
ddeubel

=)RT @JordiJubany: The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. W. A. WardSun May 02 20:28:50 via TweetDeckMichael Harrison
harrisonmike

You may also be interested in:

• ELT Guide to Twitter
• New TEFL teachers on Twitter
• More posts on Life in the Twitterverse
• The Best of the ELT Blogosphere
  
• Tweets saved by Shelly Terrell
• Tweets saved by Larry Ferlazzo

Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos interviews Nicky Hockly

Nicky Hockly is the Director of Pedagogy at The Consultants-e which is an online language teacher training and development consultancy. She has worked in the field of face-to-face and distance education since 1987, as a teacher, teacher trainer and consultant and holds an MA in TEFL from the Universidad de Granada ( Spain ), a CTEFLA (1987) and a DTEFLA (1991). Nicky has worked as a teacher trainer on Cambridge-ESOL CELTA courses, and has given seminars, in-service workshops and teacher training courses for practising language teachers in the UK, South America, South Africa and in many European countries. She has also been involved in materials development, for both EFL course books and online learning.   Awards include: British Council Innovation Award - Winners 2007; Ben Warren International House Trust Prize 2007; David Riley / MacMillan / BESIG Prize - shortlisted 2008; British Council Innovation Award - shortlisted 2009. 

Nicky blogs @ E-moderation Station and tweets from @TheConsultantsE

Nicky kindly agreed to do an interview with Panagiotis for the She-in-ELT series.

1. Why did you decide to pursue a career in English Language Teaching?

The weather is what made me into a language teacher. That may sound a little odd. Born in Cape Town South Africa, I was used to decent weather, and after spending six years in the UK, I was desperate to move to warmer climes. The easiest way to move to Greece/Portugal/Italy/Turkey/Spain was by becoming a language teacher. The minute I got my British citizenship, I jumped on the first plane heading south, armed with a four-week teaching certificate, and got a job in Barcelona. I then discovered that I loved both teaching and Barcelona, and haven't looked back since.

2. Can you expand on your experience using technology in teaching?

I am first and foremost a teacher and teacher trainer. That's what I love doing. I'm definitely not a technical person by nature. I ended up using technology in my teaching quite by chance. I was offered a job as the Academic Director on an inter-university online MA programme in 1997, which was run entirely online. These were the very early days of online teaching and training. I cut my teeth on WebCT (a VLE), producing MA materials, designing online tasks, and tutoring groups of MA students online from Spain, the UK, and Latin America.

Although I had plenty of experience teaching face-to-face, I had none teaching online. After about six months of online tutoring, the turning point came when I myself was an online student on a course with a UK university in 1998. As an online learner, I learned more in six weeks than I had learned as an untrained tutor in six months. It was a real eye opener.

It made me realise just how important experiential training is for the online tutor. Not so surprising really: we all know that learning a foreign language gives a foreign language teacher invaluable insights into the process of learning a language; taking an online course gives one invaluable insights into online learning and tutoring.

I worked on the online MA programme for six years, until setting up an online training and online consultancy (The Consultants-E) with my colleague Gavin Dudeney in 2003. I now work about 80% online, training and tutoring, and managing a variety of online projects and consultancies. About 20% of my time is spent on f2f training and giving conference talks.

Using technology in my work has the obvious advantage of working in a cutting-edge field which is constantly evolving, and which I find interesting and stimulating. Fringe benefits to working online include avoiding rush hour traffic, and working in my pyjamas until 2pm if I feel like it.

3. Today we all witness the education world change and transform into something new through the use of technology. What do you think the future of education holds for us? How do you see online learning developing?

I think it's already the case that more and more educational institutions are offering both blended and online learning. Learners expect increased flexibility, and teachers need to be able to harness the potential of new technologies in order to meet these needs. This means that teachers need to be trained in how to effectively create and deliver both online and blended courses. In my experience the great majority of teachers are still woefully under-prepared for this, and many teacher training courses still persist in ignoring new technologies, whether in face-to-face teaching or in blended and online teaching. I personally find that infuriating! I think it is unfair on teachers.

4. Online learning, while becoming increasingly popular is still faced by many with skepticism and fear. What do you think are the steps needed to overcome these obstacles?

Online learning is not necessarily inferior to face-to-face teaching -- it's different. The problem is that there are plenty of bad online courses out there, with poor course design, and untrained facilitators. This gives online learning a bad name. I personally know teachers who have already taken poorly designed online courses and have had such a negative experience, that they can't imagine online courses ever working effectively. This is another thing that infuriates me! :-)

Good online courses, in which effective online tasks are combined with effective online community building , and effective tutoring, can be immensely rewarding, and highly developmental. In my own experience, excellent online courses can be even more effective than face-to-face courses.

The steps needed to overcome fear of online teaching or learning? Take a good online course as a participant!

5.  How can a teacher make a successful transition from the offline to the online world?

I'm now going to start sounding very repetitive. In my opinion (and experience), teachers need effective training in e- moderation skills, and they need to experience online learning themselves as participants. Only then is the teacher really ready to consider how to design and facilitate his or her own courses online.

6. What do you think about the certification of online teachers? Do you consider it important and valuable for a teacher?

Absolutely!

7. What do you think makes ELT teaching a successful and rewarding experience?

Without doubt the students. Working in online teacher training means that my ‘students’ are teachers from all over the world, from Azerbaijan to Zambia. That is an incredibly enriching and rewarding thing!

8. For many, ELT is still a male dominated field. You’ve had a very successful and accomplished career. However, did you as a female ever felt pressure or limits on your development? Did you feel a sort of “glass ceiling” in the field?

Well, it's very flattering that you think I've had a successful and accomplished career!  I think there are plenty of women out there who have done a lot more than me, a lot more effectively, than I have! As to the glass ceiling debate, my only comment is this: of all the conferences that I have attended or spoken at in the last 12 months, the great majority of plenary speakers were male. In two of the conferences, all of the plenary speakers were male. I find that surprising in a female dominated profession.

Useful links related to this posting:
Nicky's very funny Pechua Kucha from IATEFL Cardiff 2009

This interview was conducted by Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos of Myngle.com - Myngle brings together language teachers and students from all over the world enabling live lessons over the Internet. Myngle offers the possibility of teaching or receiving live one-on-one lessons from the comfort of your home for practically any language, level or type of teacher.  To learn more about Myngle, visit their LinkedIn page.

Myngle also tweet from their handle @Myngler


Do you have a question for Nicky?  Don't hesitate to ask and if you'd also like to contribute a guest-article on one of the amazing woman in our field of English Language Teaching, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

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!
Suzie

Before answering, I thought I'd turn it over to you as I can think of several ongoing training sessions she could participate in to get her skills up to speed and will be sending this link (courses at the bottom) - however I reckon she's also asking about finding students and keeping them actively learning, motivated and.... (me putting words into her email of course) probably how to do this in a way that also brings in a reasonable income.

So if you're a successful online English trainer (or even a company that deals with this sort of thing), whether it's via Skype, 2nd Life or any other platform - would you like to share with us your best tips, helpful links, book suggestions, good/bad experience and things to watch out for - so that we can become better informed?

Thanks muchly in advance!

Best,
Karenne