Thnx 4 ur RTs

A rather popular figure in ELT kicked off a rather big discussion two days ago - one which captivated my attention and distracted me from doing a thousand other, much more pressing and urgent, matters.

It was regarding the social niceties which should or shouldn't go along with life in web 2.0 and whether or not we understand the culture emerging there.

For the most part, Gavin's observations were spot on but still, I was annoyed about a couple of things. Regarding the narcissism of web2.0, he's right - it is something I have observed and dislike also but the blogosphere is abuzz with it, it's not only happening in our field.

I remember my own nervous beginnings but as someone who's traveled quite a bit, I also remembered that because I wasn't sure of the map and cultural faux pàses so easily tripped on, I bought, watched, read and bookmarked the 'guide-books.'

I studied before I entered.

One particular point in the blog comments on That' SLife was whether or not thank you's for ReTweets are appropriate: if they're a form of spam and whether or not they should be made privately or publicly and discussions erupted on how they "clutter up" the hmm... really rather busy twitter stream.

So here's the thing...

I say thank you to you because I am thankful.

Actually, I'm excessively, overwhelmingly, abundantly grateful.


Let's get something pretty straight, just in case it isn't clear:

I am no big deal.


As much as I love my blog (can you tell?) and it's nice (but mostly weird) that some of you are now referring to me as a VIP, it just ain't so.


I'm an English teacher.

I pack up my backpack every weekday, just like you do, well mine usually has a netbook inside it, I go to my classes and teach there and sometimes my lessons work out well so I blog about these.... so you can go try these ideas out too and I can find them again... but sometimes, to be frank, they're not all that clever.

I train teachers in workshops however I'm not a teacher-educator.

I haven't written a major textbook and no, I haven't created an earth-shaking pedagogy.



So, how did this no-one arrive in the place of having a "popular" blog?



When I started in September last year, I wasn't on Twitter. So in the beginning I got maybe 5 visitors a week..? And probably of those visits, 50% were made by my parents. But I came to the page and I wrote.

I put in the hours.

Some of my articles were just awful. Embarrasingly so.

Some of them were average.

Sometimes I thought, wow, is like no one ever going to read my words? All those so-called supportive colleagues at the school I used to work at - too busy, they kept saying they'll look at the weekend but the weekends went by and they did not come.

That so-called best friend who told me she liked my blog and then when I asked her, did you like what I did with the pictures, she said huh, what picture... and I knew she too, had not come and visited.

And though I was hurt I came to the page and I wrote.

I went out and I learned from the better bloggers. I offered to do guest-pieces for those who knew what they were doing because I read that you should do this. Some of these were accepted, some were not.

I visited your blogs and I learned from you.

I wrote more articles.

I bought books on blogging.

I combed through slideshare and the 'net for tips on how to become a good blogger: Darren Rowse and Chris Brogan helped me enormously - their mantra became my mantra and if you really want to be a popular blogger too, make it yours:

Write.

Somewhere around the 4 months mark... I came up with something which was considered useful by you: some of you decided to share a lesson plan I'd spent 12 hours writing with your colleagues on Facebook, you sent it on by email and it got listed in various yahoo!groups.

Now all of a sudden I was getting 20 - 50 visitors a day... and some of you even began to subscribe to my posts.

Which meant, holy cow, responsibility...

I had to write...

So I came to the page and I wrote.



You started talking back to me.

At around six months, some of you started writing to thank me for what I was writing and it was this gratitude of yours which pulled me to the page and made me write even more articles, now twice or three times a week instead of every now and then.

I joined Twitter in May and as we bloggers of the blogosphere connected daily in the Twitterverse, suddenly the number of visitors to my blog increased exponentially and with that, the deepening obligation to keep writing.

I enrolled on a course with Darren Rowse and did the tough but rewarding 30-day challenge to become a better blogger.

I wrote every day and did every exercise...

My writing improved and now you began to regularly share my posts with your friends, with your colleagues, - you RT'd my work, ideas and tips and passed these on to your own professional and personal learning networks.

Let me say that again.

You read my posts and you commented on them and then you decided what I wrote had enough value to be shared with your own colleagues. This may seem to a casual observer as no big deal... this may seem odd as "in real life we don't thank people for repeating what we say" but this is what you did:

You rewarded me with the highest praise
any writer could ever wish to receive:

you told me my words were worthy.

So though I'm no VIP and though I don't write the best blog in the blogosphere you keep bringing the obligation and responsibility to do the thing I love doing most: writing.

Through your appreciation, you have transformed my quiet life - - you've gotten me two paid writing assignments, you've given me a thousand new ways to smile, confidence in my concepts and ideas about teaching - - you have challenged me to be consistent and true, you have helped me grow as a person and a character in the edu web 2.0 world and

you have given me the gift of the page.

Thnx
4
ur
RTs,

Best,
Karenne

Why Twitter lists are a good idea

Earlier this week I was beginning to feel the Twitter burn-out as despite the obvious value in being a part of a global learning community, the site is so distracting and time-consuming - often there are just way too many excellent tips, links and amazing articles to read and as I now teach 30 contact hours a week, some of which are in blended learning classes, write ELT materials, a blog, run a blogger's group, yadda yaddda...

I came to the conclusion that twitter should only be looked at at specific times of the day and not be on all the time and it's defintely not on my phone.

The problem is that I'm followed by about 1500 people and follow around 1000 in return so filtering through the noise became a surprising issue: the stream looks very, very different from when you are following 100 - 300.

Along with the wonderful teachers I've met online, in the last 8 months or so, my stream includes random networkers, motivational speakers, the "pushing my products" people, the narcissists of whom there are so many, even in education (they call it passion) - so the question of how to effectively concentrate on those I respect without spending a whole bunch of time unfollowing people popped up.

I set up groups on Tweetdeck (probably like most of you) which was handy however kept missing the tweets by those who post outside of my timeline.



I'm about quality, not quantity, so how to work it while sticking to my Dunbar?



I found the solution!

Although most of what I've read regarding Twitter lists in the past few days has been negative, the social media experts decrying them and wondering whether or not some people will end up feeling left out if they're not listed, I think they missed the point.

The lists aren't about who follows you.

They're about who you follow.



They're an easy way of cutting through the noise to focus on specific groups of people within your niche community so you can develop better relationships with them.

My take on the PLN (Personal Learning Network), is that it is about creating valuable, personal, long lasting professional friendships not about adding long lists of random readers, numbers/followers/group-members etc, etc but instead focusing on people you expect to meet at conferences, trainers whose presentations you hope to attend, authors whose books you've read or want to read, educators whose websites and blogs you visit regularly; people you want to learn from and collaborate with, teachers to share and bounce off ideas with.


Creating Twitter Lists isn't easy!

To effectively, efficiently create your own list, I'd recommend doing what I did :

I searched my own twitter id (leaving off the @sign to see the full conversation) and also checked backtweet (good for website owners and bloggers) for those I communicate with most frequently, who chat with me back, who ReTweet my work and put these names into a spreadsheet.

I also looked at who I haven't talked to very often but whom I really wish I did.

Then decided what categories they fell into and from that created my lists:

• educators & teachers from other fields
  
• elt (in TEFL/ESL)
  
• elt-bloggers (beltfree*)
  

and

• the lots of gr8 links group who really deserve their own space!
  

One thing I truly like about the lists is that they aren't static in the way the tweepl lists were - so I can continue to add/subtract to these as the months and years go by.

Another feature is that you can follow the lists of other teachers - handy when someone you know comes up with a category you hadn't thought of and want to monitor also.

I've even made a smaller, private group of "faves" so now, signing off this post and glancing at the tweets from my friends, spanning throughout the entire week, I'm newly invigorated by the potentiality of Twitter to develop as a language professional.

What have your experiences with lists been like, did you find a simple way to create your own? Do you have a tip to share?

Are you worried, like the social-media-experts, about being left off a list?

Have you hit the Twitter-burn-out and came up with a plan too?

Let me know your thoughts.

Best,
Karenne

Useful links related to this posting:
ELT Guide to Twitter
The Business of Twitter

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.

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

Tech Tips for ELT trainers–1: Computer Hardware

Every Monday, I’ll kick off the week by posting up a training video or a slideshare on technology and the English Language Classroom.

To start us off we’ll be looking at this video from the Commoncraft show on hardware.

Knowing how the computer works will help you understand all the other stuff you’re doing on it!

Don’t hesitate to let me know if you like(d) the video or if there is anything else in particular you would like to see. Simply click on the comments to communicate with me.

Toys for Teachers

All I want for Christmas is...

some really great teaching equipment.

Have you been a good English language teacher this year? Have you been learning and growing, communicating, aiding, facilitating, coaching and generally imparting your knowledge of this wonderful language?

Good, you deserve a treat and so you can have a quick chat with Santa, I'm gonna tell you about the most important thing I bought this year.

As I've mentioned often, he's the number one love of my life.

Actually, I confess, when I hit the "create a new post" button I thought I'd begin this with a poem, an ode in fact, but realized that

The Little Blue Guy

I traveled from shore to shore
visiting each and every store
wasn't sure what to do
I needed to find you.

My back was killing me -
my laptop, you see
weighs a ton!
But
teaching with technology's
so much fun.

Had a quick look
you're the size of a book
I fell in love:
you fit in my bag like a glove.

Oh!
You're shiny and new
you're beautiful 'n blue
I immediately knew
what to do -
I bought you.

well, Puh! That's simply just too corny.

You'd probably prefer to just read the statistics, get the hard facts and data and get told how to go find your own.

Rightie, then.

The Little Blue Guy's real name is an Acer Aspire One.

He's one of a genre of netbooks currently on the market. Mine cost €399 a couple of months ago however shortly after purchasing, noticed that Amazon had him at €50 less. Hmmm... you live, you learn. I never reckoned that buying electronic equipment would be cheaper online but there you go. (Links below.)

In general, Netbooks range from €299 to €699.

At the lower end of the price range they are pre-installed with the operating system Linux. Unfortunately, despite what all the techie geeks say I'm going to tell you that if you're not a SuperTechie and don't have a SuperTechie spouse, in the house, then don't go there.

It's simply too time-consuming to figure out how to make the video functions work or utilize some of the great free downloads available. I know, I tried and ended up going back to the shop to get the Acer.

If you're a regular ELT (English language teacher) currently in the process of moving over to TwIT (Teaching with Technology) and you'd like to have your own little guy, you'd be better off going for a model with XP.

And don't worry, those abound. Here are two good, short videos, one's cute marketing propaganda and one's a review of four models .

The Acer shown by the guy in this video uses Linux, again: look for one with XP pre-installed. The main reasons, as you probably gleaned from my poem and the vid, for using netbooks to teach English in the classroom/ in-company are:

they are portable and practical

• light (1.8kg - 3.1kg)
• small (7" - 10")

and in many cases they

• come with more memory than a normal laptop (120-160GB compared to 80GB of most models).* -be careful, some only have 8GB: not useful if you want to download and save videos.

• are often more powerful than a normal laptop

Do note that these machines aren't meant to replace your laptop or your desktop computer at home. If you spend hours typing on one of these your fingers and wrists will end up hurting!

It's a mini computer, made specifically for infrequent and internet usage - perfect for taking into class, to training conferences if you're a teacher trainer, for showing videos, playing mp3s & podcasts, recording your students and sharing presentations you've made or grabbed from slideshare.

Some downsides you should also consider:

• no DVD or CD slot
  
• you will need to purchase or download free software separately.
• the touchpads are small (best to get an extra mouse to go with and if you want to walk around the classroom while controlling what's going on the screen, get a 'presenter' mouse.)
  

Want Santa to come on down the chimney? Get the banker of your household (if you have one) to have a general browse around at what's available in your city. It's a good idea to compare prices - also come on over and take a look at my Amazon "toys for teachers" pages where I've presaved some good models

Germany

UK

USA and rest of the world

p.s. if you want your operating system to be in English and your country allows importation of computer goods, best to go with a purchase from UK or US.

On The Little Blue Guy, I've put the following useful freeware:

• internet browser: firefox

• recording students: audacity
• mp3s/podcasts: i-tunes
• virus protection: avira
• download/play videos: media converter
• photo management: gimp

• documents, presentation tools, pdf, spreadsheets: open office

NB: Most free software comes with options to set the language of preference.

To grab stuff from my stored resources:

• youtube
• slideshare
• delicious
• photos
  
• posts with my tips on teaching with technology
  

Any questions?

Do you have observations or experiences you'd like to share with us about the model you chose and how it works? Don't hesitate to click on the green comments at the bottom and type in your message there.

Best,
Karenne

p.s. Lindsay Clandfield's new blog is up and he's got a list of six more gift ideas for teachers, they're over here.

CNN student news

23 September 2008

This morning I woke up late with a headache and the scratchings of a cold on the way.

Instead of my normal 6am start: time for checking my emails, facebook updates, web statistics, reading, etc. I slowly made a cup of coffee, potted about, got dressed and then realized too late that I hadn't prepped my 8am lesson.

My 8am's only 15 minutes walk from home but by the time it occurred to me that beyond their homework I didn't have any materials ready for our lesson, I had 15 minutes to go.

So, what'd I do?

CNN student news, of course.

If you haven't seen this site and haven't used it in an EFL lesson yet then check it out!

The site comes with video (mp4 via i-tunes), transcripts of the text and question sheets. Simply print out what you need, download the vid (free) pack up your computer and go.

In class, watch the video a couple of times (once without the transcript, once or twice with), go through the difficult vocabulary, do the questions and discuss the most relevant story in detail.

This takes an hour/hour and a bit.


If there's something of specific interest to your students within the report (in my case with this week's: the US financial crisis) then their homework is to follow-up on the story in the local press and report back next week.

Easy!

Karenne,