End of Summer Blues

Are you in summer mode, school mode, or something in between? 

I am definitely still delightfully relaxed and stress-free as I finish the last week of my summer holidays. In fact, you could say I have the end of summer blues as I contemplate going back to school for yet another teaching year.

I'm sure many of you feel the same way and want to enjoy these last days of summer. 
Ah ....Summer

I had a terrific summer filled with gardening, swimming, reading and simply being lazy in the sunshine here in Vancouver,Canada.  Of course, I also spent more time indoors than usual watching the 2012 summer Olympics in London. What an exciting and yet controversial Olympics it was!  Did any of you watch the Olympics? What did you think about some of the things that happened? 

I hope those of you who took a break during the summer had a great time, and those of you who took classes during the summer were successful.  

A Little Review? 

The fall term will begin in less than a week, so both you and I will need to be gearing up for school work soon. 

To make the transition a little easier, you might want to review some grammar, practice your English reading or listen to some English videos or music.

New Resources 
Although I didn't write many posts during the summer,  I have added several new pages - including a Study Skills Page. I have also posted a lot of new resources to almost all the pages - especially the GRAMMAR,   LISTENING,  and PRONUNCIATION PAGES 
 
In addition, I have added several NEW categories with links on the right hand side. 

Employment and Job Related Links: These contain links and resources for people who are looking for a job. Several links focus on job descriptions and what employers are looking for in Canada and other English speaking countries. 

Medical English: These contain links and specific resources aimed at those of you who used to work in medical fields and wish to upgrade your skills, and for those of you who are interested in entering the medical field. focusing on medical vocabulary and language. 

Professional English: This category contains links and resources for students who want to focus on English vocabulary and activities that are specifically aimed at different professions or careers.  Hopefully, this category will grow as I find more material for you. 

International Academic Tests: This category contains links to blogs and test resources for those of you who plan to take any one of a number of International Academic Tests. There is also a lot of tutorials and practice materials in ALL skill areas in the PAGES  above. 

Fun and Games: Everyone needs to have a little fun while learning English, and games are a great way to review grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling skills.  This category is aimed at helping you review while having fun at the same time.  mode - even for short periods of time to update my blog.  I suspect that I am not alone in the challenge of balancing enjoying the summer with the school work that I need to be doing.

Drop me a Line 

So.... send in a comment or two to let me know how things are going with you. I'm always interested in what my readers have to say.
  

A few things you could write about 

1. How did you enjoy the Olympics? 
2. What did you think about some of the scandals that  came out of the Games? 
3. How do you feel about going back to English classes?  
4. Are you finding this blog helpful? 
5. Do you have any topics you would like me to write about?
   

SMILE

SMILE (Social Media in Education and Learning) is a project launched by European Schoolnet (EUN) with the goal to improve our understanding of the challenges and opportunities of using social media in education. The EUN has been awarded an inaugural Digital Citizenship Research Grant by Facebook. It's a year-long project divided into three parts.The first, six-week long part was an online laboratoy for 100 European teachers led by Ollie Bray, during which we investigated different educational opportunities that social media offers.

In the second part we have formed 6 Communities of Practice in order to highlight trends and best practices of how social media can be used in education.

I'm the deputy leader of CoP 4 - Social Media for Professional Development. We have just created a questionnaire and we'd like to hear from as many teachers as possible how they use Facebook. The results of the poll will be published on our Facebook page as well as our blogs and we hope to contribute to the safe and proper use of social media as a form of CPD.

#eltchat will live! fast and furious - a repost

One of the columns on my Tweetdeck is reserved for #eltchat - and it has been so since the first #eltchat was held back in September 2010 - even though I've taken part only in a handful of #eltchats myself! #eltchat, in case you still don't know, is a fast, furious and focussed form of CPD for English language teachers held on Twitter.

I was really taken aback to find out about the loss of eltchat.com, but am convinced that #eltchat will survive and continue to bring fantastic discussions which teachers can take part in or read about in transcripts that are regulary published and from which one can learn a lot.

So I'm reposting Marisa and Shaun's post right here:

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.
Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.
And that is how #ELTchat was created.
The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.

Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.
A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011, he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.
We never found out for sure.

We never received a single word of response to our emails.
eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.

And yesterday we lost it!

On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.
The news is really upsetting.
The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment
We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.
But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org

It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet
And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations
We will be back with a vengeance
We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!

We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!

Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden

ESL 2012 London Olympic Resources

The Olympic games are half over and I have hardly written a thing. I'm sorry about that. I've been too busy enjoying them to write much.

Yes, there have been politics and scandals, but if you look beyond that and focus on the Olympic spirit and the effort that athletes from around the world are putting into these games, it's worth watching. 

Watching those flags go up to the sound of a national anthem certainly does tend to bring out strong sense of nationalism and pride in one's country. 

We should ALL be proud of countries, and the athletes who made it to the Olympics even if they don't win a medal. They are still the best in their sport in our country. 

Earlier I said I would post some useful resources for you. This is not a complete list, but here goes: 

I am going to divide them into categories so that you can pick and choose the kind of thing you want to do.

General Sites for Schedules, Results, Sports, Participating Countries 

• The International Olympics Organization
• Olympic Organization Sports 

• The 2012 Olympic Games Official London Olympics website, You can find information about athletes, sports, London , minute to minute updates on all the events, video and photo highlights of specific events, schedules   
•  

News and  Daily Highlights

• The 2012 Olympics on the BBC 
• CNN Olympic Coverage
• 2012Olympic Coverage at the Guardian  Very complete coverage that is easier to read than American English newspapers and has more information on all countries, not just focused on U.S
• 2012 Olympics at the Telegraph  Very  complete coverage that includes many videos. Much more international and less biased than American channels
• New York Times Olympics  

Olympic Values and Symbols

• Olympic and para Olympic values
• Olympic logo 
• Olympic Truce
• The Olympic Flame and Torch Relay pdf 

History of the Olympics

• Modern Olympics
• Ancient Olympics 
• BBC Animation of the Ancient Olympic Games  

Past Olympics 

• Best of the Olympics :Many videos the Olympic organization has on their websites about the best moments in Olympic history.
• Olympic heroes slide show
• Olympics Timeline from the beginning until now 
• History Channel: A series of videos about different aspects of the Olympics

SPORTS:

• Olympic Sports Source Olympic Museum  
• Sports Vocabulary + quiz   
• Sports Idioms + Quiz  
• More Sports Idioms +Quiz
• Olympic Sports + Quiz
  
•  Sports vocabulary sorting categories  

  

 FUN STUDENT BASED MATERIAL 

• BBC Newsround: Fun Quizzes and easy to read information
•  2012 Olympic Material from English Club   includes readings, sports vocabulary, idioms vocabulary and quizzes  
• The  Olympics from EFL Classroom 2  
• Olympic Activities from Enchanted Learning
• What is this Sport? British Council for Kids
• 2012 Olympics quiz 
• Olympics Trivia Challenge
• Ancient Olympics Quiz 
• Activity Village Summer Olympics 
• Go for the Gold from Scholastic
• Project Britain: Culture, Traditions and Olympics
• Guide to the Para Olympics which take place after the Olympics 

  How much do you  know about the ancient Olympics?

• Olympics Trivia Quiz  ( a little harder - open ended)

How much do you know about the modern Olympics? 

• 2012 Olympics Quiz (   open ended)

LONDON

• London Landmarks 
• Everyone's London  

Reading and Issue Oriented Material with Some Video   

• Breaking News English: An Olympic Reading and Listening   
• The Olympics: Reading and Comprehension Questions from English Club   
• Olympic Worksheets and Activities 
• English for the Games from the British Council  
•  History of the Marathon from British Council
• Tibet and the Olympics  ( A short reading with sound from Voice of America) 
• Short Cuts to the Gold : Nine Cheats in Olympic History 
• The Strangest Even ts at the Olympics 
• Catching Olympic drug cheats CNN article, graphics explaining the process, several videos
  

 ENJOY!!!!

TypoEffects

I just found out about TypoEffects on the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning website and since it seemed fun and useful, I gave it a try.

TypoEffects is still in beta and free for the time being, at least. It converts your images into typographical images or word clouds. There are two types of generators -  the Row-Text Image Generator allows you to insert an unlimited (?) number of words, while with the Word Cloud Generator you can use up to 16 words  only.. What I like most about this tool is that it lets me choose which parts of the photo I want to leave without the text. Also, it's possible to zoom in/out and there are a lot of colours to choose from.

How we learn

In my presentations on the skills of the 21st century I often share with my audience the famous quote by William Glasser: "We learn...

10% of what we READ
20% of what we HEAR
30% of what we SEE
50% of what we SEE and HEAR
70% of what we DISCUSS with OTHERS
80% of what we EXPERIENCE PERSONALLY
95% of what we TEACH TO SOMEONE ELSE."

Well, today I found out that William Glasser never said that. Who did, I have no idea. It might have been Edgar Dale, whose cone is frequently used to show how we learn. Some people say that these numbers are misleading and have no scientific acuracy. Nevertheless, I still believe that this quote is a good description of learning retention rates.

All the learning pyramids that can be found on the Internet are in English, of course, so I made my own pyramid with numbers and icons only, so that it can be used in different  linguistic settings.

For those who don't like pink, I made a more calming variant:

.