Am taking up  Adam Simpson’s challenge, well, not really a challenge, more like an invitation but such a nice way to look back at what I have blogged about this year.  Adam said, “Choose the best 11” but I must confess I don’t write as many posts as all that. Some people seem to be able to churn them out every day, some even twice or three times a day! Pas moi! 

During July and August when I was training on two different intensive courses
ended up with very little by way of blogging but made up for it later. Anyway, here go my top posts for 2011.

#ELTchat – 99,052 Tweets and counting!

January 29th, 2011

It was quite fitting that I should set off with a post on #ELTchat. I love this weekly chat with teachers from around the world and that is one of my real favourites this year, a celebration of sharing and PLN’s. 

Advance Organisers – How they Connect the Reading Experience

February 28th, 2011 

I wrote this post while I was teaching on the same SEETA course and I really think this is one of my best so far – well, with the exception of the section on mindmaps which needs a little tweak here and there. I also reminds me of what a great course to run that was; my first Moodle course as an instructor in which I learned as much about moodling as my ‘trainees’ learnt about challenging their learners in reading lessons. 

Are you ready to go beyond your comfort zone?

March 22nd, 2011 

I have been a DELTA trainer for longer than I can remember (no, this is not actually true) and I think this is a great course to follow for an experienced teacher who is ready to go beyond PPP. I really enjoyed writing this and had a request to post it on the Cambridge ESOL website as well! 

Reporting after IATEFL Brighton

April 26th, 2011

I had every good intention of writing these well informed reports about the sessions I went to at  IATEFL Brighton, but somehow the conference itself took over and living the experience became more important than reporting it! Experiencing a conference of this magnitude takes a lot of energy! Running from session to session, stopping for [...] 

This post was another celebration of my great PLN and a precursor to my later post about TESOL France. 

Another Dogme Lesson

April 8th, 2011

This post is written in response and as part of a twitter conversation with Martin Sketchley – @ELTexperiences on Twitter. His blog post on his own Dogme observed lesson can be found at the end of this post. In the days before writing his experimental asignment for the DELTA course, Jonathan – my trainee of [...] 

It was great to support Jonathan in this DELTA experimental assignment and so exciting to have Scott produce a video to help him. This would just not have been possible even two years ago!!! I love it! 

From Critical Pedagogy to Disabled Pedagogy

May 18th, 2011

Luke Prodromou was the first guest writer on my blog, ever! And what a post he
produced to launch the Disabled Access Blog Challenge to generate awareness in
ELT Teachers about this subject!

Survey on the use of Social Networks for Foreign Language Teachers

August 6th, 2011

Dear PLN, Many of you are aware that since earlier this year,  I have been involved in an EU funded project – aPLaNet – whose aim is to help Foreign Language Teachers develop and maintain their own PLN in an autonomous way. Creating one’s PLN takes time, effort and commitment,  and those of you reading
[...] 

This was not really a blog post but putting it up on my blog encouraged a lot of
teachers to respond and I was very happy about that. Plus, I worked very hard to
produce that survey! 

Happy 1st Birthday #ELTchat!

September 24th, 2011

Happy Birthday #ELTchat and all #ELTchat followers! It’s been an amazing year and I am very proud and grateful to have been a part of this! I look forward to many more birthdays and many more new directions that this great PLN will take me to! Thank to all who follow and make my Wednesdays [...]

What a great week that was!! And the celebrations in Second Life were great!!!

Going to Conferences, Connecting with Fellow Teachers – #TESOL France

 November 14th, 2011

My online life has become a source of continuous Professional Development and constant contact with my Personal Learning Network (PLN), which includes inspired and inspiring educators from all over the world. I talk to them on Twitter and Facebook every day. We hold organised discussions on Twitter every Wednesday. But meeting with them in [...]

I do go on a lot about PLN’s, don’t I? But I happen to have a great one and I can’t stop smiling whenever I meet them  

A Little & Often: Integrating Technology on Teacher Development Courses

November 21st, 2011

A few months ago (April-June 2011*)  I wrote a report on a survey on the use of technology amongst CELTA tutors. The results were rather disheartening and the
prevailing attitudes among many of my respondents ranged from the completely  negative (“It is not our job/place to introduce technology on CELTA courses; there are more important [...]

Using educational technology is one of the topics I talk about with my colleagues every day of the week – mostly on twitter, but blogs, too. It’s inevitable that I would be reporting on my successes and failures using edtech on my teacher training courses.

Embedding Creating Thinking Skills Training into our EFL Practice

November 27th, 2011

Creative teaching and learning is a topic dear to my heart and one that I have embedded very deeply into the design of all my training courses. If you would like to read the post related to teacher development, please click here, though that is not a post I wrote in 2011!

I updated this post with videos from my talk at Harrogate and shared again so
that was my most recent fave post in November.

So what does this selection say about my blogging style? Any comments?

And just in case you have been wondering why blog at all, here is a post I put up on a new blog I was trying out while I was following the EVO  course ‘Becoming a Webhead”

Why do I blog?

Post Script 

Meet these bloggers and their picks – some will be familiar, some new – a worthy read.

Adam Simpson - 11 from ’11: The best of your posts from this year (blog challenge) Adam started this challenge and what a good idea that was!

Tara Benwell – 11 from ’11 published the best 11 from the challenges she has given her learners – truly worth looking at her work with learners within a social network.

Dave Dodgson – 11 from ’11 (Almost a year in the life of my blog)  an En English teacher in Turkey and his first year of blogging – you could be on my list next year if you start now!

Tyson Sebunt  –  11 from ’11 a collegue teacher and teacher educator fron Canada with great style

Sharon Turner – SHHH it’s a Secret!!! a blogger I am getting to know and you should, too

Tamas Lorincz -  11 from ’11 I haven’t written  where Tamas writes about the 11 posts he should have written but didn’t because…well, read his blog post to find out!

,,,

Post Updated with videos downloaded from Upstream

Videos of  most of my talk at IATEFL Harrogate 2010

Part A about 22 minutes  (conntent of slides 1-7 below is not included) 

 Part B about 8 minutes

A Summary of my talk 

It has been suggested that creativity (or, as it is also termed, divergent production) is not a single unifying ability but is viewed as a composite of intellectual abilities. The four main facets I will be looking at are:

FLUENCY Ability to produce large numbers of ideas

FLEXIBILITY Ability to produce diverse ideas (not the same kind)

ELABORATION Ability to add on to and embellish an already existing idea

ORIGINALITY Ability to produce uncommon, ‘clever’ ideas

Creative thinking, or divergent production, facilitates problem solving, and in a problem solving approach oriented classroom, enhancing creative thinking potential can facilitate discovery learning as well as enhance language production.

This talk outlined the relationship of divergent versus convergent production to specific language activities encouraging one or the other kind.

A range of activities which can develop aspects of creative thinking singly or in combination were suggested; the handout contains a few more which were not covered in the actual presentation.

The four facets listed do not refer specifically to language learning but to any kind of intellectual challenge, language learning being one of them.

Slides 

Divergent production activities_Handout and_task

Comment

I would like to add a significant, for me, point, which does not emerge from my slides and handout, but which was made during my talk:

The activities mentioned and listed are intended to be integrated into a regular syllabus, for instance, the ‘unusual uses’ activity could be used when you introduce and practise the infinitive of purpose, or later, when you want to cover time clauses, or the language of re suggestions. The ‘predicaments’ activity can be used as is (..you were seen dancing on the rooftop of your friend’s car in a car park) or with other structures which you might introduce earlier or later, e.g. “Why did you hang your shoes outside your window last night?”

All these activities, however, need to be seen in the context of language practise and learner training.

The synthesis of these individual facets, their combinations and integrations need to be taken to a higher level of application through activities in the higher order level of Bloom’s taxonomy, whether digitally or non-digitally, in holistic activities, collaborative  projects, large scale simulations, web quests, authoring of wikis or blogs, creating collaborative stories or similar tasks.

Ambriguous Picture Sources:

• Perfectly timed photos check the one I linked to out as well as this one, perfect for cutting in half!
• Deviant Art

Related blog post:

The Art of Being Creative by Marisa Constantinides, TEFL Matters

The activities presented in my talk at Harrogate were all related to language learning situations, but a few years ago I wrote an article ‘translating’ the basic activity typology into a list which could be useful to teacher educators. Many of these activities form the basis of the training at my centre on a variety of courses, from CELTA to DELTA and beyond.

My main bibliography on the subject of my talk can be found on this other, related post.

Acknowledgement

I am hugely grateful to Graham Stanley who livestreamed my talk on the day and has kept the videos on his account without deleting them for so long! Thank you so much Graham! I actually only now saw that you can download livestreamed talks via Real Player on Firefox (if anyone is interested in saving theirs )

A few months ago (April-June 2011*)  I wrote a report on a survey on the use of technology amongst CELTA tutors. The results were rather disheartening and the prevailing attitudes among many of my respondents ranged from the completely negative (“It is not our job/place to introduce technology on CELTA courses; there are more important basic areas; they can learn this later”) to the cries for help (“I don’t feel I know anything about it; I don’t know where to begin“).

Although for reasons of copyright ownership, the original article is only available if you purchase it, you can read  the abstract if you click here – you might also like to hear the podcast of an interview I gave to Nik Peachey on the same topic from IATEFL Brighton online in 2011.

My own position is that we do need to include it as an important part of our curriculum and that we should make it a normal part of everyday teaching, i.e., normalize the use of education technology tools.

How successful have we been so far? 

Today, technology was on the timetable of my currently running CELTA courses.

And even though it appeared on the timetable ‘officially’ for the first time,  I am very happy to be able to embed an animation created by one of my trainees for her Teaching Practice which followed that particular ‘input session’. Here it is:

GoAnimate.com: is there a movie tonight.

(Thank you Danae for letting me use your work:-) ) 

Web 2.o & Integration into Teacher Development Courses 

This was a question (how to integrate Web 2.0 training into our courses) which I had to deal with along with many others like myself who have found themselves in a similar position.

At first, I started by including one or two input sessions – usually during the second half of the course or later. It seemed – by dint of amount of time allocated to it and place on the syllabus –  that this was not one of our core subjects.

The results of these short input sessions were very mixed. There were a few, but very few, trainees who seemed to respond to the call for the use of more technology, but many of them remained either unconvinced or relegated the use of Web 2.0 tools to a time after the course, when they would “have more time to think about it”.

It seemed that this particular treatment was not having the desired effect.

Some of the articles and blog posts I read up  seemed to be rather dismissive of what I had been doing – which got me thinking whether my approach was not somewhat misguided. The question they posed was:

Can you help teachers integrate technology in one or two sessions on a course and hope they will readily adopt it?

This was the question I was dealing with and after a few enthusiastic attempts to preach technology, I decided that the best way was to stop preaching and, instead, practise rather than preach, and practise without making too much fuss about it, but treat Web 2.0 tools very much like other tools, visual aids, materials I was using on my courses.

At the start of today’s session, I asked my trainees to think back and remember how many different Web2.0 tools they have already been using so far.   Here are two word clouds, one from today’s sessions and one from a previous course:

Made with Wordle

From the brainstorming of our  CELTA course, in July 2011 – a slightly different combination of tools but still quite a few for the first half of their 4-week course.

Made with Wordle

As the trainees themselves realized, they had been using most of the tools I was talking about – the tools were recognised and discussed in a sensible way, in terms of their best uses or when and where it would be a good idea to include them.  They did not seem like a novelty, nor did we dismiss other non technical tools and methods in favour of tech tools.

Here is how our trainees were introduced to some of  the tools:

Before they even started their course

• They used a wiki to access their preparation materials and self-access tasks
• They saw a couple of Vokis made by their course tutor on the welcome page and another one in their “Common Room” where they were free to play and upload or edit and insert links
• They used a Lino_it (an alternative to Wallwisher) in order to meet and greet each other  before the course
• They watched You Tube Videos and  screencasts on how to use their wiki
• They downloaded files from the wiki
• They subscribed to my Diigo and Delicious bookmarks

During their Course – for assignment work and lesson prep

• They used Audacity to record  a learner each for their first assignment “Focus on the Learner” (on Day 2)
• They learnt to convert Audacity files to wav files so they could hear them on pc or laptop
• They used our PC’s or their laptops to email audio files to themselves or learnt to upload them onto their wiki – in some cases the same learner was used as the subject of the assignment by two trainees
• Their Teaching Practice points were uploaded to their wiki.
• They scanned and uploaded pages or images from coursebooks and saved audio files
• They looked for images on Google, Flickr and royalty free sites, including Microsoft ClipArt
• They found and downloaded or favourited song video clips and other topical clips to use in different parts of their lessons
• They used powerpoint to show their images, realizing what a waste of paper and ink printing photos involved
• They downloaded and used lesson planning templates in order to write their lesson plans
• They experimented with powerpoint for more dynamic grammar presentations and revelations of bits of language through the various animation tools available in this programme
• They researched language points for their language analysis
• They used online phonemic typewriters to insert phonemic script in plans, aims, language analysis sheets
• They used the chat function in their wiki or Skyped each other to collaborate
• They used Google.docs to create and share class profiles so that they could have information available to them when they changed over classes
• One of them (on our latest course) stage managed a live Skype chat with a friend of hers in the UK  to illustrate some language points/functions she was presenting-I am sure more skyped dialogues will be appearing again soon
• They often took pictures of the Teaching Practice Feedback comments which we encourage them to write on the board for each other using their iPhones or phone cameras; they uploaded the photos to their wiki – sometimes we used Lino it for delayed feedback

A Little & Often – Without too much Fuss 

This is what I have come to realize – that a little and often seems to work best – the examples are what they see from us and just like a trainee will try to imitate a technique as simple as rubbing out the words of a dialogue gradually to help the students memorize it, so will they try to do the same if they see us use a tool in one of their sessions or a demonstration lesson which made the lesson more motivating and effective.

Resistance resisted

To the one voice of resistance  - “What if there is a power failure? How will you teach your lesson then?”,  it was delightful to hear the trainees thmeselves reply “well, we can always use the board or have a plan B just in case….” 

So How?

I don’t think I have reinvented the wheel here but it just goes to show that to train teachers (or anyone) in best practices in their field, you do have to model these best practices quite consistently in your own teaching and training.

By modelling the use of Web 2.0 tools without very much ado about them but including them as a normal part of everyday teaching, it looks as if we may be looking at  a much better way of introducing educational technology to teachers in training by making it a part of the normal everyday tool kit for teaching.

It has worked so well so far, that I think I actually am going to do away with the input session(s) on their timetable – they are probably not needed.

How have you integrated technology in your training courses? 

I would really love to hear about your experiences and successes and failures. Sometimes you learn more by looking at those too

 GoAnimate.com: Signs+of+the+Times by SpyrosBogiakis

Another dialogue produced by Spyros Bogiakis towards the end of the course
to illustrate some functional language  (persuading or advising)

 Related Research Article

*Integrating Technology on Initial Training Courses: A Survey Amongst CELTA Tutors  International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), April-June 2011, Vol. 1, No.2

 aPLaNet Online!!!!

	I am writing these lines while our third meeting is in progress in Brno, in the Czech Republic.  So far we have generated a lot of interest amongst the members of our PLN who have joined our Ning and our Facebook group And we have been working very hard and have produced a great variety of support tools and documents for all of you out there, Mentors and Mentees, and teachers who will be piloting materials on their own. Do join us for our third progress meeting tomorrow and find out what is next in store for you!
		Visit aPLaNet
	aPLaNet Progress Meeting   aPLaNet Online Mentor Workshop   All those who have declared yourselves as mentors in the Ning, please be there for that meeting to be run by Graham Stanley and moderated by Monica Vlad & Marisa Constnaitnides

How does it feel to be a dyslexic student? Watch this video.

 

Checklist 1 taken from Dyslexia Action 

If the answer to most of the following questions is ‘Yes’ it would be wise to seek advice:

All ages

1. Is he bright in some ways with a ‘block’ in others?

2. Is there anyone else in the family with similar difficulties?

3. Does he have difficulty carrying out three instructions in sequence?

4. Was he late in learning to talk, or with speaking clearly?

Ages 7-11

1. Does he have particular difficulty with reading or spelling?

2. Does he put figures or letters the wrong way e.g. 15 for 51, 6 for 9, b for d, was for saw?

3. Does he read a word then fail to recognise it further down the page?

4. Does he spell a word several different ways without recognising the correct version?

5. Does he have a poor concentration span for reading and writing?

6. Does he have difficulty understanding time and tense?

7. Does he confuse left and right?

8. Does he answer questions orally but have difficulty writing the answer?

9. Is he unusually clumsy?

10. Does he have trouble with sounds in words, e.g. poor sense of rhyme?

Ages 12 – adult

1. Is he sometimes inaccurate in reading?

2. Is his spelling poor?

3. Does he have difficulty taking notes or copying?

4. Does he have difficulty with planning and writing essays, letters or reports?

Some common problems

You may think:

• He’s not listening

• He may have difficulty in remembering a list of instructions.

• He may have problems getting his thoughts together coherently for story or essay writing.

• He may have sequencing problems and may need to be taught strategies to cope/alternative ways of remembering.

• He’s lazy

• He may have difficulty in organising his work and need specific teaching to help him.

• He may be able to answer the questions orally but he can’t write them down.

• The child may have found that the less he writes, the less trouble he gets into for making mistakes

• He’s not concentrating

• He may have difficulty in copying accurately. This is often because he cannot remember chunks but needs to look at each letter, write it, then look at the board again, find the place, and so on…

• He’s careless

• He may have very poor handwriting as he hasn’t sufficient hand skills to control the pencil.

• He’s not checking his work

• He may spell the same word several different ways if he doesn’t have the visual memory to know what is right or the kinaesthetic memory for it to feel right as he is writing.

• He doesn’t look carefully

• He may have a visual memory deficiency and therefore experience difficulty when interpreting symbols.

• He’s being awkward / impossible on purpose

• He may be able to produce very good work one day and the next “trip up over every word”. “Off days” are quite common and require extra encouragement and understanding.

Some common strengths

You may be surprised that:

• He has a good visual eye

• He may be able to arrange the furniture in the classroom very effectively.

• He’s very imaginative and skilful with his hands

• He may be able to make the best models.

• He’s practical

• He may be able to work the computer before the others – even perhaps repair it. He may be able to start the car when others have failed.

• He’s mad on sport

• He may excel at individual sports.

• He’s got a fantastic imagination

• He may be able to tell wonderful stories if his long term memory is good

General comments

“If a child cannot learn the way we teach we must teach him the way he can learn.”

The teacher needs to recognise that the dyslexic child in the classroom has a different way of learning and therefore needs a different way of teaching.

The main problems are:

• poor sequencing skills;

• poor auditory discrimination and memory;

• poor visual discrimination and memory;

• poor short term memory;

• poor self confidence.

Summary

There are many types of learning disability of which dyslexia is only one. In some cases of disability, diagnosis can

be difficult. Only a full psychological assessment will determine if any child or adult is dyslexic – but there are

pointers.

Checklist 2 (reference below) 

Clinical Characteristics of Dyslexia

EARLY

1. Difficulty with fastening coat, shoe laces etc
2. Clumsiness
3. Difficulty with following a simple rhythm
4. Problems understanding directional prepositions (in/out, up/down, under/over, etc.)
5. Confusion between right and left
6. Excessive spoonerisms, e.g. ‘par cark’, ‘beg and acon’
7. Difficulty carrying out more than one instruction
8. Difficulty naming objects
9. Difficulty remembering what day it is, their birthday, their address, telephone number
10. Difficulty learning the months, days and time

READING

1. Missing out word(s) on a line or reading the same word(s) or line twice
2. Failure to recognise familiar words
3. Confusion between similar looking words (on/no,  for/of/off/from, ever/even/every)
4. Inability to blend letters together
5. Difficulty breaking down long words into syllables and putting the syllables back into correct order (e.g. “frantic’ for ‘fantastic’, ‘suspectible’ for ‘susceptible’ , ‘affectedly’ for ‘affectionately’ )

WRITING – SPELLING

1. Poor handwriting with many reversals and badly formed letters
2. Inability to copy accurately, particularly from the blackboard
3. Messy work with many crossings out and words tried several times (e.g.sens, cens, sns, scens, sense)
4. Persistent confusion with similar looking letters (b/d, p/g, n/u, m/w, s/z)
5. Letters, syllables and words omitted, inserted ir ub tge wrong order
6. Lack of  or indiscriminate use of punctuation
7. Indiscriminate use of capital letters ( e.g. raBBit )
8. Inability to stay close to the margin

GUIDELINES FOR TEACHERS (From Augur, 1985)

1. Let the child sit near you so that you can observe him/her and give him/her as much help as possible
2. Appreciate that s/he will have persistent difficulty learning anything in sequential order (e.g. multiplication tables). Allow him/her to use table charts.
3. Appreciate that the standard of his/her work will be erratic
4. Never indicate that s/he is lazy or stupid or compare his/her written work with that of other class members. Do not ask him/her to read aloud in class, unless s/he wants to do so.
5. Write very well and clearly on the blackboard. Check his/her copying or appoint someone to do so.
6. Make sure s/he is taught all the alphabet letters for name, sound and shape – upper case A, lower a, hand a
7. Does s/he know the blends st, gr, spl and can s/he blend sounds together?
8. Don’t mark every wrong spelling – it is too disheartening.
9. Don’t give him/her long lists of mixed words to learn weekly.
10. Give him/her some guidelines ( e.g. No English word ends with a –v, you must use –ve; -q is never written alone but always –qu; the past tense suffix –ed has three different sounds: /id) as in patted, /d/ as in filled, /t/ as in jumped