On-site optimization refers to the process of making your website appeal to both search engines and users. It reviews and improves both the public face of your website and the behind the scenes coding and technical set-up that only search engines see. A search engine evaluates a website differently to a human visitor. A search engine can’t evaluate how nicely your website is designed, how well your content is written or how much value your products/services provide. It has to judge a website from a technical point of view. On-site optimization is the foundation on which the off-site optimization process builds upon. Without it, off-site optimization efforts can go largely to waste. The process is wide ranging, and will vary slightly from website to website, but these are some of the main factors that form the on-site optimization process: On-Site SEO   Add keywords to urls, title tags, meta descriptions, header tags and alt tags. Ensure each page has a unique and descriptive title and description. Assign existing, or create new, pages for each keyword. Improve content to match/better content on competitor websites. Assess existing and potential keyword targets. Remove, merge or add to pages that have little useful content on them. Check the site loads properly in different web browsers and screen resolutions. Analyze inbound link profile. Ensure calls to actions are located in prominent positions. Link to important pages from the homepage and/or main navigation area. Improve the readability and formatting of written content. Check for and fix broken links. Add structured data mark-up code. Claim authorship of content. Fix duplicate content issues. Add in-content links where appropriate. Remove unnecessary outbound links. Create a user-friendly 404 error page. Assess and improve page loading times. Add social media sharing buttons. Create and submit an XML sitemap. Set-up Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.  

Ahead of his webinar on 30th January on the same topic, Gareth Davies asks: How can we as teachers adapt to the changing needs of learners in the 21st Century? Next time you are on public transport have a look at the range of technology on show. People will be playing computer games, reading from e-books, checking the internet, messaging their friends, listening to music, watching video, or if we are lucky, actually doing some English homework. The world has changed; our students have become digital. How does this digitalisation of life affect our students when they come into our classrooms? Have their expectations changed or their behaviour patterns? Should we be looking to adapt our methodology to meet the modern challenges of 21st Century teaching? I am not suggesting that we should completely revolutionise our teaching, it is not realistic to go completely digital; there is not the equipment available for a start. But what I am suggesting is that we can observe our students’ behaviour patterns to see how we can tinker with our methodology to allow the students to get the most out of our teaching. Let’s take Social Media / texting as an example. Teachers who claim their students don’t even read or write in their own language are wrong. Students might not read long novels or write descriptive prose but they communicate frequently through this medium, making reading and writing an essential part of our syllabus. But students are used to dealing with messages of around 140 characters, so we need to adapt what we do in class so the reading and writing texts don’t seem too daunting for them. In my webinar I will be looking at this and other examples of students’ digital behaviour to see what we can learn as teachers and how we can harness their new learning styles to bring success to their English learning. Remember: changing with the times does not mean throwing the baby out with the bath water and completely changing our teaching, it just means learning from our students and responding to them to help prepare them for the 21st Century. To find out more about adapting your teaching to suit 21st Century learners’ needs, register for Gareth’s webinar on 30th January.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Professional Development Tagged: 21st Century classroom, Adult Learners, Digital classroom, Gareth Davies, Headway Fourth edition, Professional Development, Social Media, Technology, Webinar

Off-site optimization is the process of promoting your website across the web. The purpose is to build brand awareness, improve rankings in search engines and attract visitors from 3rd party websites. It’s an on-going process - not a one-off, set and forget one. The best approach to off-site SEO depends on the industry you operate in and your budget, but your overall strategy should consist of several of the following methods: Off Site SEO Outreach -Contact companies and bloggers with relevant (but non-competing) websites. Ask them to link to your best content. Content Marketing -Contact companies and bloggers with relevant (but non-competing) websites. Publish content on their websites which links back to your website. Per Per Click - Use Google Adwords and Facebook Advertising to gain instant new visitors. Constantly review and adjust ads to improve click through rates and reduce the cost per click. Network Sites -Create a network of websites that branch into sub-industries of your own. Provide useful information and link to relevant websites (including your own). Video marketing - Create a network of websites that branch into sub-industries of your own. Provide useful information and link to relevant websites (including your own). Banner Advertising - Create image adverts to display on relevant 3rd party websites. Regularly change the websites advertised on to expose your brand to new audiences. Link Exchanges - Contact companies in relevant industries and link to each other’s websites. Only link to other websites that provide value to your own customer base.          

Image courtesy of Creative Commons Sean Dowling, an Educational Technology Coordinator, looks at whether blogs can be used to deliver web-based English language courses, using an example from his own experience. In my previous posts, I discussed how blogs could be used to deliver a lesson and showcase student work. These posts were examples of how blog owners can post information to the Web on a regular basis and how blog readers can add comments. However, over the last decade or so, blogs have become a lot more sophisticated; now extra pages can be added for additional information and widgets (tools) can be added to sidebars that add a lot of functionality and personalization (see figure 1 below). These extra features have changed the traditional blog into an interactive website which can be used in a variety of ways, one of which is to deliver English-language courses. Furthermore, blogs are easy to set up, modify and manage, so with just a little practice, even the most technophobic educator can become a competent online course builder. Figure 1: web2english course home page The first choice is to decide on which blogging platform to use. This may seem a difficult decision to make as there are so many free blogging platforms available. Three of the most popular are blogger, tumblr and Moveable Type, and all are great platforms. But my favourite is WordPress. I have used WordPress for designing and delivering a wide range of blogs, from my own portfolio, to educational technology and English teaching sites. One such site, web2english, will be featured in this post. web2english was an experimental English course set up to see if a fully-online course could be designed, delivered and managed using web-based tools (a DIYLMS, a do-it-yourself learning management system as opposed to using large-scale, enterprise-level learning management systems such as Blackboard and Moodle). Only six students were enrolled in the course, but I have run similar courses with up to twenty students enrolled. The course consisted of eleven modules: an introductory module conducted face-to-face to familiarize students with the web-based tools, and ten study modules done fully online (see table 1 below), but with a weekly face-to-face "study" morning for students only. End of course feedback from all students was very positive. Table 1: Course Schedule   Using Posts on the Blog Posts were used to deliver to students modules of learning activities, with the current learning module always on top (click here to see posts). Within the posts, hyperlinks were used to direct students to the learning materials (e.g. reading and listening texts on different websites or links to documents directly uploaded to the blog). Students could use the comment feature of the posts to interact with the teacher and peers; however, as each post contained a wide range of learning activities, I split up the module into individual learning activities and posted these on another web-based tool, edmodo, thereby giving students more opportunities to interact. Using Pages on the Blog While posts were used for the weekly learning modules, which were dynamic in nature, Pages were used to display information that wouldn’t change. In web2english, pages have been used for the course outline, schedule and assessment rubrics. There was also a page which was used to aggregate all student work (see figure 2 below). This enabled students to quickly view and comment on other students’ blogs and podcasts and to access their collaborative presentations. Figure 2: Page that aggregates student work The number of pages that can be added to a WordPress blog is unlimited; however, the width of the blog restricts the number of pages that can be displayed in the menu bar along the top. Fortunately, depending on the theme, pages can be organized into sub-menus. Figure 3 shows an example of this in another blog. Figure 3: Menus and sub-menus of pages   Using Widgets on the Blog While blogs are great for displaying information and getting feedback in the form of comments, other tools need to be used to make teaching and learning more effective. To do this, blog "widgets" can be used (see figure 1 above). Widgets are simply objects that allow tools to be embedded into blogs. For example, on the course home page, I used the twitter feed widget in web2english to display the latest tweets by students (they were expected to post a minimum of ten tweets per module). Text widgets were also used to add linked images on the home page. These widgets allowed students to quickly access tools for taking quizzes, doing surveys, making their own blogs and podcasts, and accessing aggregated pages of student work on Netvibes and Dipity. While using blog posts, pages and widgets is an easy, cost-effective way to build a DIYLMS powerful enough host an online English course, be it fully online or as part of a blended-learning environment, there are some important issues that need addressing. Blogs are great for exposing learning materials and student work to a wider audience; however, this brings up the question of privacy. Fortunately, blog posts and pages can be password protected. Student assessment is also an issue as blogs have no built in assessment tools. In web2english, I used a web-based tool called ClassMarker which, for a yearly fee of $25, allowed me to quickly create assessments and provide a student grade book. I could have also used the free test tool within edmodo. One other problem with free blogs is advertising. But these can be blocked, for a fee of course ($30 dollars a year for WordPress).Filed under: Multimedia & Digital, Professional Development Tagged: Blended Learning, Blogs, Bringing Technology into the Classroom, Connected Educators, EFL, ESL, Learning Management System, Sean Dowling, Technology, Web tools, Web-based English courses

An Ideal Instructional Designers should: Unique and capable Skills Set of an Instructional Designer   Own and practice interdisciplinary knowledge, cross-cultural competency, as well as assurance and hunger for learning and technology. Have a background in concerned education, a critical attitude, and clear learning objectives. Conduct thorough research; brag of good analytical skills and the ability to craft information from various sources. Effectively communicate both visually and verbally, be a good listener and create measurable objectives, based on the audience’s needs. This requires the successful identification of the learners’ general characteristics. Create content with information that can be used and applied in the real world and especially within the audience’s professional field, always in cooperation with SMEs, professionals and team members. Select the right instructional media, and write effective copies, texts, audio and video scripts. This requires thorough media knowledge. Focus on the expected outcomes, based on the spectator’s prior skills, knowledge, prospects and needs, and design a course based on the available technology, budget and time. Be an effectual project manager, able to develop the right instructional strategy and the appropriate arrangement, with pre-class activities, presentations, learners participation, practice problems, case studies, and evaluations. Be a successful, flexible and practical problem solver, able to tackle with any kind of setback and obstacle. Be able to create effective and fair assessment methods that foster the learners’ development by providing opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of the learning goals.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Foundation Our new Online Practice and Workbooks (listed below) offer a variety of useful activities for students which help improve their skills; but did you know that as a teacher you can also upload your own content? Join Michael Man in his webinar "Adapting our online materials to suit your students’ needs" on 24th January 2014 when he will show you how to add a personal touch to your course. Online learning provides teachers with extra materials and students with opportunities to study further as they extend their learning out of the classroom. But what if a teacher wants to introduce his or her own reading text, speaking task or link to a website or online video? What, exactly, is possible to add and what are the advantages? Let’s start with a scenario: you have been working on a unit on family life and your students are keen to learn more about family life in other cultures. You have a fantastic reading text you are sure the students will love, but you are already above your photocopy quota and three students are absent. Using our online teacher tools you can upload the text and any worksheets you’d like the students to work on. Students can access them through their account, and you can even send a message to the absent students to let them know the worksheets are there. Using the teacher tools you can adapt your online course and add your own content. Let’s imagine that in the next lesson, a student comes in and tells you about a YouTube video she saw online that gives another view of family life in a little-known culture. She thinks it would be interesting for other students to see. You view it and agree with the student, so you insert the link. Students can now log in, click the link and view the video. With students buzzing with ideas and things to say about how different family life is in their culture as compared to the others they have read about and viewed, you seize the opportunity to create a speaking task. You upload the task to the Dropbox, tell student A to work with B and off they go to record their conversation, which you can then listen to (and mark) later. This scenario is not hypothetical; the ability to do just that is achievable and simple when teachers take advantage of the ability to add their own content to the new Online Practice and Online Workbooks for their course. Adapting our materials and adding your own content is suitable for students at any level and the tools to do it are available on every course that uses the new Online Practice and Online Workbooks: Aim High American English File, second edition Business Result DVD edition English File, third edition English Plus Headway Academic Skills insight Network New Headway, fourth edition New Headway Plus, special edition Oxford Online Skills Program Q: Skills for Success, special edition Solutions, 2nd edition (International, Nederlands and Maturita) Speak Now Join the "Adapting our online materials to suit your students’ needs" webinar to find out what you can do with these tools and how to use them. Find out more about teaching and learning online.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Multimedia & Digital, Teenagers Tagged: elearning, Learn online with Oxford, Learner needs, Online learning, Online materials, Online Practice, Online teaching, Online Tools, Online Workbooks, Student needs

     A hashtag is a unique strategy for categorizing messages on Twitter and is seen as a very powerful marketing tool by businesses.      The # symbol is precedes the tag followed by one or more keywords that will properly lead individuals to conversations and discussions pertaining to a specific topic or theme.      There are several advantages that come with using hashtags. These can be used for casual or business purposes to increase awareness, as well as improve your reputation online.      You should also learn the proper ways to make a hashtag for online success. In micro-blogging community as vast as Twitter, the hashtag is what will collate all ideas under one thread so that you get a more targeted user experience, instead of just running through thousands of random tweets and wasting time. Here’s how you can make hashtags work for you.  Importance of Hashtags   1. Use it to start a topic or discussion. 2. Use it to start a competition. 3. Host and join chats. 4. Get information. 5. Use it to Arrange Tweets. 6. Gain more followers.  

Social media is a word that is being widely misrepresented a lot these days, but it is seldom understood by all! Social Media is trending to be a point of communication for like-minded persons who share, create or exchange information or ideas online. However, is it safe to be a part of social media? That’s the big question here!    So you thought Social Media was Safe?!?!   The huge disadvantage of social networking is that it reduces or excludes face-to-face socialization. The highlights and significant points taken into consideration can be discussed as identity theft, which means that because of the independence afforded by the virtual online world, individuals are unrestricted to produce imaginary identities and can pretend to be somebody else. People are being targeted for online scams; companies are ridiculed by unwanted negative feedback or publicity. In addition, one can also talk about how the concentration of employees has reduced the productivity as they are too busy updating their statuses or are checking their likes and friends list. The photographs that are posted on the social media are also not safe as they are morphed/tampered and misused for illegal activities. And God forbid, if your account on the social media is hacked, then all your privacy is lost. All your vital information is leaked online or used for illegal activities.    

Dr. Jack C Richards is an applied linguist, writer, and teacher trainer. He is the co-author of Speak Now, a four-level speaking course that helps students to communicate with confidence. In this article, he looks at teaching conversational English. Conversations are longer exchanges that may follow on from small talk and are the more meaningful type of interaction that results from small talk. They are a more serious type of exchange in which what is said and how it is expressed are both important. One of the most important aspects of conversation is managing discourse around topics. Whereas topics are only lightly touched on in small talk, conversation involves a joint interaction around topics and the introduction of new topics that are linked through each speaker’s contributions. The skills involved include: Initiating a topic in casual and formal conversation Selecting vocabulary appropriate to the topic Giving appropriate feedback responses Providing relevant evaluative comments through back-channeling Taking turns at appropriate points in the conversation Asking for clarification and repetition Using discourse strategies for repairing misunderstanding Using discourse strategies to open and close conversations Using appropriate intonation and stress patterns to express meaning intelligibly Second language learners need a wide range of topics at their disposal in order to manage conversation as interaction, and developing topic fluency is a priority in my speaking classes. Initially, learners may depend on familiar topics to get by. However, they also need practice in introducing new topics into conversation to move beyond this stage. Casual conversation between friends or people who know each other well has these characteristics: Topics switch freely Topics are often provoked by what speakers are doing, by objects in their presence or by some association with what has just been said There does not appear to be a clearly defined purpose for the conversation All speakers can introduce topics and no one speaker appears to dominate the conversation Speakers comment on each other’s statements Topics are only elaborated on briefly, after follow-up questions or comments from listeners Comments in response to a topic often include some evaluation Responses can be very short Ellipsis is common The speaker’s co-operation is often shown through speaker support and repetition of each other’s vocabulary Vocabulary typical of informal conversation will be present, such as clichés, vague language and taboo language Developing topics in conversation is a subtle process that requires skills in topic management. Personal recounts are very common in conversation and serve to re-tell an event that the speaker was personally involved in. They often involve one person sharing a recent experience followed by the second speaker’s sharing of a similar experience as in this example: A: Someone nearly ran into the back of my car on the freeway yesterday. B: No way! A: Yeah I was going down highway 201 when …. B: That almost happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was …. Students need practice in sharing personal experience and exchanging recounts, as in the example above. Agenda management and turn-taking are also important features of small talk and conversation. The former refers to the participants’ right to choose the topic and the way the topics are developed, and to choose how long the conversation should continue. This includes strategies for opening, developing and closing conversation and for introducing and changing topics. This process is often jointly managed by the participants, depending on the social relationship between them (e.g. teacher-student; friend-friend; employer-employee). Turn-taking involves providing opportunities for another person to take a turn in speaking and recognizing when another speaker is seeking to take a turn. Teaching conversation Ways of teaching conversation include: Awareness raising activities: students examine examples of conversation, either recorded (audio or video) or transcribed examples, and look for examples of how such things as openings, topic introduction, back channeling, etc. are realized, and for indicators of casual or formal speech. Dialog completion: students are given transcripts of conversations with selected features removed (such as opening, closings, clarification requests) and asked to try to complete them. They then listen to or read the completed dialogs, compare, and then practice. Planning tasks: students are given topics to include in a conversation and asked to write dialogs that include them and that also include personal recounts. They then compare and practice. Improvisations: students are given skeleton dialogs or dialog frames (e.g. containing a sequence of topics or functions they should use in a conversation) and use them to improvise conversations. Both small talk and conversation have features in common: They require being a good listener: this can be indicated through the use of back channel signals They involve asking questions: conversation develops through the participants asking question and following through on the answers they get with further questions They involve sharing of information: participants are expected to share information they have that is relevant to the topic being discussed Don’t forget to read Jack’s previous post on Teaching ‘Small Talk’.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Skills Tagged: Applied Linguistics, Conversation, Conversational English, Fluency, Jack C Richards, Speak Now, Speaking, Topics

  Exemplarr wishes you a Happy Ganesh Chathurthi