Karen Frazier, co-author of Let’s Go, shares her top tips for helping children with learning disorders in the English classroom. Every ELT teacher has experienced a moment when he or she wonders what else can be done to help a student who seems to be struggling in class. Trying new activities and methods may work, but sometimes the student continues to have problems. This may suggest the student has some underlying disability. It could also mean that the student is struggling primarily because the language is different from the student’s first language or because of issues related to acculturation. In either case, what can a teacher do in class to help this student? 1.    Get to know your student. He or she wants to be just like the other students, not thought of as only a student with differences. Find out what the student really likes to do (favorite activities, books, music, games, etc.), and what the student wants to do (at school, outside, dreams, etc.). Then include those likes and wants in the class activities and lesson themes. 2. Find out about your student’s life experience (family, language and school experience). A student who has had a positive school experience and who is confident in his or her first language (L1) will have better success when learning the second language (L2). He or she actually relies on knowledge from the first language to help in learning the second language. If you are teaching students in an ESL environment, where everything in the school and the community is in English, you may have students who behave like they have learning disorders; however, we must keep in mind that a student who has just moved to a new community may be experiencing culture shock. This can have a significant effect on how the child deals with learning a new language. Feelings of being overwhelmed by sights and sounds that are different can cause the child to withdraw and/or experience ‘response fatigue’, the inability to respond because they cannot handle any more new and different stimuli. So it’s important to get to know more about your student to help you determine the best way to teach that student. 3. Create an atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement where all students feel supported and can learn in different ways. Every student should feel welcome and valued. To help a student with special needs, seat the student near your desk so you can easily give assistance as needed. When individual speaking is necessary, have that student stand near you for support. Also, encourage all your students to get to know each other through in-class activities and projects they do together. Have your class work in small groups and pairs, playing language games, creating stories and role-plays, etc. This is good for students with learning disorders as well as for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Working together with a supportive group or partner, that can share ideas, can make a significant difference for these students. Positive pairing helps the student with a difference or disorder feel productive and confident. It minimizes that feeling of being different. 4. Use plenty of visuals in your class. Teacher and student cards with a picture and written word for vocabulary words are ideal. This is especially important for students who have hearing disabilities. Since they do not hear well, they need to focus on the written words to help them learn right from the beginning. Have students play games, in pairs or small groups, using small cards, each with a picture and a word to build knowledge in a playful way. Place pictures around your room with words that students can refer to as needed for support. 5. Introduce and practice new language using a multi-sensory/multi-modal approach. Students with learning disorders, and all students learning a second language, need to have visual, auditory, and kinesthetic input. This multi-modal approach can help the student practice and reinforce the new language in a variety of ways. Dialogues and songs and chants, with repetitive lyrics, that focus on the rhythm of the language are also beneficial. Students with speaking disorders tend to have fewer problems with language when they are singing or speaking rhythmically (with a chant). Students more easily learn to say new words and language in songs because most of them generally enjoy music and focus on learning the song. Clapping the rhythm also helps both those with speaking as well as hearing disorders. 6. Half-class drills are very useful when practicing new language.   As a large group of students are talking together, no one feels as if they stand out. Have half of the class ask the questions and the other half answer.  Practicing like this, without having any student feel singled out, reduces stress and allows time for all students to develop muscle memory and confidence, before having to speak alone. This is especially important for students with learning disorders or disabilities. 7. Use fun materials, based on students’ likes and experience. To encourage students who are struggling, find or create short stories about famous people who have overcome disabilities and setbacks. Inspire your students to believe that they can also triumph in spite of challenges they face.  Use magazine pictures of strong and inspiring characters to make popsicle-stick figures. Then place sight words on the figures and have students make sentences with them. Do projects where students create simple stories using their favorite TV or game characters. Always encourage your students to share their experience and viewpoint in what they are doing so that they link their learning to what they already know. 8. Use assistive technology to help provide differentiated learning opportunities for your students. Digital resources for students often contain stories, which a student can listen to and read over and over, at their own pace. This gives students a chance to practice words and language that they might not be able to completely absorb during the in-class activities. Online practice also provides the students with a way to practice listening and new language on their own, in the privacy of their homes. English Language Learners (ELLs), like the general student population, may have any one of many learning disorders, including visual impairment, hearing impairment, dyslexia or delayed language development. If they face these challenges, it will be evident in both L1 and L2. So it is important for us to carefully understand and evaluate a student’s complete language and life experience when one is struggling with learning English and provide extra support for that student when needed. As we work with our students, we must also be aware that students who are newcomers to our area, or students who did not choose to be in English classes, go through an adjustment period. During this time, they may actually exhibit behaviors that are similar to those found in a student with a learning disorder, such as distractibility, lack of focus and concentration in learning, rejection of and a distance from the new language and community. Given time and plenty of encouraging support from us, and their classmates, students with special needs will be able to learn English. Register now for Karen’s free webinar on 12 December, 11h30 GMT to get more tips and strategies you can use when teaching students who have language learning disorders in speaking, hearing and reading. Want more free articles, videos and lesson plans from Karen and her Let’s Go co-authors?Filed under: Professional Development, Young Learners Tagged: Children, disabilities, Disability, Dyslexia, English, English as a second or foreign language, hearing, learning difficulties, Speaking, special needs, Writing

If you are a blogger you naturally have information that you want to share, but at some point you may also want to realize some income from it. Today’s LMScast focuses on how to monetize your blog with online courses. You are already creating content for your blog regularly and consistently. Offering your content for free is admirable and indicates that you have expertise and passion for your subject. But maintaining a quality blog takes time, energy, research, resources, and commitment. Realizing some payback from your investment is reasonable and attainable. An online course is an effective way to present your information in depth and to enhance retention and understanding through interactive devices like exercises, quizzes, and gamification. Plus it allows you to monetize your content by charging for your courses. If your blog is successful then you are already doing content marketing and maintaining a publishing schedule, so you have already demonstrated proof of your worth. The next logical step is to benefit from your efforts and monetization is the best way to achieve that. There are many options for doing this, and deciding what you want to do and how to approach it can feel overwhelming. Fortunately there are simple systems for building your course modules and making them accessible to your audience. A WordPress plugin LMS system like our lifterLMS makes it easy to create and sell online courses through your blog site. The challenge is to design your courses to be inviting and compelling for your users. Because you have enough interest in your subject to always be learning, researching, and keeping current on advances, you may have lost sight that many of your followers are new to the subject and need to start from the beginning and progress in steps. Your task, then, is to create introductory material for them to get started with, followed by intermediate, and eventually advanced course offerings. Your beginner’s market is actually your biggest customer base, so you want to make sure you have information that is accessible and understandable at their level. You do have the option of focusing on an advanced audience, but that is likely a smaller niche market. No doubt you have seen membership sites that charge a subscription fee to access specialized content, but the success of online course offerings is rapidly replacing the membership approach. ELearning offers an interactive experience for structured learning and evidence of achievement that mere access to stores of information cannot match in terms of motivation and engagement. And the more courses you build, the better they will become. You are involved in your subject area and you want others to feel that same excitement and interest. This is the reason you put so much of yourself into your blogging. Providing stimulating, integrated online courses that present your subject in step-by-step increments while allowing users to clearly see their progress gets your audience involved with your content in a personal way. ELearning delivers a satisfying experience on a level that your audience will be willing to pay for, and they will keep coming back for the progressive courses that follow. Remember that you can post comments, and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. joshua millage: Hello, everyone. We’re back with another LMScast episode. I’m Joshua Millage and I’m joined with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about how to monetize a blog using online courses. Chris, how do I do this, man? I create content all the time over at infusioncast.co and it’s a community-driven blog. I don’t have a monetization idea, so help me out here. How do I take what I’m doing and monetize it? chris badgett: The first thing I want to do is congratulate you for creating free content - that’s a big roadblock - and any education entrepreneur out there who has taken the step to give away information for free. Maybe it’s a passion, but I know sometimes creating a blog post is a lot of hard work and really polishing it and researching it can take time. First off, congratulations. You’re already far beyond a lot of entrepreneurs out there looking to market and do content marketing because you’ve actually done it. joshua millage: Thank you. chris badgett: That’s awesome. Hot tip: whenever I see somebody who’s been blogging consistently for a while there’s a huge celebration in congratulations do. What ends up happening is after you get into that cycle where you’ve built good habits of content creation, whether you have a weekly publishing schedule once, twice, three times a week, daily, whatever it is, you get in this cycle of free content and you almost forget about monetization or you overcomplicate monetization by just having one offer. If you’ve been blogging consistently for a long time, then either you’re the subject matter expert or you’re researching and you’re getting that expertise across from others and that sort of thing. You’re curating the best stuff on the web. You’re developing this expertise that you could totally monetize in an online course. You just have to get going on that. joshua millage: Yeah, you’re right. I do have a lot of information that I want to monetize. What do you do? What system do you use? How do you do that? There’s so much noise I feel like right now around creating online courses. There’s so many options. How do I think about my course and then how do I think about building it? chris badgett: Of course we created the lifterLMS plugin which makes it easy to create and sell online courses, but before we even get into how to create it, I think there’s a couple psychological roadblocks we have to get through first. I think the number one thing that happens I noticed is people who do write all this great content and are constantly researching their industry and evolving themselves, they get caught up in always being on the cutting edge, cutting edge, cutting edge, when there’s all these people back at step one who just need to get to step two. joshua millage: That’s good. chris badgett: That beginners’ market is often the huge, big market. For creating an online course, I recommend go super advanced or go after that beginners’ market. Don’t get caught in the middle. If you’re always improving yourself, you forget about those beginner people. I think it’s important to celebrate what you’ve learned as an entrepreneur and a subject matter expert and then turn around and go back to the people who are at step one and just need to get to step two and step three. They’re not trying to go from one to ten, that kind of thing. joshua millage: I love that. That’s really good. That helps me think about the content. What do you look for when you’re choosing a system? I know we’ve developed lifterLMS so we’re more on the LMS side of things, but is there any reason for people to be looking at the membership sites anymore if they want to sell courses, or do you think that the time is gone? chris badgett: I think we’re seeing the death of the membership site for online courses, because a true online course takes somebody through a series of learning engagements and also motivates them along the way, as opposed to a membership site which is just like a pay wall and you put stuff behind it, which of course people organize. But you can do so much better with a true learning management system. joshua millage: Totally. chris badgett: We have a post coming out soon, and by the time this post goes live it might not be out just yet but it’s going to be out very shortly. This is being recorded in January of 2015. We’re doing a roundup post with thought leaders all over the internet about the biggest mistakes that people make when making an online course and what to avoid. These are from seasoned online course pros. One of the trends I’m seeing in people’s comments is not focusing on really the content. They get caught up in the system like the membership site plugin or the LMS without focusing in on the content. If you’re looking to monetize your blog, you’re asking yourself how to monetize a blog with an online course, you want to really be thinking about taking somebody through that journey. We have another episode about the curse of knowledge where as you become an expert you start internalizing all these things and taking the step by step stuff for granted. You need to bring that stuff back up to your consciousness and really create that flow of taking someone from wanting to either achieve a desired outcome or escape some kind of pain, and take them step by step by step through that course. One way I like to tell people to help conceptualize it is start thinking about, if you are going to use video, to teach bite size chunks, so less than ten minute videos. Create an outline and then think about if it can’t be broken down into ten minute video chunks, you need to probably break it down again. joshua millage: I think that’s great. The average attention span is so short. People want to also feel progress. There’s something about checking things off a list and going through courses bit by bit that motivates people to get momentum and complete the course and get through your content, which has a number of great benefits. One, they might come back and hopefully will come back for the second course or the 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. And it also creates a better relationship, and that’s what this is all about is creating relationships with students and people who buy into your knowledge. That’s awesome, Chris. I think this has been a great episode. This is just the start of these types of episodes. I know we’re going to go more advanced here in the future with this sort of topic. Do you have any closing thoughts for the people who are listening at home? chris badgett: Yeah, I would just say if you want to monetize a blog and you’re going to create a course, you don’t have to get it perfect the first time. Once you get students in there and you see people are maybe struggling with a particular lesson the way you’re teaching it, you can change it later. Let go of that perfection. Take all this awesome knowledge you have from blogging and mastering your subject and go create an online course. joshua millage: That’s awesome. Until next time we’ll see you later. The post How to Monetize your Blog with Online Courses appeared first on LMScast.

Julie Moore, co-author of the recently launched Oxford EAP Advanced / C1 level, looks at ways of teaching writing skills more effectively. Julie will be hosting a webinar on the same topic on 26th and 27th November. In ELT, we often talk about teaching the four skills; reading, writing, listening, and speaking. But how much class time do we actually devote to teaching writing skills? I know that for many years in my own teaching career, my ‘teaching’ of writing skills amounted to little more than five minutes going through a homework task at the end of the lesson. The task might be linked to the topic of the lesson and there might be a bit of useful vocabulary, a few key words or phrases in a nice shaded box, but otherwise, I think my students were pretty much left to their own devices. I’d then collect in their writing to ‘mark’, largely on the basis of their language, or more to the point, their language errors. I’d use this collected language - much more convenient than the ephemeral spoken language in class - to help decide what areas I might need to revisit in future lessons and to give students individual feedback that there wasn’t always time for in class. On reflection, I realise that my aim in setting these writing tasks was not really about teaching writing skills, because it involved very little actual teaching and no work on any specific skills. It was really just a chance for me to capture samples of my students’ language in a form that allowed me time for analysis and reflection. Now that’s a perfectly legitimate aim, but I don’t think it really qualifies as "teaching writing skills". It was only when I moved into teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to students preparing to study at university, who need to do lots of writing, that I really came across materials and activities that focused on teaching the skills needed to write effectively. Some of these activities were specific to academic writing, but many are actually about skills that are applicable much more widely to writing in everyday contexts. We do activities around summarising, conveying key information clearly and concisely. There are tasks aimed at structuring more complex information in a logical way (coherence), using language that flows well to make it easy for your reader to follow (cohesion). We look at how to express evaluation, being appropriately confident or tentative (hedging), how to be persuasive, to argue your case, and to engage your reader. We analyse texts from different genres by expert writers to see what lessons we can learn about their style and approach. I also spend time in class addressing editing and proofreading skills, because in real life, we don’t just hand in a piece of writing to be marked and graded, we use tools and techniques to check and redraft until we’re happy with the final result. In my webinar, we’ll look at some of these practical techniques and activities that you can use to help your students become more effective writers - whatever their writing aims. Register now to take part.Filed under: Business & English for Specific Purposes, Professional Development, Skills Tagged: Academic writing, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language Teaching, Julie Moore, Oxford EAP, Teaching EAP, Webinar, Writing skills, Writing tasks

If you create and sell online courses, it’s very likely that you’ll need to include videos in your course materials. Video is the closest thing we have in the online learning environment to a real human interaction, because you get both audio and visual connection with your students. But there are some pitfalls to be aware of when choosing how to host videos for your online courses. In this LMScast podcast episode Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss hosting your LMS videos on Wistia or Vimeo versus using YouTube. While you can post videos on YouTube for free, it is possible for people to share the links to your YouTube videos, even if you lock the videos. And it’s even possible for people to embed your videos on other websites. If you want to be a pro with your LMS courses and be able to charge premium pricing, you should consider using a premium video hosting service. It’s important to keep in mind the speed of your website, protecting your video content, and the mobile responsiveness of your videos. Joshua and Chris also explain how to embed video in your WordPress LMS using oEmbed and video foam if you’re using Wistia for video hosting. Most people have a fear of being on camera when they first start recording videos for their online course. They think they need to have the perfect lighting and the perfect video. But if you just get over the fear and go for it, the connections you can have with your community can be profound. With the lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin, it’s easy to use videos to enhance your online course lessons so you can build a better connection with your users. You can post comments and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us! Joshua Millage: Hello everyone. We’re back with another LMScast episode, and today we’re talking about video hosting and specifically how you use video hosting in your WordPress LMS. I am Joshua Millage. I’m joined with Christopher Badgett and Chris, help me answer this question, Man. How do we host video in our LMS systems? Chris Badgett: It’s a great question. There’s so many options out there and there’s a couple landmines you want to avoid when you start working with video on a website. To go directly to the answer of how to use video in your WordPress LMS system, I would say the best thing you can do is use a Vimeo or Wistia paid video hosting account. Those usually work out to something like a couple hundred bucks a year and with a certain amount of terabyte of videos or whatever. Joshua Millage: Why? I don’t understand. Why can’t I just use YouTube? Chris Badgett: That’s a great question. When people started out they first started trying to do it YouTube, and you think you’re kind of clever when you’re like, "Oh, I’m going to unlist it on YouTube so people can’t find it. Then I’ll invent a new site," which you can do and I do recommend that if you’re going for that absolute, cheapest possible way to do it. But what ends up happening is people can share your videos. If somebody gets ahold of a link, they can put it somewhere else and embed it somewhere else and so on. Joshua Millage: Right. Chris Badgett: It’s really … if you want to be pro and you want to charge premium pricing, you need to have premium video hosting. If you don’t want your site to slow down or have to spend a crazy amount of money on your web hosting plan or on a development team to create a responsive mobile-friendly video player for your lessons … Joshua Millage: Um-hmm. (affirmative) Chris Badgett: … you just want to use one of the premium video hosting services. You can embed the videos right in your lessons. You can also restrict it and say, "Only allow these videos to be played on my website." Now you’re protected. They’re fast, they’re mobile responsive and they work great. Joshua Millage: That’s awesome. When you grab the video, you’ve uploaded it to the system, how do I get it into the LMS system? What do I do? Chris Badgett: There’s different ways to do it. With lifterLMS the WordPress learning management system plugin that we created, we actually have a featured media box where you can drop in a Vimeo or Wistia or YouTube embed code, and it’ll automatically put that video at the top of the lesson. But you can also just put it at the top of the lesson. When I say put it, what you’re doing is you’re embedding it. When you go to one of these hosts like Vimeo or Wistia or YouTube, they have a share button and you can grab it. What you’re going for is the embed code. There’s a nuance there. With certain really popular services like YouTube and even Vimeo, even Vimeo PRO, there’s a new thing that’s happening inside of WordPress itself called oEmbed where all you have to do is put the video link, the URL, and it’ll take care of all of it for you.  Put it in there, put it inside the container you put it in or the column or whatever, and then it’ll compress nicely on mobile devices and so on. That’s not available for Wistia so if you go to Wistia, you just want to grab the Wistia embed code, and they actually give you all these different types of embed code options from Wistia like iframe and this other thing called video foam. What you actually need if you are a Wistia user, is you want the iframe embed code and you want the video foam option turned on, which helps with the mobile responsiveness. Joshua Millage: Wow! That’s helpful, Man. Cool! Well, this is like kind of a punchy, quick hit video because I think this is a question that a lot of people ask and you just kind of dialed that all in for me. I’ve learned a lot. Is there anything in closing that you’d want people to understand about video? Chris Badgett: Sure. Two final points is that video is the closest thing we have in on-line learning environment to like a real human interaction because you get the audio and visual elements. Joshua Millage: Right. Chris Badgett: You could charge more for it. Your people build rapport and trust quicker with it so that’s one thing I encourage people to use video in their LMS. The other thing is there’s always, especially if you’re a first time getting used to being on camera, there’s often this fear of being on video that’s important just to get over and get past. That fear sometimes gets assigned to, "Oh, I’ve got to have the perfect video setup with perfect lighting and so on, or perfect sound." Just get started. It’s just natural. Everybody goes through it. "Oh, I’m going to put my face on there and all this stuff." But once you get through it and you open the door to what’s possible with video, the connections you can have with your community can be profound. Joshua Millage: That’s awesome!. Great tips for today, Chris. Thank you so much, Man, and until next episode, we’ll talk to y’all soon. The post How to Embed Video in Your WordPress LMS appeared first on LMScast.

Robert McLarty, Head of Professional Development at OUP, gives a brief introduction to the European Profiling Grid (EPG) project to help improve the quality and effectiveness of language training. I play golf in the most average way possible.  I have been at the same level of golf since I left school around forty years ago. If I were learning English, my teacher would already have placed me right in the middle of the intermediate plateau. Luckily, golf is only a hobby so I don’t have to justify my level to anyone but myself. Language teachers, on the other hand, have always found it hard to assess themselves. For a long time we have had the debate about native speakers as opposed to non-native speakers. Then there have been disputes as to whether knowledge of the language or ability to illustrate that knowledge and pass it on is the more important skill. There are a number of initial teaching qualifications for language teachers, others for more experienced ones, and then a wide range of post-graduate qualifications. But how much do they improve the quality of someone’s teaching? Experience seems valued until the teacher has been somewhere too long; inexperience is valued because it is usually added to with zest and vigour. But there is always a question mark over the rookie teacher, despite the fact that they innovate without meaning to and often bring genuine passion to the classroom. Within teaching establishments there is usually a wide range of teacher profiles with a completely individual mix of talents and qualities, strengths and occasional weaknesses. That is what’s so engaging about language teaching - but it also brings its own risk. Other professions can increase the value and the price of their service simply by having a linear progression of qualifications. This will never work for education. There are too many other factors to take into consideration. So, when a school claims that their teaching staff is qualified and experienced, what does this mean? Does it necessarily add value? Why are they better than the competition or better than the new school, which is lowering its prices but offering the same level of service? Image courtesy of EPG Against this backdrop, a very exciting project has been run by a group of institutions from across Europe who have developed the European Profiling Grid. This is a framework of competences for language teachers available as an online assessment tool. The same tool can be used by the teachers themselves, their trainers or their managers. By plotting your level to a range of descriptors in four main areas, you arrive at a profile (often jagged) of your teaching as it is today. You are encouraged to assess your training and experience, including observed teaching, your teaching skills along with other life skills such as intercultural competence, your digital literacy, and your professionalism. Discussing it with a group of managers, trainers and teachers at the recent IATEFL BESIG conference, a number of conclusions were drawn. There was consensus that it will be a useful tool for professional development in that it shows where a teacher needs further training; it will act as a good starting point for an appraisal conversation; it is a useful official document confirming a teacher’s competence at any given time, and; as a collection of records it will give an accurate profile of an institution’s professional knowhow and experience - very useful when bidding for new business or preparing for inspections. The same discussion raised doubts about the lack of personal skills areas in the grid - communication, collaboration, charisma, creativity and so on - and it’s hoped that these will be addressed at some stage. It was also noted that schools could misuse the grid in a judgmental way, which might actually be damaging for a particular teacher. As part of a professional development portfolio, however, the grid got a big welcome. In much the same way as the CEFR was greeted with caution and grew into a vital benchmarking system for language learners, I expect the EPG will be in common parlance in the teaching world within a short space of time. The first iteration is now available on the EPG Project website. Try it out and submit feedback to the project team.Filed under: Professional Development Tagged: Education, EPG Project, European Profiling Grid, IATEFL BESIG, Language education, Oxford Teachers' Academy, Professional Development, Robert McLarty, Teacher Development, Teaching qualifications

There are many ways to create online content that delivers your message and can also generate income. In today’s LMScast Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett talk about how to monetize a podcast by offering online courses. A previous LMScast episode in this series on monetization focused on blogging. Podcasting is another approach to consider. Creating a podcast is quite an undertaking, and if you choose to employ this method understand that there is a lot of work involved, but there are also distinct advantages, one of which is personal appeal. A blog features the written word of a writer but a podcast employs the spoken word of a host, and possibly also a video image of the person delivering the message. This provides an even deeper rapport with viewers, as voice and images of a person presenting your material psychologically establishes a greater level of trust in the information being presented. The host may also interview guests who are respected experts on a subject, and their influence validates the host’s credibility. Everything you present in your podcast, including information shared by guests, can become the basis for an online course based upon the best ideas and information in your industry. One example is our affiliated Infusioncast podcast where we help people set up and optimize their Infusionsoft application as well as their website. Often people have difficulty grasping how the application and their website function together. Teaching these processes sets a foundation for creating a course as well as building an online community, and those become valuable resources that can be monetized. All the content you bring together for your podcasts can be organized and placed into a system like lifterLMS to create courses and certifications, which can then be sold. The key is knowing what you can present for free and what should be monetized. The rubric for that is to structure your information into why, what, and how. For example, John Lee Dumas produces a daily podcast called Podcasters’ Paradise. He shares information about successful podcasting that establishes him as a trusted advisor. His podcast creates interest in joining his community and accessing his resources. People are willing to pay for that support system and to learn the processes he uses to succeed. This same dynamic works with Joshua’s Infusioncast podcast and Infusioncast Confidential Facebook group. Bringing together the what and why of a subject area creates demand for the how. Information itself is vast and expansive, and as such can be overwhelming. Because of this, content curation as a process of gathering information and organizing it becomes a valuable function of blogging and podcasting. Curating information into the structure of an online course offering makes it even more accessible and, therefore, more valuable. Andrew Warner adds another level of value to his Mixergy podcast by interviewing guests for his free podcast, and then continuing those interviews to provide exclusive in depth tactical information in advanced courses for his Mixergy Premium paid subscribers. If you are debating whether you want to pursue developing a blog or a podcast, consider that in creating a podcast you essentially create a blog as well, so you actually can do both. Podcasting will also build your multimedia skills and that will help you design much better online courses, especially with a WordPress LMS plugin like our lifterLMS. Whatever you decide, remember that consistency in your presentations is basic to how to monetize a podcast, because without consistency in quality and frequency you will not build or maintain an audience, and certainly not paid subscribers. Remember that you can post comments and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMSCast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. joshua millage:        Hello, everyone. We’re back with another LMScast episode. I’m Joshua Millage and I’m joined with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about how to monetize your podcast. This is in a series, I guess you could say, of monetization-type episodes. Monetizing a podcast is slightly different than monetizing a blog. Chris, what do you see as some of those differences? chris badgett:           In the last episode we talked about how to monetize a blog, and I’d definitely kick it off by also saying congratulations to anybody who’s gone to the effort of creating a podcast, which is a huge effort. We all know the power of content marketing. Creating a podcast is difficult and keeping that momentum. The big difference between that medium format from the written word and blogging, there’s a couple things going on. One is the host of the podcast. It tends to have an even higher level of trust with his audience, because either it’s a video podcast or audio podcast. You feel a more real human connection faster than reading the written word in most cases. Even with smaller audiences on a podcast, you tend to have even deeper rapport than somebody with a broader audience who writes frequently. That’s one big difference. The other thing is podcasters are often interviewing other guests or experts in their field and stuff, so they tend to have a very big amount of influence but also play the role of researcher in the sense of collecting some of the best information and ideas in their industry, and so on, which is fertile ground for creating an online course. joshua millage:        I think one of the advantages that podcasters have is in the process of creating your podcast you are creating your course. A good example of that is with our other podcast, Infusioncast, I’m going through the process of explaining to people not only how to set up and optimize their Infusionsoft application, but at the same time set up and optimize their website. Because I will find that that always seems to be the gap. It doesn’t really matter what the business is, whether they’re selling info products or whether they’re a coach or a speaker, an author, or a brick and mortar, they have this disconnect between utilizing their website and Infusionsoft well. Every single Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we go through this process of these are some things you should be doing this week. These are some things we should be doing next week. As I look at it, those are like modules. That’s my own unique format over there that we’re going through, but I’m really creating a course and a community that’s valuable that can be monetized. I think what’s interesting is as I think about it six months from now really when I have that much content together is when I’m going to personally feel comfortable by going back and taking that and putting it into a system like lifterLMS and creating courses and certifications and things around that. Because I think that it would be valuable to say, "Hey, I was certified by the Infusioncast methodology," so that when those people go out, if they’re ICCs for instance, they have another badge to say they’ve been certified in another different way. It lends more social proof. Those are the advantages for putting all this in a system like lifterLMS. The one that I’m not mentioning is the fact that I can now sell that information. People are going to be like, "Joshua, why would you sell or how could you even sell it, because you gave it all away for free on the podcast?" And they’re right. The thing that I’ve realized is that there is intrinsic value in structuring information. Having it all in an episode list is inherently less valuable than structuring it and putting it in a course. I want people to suspend their disbelief on that for a second, because it happens all the time. You you mentioned John Lee Dumas. John Lee Dumas has an incredible program called Podcasters’ Paradise. It’s cheaper now, but I bought into it I paid two grand for it. That’s a lot of money. The fact of the matter is, I could have found all the things that I learned on YouTube videos and all over the web. I could have. chris badgett:           But I watched you become an efficient podcaster not just with one podcast but with two podcasts just like that. So that course rocketed you to what you wanted to do. joshua millage:        Yeah, that two grand was time saved, because I didn’t have to go scouring all the web for a way of doing things. I look at a guy, John Lee Dumas, who’s putting out a podcast every stinking day and go, "I want to know what he knows. I want to know the inside of that machine." I got to see the inside of that machine, and beyond that the community, which is what has really been helpful. There’s so many brilliant Paradisers. I need to be more active, but I’ve been pretty active in the Facebook group and that sort of thing. That community has inspired me, too. There’s the aspect of the content. What’s the saying? People come for the content but stay for the community? I think that’s the thing that has helped me with that. That goes to show you too with a podcast, Infusioncast, for instance, has about 2,000 unique listens every week. There’s a community there. Now I’m the process of taking the community that listens to me every week and getting them to engage with me somewhere else. Right now, Infusioncast Confidential, our Facebook group, is that. All of that to say is this is how you connect the dots in the podcast realm, bringing it together into a product that people would be willing to purchase. chris badgett:           Absolutely. I think another good word to really wrap your head around is curation or curating. When you create a podcast or you write a blog, you’re curating content. In the past the internet was all about, "oh wow, I have access to all this information." Now it’s about there’s too much information. We’re all overloaded. Let’s curate it, get the best of the best. You did that the first round with the podcast and now that you’ve curated it you can take it another step and curate it even more into an even more valuable online course. Just for everybody listening, we talked about John Lee Dumas and Podcasters’ Paradise, his online course, but we’d like to also talk about Mixergy, which is a great podcast I’ve been listening to for years. It’s my free business education. Andrew Warner, who you know personally I believe, behind that. It’s an awesome podcast about the entrepreneurship, especially in the digital space. Andrew takes an interesting model with how he blends his podcasts with online education. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe he has guests come on for an hour for free, and then maybe some of those guests, they stick around for another hour and teach something more in depth and tactical about the whatever they covered in the first part in the free episode. That goes into his membership site as the advanced training that the members pay a monthly for, which is called Mixergy Premium. Is that right? joshua millage:        It is right. That’s one of the ways. I don’t know. His format has changed a little bit now, but he has done that format before. People do come on for an interview that’s more of their story, and then they teach the tactics in the premium. He’s done such a good job in the last year really of organizing that. You can go on and click PR for instance, and there’s all these advanced courses on PR and that sort of thing. In my experience, and I will say this boldly, that I think if you want a business education and you make a point to listen to a Mixergy interview every day, in six months you will have more tactical, relevant business knowledge than you do if you went and got an MBA. That’s because I have an MBA, and I can speak directly to that. I think in the six months when I was recovering from an illness that I got in Asia … I won’t get into that story right now, but I was basically on my back for six months, and every day I listened to a minimum of one Mixergy interview. In that six month period from what I had learned, it landed me a job in Los Angeles at an ad agency, because I was able to pitch bloggers and I understood that world, because I had heard so many stories and I had learned really well. I had joined Mixergy Premium, and I had learned the tactics, too. I had the theoretical from the story side of it, and I had the tactical, like these are the things I can actually do, which is his methodology. That’s another format, and I think what I admire. chris badgett:           There’s another rubric there I just want to give the listeners, which is I’ve heard it described this way: the free podcast contains the why and the what, but you’ve got to pay for the how to. It’s just a way to think about it if you’re thinking about how could I start a podcast and then build a course. joshua millage:        Absolutely. chris badgett:           The what’s free and the how, you’ve got to pay for that. joshua millage:        Absolutely. I think the thing with all of this that I want to end on is this isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes stamina. John Lee Dumas I see is now in the 800’s in terms of podcasts he’s put out. Andrew’s broken 1,000, which was awesome. That 1,000th interview was pretty cool the way he did that one. These guys have been doing this for a while, for a long time, so the people who are listening, make sure you have that long-term mindset. If you’re someone who just wants to build a course, our system, lifterLMS, is perfect for that, but I think it is enhanced when you start to do something with a commitment to consistency and putting out something. We’ve talked about blogging in our last episode. We’re talking about podcasting in this one. Both of them, the reason that these methods are going to make you successful is you’re putting things out there, free things out there for people to get to know you. That makes them much more likely to buy your paid stuff. That’s something that’s really, really important. I think in a future episode we should definitely cover how to ask your audience what they would purchase, so you don’t build something that they wouldn’t want to purchase. That’s kind of in this and we’re not touching on that today, but the key is put something out there, market something, do something to get eyeballs on you so that you can make your course profitable. I think a lot of edupreneurs, as I would like to call them, are missing that. It’s key. It’s crucial if you actually want to make this a full-time thing. chris badgett:           Absolutely. I’ll just cap it off with one pro tip, and that is if I had to choose between doing a podcast or doing a blog as my free line of content, I would actually choose the podcast, for two reasons. The first reason is that like we do here with LMScast, this podcast, our conversation here gets transcribed and basically turned into a blog also, so you’re killing two birds with one stone. joshua millage:        Totally. chris badgett:           The other thing is as you go into an online course, an online education, whether you build your learning management system with lifterLMS or not, is once you’ve practiced podcasting, you’re getting good at audio. If you want to, you can make more money by selling a course that includes multimedia format. It’s not just the written word. It may contain some audio and some video. Starting a podcast is a great way to get comfortable and used to teaching either on camera or at least in the audio format. joshua millage:        Absolutely. There’s a lot of nuggets of knowledge and wisdom in this episode for everyone. I hope you enjoyed it, and please reach out to us at lmscast.com. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the comments on this episode, so talk to us there. Until next time, we’ll talk to you then. The post How to Monetize a Podcast with Online Courses appeared first on LMScast.

We are living in an era of information overload.  So much content is shared online that curation is needed as a way to get value out of the information flood. Content curation is the process of shi… Source: www.theedublogger.com This explain in good detail about content curation; what it is and why we need to use it. I looking at teaching this to my 8th grade students as we method for them to "filter" through content as they create an online digital magazine.  See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

How is the ‘Can Do’ ethos of Headway linked to the aims of our students and the CEFR bands? Stacey Hughes will be exploring this question in the webinar: "Six Levels, Six Stages - in Sixty Minutes" on 28th November 2013 at 9:30 and 15:00 (GMT). In the past, learning a language involved learning more about language than learning to do things with the language. What pedagogical issues does this shift in focus raise? How does it link to student expectations in the kinds of tasks we set for them? The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) focuses on what students are able to do at different levels; in other words, what they are able to talk and write about and what they are able to understand from reading or listening. It is this focus on what learners can do with language - how they can effectively use language for communication - that Headway brings into its activities. When aiming to help students achieve their learning goals, we also need to consider who our learners are and what are they learning English for. What kinds of activities and topics can course books utilize that will improve students’ ability to communicate effectively in a language? How can we extend this learning outside of the classroom? These are some of the issues we will explore in the webinar. Using some of the CEFR level descriptors, we will identify language skills from six different level bands. We will also look at Headway’s approach to learning and see how it links to the practical application principles in these descriptors. As teachers, we know that students gradually build up proficiency. However, students need frequent, reachable goals to see their progress. They also need to see the connection between what they are doing in a course and how it is useful for them in using the language. This webinar will show teachers how they can join the dots between activities in Headway with ‘Can Do’ objectives. Register for the webinar now. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Professional Development Tagged: Adult Learners, CEFR, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Headway, Headway Fourth edition, Language skills, Professional Development, Stacey Hughes, Webinar, Young Adults

In eLearning your number one goal is to help your audience fully understand the information they need to learn. Using a variety of media formats — including text, video, and audio — you can accommodate most individual learning styles. Plus you are offering greater worth, and therefore can charge a higher fee for your online courses. In today’s LMScast Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett explain how to embed audio in your WordPress LMS. It’s actually easier than you might think. There are several options for including audio in your course design. The simplest method is to use the existing media hosting capabilities that are built into WordPress. Just upload an mp3 with the "Add Media" button and you are done. In the past you had to install audio plugins for WordPress, and that is still an option if you need greater functionality. The Add Media function does have limitations depending on the scope of your presentation and size of your audience, but it is the most immediately available method. If you have higher traffic you will need premium audio hosting to allow for greater capacity and capability. With premium hosting you also get content protection and marketing capabilities. There are many resources available to you depending on your requirements and some are not suitable for eLearning, so make sure you are paying only for what you actually need. Libsyn is an established media hosting service that functions best as a podcasting host, but for eLearning you will be paying for services you don’t need and may have to work around. A newer provider that might be more appropriate is SoundCloud. Using this service requires some technical expertise, but it offers you more design capability. It even includes a comments capability that allows you to receive direct feedback from your students right on the waveform. It is currently geared more toward artists and musicians, but the platform is extremely flexible, which makes it perfect for online course design. It is also mobile enabled, which allows students to access your audio content wherever they are. Mobile audio is a vital consideration for your course offerings as it allows students to take at least part of your content with them and listen while they do other things. As with SoundCloud, mobile capability should be available with your premium service. You can also just make mobile audio files of individual lessons available for download from a WordPress media library or from Dropbox. This allows access to course content when the listener is not connected to the internet. Another advantage of audio content is that students have the option of listening in double or triple time; i.e. increasing playback speed so they can access the information in much less time, and thus stay engaged more easily. Providing audio content is simple and direct, and knowing how to embed audio in your WordPress LMS allows you to employ that media option. It does not require expensive equipment or studio time. You can create audio files on a smartphone or computer using basic technology you already have in hand. The most important thing is to get started, and a WordPress learning management system plugin like our lifterLMS makes it easy to do just that. As you design your online courses, remember that each student is an individual who learns in a unique way. Presenting your information with a variety of media helps you to reach each student and keep them engaged. Remember that you can post comments and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. Joshua Millage:  Hello, everyone. We’re back with another episode of LMScast. I’m Joshua Millage and I’m joined today with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about how to embed audio in your WordPress LMS. This is something that I’ve been doing for a long time with our sister podcast, Infusioncast. Chris, why is it important to use so many different forms of media? Let’s start there before we get into the tactic today. Chris Badgett:  There’s two primary reasons for that, and we’ve done a separate podcast episode about each of these.  But real quickly they are number one: our main goal is always to focus on the learner learning. When they’re getting multimedia forms of content, whether that be text, video and audio, you’re adapting to different learning styles, so people really connect with the different formats. That’s a big reason. The other reason is when you create that multimedia learning content you can also charge more money for it. It’s more valuable. There’s more perceived value in the marketplace. Those are the two main reasons. Joshua Millage:  That’s amazing. Let me take it into the tactic today, because I have been podcasting and using audio for a really long time, and there’s a lot of different options. I think for people to go and depending on what they’re trying to do and how much protection or how much freedom they want to have there’s a lot of different options. I think first and foremost you can utilize your WordPress media hosting capabilities if you want. There’s some advantages and disadvantages. Advantages is you’re keeping everything in one spot. Do you happen to know off the top of your head any good audio player plugins? I personally don’t. Chris Badgett:  There’s a bunch of free ones that are on the WordPress repository. There’s one called zen-something I’ve used before. The interesting thing that’s happened lately with WordPress is you no longer need that stuff. You can get it if you want it because that audio plugin has a better design or whatever, but by default now when you click the Add Media button on WordPress, whether that’s a lesson or any post or page for that matter, if you upload an mp3 it will put in a nice responsive play button, the bar … Joshua Millage:  Oh really, so they have it built in. Chris Badgett:  It’s built in now. Joshua Millage:  Oh wow, that’s amazing. Chris Badgett:  But like you said, there are some constraints that come with if you go that route and you have a high traffic site, and also with WordPress media library itself and the type of hosting you’re on. I think by default you start out with a 64-megabyte upload limit. If your audio gets too big you’re going to run into that limit, which can be raised in some cases on your hosting account but you’re starting to get into where you should really be getting into premium audio hosting. Joshua Millage:  Absolutely, absolutely. I think that’s the next step would be premium audio hosting. There’s a lot of options for that nowadays, too. If you’re coming from a podcast angle, like you want to utilize content in your online course and you want to protect it but you also want to maybe utilize it as a marketing channel, there’s two main players in the podcast media hosting space. There is SoundCloud, which is kind of the new boy on the block, I guess you could say, and then there’s Libsyn. Libsyn‘s been around for years. They’re pretty bulletproof. I like Libsyn for a lot of reasons. I don’t use Libsyn, but I like Libsyn. I think that if you’re pure podcasting, go Libsyn and then in your courses you actually might want to utilize something else. Because Libsyn’s geared towards giving you an RSS feed for syndication. You could utilize Libsyn, have a subchannel, and make all of that protected and embed that using their players, but you’re just going to be spending more money. So in this use case, I would say Libsyn’s probably not the best. If you’re pure podcasting, Libysn’s awesome. Now if you want a hybrid of both, and actually the one that I utilize is SoundCloud, because SoundCloud allows for … and they’re not as advanced in the podcasting space as Libsyn so you need to be a little techy if you want to use it for podcasting, like you have to do some kind of hacky things to get it out there. But if you’re just utilizing it for an LMS purpose, it’s amazing. You would upload the audio. They have these beautiful HTML 5 audio players. They look gorgeous. One of the coolest features I think is that you can actually drop comments in along the wave form. You have this wave form that goes up and down, and as you’re talking, as you’re giving your lecture, if your lecture is at minute seven then someone could actually jump in and comment on minute seven. "Hey professor" or "Hey Chris, what did you actually mean by x, y and z?" That adds a social aspect that is pretty awesome. Then you could utilize that for podcasting also. You could keep some tracks private, some tracks public. You could have the public tracks go into your RSS feed. If people are really interested in podcasting, I’m happy to make a video about podcasting as a mechanism for marketing for your LMS. That would be a really fun video and I could walk through the how-to of how that works. I think for the sake of this episode and to keep it concise, I would highly recommend SoundCloud as the number one pick for educational media hosting and embedding. It’s just really flexible. If someone were to access your site on their mobile device, they’d be able to play it no problem there. I know some people might be going "SoundCloud doesn’t have anything … if I go to the site it has nothing to do with LMS," and they’re right. It’s mainly geared towards musicians and artists right now, not even podcasters. But the platform is so dynamic that I think it works really, really well. Chris Badgett:  Absolutely. One of the other things that we run into is people with their WordPress learning management system, they want people to be able to take the courses on their phone when they’re offline. You can’t really do that without going into a native iPhone, Android app-type situation. What you can do is also offer an audio download on an individual lesson so there’s a download link so the person can download that audio file for that lesson and go for a run and listen to it, that sort of thing. They don’t have to be connected to the internet. For that, I don’t know about SoundCloud, but in the past if it’s small enough I would put that audio file on my WordPress media library and create a download link. If it was bigger I would put it in the Dropbox in a public folder and have a download link so they could pull it down from Dropbox. Joshua Millage:  Yeah, that’s another great way to do things for sure. Chris, I think this is a really helpful episode. I think a lot of people are going to enjoy figuring out how to embed audio. I think it’s a little different than video. I think there’s some advantages and some disadvantages, but our recommendation is when you’re creating an online course to use all the different forms of media, because you don’t know exactly how your student is going to learn. That is huge, huge, huge, and I think it’s really important to be considerate of how everyone learns. I’m an audio guy so I’m a little biased in this episode. I like audio and I like audio for the simple reason, and this is something that a lot of people don’t think about, I listen to things in double or triple time. I have conditioned myself to not be thrown off by the fact that when I do that people sound like chipmunks. Because that doesn’t matter I can get through so much more information. It’s like being in the Matrix scene where they put the jack in the back of the head. I feel like that’s what I’m doing when I listen to things in double or triple speed. That’s something that people don’t consider. I would highly recommend putting audio out there for weirdos like me who listen to it in double time. I can get through your course faster. It keeps me engaged, and it just helps with my ADD. At the end of the day that’s why I’m doing it. Cool. Do you have any final thoughts for the audience here, Chris? Chris Badgett:  Sure. I would say if you’re just creating your first audio lesson or a full audio course, it’s important just not to get too wrapped in all of the fancy mics and equipment and stuff you can get. You can literally record your first audio lesson on your smartphone, on your iPhone, on your Android. All computers have some kind of audio recorder built into it like GarageBand on a Mac. I’m not sure what the Windows equivalent is, but it’s just one of those things where you just got to do it and then over time you’ll continue to make better and better quality audio. If you happen to be watching this video version of this podcast you’ll see Joshua in his sound room with his more advanced audio equipment, but just start. That’s the most important thing. Joshua Millage:  Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. All right, folks. We would love to hear your feedback on this. You can reach us over at LMScast.com and just click this episode, leave us a comment. We’d love to hear from you. Until next time, we’ll talk to you then. The post How to Embed Audio in Your WordPress LMS appeared first on LMScast.

Thanks to Craig Kemp for this blog post. Excellent tutorial on how to archive Twitter chats on @storify. Source: mrkempnz.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

Image courtesy of Jack Dorsey via Flickr Ian Brookes is a freelance writer and editor based in Scotland. He has edited a number of dictionaries and has written books about spelling, writing, and punctuation. In this post, he looks at the anomaly of double consonants in certain English words. The presence of doubled consonants in certain words can present a great challenge for students attempting to get to grips with English spelling. The sound of a word will often give an idea of whether a single letter or a double is required, but it is quite possible for two words to sound alike and yet for one to be spelt with a single consonant and one with a double. Why is there only one ‘b’ in habit but two in rabbit? Why should there not be a double ‘l’ in auxiliary when the letter is doubled in ancillary? Examples like these might suggest that students will look in vain for any rational pattern. But, in fact, English spelling is not entirely arbitrary; it is just that the spellings of English words reflect the origins of the words rather than their sounds. Rabbit is spelt with a double ‘b’ because it comes from a Flemish word robbe; habit has one ‘b’ because it comes from a Latin word habitus. English has taken its vocabulary from a variety of languages, and each of these languages has its own spelling patterns. The presence of words from different languages side by side in modern English leads to some apparent inconsistencies in its spelling. So, my first point is that any information you have about the origin of a word can be useful in determining its spelling. This information may come from thinking about the spellings of other words within the same word family: for example, if you can think of perennial and millennium as being members of the same word family as annual (they are all derived from a Latin word meaning ‘year’), you can be confident that these words will be spelt with a double ‘n’. Some learners may even be able to apply knowledge of the language from which the words came into English. (This is why contestants in spelling-bee competitions sometimes ask for word origins before giving an answer.) Loan-words from Japanese or from Polynesian languages, for example, do not usually have doubled consonants, whereas words from Germanic languages are more likely to have them. For most students, however, the origins of English words are even more obscure than their spellings. So a more practical strategy for remembering tricky spellings is to learn or make up a little phrase that acts as a reminder. I still remember how to spell necessary from being told that ‘it is necessary for a shirt to have one collar and two sleeves’ (so I think of it having one ‘c’ and two ‘s’s). Here are a few more memory guides along the same lines: This accommodation has two double rooms and two singles (double ‘c’ and ‘m’, single ‘d’ and ‘t’). A committee should have as many members as possible (double ‘c’ and double ‘t’). The show was a success and they doubled their money (double ‘c’ and double ‘s’). I find such devices to be a powerful learning tool. Not only that, but the model is entirely flexible, so that students can devise their own memory guides, using their own native languages and employing contexts that are meaningful to them, as a way of remembering tricky spellings. What useful phrases have you taught to your students to help them remember tricky spellings? Share them in the comments below.Filed under: Dictionaries & Reference, Grammar & Vocabulary Tagged: Doubled consonants, English Language, English spelling, Etymology, Ian Brookes, Linguistics, OALD, OALD8, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Spelling, Word origins

February 24, 2015 Following the post we shared here a few weeks ago featuring some useful resources to help teachers and educators master the art of presenting, somebody sent us this beautiful visual… Source: www.educatorstechnology.com Students please look at this infographic as a template for you to look at when you start to piece together your information. See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

There has never been a better time to publish your book, because now you can do it online. And if you know how to monetize a book with online courses, you can realize unprecedented profits from it. In today’s LMScast with Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett we discuss how publishing an eBook can be a great introduction to your online course offerings. There are some compelling reasons to publish a book online. First, the conventional book format is simply difficult for a lot of people. Every individual learns differently, and book-based coursework prevents some students from assimilating the information they need. In digital format, however, a book can incorporate interactive media that makes information more understandable. It’s all about giving the end user whatever they need to succeed in your courses. Another incentive is revenue potential. As an overview of the areas your course covers, an eBook can be an affordable introduction that demonstrates the value of your paid courses to potential students. Your course offerings are especially attractive if you provide a complete learning access path beyond the eBook, such as a free blog, a podcast, interactive courses sourced through a WordPress learning management system like lifterLMS, live events, mastermind groups, and coaching. In previous discussions we have looked at monetizing podcasts and blogs, which are already online entities, but creating an eBook requires a break from traditional thinking. For digital consumption, content needs to be presented in quickly readable chunks, not long paragraphs that sit on top of each other in a visually intimidating mass like most printed textbooks. Making text content more readable and adding interactive support media makes your information far more accessible than ever before. Students engage more with a book if it presents not only the why and what of the subject, but also the how. There is simply no better way to teach a subject than to get students to actively experience it rather than just read about it. An interactive format for your introductory eBook will also demonstrate the capabilities that your online courses offer by using examples of content already stored in your LMS so readers get a taste of the look and feel of your online classroom environment. Most authors are more focused on their creativity or expertise in their field of study than on marketing an eBook. With an online format you can easily add a call to action, like a link to the course website or a direct purchase button. Without turning yourself into a salesperson you can effectively monetize your content with this simple device. Online publishing provides extremely low overhead costs to write the book, publish it, promote it, and sell it while introducing your online courses. Because of this, you can afford to offer some free information and support that will make your paid courses far more appealing to potential students. Especially if your subject area is potentially intimidating for some students, offering introductory information in a variety of learning styles can help you reach those students, too. If you have already written a book, then you have done the groundwork to expand into a full online course offering. And if you have already created your online course and are ready for students to pay to access it, then you can easily create an attractive introductory eBook synopsis. Either way, learning how to monetize a book with online courses is the most lucrative step you can take towards making your online courses successful. Remember that you can post comments and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. joshua millage: Hello everyone. We’re back with another episode of LMScast. I’m Joshua Millage and this is Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about how to monetize a book and why every single author needs to be using an LMS system. Chris, the question goes to you. How do we monetize a book? chris badgett: Awesome. We just did 2 episodes about how to monetize a blog, how to monetize a podcast. They’re all a little different based on the media format. How to monetize a book really starts with a conversation about why do that. There’s a couple of reasons. One is that a book is very largely text-based, maybe some images, but mostly text-based. We’re always a proponent of and fighting the battle for the end user, the end learner. Some people don’t do well with books. We’ve seen a huge amount of people moving away from the written book to audible, to do audio books which you can take with you while you’re running and doing something else or driving in the car and so on. It’s just a way to really open up that content to people with different learning styles. There’s a huge revenue potential for the author. Their raving fans that take the course are likely going to spend a lot more money for an online course, especially if it’s really full of all that multimedia type of content and also especially if the author includes something like some one on one time or group calls in there, inside the learning management system. Now that this product becomes super valuable, it’s not like a 99 cent eBook or a $25 hardback. joshua millage: Right, yeah, that’s a great point. They can add a level of further explanation and teaching too, which is interesting. This is really exciting to me because I used to work with a lot of authors, and I think one of the first things that you can do when you’re thinking about monetizing your book, and this is a little more tactical, is chunking it down into focus areas. I think that a lot of authors do a great job of theoretically talking about whatever their subject matter is, but then they don’t go into the application side of it, like applied whatever it is, and helping people chunk things down into actionable steps. Would you agree with that? chris badgett: Absolutely. A lot of books are about the why and the what, but not necessarily the how to and the action items. Mostly we’re talking about the non-fiction niche in that part of the bookstore. joshua millage: Yeah, I think you’re right. The how is what people will really pay for. I think that’s the thing when you focus on that then you can create a really valuable course. The book actually then can become kind of a lead generation into your course. I’ve seen a lot of people do that. Actually, the direct marketing guys do it the most blatantly and probably the best at the end of almost every chapter. If you want more, head over to so and so and sign up for my, in their case, it’s usually a newsletter. That’s kind of the old school LMS. The paper newsletter and getting lessons and things every month. I’m reading a book by John Carlton, and it’s like every single chapter is a pitch for that. chris badgett: To go to the website. joshua millage: To go the website and to enter in your email to receive something for free, but you know what’s happening. They’re going to put you in a sales funnel, which I think is pretty cool. I think that a lot of people should look at their book as one of the ways to earn money and generate leads for the overall business. I think a lot of authors don’t look at themselves as a business. They don’t look at their content, they look at themselves as an artist or an author and not someone who should be focused on the money. I think that, not that you should be 100% gung ho, like money, money, money, but as an author in this day and age, there’s never been a better time to monetize your knowledge and monetize your teaching and utilize systems that are really low overhead. Like with lifterLMS, you buy that plug in for a hundred bucks, and you spin up a WordPress site. I bet you can get everything done for under 500 bucks and you could have a product that could generate thousands upon thousands of dollars of revenue depending on, there’s a lot of things I’m leaving out of that equation. You’ve got to be able to generate leads and things. But if you have a book going out there, that’s going to happen. If you have things in your book that say, "Hey come and take the course that has to do with this chapter," you’re going to have more leads than you know what to do with. I think that’s really important. Then in the customer life cycle, after you do the lead generation work which the book can really work, then you’ve got to nurture them so you’re putting out content, free content, free lessons and things that converts them on to your paid program. chris badgett: Absolutely. It might be a little overwhelming for a beginner, but this system is a really good medium to advanced skill stuff here is looking at your full sales funnel. Looking at what some people call the integrated products suite where you might have an eBook, a book, free blog, a podcast, online courses with your WordPress LMS, live events, mastermind groups, one on one coaching, group coaching. All these things can work together, if you are a subject matter expert, to really propel you forward. joshua millage: Right. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this subject and if they have started to monetize their book. What their experience has been like? I know a lot of authors that I’ve worked with in the past. They’re like, "I wrote the book. I thought everything would come together." It’s like, "No, the journey just started." There’s an elephant you have to eat, and you can eat it bite by bite. You can just chunk it down. chris badgett: I’ve heard a lot of authors also say, "I didn’t write a book for the money." It’s getting harder and harder unless you have a runaway best seller to actually make decent income from publishing a book. What it does become is a big business card. You get exposure on Amazon.com and some of the other popular platforms. joshua millage: Right. I think it’s a huge benefit. This is great man. This is kind of the book end, no pun intended, for the monetization episodes that we’ve done. Are there any closing thoughts that you have for the audience? chris badgett: Yeah, I would just say if you have written a book, you’ve already done a lot of the hard work that online course entrepreneurs face in terms of doing research, getting organized, dividing things into chapters and subheadings and so on. You already have the raw building materials to create an online course. In many ways your job is much easier, it’s not about getting started, it’s about morphing it into an online course, chunking it out, adding value. You’re already ahead of the curve. If you’re a book author and you’re thinking about creating an online course, in some ways you have it easier than people who are starting at the beginning with just creating an online course. I’m also going to say the opposite. If you are an online course creator and want to get into the book market to help get exposure for you and your brand and your subject matter expertise, go for it. I actually challenged myself once to write a book in a weekend, self publish it. It was up on Amazon in 2 days. It’s called Outdoor Leadership Secrets. You can look it up. It’s totally possible to create a book fast. It’s totally possible to create an online course fast. It’s all about pulling the trigger and riding the bullet as we say. And not stumbling over yourself. Get out there, publish it, put it up there for sale. You can make it better as time goes on. joshua millage: Yeah, that’s great. It’s really just getting over the fear and going for it. I love that Chris. Thank you all for listening to us. We love doing these episodes and I hope that you find this one valuable. You can head over to LMScast.com and leave us a comment. We want to have a conversation around these topics and see if we can help you further over there at the blog. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll talk to you next week. The post How to Monetize a Book with Online Courses appeared first on LMScast.

Karen Capel, an Academic Coordinator and teacher trainer, returns with another post for Coordinators and Directors of Study, sharing her tips for observing teachers in class. Observing teachers on your staff on a regular basis is one of the essential tools to ensure the quality of the service you offer to students. As a result, it is of paramount importance to utilise class observation in a sensible yet effective way in order to achieve not only the expected results, but also the professional and personal growth of the members of your team. It helps them feel valued and creates athe sense of belonging necessary for each individual to work to the utmost of their abilities. When one starts observing lessons, the focus tends to be on the technicalities that we believe are the key elements of a good lesson: having a clear objective; giving instructions and checking understanding; eliciting responses from students; classroom management strategies; use of materials; TTT and STT (Teacher Talking Time and Student Talking Time) to mention just a few. However, my experience proves that there are some other underlying elements which can mean the difference between a lesson being a success or a complete failure. For example, the rapport the teacher establishes with the students, which can result in better engagement with the planned activities, with students participating actively and therefore acquiring the target language easily. Other aspects of equal importance include whether the contexts and activities chosen are appropriate for both the level and age of the students, and the balance of activities and interaction patterns used. These will enable the teacher to deliver a lesson which caters for all learning styles, gives all students the opportunity to express their ideas and clarify any issues which may arise, as well as practise and reflect on the target language. What tends to be overlooked is being flexible enough to recognise opportunities to share knowledge with students. Often students come up with questions, raise doubts or even point out mistakes - which gives rise to opportunities to explain things more clearly, to share your knowledge - but often these opportunities are ignored by teachers due to a desire to focus on set objectives for the lesson. In these situations, taking the time to explain things further leads to further learning and students leave the classroom with the feeling of having had an enjoyable time while learning about the language in a memorable way. The pace of the lesson is also crucial. Too fast and some students may not be able to follow. Too slow and the stronger students quickly get bored. Striking a balance between allowing enough time for students to understand and actually incorporate new language items and keeping a dynamic pace which prevents dullness is the key to a successful lesson. Furthermore, activities should be linked with one another so that students see them as meaningful - we as teachers set objectives according to what we want students to learn, but we need to create contexts and link tasks in such a way that students feel there is a purpose to them and they provide a natural progression of learning. Time management is vital as well. I have seen lessons where teachers had clear objectives and were just about able to meet them through the use of appropriate teaching techniques - eliciting when necessary, giving precise instructions, etc. - but by the end of the lesson students had learnt very little. Why? Because the teacher did not make the most of the time available. And this is imperative, since most EFL students are in contact with the target language only during their lessons, this being their only chance to listen to and practise it. The same happens with the balance of activities and skills dealt with, as every student needs to have the chance to practise their speaking skills in every single class, considering this may be the only time they do so during the week. How can one learn a language if not given possibilities to use it? That is why STT should also be maximised. Needless to say, all of the aforementioned points are intertwined and, one way or another, related to the role of the teacher. The teacher must be the facilitator of the lesson, always showing interest in the students’ learning and therefore closely monitoring and following what each student is doing and the difficulties they may be facing . Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that this should not be taken as spoon-feeding them, but as providing them with the necessary tools so as to gain autonomy and control over their own learning process. It is achieving this seemless integration of facilitation and organisation which leads to a successful lesson, rather than merely applying solid teaching techniques.Filed under: Professional Development Tagged: Advice, Class observation, Classroom management, Coordinators, Directors of Study, Educators, Karen Capel, Lessons, Observation, Planning, Supervision, Tips

The following are student created infographics on a specific topic of Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety. Students are in 8th grade. The objective of the unit was ==> Students will create an infographic presenting student researched information on a specific Internet Safety Topic. Students created their infographics using the webtool PiktoChart ==> www.piktochart.com   

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. In this week’s blog, Verissimo Toste responds to Sylwia’s blog comment about motivating young learners. I’m interested in the idea of participation points for the class. How does it work? Is it a motivation for the whole class? Are there any awards? I’m asking because I mainly have a problem with involving students in the lesson, especially the weaker ones. They fell behind with grammar and vocabulary and they became discouraged. They are also very lazy." Sylwia brought up an interesting issue: involving young learners in the lesson, or more specifically "the weaker ones". According to Sylwia, these weaker learners "fell behind with grammar and vocabulary and they became discouraged." The first point I would like to bring up here is that success motivates, and equally, failure demotivates. If a learners’s previous experience with English has been negative, it is natural that they will give up. So, an important objective for the teacher of young learners is to make everyone feel successful. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Here are some ideas: 1. Focus on what has been learned Praise learners for their achievements. When teaching colours, for example, focus on the colours each child has learned, not on the ones they still don’t know. Don’t compare them to one another. Relate to each learner individually. Focus on what each learner has achieved and the improvements they have made. 2. Make your classroom safe and supportive Strive to make your classroom a place your learners enjoy being in. Equally, make your lessons a time your learners look forward to. Encourage them to enjoy the songs they sing, the games they play, the projects they share with each other. Make your lessons fun and have fun with them. When an activity is on the verge of being too difficult or uninteresting, step back. Save it for another time. Children do not learn when they feel stressed or when they don’t like what they are meant to learn. 3.  Children like learning This is an important point, so I will repeat it: children like learning. It is what they do all day, every day. Children learn what they need to learn. Your learners will enjoy learning a new song. If you ask them to teach that song to their parents, you create a need for them to learn the lyrics. You also create a situation in which they are motivated to learn the song in order to teach someone else. This may create a need for reading the lyrics, or to memorise the song well enough for when they arrive home. Notice how, in this situation, you have also created a need to play the song more than one time, as your learners will need to know it well in order to teach it. 4. Children are natural language learners Everyone has learned a language. There is no language in the world that is too difficult for a child to learn as their mother tongue. So, children are natural language learners. They will make the effort to learn the new words you are teaching, or some new language structure. They simply need to feel safe, to enjoy it, and to believe they can do it. Now, more specifically, what can a teacher do to involve all of their learners in the lesson? 5. Personalise the learning Whatever language you are teaching, see how your learners can use it to talk about themselves and their world. When teaching words associated with the house, relate it to their houses. When teaching abilities with "can", or possessions with "have got", relate it to their abilities and their possessions. Young learners like to talk about themselves. When they see English as a way to talk about their interests, they will become more motivated and will make a greater effort. 6. Each according to their ability As your learners are learning the language, relate to each according to their ability. Antonio may tell you a lot of things he has got and, in this way, use most of the language you have been teaching. Ana, however, may only tell you about a few things. In both cases, praise them for what they have done. This will encourage Ana to continue learning. She will notice how others communicate more and be encouraged to learn more. Remember, success leads to success. If Ana feels successful, she will continue to make an effort. 7. Praise them! Reward them! Establish a system for rewarding your learners for their efforts. Rewards should be based on effort and not knowledge. Make sure that everyone is able to get the reward if they try. For example, in my classes I create an honour board called, "I Am Special". Let’s imagine I am teaching likes and dislikes, with the vocabulary related to food. The first week anyone who can name 5 different food items without looking at the book gets their name on the board. Two weeks later it might be those who can tell me 3 food items they like and three they don’t like. 8. Give them the opportunity to succeed. Give your learners a second and third opportunity to succeed. Maria may not be able to name 5 food items the first week, but during the second week she is able to. That’s when you put her name on the honour board. Eventually, you may see everyone’s name on the board. Great! Congratulate the class on how well they are doing - all of them! 9. Establish routines Establish a routine in class. This will help communicate to your learners what is expected of them. How should they enter the classroom? What is the first thing they should do as they come in? What do you want to see on their desks? What do you not want to see? Do they put away their books? Establish some definitions for working together, raising hands, etc. 10. Use project work Finally, since Sylwia mentioned weaker learners and the idea of mixed ability, I always recommend that teachers use project work for these situations. I mentioned that personalising learning helps motivate children to learn. Using project work can give learners a basis to use the English they are learning. For example, when learning "can" for abilities, learners can make a poster of what they can do. Using images will reinforce learning. The project gives everyone an opportunity to show what they have learned. Making it personal and sharing the information with others in the class will engage them in their learning and make the language real. Invitation to share your ideas We are interested in hearing your ideas about getting young learners involved, so please comment on this post. Please keep your challenges coming. You can let us know by commenting on this post, on Twitter using the hashtag #EFLproblems, or on our Facebook page. Each blog will be followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats. Here are the topics for the next two blogs: 04 December 2013: Learning English beyond the exams 18 December 2013: Written self-correction for younger learners Related articles Solving your difficulties as an EFL teacher - #EFLproblems (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Cell phones in the adult classroom: interruption or resource? (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Teaching writing in the age of WhatsApp (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Professional Development, Young Learners Tagged: #EFLproblems, Children, Classroom activities, EFL, Language learning, Motivation, Professional Development, Project work, Verissimo Toste, Young Learners

In eLearning it’s vital for teachers to be able to engage with their students in order to know if they’re learning and understanding the material. In today’s LMScast with Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett, we discuss how to use technology to scale the human touch between teachers and their students in online courses. We’ve been building engagement systems for websites in the Infusionsoft community for years. Using Infusionsoft, you can apply tags that trigger engagements with customers based on their actions. For example, if a customer makes a purchase, you can set up a sequence in Infusionsoft to send them emails based on which product they bought. We’ve built our lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin with that same type of engagement in mind so you can use automation to scale your interactions with your students. You could set up engagements in lifterLMS to email your students when they finish lesson one or when they pass a quiz. You can set up the engagement system to meet your unique needs and to help you identify which places in your course materials may be causing your students to get stuck. And then the system can automatically let you know which students you should reach out to in person with extra help. The system is not to replace you, but to give you more productive time. Some of our lifterLMS users are also Infusionsoft users, and for them we’ve created an add-on to lifterLMS that integrates with Infusionsoft. This integration will allow use of the ecommerce system in Infusionsoft, and campaigns inside Infusionsoft can be set up to trigger engagements based on students’ activity. The integration between lifterLMS and Infusionsoft allows for advanced options that are based on the flexibility that tagging brings for organization and engagement sequences. Part of our background is that we have deep WordPress, Infusionsoft, and LMS online course knowledge, and we’ve merged those together into lifterLMS and the Infusionsoft add-on. We’ve created the foundation of a learning management system with a deep Infusionsoft integration for WordPress sites. If you have any specific feature requests for lifterLMS, we’d love to hear from you. You can leave us a comment on this LMScast episode at LMScast.com/Infusionsoft. You can also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us! Joshua: Hello, Everyone. Welcome to LMScast. This episode is a little bit different, because Chris and I are actually in the same location today in Santa Cruz, California. But yes, I’m Joshua Millage. This is Christopher Badgett. Today we are talking about Infusionsoft and WordPress. Chris, where do we start with all this craziness. Chris: Let’s take it down to the learning management system level and talk about … Those of you who have been following lifterLMS, our WordPress learning management system plugin, we do bring up integration with Infusionsoft, and it’s one of the things that we’re getting ready to release tomorrow as a matter of fact. This is in the middle of February when we’re recording this. That Infusionsoft integration with our plugin, what it does is it allows for two very different things to happen for Infusionsoft users. One is to use the Infusionsoft eCommerce system. It’s kind of like the more obvious thing, in the same way that WooCommerce allows you to add the Infusionsoft payment gateway option with the premium plugin add-on or extension. What’s more interesting, and one of the things that’s really interesting about lifterLMS and our whole mission and purpose in the eLearning, LMS, online courses community is engagement. In our Infusionsoft add-on, it allows you to inside of a course engage your students in a certain way with a automated email, badge, or certificate based on a triggering event. Now let’s say someone finishes lesson one or passes a quiz. If you’re an Infusionsoft user, you’re very used to the language of applying a tag. We can also do something where if a user hasn’t logged in for a certain number of days we want to apply this tag. Now we’re in Infusionsoft world. Joshua: The Infusionsoft world is really interesting. We’ve been building engagement systems in Infusionsoft for years now. What’s cool is you can trigger engagements in Infusionsoft based on when tags are applied and certain systems, like there’s a system called PlusThis, which allows you to wrap up videos and apply tags based on how much of a video is watched. It allows you to do some really interesting things. In that use case, you could apply a tag based on whether or not someone got 50% of the way through your video. You’d trigger an email if they hadn’t watched more than 50%, say, "Hey listen, you missed X, Y, and Z at the end of the video. Click this link to go back and watch it." And you could actually up your engagement. I think the one thing I want to demystify first is that lifterLMS scales the human touch with automation. Let’s start there because- Chris: That confuses some people. Joshua: That confuses too many people. I think it’s interesting because I can see why people are getting a little bit confused on that. It’s polarizing. If an email is supposed to be Chris, that’s not really scaling the human touch; it’s robotics. I think what lifterLMS is going to do and what it is doing currently is it’s allowing you to see when you need to follow up with your students. Our hope and our goal here is to provide a foundation of technology that helps scale the human touch by taking the thinking out of when do I contact my students. The system will say, "Okay, people are getting stuck here," and maybe engage them, send kind of a shot across the bow with an email, but it will also tell you, "Hey, people are getting stuck here. Why don’t you give them a call?" Or maybe an email is generated when someone hasn’t logged into your course, so it’s showing they haven’t engaged with your material. It also tells you that you need to go in and give them a call in addition to that email. This is just example. We want to create a bunch of different ways for your to engage your students, a bunch of tools that do it automatically. Our hope isn’t that that replaces you. It helps you scale and gives you more productive time so that you can get in, look at your dashboard, and know these are the people that need help, these are the people that I need to reach out to. Because what happens with the internet is that we don’t have a classroom. We don’t have that in-person non-verbal communication where intuitively … This is kind of my origin story, is a professor saw me every day struggling in class, reached out, asked to get coffee, helped me out, and I succeeded in that class. How does that story translate online? What does that look like? That question has driven us to go, "Okay, we’re going to start with just some basics here with email automation and Infusionsoft, and merging that with course analytics and student analytics. The sky is the limit. We have a lot of other ideas. At the same time, if you’re someone who has no interest in ever engaging your students, we don’t really want you to buy lifterLMS. I digress a little bit here, but I want to get back to the Infusionsoft thing, because Infusionsoft is an engine that can connect to lifterLMS and really allow you to turbocharge these interactions. Chris: If I could jump in there, I also want to point out just with lifterLMS that if you’re not an Infusionsoft user, the stuff that we have built natively inside lifterLMS to allow these trigger points and email engagements that can be personalized to the user to go out is kind of like Infusionsoft-like capability that we’ve brought right into your WordPress and into your learning management system. Don’t feel like you have to use Infusionsoft, but the people that do use Infusionsoft know it’s a really amazing community, pretty advanced in terms of marketing and strategy around types of campaigns people want to build. We just wanted to reach out and since we have all that history with Infusionsoft make that intersection between WordPress learning management system and Infusionsoft, which is optional. You don’t have to use Infusionsoft to supercharge that. Joshua: Transitioning over to scaling the human touch in the Infusionsoft world, I would say the upper echelon, the top 5% of Infusionsoft users, do this, and they do it really well. They do some incredible things with Infusionsoft. I think there needs to be a tool that sits in between Infusionsoft and WordPress that allows the rest of us to do some pretty cool, engaging things with our students and our customers. LifterLMS is that perfect tool. With our Infusionsoft premium add-on that can connect with lifterLMS, you can do a lot of advanced things. All of them are based on tagging options, which if you’re getting into Infusionsoft I recommend using tags for pretty much everything because of their flexibility in organization and starting and stopping actions. With that said, I think where we’re headed here with Infusionsoft and WordPress is creating a learning management system that can also act as a foundation for the Infusionsoft user who wants a deeper integration into their WordPress site. Chris: Absolutely. Also, those of you who aren’t using Infusionsoft, that’s okay. The WordPress users kind of are your CRM. But the Infusionsoft people like their Infusionsoft CRM, so when someone purchases a course now they have a contact record and so on. Joshua: Some of the things that we’re going to be able to do is pass that user data back to Infusionsoft, store things in custom fields, apply tags based on actions. We’re going to be able to pass eCommerce data back through so you’re not going to need a third party plugin to manage that, which there’s a lot of them. Then as time rolls on and we update the plugin, we’ll be able to track a lot of behavioral actions. I think we’ve talked at a high level about even integrating with video players and things like that. We are looking at really creating the foundation of a learning management system and a deep Infusionsoft integration for WordPress. Not that it’s the goal, but I’m excited to see how people use it as a framework to integrate the two. It’s kind of on the horizon I think. Chris: That’s kind of what we do. We’ve built the lifterLMS plugin, but we also do a lot of custom WordPress sites that have membership sites. We do a lot in the Infusionsoft community. We’re kind of at the intersection of WordPress and Infusionsoft, and if that project happens to have online courses or learning management system needs, we can extend and go deep with Infusionsoft advanced integrations or custom learning management system stuff. For the plugin and the Infusionsoft integration, you’re off to the races with just that alone. Then there’s this whole other layer of custom development that in the hands of a skilled developer or someone with skilled Infusionsoft knowledge can really take it to another level of deeper customization and that sort of thing. Joshua: Yep, absolutely. This has been a good one, Chris, to give some insight into where we’re headed with Infusionsoft and lifterLMS. If you have any specific feature requests or needs or what you’d like to see us do, we’d love to hear for you. Please leave us a comment at LMScast.com/Infusionsoft. We’d love to hear from you and get to know what you want to see in our premium add-on for lifterLMS. Chris: Absolutely. Just to wrap it up, part of our story is we came with deep WordPress knowledge. We came with deep Infusionsoft knowledge. We came with learning management system online courses knowledge. We’ve just combined that all together, so we’re really excited to see what other people who are at this intersection are going to do with the tools we’re building and the community around that. Joshua: Yep, absolutely. Until next time, we’ll talk to you soon. The post Infusionsoft and WordPress for Your LMS Courses appeared first on LMScast.

Photo courtesy of Gryphon House Margaret Whitfield, co-author of the forthcoming Kindergarten series, Show and Tell, offers some practical tips on using songs and games for Kindergarten classroom management. There are many reasons for using songs and actions in the kindergarten classroom. They’re memorable, they engage different types of learners, channel energy effectively and - best of all - they’re enjoyable. But songs and actions are also fantastic for encouraging teamwork and managing the classroom. How can songs and actions encourage teamwork? Singing a song is in its nature a collaborative activity. All the children can join in to create something that they’re proud of. Harness this by allowing children to join in at different levels. Give them a tambourine if they’re too shy to sing - they’ll still be absorbing the language, learning the natural rhythm and intonation. If they’re super-confident, give them a line to sing solo. Try arranging the children in a circle and moving around as you sing the song - the children have to work as one or the circle collapses! Ask groups to work together to make up actions or new verses. Have the group teach their verse or actions to the rest of the class, using props and flashcards, if appropriate. By working in groups like this, children are encouraged to collaborate and the less confident members of the class are more likely to contribute. (Try this free song activity idea from Freia Layfield, an Oxford University Press Teacher Trainer.) Think about how you teach songs as a way of promoting teamwork. Encourage the children to be involved in the process. Begin by simple options - listen again, or sing? Clap the rhythm or ‘la-la-la’ to the tune? The children can move to different areas of the classroom according to their choices. Then have a child be in charge of the CD player. Teach the children simple phrases (Pause, please. Play it again, please.) so that they can direct the child working the CD player. With older children, once they are used to being in control, you could challenge a small group to work together with the CD player to learn the song. How can songs and actions be a tool for classroom management? All children have their own ideas about what they want to be doing, and it can sometimes be challenging to focus them on the job in hand, particularly if it’s not one they’re fond of. My experience is that many very young children will respond better to commands if you sing them - however simply, and however badly. Clean up, put your shoes on, wash your hands, and so on. The same can be true with actions - it’s like a code you share with the children; for example, clap your hands to get their attention, hold them in the air, then rub them together as though washing your hands. One advantage of both these approaches is that you’re not using your voice in the usual way. A step on from this is to turn everyday classroom routines into short chants and songs. This can be particularly effective if you use a tune that children know and like; for example, try teaching this ‘clean up’ song, sung to the tune of ‘London Bridge is falling down’: Time to clean up everyone, everyone, everyone. Do it together, let’s have fun, Let’s get busy! If you build in some actions, as well, you can ensure that children are focused on the song and not carrying on with what they were doing. In our forthcoming series, Show and Tell, my co-authors and I have included chants to support good behavior, so you can build these into your classroom routine and use them as a fun reminder. For example, when a child drops something (or looks as though he/she is about to!): Little hands be careful, Pick it up and hold it tight. Little hands be careful, And it will be alright. You can also use songs as a reward. Leave time at the end of the lesson, pick a child whose work or behavior has been especially good, and ask them to choose their favorite English song for the class to sing. These are just a few ways that songs and actions can be used to promote teamwork and help with classroom management. If you have any feedback or ideas of your own to share, please post! Would you like more practical tips on classroom management and how to develop communication, collaboration and other 21st century skills with your kindergarten children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st Century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools. Sign up for the webinar on Making the most of kindergarten classroom management on 18 December.Filed under: Pre-school Children, Professional Development, Skills Tagged: Classroom management, Collaboration, Communication skills, Creativity, EFL, ELT, Kindergarten, Margaret Whitfield, Mixed-ability, Show and Tell, Songs, Speaking, Teamwork

In today’s LMScast, Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett talk about the 3 E’s of online education. These 3 E’s are all about how you can create a successful online course and how you can really change someone’s life and help them improve in some way. The 3 E’s are: Educate Entertain Execution These 3 E’s of online education are also the secret to how you can take your online course to the next level. The first of the 3 E’s of online education is Educate. Since the point of online teaching is education, most people creating a course have some level of experience with how to educate. Something that edupreneurs can learn from internet marketers is the concept of results in advance. You should give your students something early on in your course that they can put into action so that they continue to stay engaged with your content. And giving your students a skill or helping them solve a problem is key to educating. The second of the 3 E’s of online education is Entertain. It is possible to make an online course educational and entertaining at the same time, and this is an area where many education entrepreneurs need to put in some extra effort. Your course content should be engaging, and you should differentiate your course offerings from other courses in your market. It’s also important to bring the human touch into your educational material. Once you’ve gotten the edutainment in place and you’re making the course interesting and fun, the next step is the last of the 3 E’s of online education: Execution. In this step, you’re empowering the learner to execute based off what they’ve learned and what they were entertained by. Execution takes the course materials out of the intangible realm of ideas and into action steps the student can take with the material they learned. One example of an execution call to action is to end a lesson by saying, "If you were going to take one action from this lesson, I recommend that you do this…" As an education entrepreneur, you need to support that drive to execute in your learners. And our call to action for you today is to go set up the 3 E’s of online education in your next course: Educate, Entertain, Execution. We’d love for you to leave a comment underneath this episode to let us know how you’re using the 3 E’s in your online course! You can also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. Joshua: Hello everyone! Welcome to LMScast, and I’m joined with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about the three E’s of online education. Chris, what are the three E’s? Christopher: The three E’s are all about hot to create a successful online course and how to really change somebody’s life and help them improve in some way. The three E’s are Educate, Entertain, and Execution. Joshua: I love that, because it’s easy for me to remember primarily. Educate, I think that one goes without saying, I mean that’s the point of online teaching and everyone who’s creating a course should know how to teach at some level. I think the thing to remember is you want to offer them some sort of result earlier on in the course rather than later, to help them stay engaged. I think that’s something that the edupreneur can learn from the internet marketer with that whole concept of results in advance. Give them something early on. Give them something they can put into action often so that they continue to engage with the content. Do you have anything to add to that? Christopher: I would just say that yeah, education is the most obvious one. In some ways, it kind of slips under the rug like if you’re just entertaining. For example in a podcast format, I know there’s some podcasts where it’s very entertaining, but in the end, you’re like, "Wait a second, what did I learn? Did I actually learn something there? Was it just funny or like a lot of conversation and stuff?" Education is giving somebody a skill or helping them work through their problem is key. Joshua: Yeah. I think it’s really key. What’s the second E again? Christopher: That will be entertainment, which I think a lot of education entrepreneurs need to step it up a little bit in terms of making their content engaging and differentiating and bringing that human touch to their educational material a little bit. Joshua: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, some of my best professors were just complete nut cases in front of the classroom, but it was always fun to go to class, and it was always fun to learn with them, because they kept it interesting, and they peaked my attention span by making things educational and entertaining at the same time. Then the third one is execute? Christopher: Yeah. That’s one that … if you get good at edutainment like where you’re making your education interesting and fun, the next level is really to take it to where you’re empowering the learner to execute based off of what they learned and what they were entertained by. That’s things like, "If you’re going to take one action from this lesson today, I recommend that you do this…" or it might be some supplemental materials that go with that lesson like download this worksheet PDF, fill it out, then you’ll be ready for the next episode. You’re getting people out of idea land into the execution. Joshua: I like that. It’s calling them to action. Telling them to go do something with the material that they learned. Christopher: Absolutely. Yes. There’s a lot people like what I would call "idea people" out there and they have a lot of great ideas, these huge great ideas, learners that have great ideas. At the end of the day, it’s all about execution. As an educator or educational entrepreneur, you need to support that drive to execute in your learner, because if you’re not doing that, you’re failing. Joshua: Right. Absolutely. I think then that our call to action for this episode is go set up your three E’s in your course, on your next course. I would love to hear from you. You can come and contact us at LMScast.com in the comments underneath this episode. You throw a comment in there. Chris and I answer all the comments, so we’d love to hear how you’re using the three E’s of education to I guess spice up your online course. Christopher: Absolutely. That’s the secret to taking it to the next level. It’s educate, entertain, and help people execute. Joshua: Absolutely. All right. Well thank you for watching this episode of LMScast, and we will see you in the next episode. The post The 3 E’s of Online Education for Your Course appeared first on LMScast.

This wordle is free by linking back to ==> mrkirsch.edublogs.org <== Part #1 - Case Study ==> Read the scenario below: "When he was at the park, Emilio took an amazing photo of a squirrel hanging with one paw from a tree branch. He uploaded this photo to his Flickr photo-sharing website. He also entered it in the school’s photography contest, and it won first prize! Soon people at school visited his Flickr site to download his funny photo. His friends posted the photo on their profiles, blogs, and webpages. Some people at school printed out the photo and posted it in their lockers. Someone in art class used the photo in a collage. Someone else from another school made T-shirts with the photo and sold them." Part #2 - Apply New Knowledge (Answer these questions on your blog). 1. If you were Emilio, how would you feel? 2. Do people using Emilio’s photo have a responsibility to ask permission before they use his work? Should they give him credit for his work? 3. Is there a difference between a person selling Emilio’s photo, and a person using the photo just because he or she likes it? Is it different when the people using the photo are Emilio’s friends? 4. If Emilio was concerned about the copyright of his photo, what could he do? Part #3 - Complete this post by Friday, March 13, 2015 @5pm. 

Kathleen Kampa and Charles Vilina, co-authors of the forthcoming Young Learners series, Oxford Discover, share some classroom management tips. As teachers of young learners, we all know the benefits of a well-managed classroom. Our students are alert, focused, and excited to learn. All of our energies can go into teaching the lesson, rather than dealing with management issues. So how can we achieve this perfect classroom? It’s important to remember that good classroom management is like fire prevention - our aim is to avoid problems in the first place. A teacher who is well organized and prepared, and who has specific goals for each lesson, is off to a very good start! However, there are other things we can do to keep our students focused and happy. We’d like to begin with two broad perspectives on classroom management, and then move on to some simple strategies that you can use right away. 1. How students perceive learning determines a lot of their behavior If students sense that learning is a one-way street, with information flowing only from the teacher to the student, management problems can occur from the very beginning of the lesson. Some students may be bored, others may feel forced to learn, and others may seek to stand out and be noticed by misbehaving. The solution is to create a classroom of curiosity, nurturing a spirit of "wondering". These qualities of curiosity and wondering are natural to students, but are often lost in traditional classroom settings. As teachers, we can reignite these qualities by being curious and wondering ourselves, as in: I wonder how caterpillars turn into butterflies. I wonder how this machine works. I wonder if there is another way to do this. I wonder how energy is created and used. After observing this type of questioning from their teacher, students are encouraged to join in and ask their own questions. They perceive that they are seeking answers together, and that there may be many possible answers. Students become empowered to learn and discover as a class. They are also eager to share what they have learned with their teacher, making them partners in learning. As a result, there are fewer occasions for misbehavior or boredom. 2. CCBA - Catch Children Being Amazing! We created the acronym CCBA (Catch Children Being Amazing) to remind teachers that students respond better to praise than to criticism. By noticing and pointing out how something is being done well, teachers give students specific examples of good behavior and learning. As you continue to comment on your students’ good behaviors, creative ideas, and positive contributions, you can easily shift the focus of attention from bad to good. Here are some examples: I’m really pleased to see how well you all made a circle and got ready to sing. Look at how Jenna and Miki are making big letter shapes together. Michael, you wrote your story so neatly in your notebook. Noticing and commenting on your students’ good behavior and achievements also builds confidence. Students often tell their parents later about a CCBA moment in their class. In so many ways, CCBA creates a positive classroom environment that supports learning for the entire year. Here are some simple classroom management strategies you can try tomorrow! "Quiet signal" - Kathleen Kampa, Oxford Discover co-author   1. Refocusing Student Attention Occasionally, it is necessary to get your students’ attention, especially if they are chatting after an activity is over. It is best to do this in a calm, quiet, and confident manner. Here are two simple strategies you can try. Before using them, it’s a good idea to practice with your students several times until they become natural. The first strategy is called the "quiet signal". To do this, raise one hand while placing the forefinger of your other hand over your lips. Students then imitate these actions. Soon everyone is quiet. The second strategy is to use a simple clapping rhythm. When students hear it, they repeat it. This signal is a clear way to get your students’ attention. 2. Transitional Songs Transitional songs help move students smoothly from one activity to the next. They’re particularly useful for classes with young learners. Here are two songs you’ll be able to use tomorrow in your classroom. Come and Sit In Front of Me (by Kathleen Kampa) Melody: The Muffin Man Come and sit in front of me, in front of me, in front of me, Come and sit in front of me, in front of me. Let’s Make a Circle (by Kathleen Kampa) Melody: Skip To My Lou Let’s make a circle big and round, Let’s make a circle big and round, Let’s make a circle big and round, Everybody please sit down. 3. Celebrating Success Creating a climate of success is important. Students work hard in your classroom, so celebrate their achievements! Here’s a chant you can use often throughout your lesson: We Did It! (Celebration Chant by Kathleen Kampa) Celebration Chant - We Did It! We did it! We did it! We did it today! We did it! We did it! Hip hip hooray! 4. Working Together When students work together in pairs or small groups, they’re building the 21st Century skill of collaboration. Students who work together toward a common goal are focused and engaged learners. When dividing students into pairs and groups, it is important that the students view the process as fair. First, decide the size of each group, based on the activity and the number of students you have. Sometimes an activity asks for students to work in pairs, or groups of three or four students. Some groups can have one additional student if the class cannot divide equally into groups. There are many ways to divide students into groups. For example, if you want eight groups, students count off from "one" to "eight." If you want six groups, they count off from "one" to "six". Students with the same number then work together. Another method is to have students pull colored cards out of a box without looking. Students with the same color work together. Students can also be placed in pairs or groups prepared beforehand by the teacher. One strategy is to place shy students with more confident students. This creates a unique opportunity to unify the class and include everyone in the learning process. Classroom management issues exist with every class. However, by creating a positive environment of curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and encouragement, your class will develop a group personality that embraces learning. Happy teaching, everyone! Kathleen Kampa and Charles Vilina Would you like more practical tips on classroom management and developing 21st Century skills with your children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools. Sign up for a webinar on Making the most of classroom management on 17 & 19 December.Filed under: Professional Development, Young Learners Tagged: 21st Century skills, Chants, Charles Vilina, Children, Classroom management, Collaboration, Kathleen Kampa, Oxford Discover, Songs, Young Learners

There’s something in the DNA of an education entrepreneur that drives them to teach for profit, and there’s no greater classroom than the internet. In today’s LMScast Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett discuss characteristics of educators and entrepreneurs, and how those characteristics can come together to create exceptional online courses. The simplest definitions are that an educator is all about teaching, and an entrepreneur is all about the money. But the edupreneur is a blend of those categories. This individual has an "irrational passion" for sharing their knowledge and skills, but also wants to realize a monetary return for sharing what they know. When developing a tool for all of these people, the designer needs to understand what they do and how they work in order to create truly functional tools for them. An educator has a core passion for their subject matter and they simply want to teach what they know and love to as many people they can reach. The subject can be anything, from business to crafting, but passion is what drives the need to share it. The more enthusiastic the teacher is, the better rapport they will establish with their students. Maturity is also a key factor for online educators. The Google Analytics for our LifterLMS WordPress learning management system software users shows that most course designers are aged 30 to 40. The second highest group is between 40 and 50, while the third highest is between 20 and 30. Maturity is, of course, not necessarily age-based, but is more indicative of experience and immersion with a subject. Designing truly good, solid courses requires a level of commitment, organization, and knowledge that is generally attained with maturity, which usually — but not necessarily — comes with age. If you have what it takes to do the work, certainly don’t let your age stop you. Entrepreneurship figures in as a desire to sell something new and progressive that will be beneficial to others. In order to do that, the product has to be promoted and distributed. It is the marketing and delivery factor that pure educators may have difficulty with, while teaching may not come naturally to entrepreneurs with a mind for business and sales. But each can learn by doing, and the best approach is to start with small projects and work your way up. Pick something relatively easy and learn how to do it. Master that skill and then advance to the next level. It also helps to have a community to interact with, and that is not always readily available to edupreneurs who tend to work in isolation. Online communities like the LifterLMS Facebook and Twitter groups and user forums are a valuable resource to eLearning educators and entrepreneurs. In designing their LifterLMS WordPress learning management system, Joshua and Christopher have drawn upon their individual backgrounds in online education and business, as well as input from their users, to develop an exceptionally versatile and user-friendly platform for designing dynamic, engaging online courses for people who possess the DNA of an education entrepreneur. They have also made it simple for you to monetize your course offerings. Try a demo of LifterLMS here and see for yourself what it can do for you. Remember that you can post comments and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. Joshua: Hello, everyone. We’re back with another LMScast episode. I am Joshua Millage, and I’m joined with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about the DNA of an education entrepreneur, and really what it means to be an education entrepreneur. Chris, I’m going to let you start it off since you are an education entrepreneur and you have been for quite some time. What are you like, man? Chris: That’s a good question. I think part if too just circles back to the fact that we created LifterLMS, a WordPress learning management system plugin that makes it possible to create and sell online courses. As an entrepreneur outside of the education entrepreneur space, we really needed to understand our target market of who are we building this tool for, who’s it for. For example, in my past I’ve done a lot of alpine mountaineering. When I select an ice ax for how I’m going to climb the mountain and use that for self-arrest, and whether I’m going to be ice climbing or just straight up steep angle mountaineering I want a very different tool, but it’s helpful to get inside the mind of that climber or inside the mind of that person who’s going to be using the tool. Yes, that’s one of the things that makes it unique for me in terms of being a part of the creating force behind LifterLMS, is the fact that I’ve also created and sold online courses on my own before that. There’s a couple things that I see that’s common among education entrepreneurs. The first I would just say is it’s just an irrational passion around the subject. That’s number one, plain and simple. To give some examples of that, it doesn’t really matter what niche you’re in, whether it’s highly professional business-oriented, whether that’s accounting or stock trading or auditing. Whatever it is, there’s people in those spaces that have a high degree of irrational passion. It can also go to the artistic realm, something like quilting or painting or drawing, or into the more vocational fields like farming or automotive repair. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, we all know it. If you look inside of all your friends you can very quickly say, "Oh yeah, that person has an irrational passion for this thing." That’s a key component of the education entrepreneurs: having that passion. Joshua: I would agree with that. That’s going to create the best learning, too when the person who is teaching it is truly engaged at a whole different level, so I would agree with that. Chris: Totally. Joshua: What else is part of the DNA? Chris: I think a desire to teach is the next one, and it also comes often from a place of maturity. A lot of the people we run across as clients in the WordPress learning management system space, or they want an advanced membership site above and beyond what’s typically possible with a membership site, or some advanced experience for their target audience that includes some education, that maturity often translates into being a little older. I can just say looking at the Google Analytics of our LifterLMS learning management system software that the highest group of people is between 30 and 40. Then the second highest is between 40 and 50. The third highest is between 20 and 30. Not that you have to fall in one of those age brackets, but the education entrepreneur tends to be a little older than the people they’re teaching to. As I would say, it’s more of like a 30+ thing, but not always. Joshua: Absolutely. What about the people who are under the age of 30? Can they be edupreneurs, or they all automatically internet marketers because they’re younger? Chris: I don’t think so. There’s a lot of great internet who are older and younger. It’s more an issue of I think the maturity to take the time to curate all that knowledge, have the desire to teach, and also have the organization to chunk it down into curriculum that can be taught. It just takes time. That being said, I know teachers in traditional education who went straight from high school to college to get a teaching degree, and they were student teaching. When they came into the high school to student teach they didn’t look that much older than you and they were right there with you. It’s not like you have to be that old. I’m just making an observation from the people that are attracted to learning management system software and the audience around that. They just tend to be a little bit older. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it if you’re younger, and in fact, my hat’s off to you. I think everybody should teach something as soon as possible, even in the teens or younger. Because the best way to learn something and to master that craft is to teach it. Joshua: I would agree with that. I think as soon as you switch into the teacher mindset there’s an accountability and a level of responsibility that you feel being someone who’s going to broker knowledge. It forces you to go deeper. It’s like something in your head just clicks in, and you’re like I need to learn this at a different level, so I agree with that. I think the other thing about an education entrepreneur is the entrepreneur part of it, which is they want to take that and they want to put it together and they want to sell it, and they want the world to benefit. They want to distribute it in some way. That resonates with me. I think I’m kind of a pure entrepreneur in that sense, a little bit crazy in that. I think any entrepreneur is. I think what I would say to those people who maybe have the entrepreneurial side but they don’t know want to teach, is to start with something. You started with omelettes for no other reason than you just needed to get in the mode. That’s what I’ve always appreciated about you, Chris, even when you wrote your book and then you created a course around how to write a book in a weekend or a blog post or something like that. It’s these mini experiments. It’s these little tries. It’s these low threshold, low barrier to entry tests that propel us forward. I’m speaking to myself because there’s a couple of things that I want to learn and teach that I need to just push myself through and go. I would say to those people that don’t know where to start, pick something easy and remember that the journey kind of looks like eating an elephant. It’s massive and it seems daunting, but you just do it one bite at a time. Chris: Absolutely. Yeah there’s often this dichotomy or this conflict between the educator and the entrepreneur. The educator is fighting the cause for education but isn’t concerned with the money, and the entrepreneur is all about the money and just extracting value in some way. But that’s not really how it works. I always encourage people to transcend and include both of those things. If you happen to lean more to the teacher side, the education side, develop the entrepreneur side. If you happen to be really entrepreneurial, lean more into mastering some specific skill and doing those many experiments. Something I’ve done is I’ve partnered with educators like in the organic gardening niche and brought my entrepreneurial expertise to their subject matter expertise, and then we’re really powerful by that partnership. There’s all kinds of ways to bridge that gap of entrepreneurship, but at the end of the day serious entrepreneurs are all about creating value and changing the world in a positive way. That’s who we’re speaking to. Joshua: I love it. Chris, this has been a good one, and I think it will resonate with a lot of people. Hopefully it inspires people to take action. A shameless plug, but if you’re looking for a system to build and sell your courses, we’ve got just that system over at LifterLMS.com. We’re really proud of it. It’s out into the wild now. You can go and check it out. There’s a demo at demo.lifterlms.com. If anything, regardless of whether or not you buy it, we’d love to just get your feedback on it. Feedback is really huge to us. It helps us create a better product for the market, and so it’s really important for us to hear that. Chris, do you have any final thoughts for the crew? Chris: Yeah, I would just give another shameless plug, and we also have this great product, but we also have this great community that’s surrounds it of other education entrepreneurs. The final thing I would add is that there’s a lot of education entrepreneurs out there that are kind of isolated. It’s one thing in my business experience and marketing experience. I’ve really noticed that these education entrepreneurs often are a little bit more isolated. They don’t really pack up and tribe up like some other niches or subcultures out there. It can feel kind of isolated, and you’re like, wow, I want to teach this stuff and I want to build a business around it, and I’m not really surrounded by other people like that. We offer that with the community that’s building around LifterLMS in social media and our Facebook community and our forums and so on. If this does resonate with you, it’s just another perk to getting onboard with LifterLMS so that you can rub shoulders with other people that think like you, and we welcome you to that community. Joshua: Absolutely. Right on. Thank you all for listening and we’ll see you next week. The post The DNA of an Education Entrepreneur appeared first on LMScast.

This Wordle-Logo is Free by linking it to ==> gustmees.wordpress.com <==     Part #1 - Tackk The link here ==> Tackk takes you to the platform Tackk. This is the web tool we will be utilizing to create our Job Descriptions.    Part #2 - What is a job description mean? What does it include? Lesson 79- My job description - English Basic Communication. from Mr. Kirsch on Vimeo.   Please click the ==> link  and watch the video about what a job description. What it  is and what does it include when employers are looking for new employees for specific jobs.   Part #3 - Job Description Examples Please click here to access some different examples of what job descriptions are and what they look like. There is also a guide for a "How To" write a job description as well. This will be your background information when you begin creating your job description on Tackk.  jdHowToWrite_printerFriendly Job Description Template Please refer to the Job Description template ==> below when you begin creating your own Job Description of your favorite job utilizing @Tackk.   

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week’s blog is in response to Raef Sobh Azab’s blog comment regarding the challenge of motivating students who are in an exam-focussed environment. Stacey Hughes from the Professional Development Team discusses how to take English beyond the focus of exams. One major problem is that the educational system in my country is mainly exam-based. Most teachers, students, and even parents do not care at all about the quality of learning. They are mainly concerned with passing the exams. L1 is all the time used in class, real life English is not stressed, language skills are not practised at all, learning aims are not achieved, and private lessons given to students at home or in private centers are the norm. This is really frustrating for some teachers who are keen on improving their teaching skills and eager to get their students engaged in the learning process, thus, achieve a real progress and taste the beauty of language." Certainly, one way to ensure students are exam-focussed is to make exams central to the course. Constant reference to exams either by the teacher, parents or institution will show students that passing the exam is the goal. But how can we make English communication skills the goal? 1. Determine personal learning goals The first thing is to find out from students what their personal learning goals are. Do they want to just pass the exam or do they actually want to learn to communicate in English? Do they want to be able to listen to music, watch films, or search the web in English? Do they want to be able to go to an English speaking country and speak with people there? Do they want to be able to get a job where they use English to communicate via email or telephone? Or maybe they want a job that allows them to travel - in this case, English may be useful. Help students find an intrinsic reason to learn English - one that is important on a personal level. It also must be said that there may still be students who don’t really want to learn English, and for whom passing the exams is the only goal. However, if the exams are based on reading, writing, listening and speaking in English, then maybe they will see that improving these skills will also help them pass the exams. 2. Use English as the classroom language Create the expectation that for the time that English lessons are going on, they will be conducted in English. This change may take some time for students to get used to, so take it slowly. Maybe you could aim for half an hour at first and then build on that. Make sure you reassure students that, during the last 5-10 minutes of the lesson, they can ask questions in the L1 if they didn’t understand. Make your instructions clear and make sure you use examples, visuals and, if necessary, written support on the board to accommodate students who aren’t confident in trusting their listening skills. Finally, encourage students to use English when speaking to each other and praise them when they do. 3. Make sure each lesson has a clear communicative aim Instead of an aim such as, to learn the present perfect, make the aim, to talk and write about things I have done before. This shift in focus lets the students know what the communicative purpose is for learning the tense - how it can be used in real communication. Scaffold tasks so that students have lots of support. So, for example, you might do a Find Someone Who… type exercise in which students have to ask each other, "Have you ever…".  Write the kernel on the board, brainstorm some endings and write them on the board: …walked for more than five miles, …eaten foreign food, …run a marathon… Keep these on the board during the discussion phase so that students can refer to them for support. Stronger students will be able to make up their own, so this is an example of an activity which could work well in a mixed ability class. 4. Don’t make exams the only focus There are lots of ways to bring in on-going assessment and even self-assessment to show students that each stage of the lesson is important. Listen to students during tasks and tell them if you think they are doing a great job at speaking in English - give them an "A" for the activity. Create a check list that students can use to self-assess: I can talk about what I’ve done. I can ask someone if s/he has ever done something. I can write about what I’ve done. (etc.). Ask them to assess themselves honestly and set review tasks if students feel they can’t really do that yet. 5. Take learning out of the classroom Ask students to set some realistic personal language goals that are not part of the course: respond in English to a blog post, listen to a song and copy out the words, look for information about a favourite subject in English on the web - there are many possibilities. Breaking out of the exam-based mentality can be difficult. While it is still important for students to do well in exams, there is nothing to stop them from having their own personal goals for learning English. Even if their goals don’t ‘count’ towards a grade, for the student, they may be even more important. Invitation to share your ideas We are interested in hearing your ideas about teaching English beyond the exams, so please comment on this post and take part in our live Facebook chat on Friday, 6 December at 12pm GMT. Please keep your challenges coming. The best way to let us know is by leaving a comment below or on the EFLproblems blog post. We will respond to your challenges in a blog every two weeks. Each blog will be followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats. Related articles #EFLproblems - Cell phones in the adult classroom: interruption or resource? (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Teaching writing in the age of WhatsApp (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Motivating Young Learners (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Exams & Testing, Professional Development Tagged: #EFLproblems, Communication skills, EFL, Exam preparation, Exams, Language learning, Personal learning goals, Professional Development, Stacey Hughes