I can always tell when there has been a learning event somewhere in the world, because I suddenly get a whole raft of new Twitter followers coming through at once, instead of the trickle that is the daily norm.I don't use any auto-refollow tools, so there is always a bit of a lag as I catch up, because I go through the list 'by hand' and decide whom to follow (or not).I tweeted about this after the recent Learning Technologies conference and was asked:This is a question I get quite often, so let me give a comprehensive answer in a space that affords me more than 140 characters for the purpose.First, and almost without saying - no spambots, as David mentions. It isn't always easy to tell a spambot right off the bat - they're getting devilish smart. But a few indicators are:Their names are often firstname+number. So Maxine1234 (or something like that) would have me doubting her humanity from the outset. However, I do have some Twitter friends whose names are something along those lines, so it's just a rule of thumb, not an absolute.They tweet the same flipping thing (or a few very similar flipping things) over and over and over again.They have no biography.They follow thousands of people (and may be followed by a similarly large number), but have only ever tweeted a handful of times.Second, I like to see a bio, and the more interesting or quirky it is, the better. For example, my Twitter friends' bios include such lines as:Dad, entrepreneur, and Star Wars freak (@dbswe)I'm all about learning, fashion, football, social media + cricket, not always in that order :) (@kategraham23)Often laughing. Always learning. Collaborating nonstop. You ready? (@marciamarcia)I'm passionate about training, L&D. I also bake fantastic chocolate cake. (@susiefinch)You see? You know something about these people already. You know that Dave (@dbswe) takes being a Dad more seriously than he takes himself. You know that Kate defies stereotypes with girly girl interests and a love of sport. You know that Marcia is all systems go, and she'll take you with her if you give her half a chance. You know that Susie doubles as a homebody and would be good company over a cup of coffee. Real people. Just like you.I also prefer a link to a blog/website, so I can get an idea of what floats your boat. If there is no bio or blog link, only a kick*ss series of tweets will get me following you. If you're following me on my @learninganorak account, it must be because we share a passion for learning (I have a personal account for more eclectic musings). So I will visit your page, and see what you tweet about. If you only ever tweet quotable quotes, homilies and truisms forget it. I want to know what you think! If you only ever retweet (RT) what someone else has posted, hmm... probably forget it, too. I can read those things first time around. Don't get me wrong, I use the RT feature a lot myself, and I appreciate it when other people do, too. But if that's all you do, what value are you adding?And if you only ever tweet about one narrow subject, such as LMSs or PSS or whatever, then after a couple of days, I'll probably have read everything you're likely to say.Twitter is a conversation. A hectic, everyone-talking-at-once conversation, and it is my number 1 personal learning tool. So... contribute already.I don't choose to follow only those people who agree with me. How boring would that be? I could sit at home and talk to myself (yes, you're right - I do that, too!), but if you're going to disagree (with me or anyone else), be grown-up about it. I can't be doing with name-calling, peeing contests (to put it politely) and slanging matches. I think that's about it, really. I know it sounds like a lot, but I'm not really that precious. I do follow over 900 people, and keeping up with them is a tall order. How people manage with thousands, I have no idea! Maybe I'll find out one day.

Interview with Claudia Reuter, Founder and CEO of SchoolChapters, Inc.Pruvalu by SchoolChapters is an integrated ePortfolio for Higher Education.We answer the questions:What is Pruvalu used for? Institution AccreditationStudent Assessment and EvaluationStudent Personal PortfoliosStandards-Based Faculty PortfoliosDoes it integrate with the LMS?Does it support mobile devices?Does it integrate with Facebook or LinkedIn?Related ePortfolio LinksRPP #100: TaskStream: Interview with Courtney PeaglerRPP #97 Interview with Trent BatsonRPP #10 Electronic PortfoliosPodsafe music selection from MagnatuneVivaldi: Concerto No. 4 in G Minor "Winter" (Allegro movement) from The Four Seasons by the American Baroque Orchestra. Duration: 26:00

Prior to becoming an Editor for Oxford University Press, Mexico, Lysette Taplin worked as an English language teacher and author for a number of primary and secondary series. In this post she promotes World Poetry Day by sharing some practical tips to use in the ELT Classroom. Poetry is an effective tool in English language teaching as it enlivens the class, giving the students a motivational buzz while stimulating their creative writing. The emphasis on the sounds and rhythm of language aids students’ phonological awareness, building a foundation for correct pronunciation and intonation, which in turn has a strong correlation to proficiency in reading and listening. In order to celebrate World Poetry Day, this blog aims to present a selected poem from the OUP series Step Inside and provide ideas for ways to exploit poetry in the English language-learning classroom. As an ELT Editor for OUP, I had the opportunity to work on an inspiring series of reading anthologies for primary school students. The series Step Inside promotes extensive reading by using texts from a variety of genres, including poetry, fables, myths and legends, fairy tales, fiction, non-fiction, and comics. The following excerpt has been selected from a poem included in Step Inside, level 4: Wayne the Stegosaurus Written by Kenn Nesbitt Meet the Stegosaurus, Wayne. He doesn’t have the biggest brain. He’s long and heavy, wide and tall, But has a brain that’s extra small. He’s not the brightest dinosaur. He thinks that one plus one is four. He can’t remember up from down. He thinks the sky is chocolate brown. Using poetry to teach pronunciation This humorous poem can be used to focus students on English pronunciation by working with rhyme. In your class, put students into pairs and give each pair the lines of the poem cut up into strips. Have them work together to identify and group the lines that end in rhyming pairs. Tell students that rhyming pairs are two words that end in the same sound, for example Wayne and brain, tall and small. Highlight some of the difficult spelling patterns, for example Wayne, brain; tries, eyes; white, night, etc. while emphasizing the pronunciation of each of the sounds. Then, tell students that they are going to create a rhyming chain. Instruct students to choose four rhyming pairs from the poem and write down as many other words that rhyme as they can. Have some volunteers write their rhyming words on the board to check answers as a class. Next, read the poem aloud and have students order the lines from the poem. Ask volunteers to read the poem aloud to check answers as a class. Rhyming Schemes The pattern of rhymes in a poem is labelled with the letters A, B, C, D, etc. To identify the rhyming scheme, tell students to look at the last word in each line. Tell them to label the first set of lines that rhyme with A, then label the second set B, etc. In the case of the poem above, the rhyming scheme for each stanza is AABB because the first two lines in the stanza rhyme with each other as do the last two lines. Below is an example of an ABCB rhyming scheme, excerpt taken from Step Inside, level 2: Art Class Written by Penelope McKimm Art class can be lots of fun, With so many things to do! Cutting, coloring, painting, drawing, Sticking things with glue! Have students illustrate the poem Have students work in groups of six. Encourage them to think about what happens in each of the stanzas and then, choose one of the stanzas to illustrate. When they have all finished illustrating their stanzas, have them put them in order and present their work to the rest of the class. Writing Give students a handout of a poem with some words missing. It could be the same poem students were working with before, or a different poem. Wayne the Stegosaurus Written by Kenn Nesbitt Meet the Stegosaurus, __________. He doesn’t have the biggest __________. He’s __________ and __________, __________ and __________, But has a __________ that’s extra __________. Put students into pairs and have them brainstorm words to complete the gaps. Encourage them to include rhymes, but tell them that they can change the rhyming scheme if they wish. Another activity which provides students with scaffolding for their poem is to tell them to write a five line poem with the following structure: First line: a noun Second line: four adjectives Third line: an action Fourth line: how you feel about the noun Fifth line: the noun This activity can be carried out individually or in pairs or small groups. Encourage students to use a thesaurus to think of exciting adjectives, for example superb instead of good. Below is an example of a five-line poem T. Rex Fierce, fast, green and scaly Goes out hunting daily Makes me shiver to the bone T. Rex Both students and teachers often tend to fear poetry, but by providing the proper scaffolding, we advocate creativity and give our students sense of accomplishment. As teachers, we need to make it clear to our students that it is okay to make mistakes. The most important thing is to let their imaginations run wild, and then have them go back and edit their work once they are finished. Please note that not all titles are available in every market. Please check with your local office about local title availability.Filed under: Grammar & Vocabulary, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: Activities, Creative writing, Intonation, phonological awareness, Poems, poetry, poetry activities, Pronunciation, rhyme, rhyming scheme, Step Inside, teaching with poems, World Poetry Day, Writing

Interview with Charley Miller, Head of Product at TouchCastTouchCast is a new startup out of bMuse from New York that is reinventing video content creation using touch via the iPadWe answer the questions:What is TouchCast?How is it different from other video editors?What is a Vapp?How do you create and play a TouchCast?What is TouchCast Cloud Collaboration?Linkswww.touchcast.comTouchCast on iTunesTouchCast ExamplesGreen Screen Augmented Reality Technology to Use in the ClassroomNEW! TouchCast Cloud CollaborationPodsafe music selection from MagnatuneVivaldi: Concerto No. 1 in D Major (Spring, 1st Movement) from The Four Seasons by the American Baroque Orchestra. Duration: 24:54

While I was adding a new recipe to my cookery blog this morning, I remembered the little tuck shop that I had for my kids when they were really small. I remembered it with great fondness, but it occurred to me that it might fill some people with horror that I was prepared to take money from my children. In fact, it was a wonderful learning experience for us all, so I thought I might share it here:When the kids were little, I chose not to go back to work full time, operating instead as a freelance training consultant with a few other odds and ends thrown into the mix, and working on an ad hoc basis. This choice meant that money was tight. So we couldn't really afford to give our children large amounts of pocket money, but we did want them to learn about having money, spending it, saving it and so on. We knew that they would want to buy sweets, but a single packet of sweeties cost more than we could afford to give them. So I hit on the idea of Mom's tuck shop.I would buy packets of sweeties and empty them into a large Tupperware cake container. I also used to make things myself (one of which is on my cookery blog today) to go into the container. Then, each day after lunch, I would open Mom's tuck shop. I would stand one one side of the kitchen counter, and they would stand on chairs on the other with their coins clasped in their little fists and select individual sweeties from what was on offer. There was a whole role play thing involved. I would call them 'young sir' and talk to them as if they were terribly important customers whose patronage was the highlight of my day (which, I don't mind telling you, it was - I'm all choked up, just remembering it!).Of course, the sweets were heavily subsidised. I didn't want to make my money back. I wanted them to experience the purchasing process. Looking back now: the early spending patterns are still in evidence. My elder son was somewhat tight with his money. He carefully figured out how to get the largest return in his investment, and would often choose to go without rather than part with his wealth. This is still the case today. My younger son bought two of everything: one for him, and one for "Daddy, when he comes home." I don't think Daddy ever tasted anything sweeter! My younger son is still generous to a fault, and will happily blow everything he has on a single gift (but he is learning a little caution).Of course, they sometimes wanted to buy things that weren't available from the tuck shop. Then they would have to save up to go to a real shop. And this meant standing by while the other child bought his daily sweeties - going without for the sake of the reward being saved for. It used to break my heart to see the longing, but it was an important lesson, so I clenched my teeth and took a big girl pill.I have to confess that the interest rates on savings accounts at the Bank of Dad were brilliant: save for five weeks and you'll get double! My elder son often went that route. My younger son, not so much.Mom's tuck shop didn't form part of our lives in England - by then both boys were at school, and the English school day goes on into the afternoon (unlike the South African school day which ended at lunch time). When they were 13, our boys were switched from pocket money to an allowance, with which they had to buy their own clothes, airtime, toiletries, etc. (except for anything to do with school or sports club commitments) we carry those costs.When they hit 18, the allowance is increased to include train fares, and they have to learn to budget for the termly expense.But I will never forget Mom's tuck shop. Maybe I will introduce it with my grandchildren one day...

Victoria Murphy, Professor of Applied Linguistics and author of Second language learning in the early school years: Trends and Contexts, shares her thoughts on the importance of L2 development in childhood, ahead of her forthcoming talk at IATEFL 2015 on Tuesday 14th on the same subject. How children learn second languages has long interested me. Looking back, even from a very young age I was fascinated with the notion of bilingualism. As a child growing up in Ottawa, Canada I was fortunate in that I had very early second language instruction - indeed I was taught French as part of my pre-school and kindergarten education. When I was in grade 3 I recall that a very nice lady came into the class and told us that if we were interested in having all of our school day in French in grade 4, that we should take the letter she was distributing home to our parents and get them to sign it. I vividly remember how excited I was then at the prospect of speaking French for the whole day! Little did I know then that I was to end up participating in an early cohort of French Immersion education, a form of bilingual education that I would later go on to study as an academic. That very early interest in bilingualism stuck with me and eventually motivated me to go on and study Linguistics and Psychology at undergraduate level and then as part of my graduate work examine more closely some of the mechanisms which underpin child L2 learning. Why is child L2 learning important? More than ever I believe the field of child L2 learning, and particularly the role that formal education has in developing plurilingual citizens, is critically important to our futures, for a variety of reasons, which include social, economic, political and cognitive perspectives. I think too that we need to have a much better understanding of the factors and influences that shape successful L2 development in childhood, and again, to identify more precisely the role that educational policy, schools and teachers can play in determining successful L2 outcomes. This understanding is all the more important because increasingly governments around the world are lowering the age at which children are being taught a foreign language as part of their formal primary education.  However, the evidence which directly examines questions about the most effective or appropriate age at which to teach foreign languages to younger children is mixed, where some studies clearly show advantages to older learners while other studies argue for benefits to young learners. One worries (at least I do) that the reason why governments are making these decisions is due to a generally held belief that ‘younger is better’ in language learning in general, and L2 learning in particular. Without a doubt there is plenty of evidence in the literature to demonstrate age of acquisition effects, and clear relationships between the age of the learner and their L2 outcomes. Contributing factors for L2 learning However, many other variables are implicated in this relationship in addition to age (i.e., it is not just the age of the learner that determines the ultimate success of L2 learning). This is the point of the volume Second language learning in the early school years:  Trends and Contexts. I wanted to show that by examining L2 learning across a range of young learner contexts - where the children in each context can be argued to be at an advantage age-wise - we see that age is not the only, and probably not even the most critical, variable in determining the success of L2 learners.  Implementing policy to formally teach L2/Foreign Language to children, or developing bilingual education programmes to help support different languages, ought to be considered within a solid understanding of the research that identifies what we can realistically expect of L2 learners across different contexts. Furthermore, particularly in those contexts where children’s bilingual development is being supported by the school, we need to pay very close attention to the nature of the provision in these different bilingual or L2 programmes so as to ensure that we offer maximal support for the development of the L2 (while at the same time maintaining and developing the L1). It is my hope that the discussions in the volume Second language learning in the early school years:  Trends and Contexts will be informative in identifying major themes and issues in different contexts of child L2 learning, and that possibly, future generations of educational policy makers will make decisions concerning educational provision with a greater awareness of the complexity of child L2 development.Filed under: IATEFL, Young Learners Tagged: English Language Teaching, First language, L2, Second language learning in the early school years: Trends and Contexts, Victoria Murphy, Young Learners

Interview with Ray Henderson, Chairman, In The TellingIn The Telling is a platform and service that helps educators deliver Flipped Instruction.We answer the questions:What is In The Telling all about?What market does it serve? What is synchronized transmedia?How does it flip the classroom? Is it like Lecture Capture?Does it use open standards?Who are some of your clients? Linkshttp://inthetelling.com/pulsepodcast/ (Higher Ed Examples)e-Literate TVPodsafe music selection from Music Alley"New Soul" by Yael Naim, the acclaimed singer/songwriter from Israel, from her album Yael Naim. 'New Soul' gained fame as the music played during Apple's Macbook Air ad campaign.Duration: 28:31

In my last job, I worked with a director who was a font of witty labels. One of these was the 'zone of absurdity' (the other labels in the graphic are mine), which arose during a discussion on the stages of performance support.Initially, we bumble about in the dark. Things aren't going quite as they should, and we're not sure why. During this phase, the biggest obstacles arethe people who refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem at allthe people who are part of the problem and are frantically trying to deflect blame onto someone elsethe people who know where the problem lies, and consider it a personal triumph that their team isn't it (this time)During this stage, the important thing is to find out what is going wrong, not to attach blame. When we figure out what the problem is, we move into the zone of potential. Now that we understand the problem, we can figure out how to solve it. The AA and various other support organisations will tell you that admitting what the problem is, is the most important step. In a blame culture, it is hard to achieve this stage, and even harder to stay in it. In this stage, we need to stay focused on finding a solution. What have we already got that we can use? What do we need to set in place? What resources do we need? All that malarkey. We're aiming for that optimal, target zone.This is not to say that everything runs smoothly in the target zone, but we stand a far better chance when we're all in the know. Of course, this is an almost mythical zone, because before we get here, the challenge changes and we start again.But my biggest bug bear is the zone of absurdity. The zone in which the solution is known, although the problem has not been defined. Sensible people like you have never even visited this zone, of course, so you can't even imagine what it looks like. Well, I encountered a small example of it yesterday, which I will share with you.I was in the grocery store picking up ingredients for last night's dinner. I had only a few items in my basket, so I headed for the self-service checkouts. One of the items was a single Granny Smith apple. I weighed it and placed in the bagging area, as instructed by the faceless lady who voices the tillpoint programme. But it seems she wasn't really ready for me to place it in the bagging area, because she had a slight seizure. The supervisor came over and set about impressing me with her speed and efficiency... dashing headlong into the zone of absurdity.She didn't even look at the instruction on the screen. She didn't even pause to listen to my explanation of what had happened. She logged in with her magnetic key thingy, pressed this button and that button and sashayed off again, not even noticing that a completely different error message had appeared on the screen. I had to call her back. With equal speed, and with similar lack of interest in the details, she pressed a second sequence of keys. At this point, there was no error message, but I now had a Granny Smith apple in my bag, although I hadn't been charged for it. I removed it from the bag and gave the voice-over lady another seizure. She begged me to return the item to the bag, even though doing so meant she would be giving it to me free of charge.As the supervisor headed to my till for a third time the security guard standing near me said, "She isn't really paying attention, is she?"I'm sure the supervisor lady thinks she's very efficient. She bustles about, pressing keys faster than anyone. But she makes no effort to identify the problem before she applies a solution. Net result? Three visits to a single till to resolve the issue of one Granny Smith apple worth 27p.Sigh.Absurd.

Interview with Dina Leytes a Practice Group Chair, Intellectual Property and New Media, at Griesing Law, a boutique law firm in Philadelphia.Dina LeytesWe answer the questions:What is online distance e-learning?What are the most common questions you get?What are the institutions' rights over faculty content?Do patent policies apply to copyright too?What are the copyright implications of using 3rd party media in a live lecture as opposed to putting that same content online?Is copyright "fair use" foolproof?Can I use a graphic I found on Google Images in my PPT in class? Or on the www?Are faculty doing "work for hire"?LinksFair Use GuidelinesPodsafe music selection from Music Alley"Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen - featured on several TV shows including "House", "Scrubs" and "Grey's Anatomy"Duration: 27:07

Ahead of his talk at IATEFL 2015 about developing elementary English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ academic language, Edward de Chazal, co-author of Oxford EAP, considers the increasing relevance of EAP teaching for elementary students and younger learners. Have you ever used the saying "The difference is academic"? The fact that it means "There is no meaningful difference", says something about the negative historical attitude of the British towards academics! But for the purposes of EAP I’d like to propose using the saying literally. In other words, EAP is different to other English language teaching contexts and the main difference, of course, is that it’s academic in focus. At IATEFL Glasgow I was one of the conference reviewers and I used this saying as the title of my review - what I argued was that over the years IATEFL itself has become increasingly academic. Sure, there’s still a lot of fun to be had, but an increasing number of the sessions are academically-inspired, covering research, serious ideas and theories, and EAP. Ideally, sessions should be both academic and fun! If one discernible trend in English language teaching is towards more specificity including EAP, there’s another important trend too: towards teaching ever-younger learners and lower levels. And in EAP the two trends come together. Going back, many would argue that you can’t teach EAP at lower levels, like elementary / A2. Looking forward, that’s exactly what’s happening, around the world and on an increasingly massive scale. I argue that as EAP teachers we should engage with this process and shape it. Let’s start by looking at EAP. What is the essence of EAP, and can it happen at A2? Big questions, short answers: at its heart EAP is about using academic language in a meaningful way; and yes, A2 is a great place to be doing this. For the first question, remember that the ‘E’ in ‘EAP’ stands for ‘English’, and the ‘A’ is for ‘Academic’. EAP students may be at an elementary level in terms of their English language, but they’re not elementary in cognitive terms. When we start teaching them they will already have had many years of schooling, usually have chosen a subject to study, and are planning to do so in English. We do them no favours by dumbing down the content and skills, provided these are achievable. So, what language can A2 EAP students learn? Time is limited, and we need to spend much less time on verbs, and more on nouns. Verbs are useful and necessary, but it’s inefficient to work through all the tenses; instead let’s stick to the present and past tenses, plus the passive as it’s widely used in academic texts. Nouns are far more frequent in academic texts, and a particular feature of such texts is the large proportion of noun phrases. The latter are all but absent from general English coursebooks, but should form a major part of EAP materials at this level. There are other key language areas too, including working with different sentence patterns, linking language, and specific areas like the language of evaluation. Above all, language learning needs to be contextualized and meaning-driven. In my IATEFL Manchester presentation I’ll be investigating what academic language we can focus on with our A2 EAP students. In doing so, we’ll see how language, context, and meaning are crucial for successful learning. Participants will identify and analyse the target language in different graded authentic academic texts, and will be empowered to follow these principles with new texts with their own students. In short, as I wrote in the IATEFL 2012 Glasgow Conference Selections, English language teachers are working towards educating our students for their own education. The difference is academic.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, IATEFL, Professional Development Tagged: Edward De Chazal, English for Academic Purposes, IATEFL, Methodology, Teacher Development, Teaching EAP

When I was in high school, I was a regular in the 4x100m relay team. My specialist distance was 400m. I did occasionally compete over 200, and even more occasionally over 100m. I wasn't quite fast enough to make the cut for the 100m individual event on a regular basis, but as a 400m runner, I had the bends down pat. And this is important in a relay team. You have to remember that your team is going to have to handle two very long bends. Sometimes the very best 100m runners are utterly useless in a bend. So a good coach will experiment with combinations until s/he finds one that works.All well and good. Now we have four sprinters, including two who run a kick*ss bend. So we're sure to win, right?Erm.... maybe.There is the little problem of the baton. It's all about the baton.The team starts with a baton and crosses the tape with that baton. That means (a) that the first runner is hampered by the need to hold the baton in one hand during the start and (b) there are three handovers during which things can go horribly wrong.To make things even more complicated, sprinters tend to have egos the size of planets. Have you watched the Olympics? Have you seen them strut? It's an important item in their toolkit, and something they cultivate. But it does mean that working as a team is very difficult for them.But the bottom line is: you can have the fastest team in the world, but if that baton doesn't make it over the finish line, your team doesn't win. End of.I was once called in to address the learning and development needs around a new process. The problem was that the new process was being driven by the new systems that were to be implemented. And the systems were not really joined up. At no point had a proper business analyst been involved. Dangerously, I was the nearest thing to a business analyst to have come into contact with the project. Of course, in my line of work, there is some natural crossover into business analysis, but it wasn't enough by a long shot. Time after time, meeting after meeting, I tried to explain that there were gaps where things were going to get lost, but I obviously wasn't using the right language, because the stakeholder team simply could not see the problem. I was repeatedly told it would have to be addressed as a training issue, and began to gain a reputation for being obstructive.I felt as if I were being asked to make a wedding dress for a girl who hadn't even been born yet. And like every L&D professional knows: when it fails, it's going to be our fault. It's going to be because the 'training' wasn't up to scratch.Then came a Very Important Meeting. The development team was going to give a demo of the new procedure in action. Enough bits of the system had been completed to make this a viable possibility. The entire stakeholder team assembled in one room, including the biggest wigs. The team leader outlined the first stage and things got off to a great start. Then we started talking about phase two. This was my moment. I asked the team leader how a deliverable would move from stage one to stage two. His response brought the whole demo to a halt. That part had not been defined by the stakeholder team and was currently out of scope for the development teams.Finally. The penny dropped. A few heads rolled. I felt like such a tattle-tale. But I also realised that it had been necessary. Without a workable process, the organisation wouldn't have a business.You simply cannot go out there and get the best products in the business and expect things to work. The system(s) should support the process, not drive it. So it's very impressive to be able to say on your website that you use Blahblah technology version X.Y. In the final analysis, if the new bells and whistles whatever-it-is isn't going to help you make more widgets with a lower reject rate, then it's a waste of money. Surely? So you need to have the process defined first. You also need to know that the hand-offs between phases of the process and system applications have been... not just adequately addressed, but exhaustively researched and catered for.Our relay team used to sit one behind the other along the aisle of the bus as we headed to competitions, passing that flipping baton forward over and over and over again. We used to get out on that track and practise that handover. Again. Again. Again. Each of us knew how to run. Like the wind, even. But that was no good whatsoever if the baton wasn't passed smoothly from hand to hand. And even with all that practice, we sometimes failed. We tripped, we dropped the baton, we missed the markers, we stepped out of our lane. We lost races. But we were just kids, and no-one's livelihood was at stake.A relay race isn't a series of four runners putting in their best performance. It's a team of people getting a baton from the start line to the finish line. And much (most?) of that is about getting those handovers right. Stephen Covey talks about starting 'with the end in mind'. Athletes repeat this mantra in various forms over and over again. And their entire training schedule, diet, everything is organised around that end.So the process needs to be designed with the end-goal in mind. The systems need to support the process, so that the end goal is achieved. The people need to be supported so that they know (or can find out) what they're supposed to do at each stage, in order that the end goal can be reached.And if the process is full of holes, or the system drops the baton... there's no point blaming the L&D team.Just sayin'....

Rod discusses some of the latest trends in eLearning pedagogy and technology. Participate in live online polls.The 2014 Horizon ReportTrends in PedagogyTechnology of Flipping (Part 2)PollsWhich kind of device are you using NOW for this poll?Where is USciences?Have you ever heard of the Horizon Report?What year was the term "peer instruction" (aka classroom flipping) coined?LinksTurningPoint Learning CatalyticsPodsafe Music Selection from MagnatuneConcerto No. 2 in G Minor (Summer) by the American Baroque Orchestra. The full CD "The Four Seasons by Vivaldi" is available at magnatune.comDuration: 26:31 (Audio only) 14:25 (Video w/o intro and music)

Jenny Dance, who runs a language school in Bristol, UK, tells us why pronunciation training is so important for her students and what led her to find a system that would allow them to practice more effectively. Helping learners improve their English pronunciation is a challenge for all EFL teachers - native and non-native speakers alike. English has so many unusual spellings, borrowed words and unpredictable pronunciations that even the most dedicated learners and patient teachers can find it tough to make good progress in this area. And yet in my experience, improving a learner’s pronunciation is one of the most effective ways of raising their overall level of English. In his ‘Pronunciation Matters’ blog (5-Jan-12), Robin Walker, pronunciation expert, comments that pronunciation training helps with fluency, confidence and listening skills - all of which are at the forefront of effective communications. He goes on to quote studies showing the impact poor pronunciation has on writing, reading, vocabulary acquisition and grammar. I wanted my students to be able to make the most of the English they had already worked hard to acquire. They may have been able to understand the word ‘comprehensibility’, and even write it with confidence - but I wanted to hear them using it fluently in their speaking, too. Improving pronunciation is, in a way, getting more ‘value for money’ from the words and phrases already learned. It was also important to develop a more robust and objective system for helping learners assess, practice and improve their pronunciation. I felt students would benefit from seeing and having controlled access to the sounds they were producing. And with the rise of the touch screen and hand-held personal computers, I could see there was a big opportunity to enhance the way teachers and students approached pronunciation training. Misplaced stress in a word can render it far less intelligible than an incorrect vowel sound. We aim to remedy the high frequency, high impact errors to help learners improve quickly. So with the help and feedback of a number of my students, we worked with Oxford University Press to develop Say It: Pronunciation from Oxford. The concept is simple: listen to the model sound (30,000 words, taken from the Oxford Dictionaries), record yourself, compare yourself and re-record until you’re happy you have made a good match to the model. Using Say It in the classroom, either one-to-one or with a small group of students is a highly effective way to work on pronunciation skills. The teacher doesn’t need to listen and correct in real time - instead, you can review and discuss the sounds together, creating a real sense of partnership in the learning process. Because the assessment is clear and objective (for example, you can compare the stress placement at a glance), both teachers and students can understand the changes required to improve. Often, students are able to correct themselves to a large degree, which is a much more powerful learning experience. Recent research shows that pronunciation is learned at a cognitive level (Gilakjani et al, 2011), in much the same way as a tennis player will visualise hitting the baseline rather than think about all the physical, mechanical elements required to execute the perfect tennis stroke. Say It seems to produce a cognitive response, with users responding quickly to the visual signposting of key features: stress placement and syllable structure. The soundwave and visual indicators give the student the ‘access points’ to the sound they need to produce. Using Say It, learners can visualise, touch, listen to, dissect and perfect their pronunciation. It’s a quick, fun and effective way to practise and learn. For my students, pronunciation training is not about sounding like a native speaker, but rather being confident that you’ll be understood. As Camille, an FCE student told me about her experience using Say It: ‘Now, when I get on the bus and ask for a ‘single’ ticket, the driver will understand me!’ You can find out more about the Say It app for iOS here. Reference ‘Why is pronunciation so difficult to learn?’ A. Gilakjani, S. Ahmadi and M. Ahmadi, English Language Teaching 4 (3), 74.Filed under: Grammar & Vocabulary, Multimedia & Digital Tagged: Apps, Assessment, EdTech, Pronunciation, Pronunciation apps, say it app

One of the criticisms of my (ahem) academic writing, is that I made (make?) too many assumptions on the part of my readers. My course supervisor once asked me "Why are you so reluctant to state the obvious?"To me the answer is: because it is obvious. If it is obvious, why do I need to say it? Why do I need to sacrifice part of my precious word count saying something well-duh-ish?Of course, the response to that is "Because it's obvious to you. It might not be obvious to your reader."I always took the view that, if you're reading this paper, you have a level of interest in this field. This is not likely to be the first paper you ever read on the subject. Of course, if the paper is electronic, you can include links to definitions and explanations, without having to sacrifice word count. But when it's an old fashioned paper-based submission..."Just pretend I don't know anything at all," they told me, "and write from that standpoint."But that's nonsense too, surely? If I assume you know nothing at all, I have to start by explaining the basic concepts to you, such as what workplace learning is and why we do it... before I've even got halfway through that, I've used up my word count.So I must assume you know something. The trick is knowing where to draw that line.This is a challenge facing learning designers, too. Do we start by covering the basics? Do we assume that the learner knows the basics? During my years as a classroom based trainer, this was always the balancing act. Where do I start from? What if one person in the class doesn't know the basics, and everyone else does? What then? All the years I taught spreadsheets, I would find myself also teaching basic maths. Because it's pointless learning about formulas if you don't know how to string together a mathematical sentence. And almost without fail, the ability to construct a mathematical sentence was conspicuous by its absence. I could probably teach the BODMAS rule in my sleep!Ah. Did you spot what I just did there? I included a link to an explanation of what the BODMAS rule is. If you already know, you don't have to follow it. But if you wondered what I was blethering about, you could follow the link and bring yourself up to speed.This is one of the things I like about designing online learning resources. You don't have to tell people stuff they might already know! You can include a link and let them choose.Of course, many is the traditional e-learning designer who will trap that poor learner in a tunnel of back and next buttons and lash them with information they already know, holding all the 'good stuff' to the end... only to be seen when they have jumped through the requisite hoops.I find the whole collaborative-pull learning such a fantastic fit, here. You can look things up when you need to. If you find that there is no definition/explanation/demonstration of the thing you're after in your organisation's learning space, you can track one down elsewhere and add a link to it for the next person. Or you can create one yourself as you learn-by-experimenting how it's done. People don't need to waste their time sitting through a whole day of stuff they already know, or to trudge through page after page of elearning that adds no value to their lives.The bleedin' obvious can be stated, but on an optional basis... and everyone is catered for. What's not to like?Of course, none of this is going to turn me into a brilliant academic writer as long as paper-based submissions are required!

Rod discusses the eLearning Tech of flipping the classroom. Participate in the live online polls.The 2014 Horizon ReportSee RPP #123 for Trends in Pedagogy (Part 1)PollsWhich kind of device are you using NOW for this poll?Have you ever heard of the Horizon Report?How many years did it take for Color TV to reach 10 Million households?How many years did it take for the VCR to reach 10 Million households?How many years did it take for the CD Player to reach 10 Million households?How many years did it take for the iPad to reach 10 Million households?Have you used iPads in Class?LinksAirSketch - www.qrayon.com/airsketchApple TV - www.apple.com/appletvApprenNet - www.apprennet.comDropBox - www.dropbox.comHorizon Report - www.nmc.org/publications/2014-horizon-report-higher-edLearning Catalytics - learningcatalytics.comPanopto - www.panopto.comReflector - www.reflectorapp.comShowMe - www.showme.comTouchCast - www.touchcast.comTurningPoint - www.turningtechnologies.comPodsafe Music Selection from Music Alley"Summertime" by Brother Love - one of the most popular tracks on Music AlleyDuration: 20:13 (audio) 15:34 (video)

Elna is a CELTA tutor and teacher trainer based in Istanbul. She has a lot of experience working with teachers in a variety of contexts and countries. Ahead of Elna’s webinar on 22 and 24 April, she gives us a short preview of what she will be talking about… I could have been rich, really rich by now…if I had only received 1USD for every single time I have heard the following: ‘’Oh that is such a good idea, but it will take too long…I have to finish the syllabus!’’ Now right from the start I have to say that this is the reality. However, from an educational point of view it is worrying that we feel rushed when it comes to teaching and learning.  A separate issue for another day, possibly with a double latte in hand! The add-on: Nevertheless, this is also what happens to writing lessons. They get treated like an extra add-on - only to be brought out when all other lessons have been completed. A shame though, don’t you think? We talk about preparing our students for the world of the 21st century in which digital literacy is key, but we find it challenging to allow time for doing those writing lessons. Those writing lessons  that could combine all the 21st century skills (communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking) and in addition, can prepare our students for a world in which we express ourselves more and more frequently in the written form. Think about it: are there some days when you actually write more than speak? How to support the writing lesson? We are treating the writing lesson badly because: - writing lessons are time consuming; - students do not enjoy writing, and - giving feedback on students’ writing also takes time. So we have to find ways in which we can do more writing, help our students develop their writing skills effectively and do all this without taking up too much of our precious class time. A challenge indeed! In the upcoming webinar we will look at ways that we can work with the writing lessons from Solutions and we will see if we can come up with ideas to be more effective with our time management. I think we all agree that developing our students’ writing skills is important; we also agree that we need to include more writing in order to prepare our students for the 21st century and offering our students a variety of tasks is essential. How to do this? Join me to explore some answers to these questions. Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: Solutions, Solutions writing challenge, Writing

Interview of Rod Murray by Jenny Brewster, founder of the Podcast Academy and Host of Secrets of their Success Radio ShowWe discuss the history and technology of podcasting and Rod's Pulse Podcast, including Rod's take on his favorite apps and elearning tools.LinksPodcast AcademySecrets of their Success Radio Show (iTunes)Adam Curry (the "Pod Father")RSS 2.0PodcatchersThe Pulse on Inside Higher EdApprenNetTouchCastBlackboardDuration: 17:17

Craig Taylor is a comparatively recent convert to social media as business tools, but he has taken the bit between his teeth. He spoke about the use of social media tools for workplace learning at the recent Learning Technologies conference, delivering one of the most engaging presentations I have seen in a long time. The guy's a natural!His recent blog post has attracted a fair amount of interest. Well it would, wouldn't it, with a title like "An open letter to those organisations who block Social Media sites…"?What makes the post particularly interesting is that Craig is using Livefyre for his comment stream. This alerts people who have been mentioned in the comment-versation. Paul Simbeck-Hampson decided to test this by mentioning me and a few others in a comment:...and of course, I weighed in with my response, as did Jenna Langer and Jordan Kretch - the people behind Livefyre (I suspect that they won't be able to keep doing that if their app gains traction). Later, Kate Graham mentioned Jane Hart and hey presto, she popped in, too.It's an interesting way to tag people and invite them into a conversation. I do have concerns that there might be some misuse, and that some users might resort to emotional blackmail/passive aggressive tactics to try to attract specific people to their sites. It remains to be seen.But Craig's post (and the ensuing comments) could do with a little exposure to those who delude themselves into thinking that they can control staff behaviour by blocking access to social media spaces as a matter of course. To prove his point, this post was generated from his organisation's gents' room, using his phone.

Mark Hancock, co-author of the English Result series introduces his forthcoming IATEFL talk on the keys to developing students’ use of dictionaries and important features that can support independent learning. Proverbial wisdom tells us that if you give someone a fish, they can eat for a day, but if you teach someone to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. It’s a message about the long-term value of learning new skills and becoming independent. A similar thing could be said about pronunciation and dictionaries. Each time you teach a learner to pronounce a word, their English benefits a little, but they remain dependent on you. If, however, you can show your learners how to teach themselves the pronunciation of a word using the dictionary, they can improve their own English independently for ever more. The dictionary is an immense resource, containing information about all the English words a learner is ever likely to need. In learners’ dictionaries, pronunciation information has traditionally been provided using phonemic symbols based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Nowadays, however, with the advent of online dictionaries, there are also recordings of all the headwords, accessible at the click of an icon - a wonderful resource. It is well worth helping your learners get familiar with the IPA symbols, even though there is now an audio option. It’s a great learning investment for the following reasons: - A knowledge of the phonemic symbols enables you to ‘see inside’ the pronunciation of the word, like an x-ray. You can see exactly what sounds are in there - and what sounds are not. Furthermore, these x-rays help you to see similarities and differences between words. For instance, your student may not be able to hear the difference between hit and heat, but they will definitely be able to see that the transcription is different. - The ear is not always a reliable source of information. You can hear the word calm, for instance, and believe that you are hearing an L because it’s there in the spelling. When you see in the phonetic transcription that there’s no /l/, it makes it official somehow. - The audio recording is only the voice of one person at one time. You don’t know which features of their pronunciation are essential and which are just one-off idiosyncrasies. For example, if the speaker places a glottal stop after the /k/ in document, the learner doesn’t know if this is a feature that they need to copy, or just a feature of that individual’s speech. The transcription shows it not to be essential. If you can help your learners to be comfortable in the company of phonemic symbols, you are doing them a lasting service, because it will give them a more complete access to the information in the dictionary. It’s not that they have to memorize all the symbols - many dictionaries have a running footer across all the pages with a key to them. So it’s just a case of them getting to know the symbols little by little, as they use them. Stress information is also provided in the transcription, by a vertical dash like an apostrophe. This is superscript for primary stress and subscript for secondary stress. If a dictionary entry does not have a transcription of its own, then these stress marks are shown in the headword itself. It’s very important for learners to become familiar with this method of marking stress. The dictionary also provides stress information beyond single word level, for compound words, phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions. Compare, for example, the different stress patterns in the following pairs: compound nouns:               ‘roller blind - ve"netian ‘blind phrasal verbs:                       "look ‘on (observe) - ‘look on (regard as) idiomatic expressions:        ‘one of these days -  one of those ‘days. Due to the limitations of the WordPress editor, we cannot display the stress markings correctly. The single mark should be subscript (secondary stress) and the double one should be superscript, but single (primary stress). Encourage your learners to look out for these stress markings, and try reading out loud the example sentences in the dictionary using the stress as indicated. We do of course need to recognize the limitations of dictionaries for pronunciation work at the level of connected speech. Dictionaries, by their nature, are more focused at word-level features. However, the 9th edition of the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (OALD9) does take a step towards remedying this situation by providing pronunciation guidance for common spoken functional exponents. For instance, under the headword invite, there’s a box of exponents for inviting and responding to invitations, along with recordings of these, and even a short video of an interaction. The OALD9 also includes videos of students giving model answers in some typical speaking exam scenarios, and these exemplify some of the prosodic features of longer stretches of speech.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Dictionaries & Reference, IATEFL Tagged: Adults/Young Adults, Dictionaries, IATEFL, Learners' Dictionary, Mark Hancock, OALD, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary Reference skills, Oxford Dictionary

Interview with Blackboard CEO, Jay Bhatt. He talks about their new business strategy that is mainly focused on making students successful. We discuss:Bb World Blackboard historyJay's background Student-centered focus MyEdu acquisitionePortfolio featuresLinksBlackboardMyEduPodsafe music selection from Music AlleyMaybe I'm Amazed by Blake Morgan. Licensed cover of the Paul McCartney classic.Duration: 27:49

Because I originally signed up to Facebook as part of an experiment to see how it impacted my learning experience, I took a deliberate decision to treat it as a melting pot. This is less true of other spaces my great big digital feet tread. For example: I have two blogs (well, three, but we won't go into that third one right now), and I address two completely different groups of people. In my mind, I am writing for a person, an archetype, if you like. On this blog, you're it. On the other, it's someone else entirely. While I have LinkedIn contacts who are personal friends, I look on that as a purely professional space, and use it to pursue purely professional interests. I have two separate Twitter accounts: one for personal and eclectic bits and bobs, the other for learning-related contributions.By contrast, my Facebook friends include people from my youth, people from my career path, people from my church, people from my leisure pursuits... and people that I've 'met' on Facebook, of course. And it has been fascinating to watch them interact with one another in reaction to something I've posted on my page.But one thing has come home to me with a vengeance this past week, and that has to do with hospitality and the respect or abuse thereof.My husband and I are rather hospitable souls who enjoy nothing more than having a house full of people to feed. We head up a team called Connect in our local church, where we take it upon ourselves to meet anyone new to the church and find out a bit about them. We then introduce them to other members of the congregation who share their interests or who are at a similar life stage. If you know me in person, you will know how perfectly suited I am to this role. The initial meeting with new folks happens in a small room off the main hall, where we serve coffee/tea and something to nibble... something I have baked myself. We like to treat people as if they are our guests.We then take this one step further. Once a quarter or so, we host a dinner (a very informal dinner, mind) at our home, to which all recent visitors to the Connect room are invited, together with a few likely candidates for them to get to know. Once again, we have the host/guest thing going on.But what has this got to do with Facebook, I hear you ask. Well, rather more than I would have thought, actually.You see, I wouldn't expect the guests in the Connect room to be rude to us or to one another. I wouldn't expect visitors to my home to pick a fight with one another. Disagreement is fine, but healthy, respectful conversation is not an unreasonable expectation, I would have thought. And I feel the same about my Facebook page. After all, it is my Facebook page, and if you're there, you're there at my invitation. As my guest if you like. As I am, when I visit your page.Recently, I felt I had to 'unfriend' someone I've known for more than 30 years. For the too-many-eth time, she mounted an aggressive, irrational attack on someone else on my page. Someone who didn't know who she was and who was too polite to retaliate in kind. She threw out insults left and right, many in shout-implying capital letters. She even took a few side-swipes at me.Now, I don't want people being reluctant to come to my home because they're afraid my dog might attack them, or because they're afraid that X person will also be there. Similarly I don't want people being unwilling to comment on my Facebook posts for fear that one of my other friends will tear into them.I love introducing people to people. I love to see those people form a new relationship that is independent of me. But if some of those people cannot respect my hospitality, I have to withdraw the invitation.Not so?

Louis Rogers, author of Skills for Business Studies and an EAP teacher, discusses whether topic knowledge and fluency is key to performing well in IELTS testing. He speaks on the subject at this year’s IATEFL. Prior to the internet we had limited sources of information and limited access to it. Therefore if we wanted to access the information we had to develop ways to store it in our minds so that we could easily access it at a later date. With the internet we have fast access to a range of information and we have such instant access to the internet that we do not need to exert such energy on encoding it in our minds. According to Sparrow et al ‘No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can ‘Google’ the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. When faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it’. For example, when participants in the study were asked to think of the Japanese flag many would think of a computer rather than try to picture a flag. How is this all relevant to the IELTS exam? Many students express concern at not knowing anything about a topic. In particular, they worry about part 3 of the speaking test and part 2 of the writing. They fear facing something they feel they have nothing to say on. There could of course be a number of reasons for this. It is not necessarily the case that students commit less general knowledge to memory. Some studies such as Moore, Stroup and Mahony (2009) found that some of the IELTS topics were perceived too Eurocentric in nature. If students feel the topics are not related to them or they have never considered them, then they undoubtedly will feel disadvantaged when encountering them. To a certain extent this lack of confidence could make students hesitate, repeat ideas and even have a flatter pronunciation. Creating materials and activities that challenge students to think and respond personally in common IELTS areas could help reduce some of their fears. IELTS lessons can provide an insight into some of this knowledge and give students the confidence to respond to such topics.Filed under: Exams & Testing, IATEFL Tagged: IATEFL, IELTS, Louis Rogers

Interview with Blackboard CEO, Jay Bhatt - Part 2. We talk about the NEW Blackboard user experience and more:The new User Experience New User Interface (UI) "Ultra"Fully responsive - dynamically adjustsNew Collaborate - no more JavaMassive data integration between Bb and other componentsNew delivery choicePublic cloud implementationMulti-tenant public cloudUses 1st instance of the new Ultra UIProduct bundlingChanges to Mobile LearnBlackboard Labs Polls AppMobile Grading AppJob Genie App "Tip/Txt" Anti-Bullying free to all K-12 schoolsBb fundamental cultural change #PayMyTuition ChallengeLinksBlackboard World 2014 (Youtube Videos)Sneak Peak of Blackboard UltraPodsafe music selection from Music AlleyAngels We Have Heard On High by Bill MeyersDuration: 31:59

Interviews at the 12th Annual Pennsylvania/Delaware/New Jersey (PADLA) Distance Learning Association Conference & ExpoLouis Stricoff, MEd, CTS (starts at 3:36 min)Executive Director, PADLADirector of New Business Development, IMS Technology ServicesConference IntroductionSteven Hart, CPBA (4:48)PADLA PresidentAssistant Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of PhiladelphiaReflections on Conference Will Thalheimer of Work Learning Research, Inc. (6:54)Keynote SpeakerReflections on Research-Inspired Learning Maximization (PDF) Jeff Rothenberger (13:45)Program Adminstrator, Office of Professional Development and Currriculum, Berks County Intermediate UnitDiscussion about NearpodScott Beadenkopf (17:41)Director, Academic Technology, Neumann UniversityReflections on asynchronous vs synchronous teachingPodsafe Music Selection Comcast Connection Blues by Miller & Pirillo from Music AlleyDuration: 27:28