The following is a guest post by Ryan Viguerie. Take it away Ryan… "So why did you choose me?" Every student who walks through my door for the first time hears this question. I’ve been a private teacher for about eight years so I’ve heard a lot of different reasons. Usually - not always, but […] The post The Three Biggest Reasons Students Dump Their Teachers appeared first on Teaching ESL Online.

Libraries are essential in building academic success and equity in our schools and learning environments. This is very easy when staff and students come from similar backgrounds and share similar languages, experiences and expectations. But what about the ‘others’? The one’s who do not share similar experiences, expectations, languages, and backgrounds? First, what does it […]

Why Facebook Why Now? About 16 years ago, long before sense and sensibility took over the Facebook or let’s say, the audience of Facebook matured, I was a very enthusiastic wide-eyed first-year teacher. Swimming in the ocean that is first-year teaching, I was hit with waves of worry that were just barely balanced by the love of what I was doing. In the midst this, the dark shadow of an untethered social media monster crept into my classroom and into my school.  It was in my first two years of teaching that I took it upon myself to be the watchdog over my grade 6 and 7 students as they became entangled in the World Wide Web, and in particular with their use of Facebook. With no guidance, and Facebook being relatively new, it was truly the wild wild West.  I found myself guarding that very thin line between chaos and order in the social lives of pre-teens, which to me was absolutely terrifying.  My students and those I coached, approached me on a regular basis about online bullying, threats and an overall fear because of confrontations that happened on Facebook the night before. Oh sure there was - once upon a time - ICQ and MSN which were popular too, but the magnitude of bullying on Facebook surpassed those two services easily and by far. So I started educating kids the only way I knew how: I taught them about safety, etiquette and above all else I told them to stay off Facebook because they were all underage. That was the beginning of what I faced.  About one year into the ‘Facebook phenomenon’ I found myself, on too many occasions, standing at the front of the school stopping high school would-be assailants, from entering my school to beat the you-know-what out of gr. 6, 7 or 8 students at my school for posts they had made on Facebook. To this day those students have no idea this happened. CITY TV also conducted a feature on my work to stop cyber-bullying and it went so far as working with Toronto Police to identify locations for staged fights established on Facebook. My taste for the social media site was sour from the get-go, and I never stuck around to see it change - and it did. As years passed I did my best to dabble in Facebook but the stigma was too strong and I was far too stubborn. I began missing things.. Began missing growth, lessons, life changing events.. I stayed of the road that led to that info and it was my own doing.   I still witness some of my former students practicing what I taught them during those early years, even though now they are employed, married and working citizens. I wonder if I did too much to protect them or was it enough? Now, 16 years later, my best friend’s wife, set out to get my wife on Facebook and in doing so forced me to reconsider and I’m so glad I did. As a teacher, a resource for technology in education and staff of a professional development department I had had enough of my self-inflicted state of irony. It was time to go to where my friends and family were and to admit I was overdue. And so here we are and I’m so grateful for it.  We do want to share and we so want to celebrate. We have 4 beautiful and vibrant children, friends and family that we love and that are a part of that village it takes to raise our children. If you’re reading this now then that’s you. Thank you for meeting me on the other side..  Thanks Wendy!

joomag example from Dr. Michael AngillettaIn this week's TeachT@lk Webinar we discussed the benefits of redesigning your syllabus to get students interested in the course from the first day. We shared the requirements of the traditional syllabus, and what Syllabus "Bloat" is. We showed how to create interactive elements with hyperlinks, videos, images and visual layouts that highlight important information to students. We demoed examples in technologies ranging from the simple PDF file, to the more complex Joomag. We shared templates from CLAS and Digication that help make the transition a bit easier for busy faculty. We even spent some time sharing syllabi and giving input on how to make them better!Below are the links to the resources shared during the webinar:Adobe Connect Recording: https://connect.asu.edu/p9n0ypybjdj/PowerPoints: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12594701/Final_IS_Slides.pdfPopulr Example: http://page.teachingwithoutwalls.com/syllabushospPopulr Educational Templates: http://inspiration.populr.me/professorsDigication: https://asu.digication.com/bio594_syllabus/Welcome/?&Digication Help: https://asu.digication.com/get_help_asu_eportfolio_resources/Welcome23/Symbaloo: https://www.symbaloo.com/shared/AAAAAxjJkkAAA41_WCqH-Q==Infogr.am: https://knowledge.infogr.am/featured/Visual PDF example: http://www.tonahangen.com/wsc/us2/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/112.Spr11.pdf Joomag: https://www.joomag.com/mag/0681492001428953621

Last month saw Bett 2016 touch down at the London Excel centre for four days of learning technology talks, demonstrations and seminars.A staple in the ed tech calendar Bett is vast and one of the largest shows of it’s kind. This years speakers included Sugata Mitra, Salman Khan and Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan.Exhibitors included FutureLearn, Github, Google and Raspberry Pi to name a few.Unfortunately none of the Ed Tech team could make it to this years show, however a wealth of resources and highlights are available via the Bett site and using #bett16 and #bettchat hashtags.  Maybe next year!

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Blended learning is an art - an amalgamation or a union of two types of learning - face-to-face learning and online learning, where each component complements the other. Over the years, the term "blended learning" has been used impetuously. On the surface, blended learning seems like any other learning experience to which an online component

Employees are busy people; and the last thing on their mind is "training." And yet training that builds their performance skills to enable full productivity and efficiency is the need of the hour. How does one create an eLearning course that will provide them with the knowledge they require to do the job they are

There’s only one type of eLearning course that spells success; and that’s an eLearning course that fulfills its obligations to help learners to learn.A course that is learner-centric in every sense is essential for the making of a successful eLearning course. Any eLearning course that fails to do so, fails to qualify as being termed

How many times have you had an amazing idea in your head, but no matter how hard you tried, you were never able to quite replicate it for real - exactly as you had pictured it in your mind? Quite often? Even if you have experienced it once, you know the desperate feeling of hopelessness

In the 2012 movie, ‘Ice Age 4 - Continental Drift,’ Manny, Diego, and Sid embark upon their greatest adventure after cataclysm sets an entire continent adrift. Manny and the gang are challenged like never before to become heroes and do the impossible, as they encounter exotic sea creatures, explore a brave new world, and battle

customize (ˈkʌstəˌmaɪz) or customise vb 1. (tr) to modify (something) according to a customer’s individual requirements .customi’zation ˌcustomi’sation n Collins English Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003 We live in a world that promotes customization - from customized t-shirts to customized gifts and accessories, and even customized meals.

Over the last few years, we have seen a change in climatic conditions across the world. This year, we were probably hit the worst. The Arctic blast brought record cold temperatures to Canada and the U.S.A; the Niagara Falls froze over; cities across US experienced extreme cold that had not been witnessed in decades. In

I wonder what the heading of this article would signify to someone who does not know what this article is about. Would you switch off, or will the incompleteness of the topic/heading compel you to read on? Chances are that I have lost a considerable number of readers already, because of my very unattractive heading.

One of the not-so-new trends that is gaining popularity in online learning is the addition of gaming elements in eLearning courses. It’s not a bad idea theoretically, but is game-based learning really successful? How open are organizations to allowing their employees to ‘play’ their way through training?

What do - the three little pigs, 3 phase power, the 3 lions on the England football shirts, 3 men in a boat, the three musketeers, the 3 Amigos, the Holy Trinity of Christianity, the Trimurti of Hinduism, the Three Jewels of Buddhism, the Three Pure Ones of Taoism, and the Triple Goddess of Wicca

If you missed the first part of this two-part series, here is a summary of the same: The three-click rule is an unofficial web design rule that suggests that a user of a website should be able to find any information with no more than three mouse clicks. There has been a lot of debate

There is an ever increasing mountain of information that is collected by organizations - a mound of untapped, seemingly-useless information that organizations collect unwittingly day in and day out. Until recently, this information was wasted away. But of late, organizations have discovered the amount of wealth that this data can bring in for the company.

Organizations face training challenges every day; and one of the most exigent demands is the ability to motivate its working staff to take up the mandatory online training courses seriously, and ‘learn’. This comes as a surprise to many of us because one would think that it would be easier to get an adult to

Mr. X is a designer in a well-known custom content development firm, who has a very important task at hand: To create a rapid eLearning course for the employees of a multinational company. Mr. X is very enthusiastic about this project; he wants to make it the best course ever! In his endeavor to create

A few years ago the concept of providing learners with learning on the go came into being, and the world awaited with anticipation the realization of this concept. While some wondered whether this was even possible, eLearning specialists created learning courses for the learner who was ‘on the go’. From classroom training to online training

In this article we revisit the 5 instances we discussed in the first part of this series - when traditional and online learning fail to provide fruitful results. Here, we see how mobile learning can come to the rescue and aid of both organizations and employees. A Mobile Workforce: As the ‘mobile workforce’ becomes the

‘Not seen, not heard’ - an adage that aptly describes the Sales Force of any organization. Not surprising really, considering the fact that the Sales Team is almost always away from the desk. How do you train this group of people who are almost never present at the workplace? How do you provide vital information