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Archive for the 'other' Category

Great expectations

Posted by Anne on January 26th, 2011

I got some great mentoring and advice from Andi White, Evan Frendo (whose professional development group at ELTABB I’ve joined) and Vivienne Arnold, and have decided to take the plunge and do the Trinity Diploma in TESOL. After an initial talk with Duncan Foord, I’ve just had my interview with Nicola Meldrum, and am very [...]

Refocussing with the BCG Matrix

Posted by Anne on January 11th, 2011

I’ve given up one of my very favorite jobs, writing for Spotlight. It was a very sudden decision. I was spending too much time on each article and found that my love of writing was keeping me from dedicating enough time to teaching, which is my essential profession, to which writing is ancillary. It forms [...]

BESIG 2010: Tools for tasks in blended learning

Posted by Anne on December 9th, 2010

I gave a talk at BESIG that was originally supposed to be about creating suites of online tasks with the cool tools available online, much as suggested by the great gurus in the field like Nik Peachey. But I found as the date came closer that I felt uncomfortable dropping task suites on students, because [...]

What does training cost?

Posted by Anne on November 8th, 2010

I just got off the phone with someone who called asking what training costs. I find the price level here in Potsdam hard to gage. On the one hand, the prices I see are in fact very similar to Munich, and our rent here is actually higher than what we paid there (we were pretty [...]

Documenting takeaways on a flipchart

Posted by Anne on November 7th, 2010

Last week I experimented with glueing paper onto a flipchart. As we progressed they drew pictures and I wrote up cards as props to hold and tell stories or explain concepts. Glueing the cards in place was the last step, defining what they were supposed to take away. Then we flipped back through in sequence [...]

Simplicity: Flipchart rather than pinboard

Posted by Anne on October 28th, 2010

In compact business seminars, the kind where the participants expect and get a full script to take home (so much for unplugged!), I usually use cards and a pinboard to collect, sort and focus the participants’ ideas. But you can drive a good thing into the ground. The act of pinning the card is a [...]

Dogme – Schmogme

Posted by Anne on October 21st, 2010

Karenne Syvester’s “Dogme challenge 1+2″, infused by Candy van Olst’s “CELTA -Schmelta”, dampened by yesterday’s “Failwhale” #Edchat, refreshed by Jeremy Harmer’s “No Dogme for EFL” combine to inspire this friendly response, the title an obvious take-off.
So Dogme means “emergent” and “co-constructed learning” on the one hand, and “essential bareness” on the other. It has little [...]