Pete Sharma Associates

What is the difference between Moodle, the Macmillan English Campus, MyLab and English 360?

Have you ever tried a Mimio?

There are still a few spaces left on the last Blended Learning course of 2009 next month in Stratford – mail PSA immediately if you are interested…………

www.psa.eu.com

Hovering around the Macmillan stand at BESIG last weekend, I was asked: “What’s your favourite thing about your new book?”

Without thinking, I said: “the unique ‘Social planner’ at the back.” This is where students can combine the power of print with the fixed sentence head (“I was born in…”), and the power of the pen, writing in their unique personalised ending (“… Pune / Rio / Vladivostock”). The students finish the book with a checklist of key utterances to review before being thrust into their next social encounter.

I also like the subtle message of the needs analysis circle, suggesting that when all pieces of the jig-saw puzzle are in place, you are a good socialiser.

Barney saw the book for the first time last night, and no doubt has his own favourite bits! Don’t worry, it won’t be long before it hits the bookshelves……

Enjoying this great conference – maybe because the sessions I’ve chosen have all delivered, maybe because you can get water and coffee whenever you need it…or just catching up with old friends – anyway, a great day…..and congrats to PSA’s Paul East on being voted joint BESIG co-ordinator with Marjorie Rosenberg…..

Hope you all received our Winter 2009 Newsletter.

If you have recently subscribed and you haven’t received it, it may be that your mail did not get through – I sent confirmation to a few addresses which were unsuccessful. Please mail us again! Alternatively, it may be caught in your spam mail.

Best wishes: the man who put the ‘Man’ in Oman.

Advance copies of our new book are OUT!!  Watch this space…

A short note to say thank you to everyone who attended the PSA Blended Learning course at The London School in Thiene in Italy last weekend and, of course, a special thanks to Julie for organising it. We had a great time and were challenged by a dynamic group of teachers to present our information and opinions as clearly as possible and then to help them realise some of their ideas and plans using the technologies and tools covered on the course.

We were royally looked after with endless cups of tea and wonderful cheese sandwiches which kept us from flagging during our demos and discussions of blogs, podcasts, IWBs, Moodles and all the other things that the course covers.

There were many questions we were not able to answer due to time and, sometimes, the fact that we had not thought about those issues ourselves. The answers to questions should start to trickle through very soon.

Our latest newsletter is now available for subscribers to te4be to download. It contains articles about Pete’s trips to south America and what he found out about how they are using technology in their classrooms. There are also up-dates on the progress of Pete Sharma Associates.

If you would like to receive the newsletter please sign up as a subscriber. If you are a subscriber and have had any difficulties in downloading the newsletter please feel free to get in touch and we’ll make sure you are able to read it.

I enjoyed doing the session on Interactive Whiteboards last Sunday!

Suddenly realised that I have  yet to post my first thoughts and experiences of using an interactive whiteboard.  This is probably more a result having too much fun learning to use it and not spending enough time recording what I’ve done.

Setting the board up had been one area that I’d been nervous about. This as due to having seen a demonstration of an IWB some years ago in which the presentor struggled to persuade the device to do what he wanted before an expectant but fidgety audience.

In fact, this may have been an unusual event. The board I’m using has yet to find a permanent home and so often has to set up and rolled out of the way separate from the projector after each outing.  Once the hardware has been positioned (the projector is also on a wheeled trolley), the orientation program is easy to run. Nine points on the board have to be selected using one of the pens and the board is ready to go. It’s almost too easy.

More to come soon.