Pete Sharma Associates

The final week of Business English month on the Macmillan Dictionary blog starts with a guest post by Pete Sharma aka moi, which starts:

I was delighted to be asked to deliver the opening plenary at the BESIG (Business English Special Interest Group) conference on digital technologies in June, in Preston, UK. I’m still preparing this talk, and have been thinking about how technology has changed the way people communicate in the business world. So far, I’ve reflected on four areas: social networking, communication, virtual worlds and vocabulary.

To read the complete post, visit: ttp://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/

I was leafing through my copy of  ‘Throw Off Your Clothes And Live’. I buy it for the chess problem … …

Sorry, with apologies to Kenneth Horne, I’ll start that blog post again

I was leafing through my copy of  BESIG Issues Summer 2011 Issue 78. I subscribe to it for Pete and Barney’s Learning Technologies page….

Anyway, I came across two practical teaching ideas: Stock Market Trends and Drawing Directions, which uses GoogleEarth.

Two practical teaching ideas practically free.

These ideas do NOT appear in 400 Ideas for Interactive Whiteboards, a book which (of course) I wouldn’t mention nakedly in this blog post as I have mentioned it before (repetition), although it doesn’t deviate from the subject. By now, a copy may well be being leafed through by yourself, or else it is already nestling on your bookshelf for perusal later…..

A few photographs of our great day last week in Madrid!  Opened by the Director of the Department of Trade & Investment……what a venue….!

What a fantastic symposium in Madrid!

Huge thanks to our wonderful sponsors (Hitachi and Macmillan Spain) and our hosts. The venue – the 41st floor, British Embassy – was spectacular.

Over the next few days, we will post photos of the event! Gracias a todos para / por venir

I just popped up to the new Macmillan author blog…

nice to read the following entry from Sarah about IATEFL Brighton (please forgive bolding of key words):

There was a huge buzz on the Macmillan stand about Jim Scrivener’s 3^rd Edition of Learning Teaching, and 400 Ideas for the IWB (Pete Sharma, Barney Barrett and Francis Jones’ great new book) – with both titles flying off the shelves.

sigh….yes….as good as it gets…. Haagen Daas dulce de leche, Nick Cave duettting with Polly Jean, caiparinjas in Rio, tequila sunrise in Monterey, infinite clone tool, wild mushroom soup…… your latest ouevre flying off the shelves………….:-)

(not bad, as it’s not due out till later this month…)

So – OK,  here’s a sneak view of part of my own author blog entry:

“My favourite question to teachers at recent conferences worldwide is: “Do you teach with an interactive whiteboard?” Watch those hands shoot up in Brazil: watch them stay down in Germany. While all UK state schools have embraced IWBs, Swiss cantons will take years to decide whether or not to invest in IWBs. (Money’s no problem). When the decision comes, we’ll all be talking about something else! The interactive whiteboard, more than any other technology, has come to represent the digital divide. Some teachers have one; others don’t; some use portable ones (e-beams, mimios), others improvise with a wii remote.

After Mexico’s recent massive investment in IWBs, there’s little surprise that my own company (Pete Sharma Associates) has hooked up with Red Nova (the training arm of Macmillan Mexico) to provide blended teacher training courses in ICT. Teachers are hungry for ideas; their students will surely benefit. Now, teachers and teacher trainers can be supported by a new book…”

Pete Sharma examines a new platform for producing top-notch web-driven business English programmes.

Many business English providers believe that ‘blended learning’, combining face-to-face teaching with online support, is best. But creating such a course is far from easy. What happens after the needs analysis tells you that your students need to prepare a presentation on exhaust-pipes for the Minneapolis trade-fair? Do you issue a course book, with a CD-ROM at the back? Unlikely. Do you create the course from the students’ own materials, with scissors, glue and a photocopier? It’s time-consuming, re-inventing wheels. In the digital age, should we go on-line, search for, download and customise authentic material from the web, and blithely ignore the copyright issues?

[To read Pete's complete review of English360, please see the latest EL Gazette article May 2011]

Every month, the In Company team at Macmillan suggest a e-lesson from the warehouse. The suggested lesson is accompanied by a blog post. Here’s the start of the  latest post from yesterday:

In 1992, I went to the Olympics in Barcelona. I bought tickets for every event I wanted to see, at reasonable prices. Now, 20 years later, I have applied online for London 2012. I have no idea which tickets I will get. I might get none, or I might get everything I applied for, plus a credit card bill which is far from ‘reasonable’!

For the complete blog entry,visit:  Olympics 2012

Just a quick announcement that we have a new date for the next course for freelance editors and ELT authors keen on ‘future-proofing’ their skills in the digital age

Course title: Digital skills for ELT

When?  8th – 9th October 2011 (9.00–17.30)

Where? The Oxford English Centre, 66 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PR

How many participants? 12 maximum

How much? £300+VAT

For more information, please contact:

Jill Florent (jill.florent@btinternet.com) or

Des O’Sullivan (desmond.osullivan@ntlworld.com).

To book a place on the course, please contact man-about-town:

Byron Russell (byron.russell@psa.eu.com).

Places on the course will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

We very much hope to run another exciting, successful course. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful venue – many thanks to the OEC team for their wonderful hosting of this training event. The school, with it’s interactive whiteboards and proximity to the city centre, is an ideal location. Hope to see you there…..