Pete Sharma Associates

Wow. This was the fastest & shortest time for me at  a conference! Veni, vidi, presenti, departi…..

It was good to catch Luciano Camino for 4.5 nano seconds. It was good to watch Nicky Hockly on digital literacies

Thanks to Jennifer Vershoor who guided me through the labyrinthine complex of the wondrous mall where the Pro-T conference was held…..

Thanks to Juan Carlos Lorenzo (of Macmillan) who supplied much – needed vittals, femto seconds before my talk

Then – the classic moment from hell where I could see the background of my Mac projected behind me, but not the Promethean screen. Arrrgh….. then, it was vice versa  - when the participants could see the screen, but I couldn’t operate it from my laptop!!

So what could a poor boy do? Apart from sing for a rock and roll band, I described what would do if I could demo the technology! Inventive, or what…the only alternative – curl into a foetal ball and fall off-stage

The audience (it seemed to me) were many miles away, in the recesses of the theatre

Still, with the confidence that comes from knowing the audience were with me, the presentation picked up momentum and ended up bringing great fun!

I promise I WILL post a copy of the article 10 things to do with an IWB- the, er, polite printable version….

Thanks to the amazing photographer who captured me in action!

Also to Maria who kindly bought the book 400 ideas – lovely! Hope it helps you – I was happy to sign it!!

Great experience, if a bit fast – like many things in life. I have been trying to bñog this for a WEEK or more, but life keeps getting in the way! Oh well……more soon…..

Increasingly students are turning to apps as a way of enhancing learning, and there is a bewildering variety of language learning apps out there, ranging from complete self-study courses to exam prep and supplementary materials. Some are “native “ apps – i.e. they will work on your mobile device even if you are not connected to the internet, a big advantage IMHO. Others are “web apps”, which require internet connectivity – which can prove a problem if you want to bone up on your grammar while 35,000 feet over the Atlantic. Readers are an obvious ebook-style app for a publisher to launch, being fairly simple. They can be based on existing assets, including audio.

The problem is that those publishers, such as OUP, who have launched ebook / app readers have approached the business model as they might approach selling books. Rather than come up with an approach which suits the business paradigm of the medium, they’re flogging reader apps as if they were hard copies on shelves – and few learners are going to fork out much the same price  for an app as they are for a “real” book. Apps and ebooks call for a very different marketing and sales approach.

Consultant Caroline Moore, who runs an interesting new development company called Learn Ahead,  has an article in the Guardian this week which should be required reading for any publisher interested in the app / ebook field (and, let’s face it, that should be all of them!)

LearnAhead, by the way, has just published its own app, Word Carrot – a highly entertaining ELT vocabulary game which is free from the app store and getting  good reviews. Well worth checking out.

We are enjoying listening to views on Blogs and Wikis!

As Facebook goes public with an estimated valuation of $100bn, and I was wondering whether to buy stock (I’m not), I thought I’d bone up on how Facebook came to pass, and where their seed money came from. The trail led me, rather surprisingly, to Bono. The uber-cool U2 frontman is a hugely astute businessperson, and in his spare time is managing director of Elevation Partners.

Elevation Partners is a private equity firm which invests unfeasibly large sums in media, entertainment and technology industries. But not just anything shiny will do. Bono and his mates are looking for technology disruption.

Basically, technology disruption is some new thing that will set the world out of joint. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, something which changes everything.

As Elevation Partners point out in their mission statement, four technology disruptions are currently changing the way we interact with the world.

Network – smartphones and tablets are exponentially expanding the number of net-connected devices. Expanding wifi and 3/4G networks means that being always online is edging closer to everyday reality for an ever-growing number of people.

Internet Technology – new operating systems and HTML5 are emerging as new software platforms, enabling (for example) more engaging content and behavioural advertising.

Navigation – users are discovering the world in different ways and consuming content differently, via mobile apps, touch screens, social networking

Architecture – out with the vast inbuilt memories on your private PC, in with the Cloud – the godlike system which will mean everything is available everywhere, all the time.

So what has this got to do with me, you may ask. Well, everything, actually. A little Friday fantasy scenario. Imagine you’re a university student learning English. Over your cornflakes your tablet beeps at you, alerting you to your online group lesson in five minutes time, delivered to you and your classmates through GooglELT. You settle into an armchair and join your class, quite relaxed; you were puzzled by the first conditional while slaving over an interactive worksheet yesterday, but the programme automatically identified the problem and upsold you an extra activity – via a micropayment off your credit card – which gave you additional practice and a clear video explanation of conditional sentences. Your teacher has already been informed and so doesn’t have to go over that point of grammar yet again.

You’ve never met your teacher face to face, and you have never been in an ELT classroom in your life. You can learn in your local cafe, in a train, at home. You don’t know what a text book is. You buy your learning in chunks, as and when you need it and when it’s identified by your learning behaviour as being relevant to your learning needs.

So if you’re a publisher, consider that perhaps most of what you’re doing right now will be as useful as a bike to a fish in ten years’ time. The future drivers of English Language Teaching may be Google, or 2K Games, or Facebook, if they perceive the value opportunity in ELT. In this brave new world, the winners will be those who have the foresight to research, identify and then encompass disruptive technologies creatively, not those who continue to do stuff in the way they have always done stuff. Or – even worse – think they are doing new stuff when in fact they are just doing old stuff on new platforms.

Will we all learn to love it? Well, that’s another issue. Steve Jobs seldom listened to music on his iPod – he preferred vinyl. I’m off to have a coffee, and stick “Rattle and Hum” on the record deck.

Byron

Tweeting: it’s not just for birds

This blog post looks at the Internet phenomenon of Twitter. We’ve all heard of Twitter. But do you tweet? And why would you?

For the rest of this blog entry, please visit the Linguarama blog. http://blog.linguarama.com/

Last week I was down at Olympia yet again, this time visiting what is claimed to be “Europe’s leading showcase of technology supported workplace learning” -  the Learning Technologies exhibition.

Aimed primarily at the corporate training market, language learning was much in evidence with the usual suspects such as EF and Rosetta Stone exhibiting. A slick stand showcased speexx, the latest corporate language training offering from Germany’s Digital Publishing group. Speexx offers the kind of holistic solution that companies – and increasingly universities – are looking for; content, an LMS and real teachers, all neatly packaged together as a complete solution, and beautifully marketed.

It’s a show that’s definitely worth a visit if you intend to do anything at all in the business / corporate sector. Learning Technologies happens again in 2013 on January 29-30 at Olympia 2, London.

Next year it will combine the Learning and Skills exhibition and the  Learning Without Frontiers 13: Future of Learning show. The organisers promise that this will offer “the biggest show in the entire learning sector… also the best attended and fastest growing”. I wouldn’t argue with the latter, and they had over 5,000 visitors and 230 visitors this year.

A nice freebie for all interested parties is Inside Learning Technologies and Skills magazine, which is available free electronically. It’s a tad heavy on the ads., but offers some interesting industry insights and useful articles – worth a read over a coffee.

Byron