Pete Sharma Associates

Thanks to everyone who made the Teacher’s Day in Alicante last Saturday so enjoyable!

Here is a ‘lite’ version of my PowerPoint plenary presentation as promised!

alicznte-lite

Here is a handout with the references: References

I thoroughly enjoyed the workshops I attended – a great day!

Just back from the joys of IATEFL. The conference itself will have been tweeted, blogged and Facebooked to death by now, so I won’t mention it again, except to say

(a) thanks to Jo, Kerry, Lucy and everyone else at Macmillan for a stonking party on Weds (so glad no one fell into the Clyde…as far as we know…)

(b) that Glasgow is a brilliant city and if you weren’t there plan your weekend away now.

So forget IATEFL until Liverpool 2013. What I want to flag up here is how to get just rewards for your creative talents.

In the world of fiction writing, the path to recognition for budding authors is not to start off with a magnum opus and send it off to three dozen publishers. That might have worked in the nineteenth century, but not now – and if J K Rowling had adopted that route she’d still be a single mum scribbling away in fast food restaurants.  What people do is find an Agent (Christopher Little, in JK’s case). The Agent has all the right contacts and so can match your work to an appropriate publisher – and, far more important, an appropriate Editor within that publisher. The Agent, being a skilled and experienced negotiator, should work out the best deal for the Author, including things like merchandising, film and digital rights.  That’s what happens in the world of fiction writing. It hasn’t happened in ELT – until now.

At the Macmillan party over a pint of cider I chatted with Nick Robinson about his Big Idea.

Nick Robinson, ELT Author Representation. Mail nick@nickrobinsonelt.com

You may know Nick – he’s a hugely talented writer and editor, commercially astute and great at networking. Nick has just launched the first (as far as I know) agency for established and new authors. He’ll assess your skills and ideas, and – as he knows publishers – will be able to link up the right person in the right publishing house with You, the writer, on a project which is ready to go. This doesn’t cost anything – except, of course, a proportion of your fees (and he’ll be able to secure a better deal than you would, anyway). If you’re a publisher, you can fast-track your requirements rather than desperately looking for a talented writer for that new ESP title on Golf you’re putting out. (Actually, English for Sport would be a pretty cool ESP series).  If you’re an established author it’s worth getting in touch too – you may think yourself as having sold your soul to OUP, but there’s nothing to stop you writing for Macmillan – or, on old titles, taking back your rights and selling the material elsewhere.

Of course it may be that you haven’t been published before, and you’re desperate to learn more about the writing and publishing process, and the personal business side (jolly stuff like VAT and Tax). Watch this space on that one…!

Byron and I having a fantastic time – great to see everyone and enjoy the mixture of input, frantic networking, discussion and eating / drinking. I am attending as many tech talks as possible – loving seeing the latest apps. Too frantic to write more but hopefully more will follow after a suitable period of reflection! Great to meet Tweeters face- to- face and folk from India, Bangla Desh, Greece and Argentina – the countries I’ve visited this year, as well as colleagues from Warwick Uni in a different settings. A beautiful Dawn in Glasgow and as someone says….Glasgow rocks!

We’re delighted to announce our new partnership in Italy with Digitalang, a leading ICT training organisation based on Trento, Nothern Italy. 

Digtalang is managed by Seth Dickens (there he is, on the left!), a really great trainer himself. We’re going to be working together on the creation and delivery of a range of Italy-specific programmes and materials, including a teacher conference in Milan in the autumn. Seth will also work with us on the delivery of teacher-training workshops in other areas beyond Italy, such as neighbouring Switzerland and Austria.

The first of these is now “out in the market” – called Interact!, it’s aimed at those who want to get the most out technology - it’s broken down over eight weeks to allow participants to study at their own pace.  Participants can choose between a fully online version of a blended version, which includes an exciting face to face element.

Pete and I will meet up with Seth at IATEFL next week – if you’re in sunny Glasgow and would like to say hello, drop us a mail - pete.sharma@psa.eu.com or sethdickens@digitalang.com

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference in Oxford last weekend, not least as it satiated a long-term fascination with shrunken heads.

It was a great experience to deliver the plenary session on Saturday morning. As promised, here is the task feedback. I have simply transferred the notes to a one-page Handout without embellishment. They give a raw picture of the cut-and-thrust of the lively discussions, most of which were about the use of Smartphones and m-learning.

task-results

Click below if you would like to download a one-page list of References for the plenary – clearly, the reference to Nicky Hockly’s article and description of dimensions / scales is highly relevant to any discussion on m-learning!

References

You can also download a graphics-lite version of the PowerPoint here:

plenary-lite

This is also available on the English Uk website where you can also read Huan Japes concise and insightful summary of the event

Many thanks to the team at English UK and to all the participants who came along first thing Saturday after a night in the Pitt Rivers museum to make this such a lively, enjoyable and thought-provoking plenary!

Pro-T conference

At long last Iam beginning to catch up on myself! Here is the Handout ‘Using interactive whiteboards’

IWBs

which I promised to post in another life – at the Pro-T conference in Buenos Aires……

Very interesting news from Pearson this week. Pre-tax profits were up 72%, to $1.8 bn, chiefly due to the increase in digital revenues, which increased by 18% in headline terms to £2bn. This means that sales of digital products now account for 33% of Pearson’s sales. Students using Pearson digital learning programmes up 23% to 43m, and Penguin eBook revenues are up 106%, now accounting for 12% of total Penguin revenues.

According to the publisher’s chief executive Dame Marjorie Scardino, the proportion of sales derived from digital output and services – such as teacher training – was more than 50 per cent .

So for the first time (as far as I’m aware) a major “traditional” publisher is seeing more revenue from digital than from mainstream media.

This must leave the laggards in the digital sphere pondering about what to do next. Pearson in general – and Marjorie Scardino in particular – have always shown remarkable foresight in promoting digital products. Within their ELT publishing operations the path hasn’t always been rosy (remember Longman English Success, which singularly failed to live up to its name?) but persistence is winning out, chiefly (I think) because the market is now truly ready for the technology. The only other UK ELT publisher with a similar level of interest in new tech – though without Pearson’s super-deep pockets – has been Macmillan, with its terrific suite of digital products and services (Campus, onestopenglish, Global).

If I were neither Macmillan nor Pearson, I’d start looking at how to play catch up as quickly as possible, and getting my house in order, digital strategy-wise. There are some very interesting acquisition targets out there, maybe still at “bargain” prices – certainly compared to in-house development costs – and it’s definitely time to start scouting around.