Pete Sharma Associates

I’m back from Santiago with a ton of great memories……..

As promised at the IATEFL conference, here’s a lite version of the plenary as an eight-page .pdf

plenarylite

Also, a list of references

References2

Having returned, all I can wonder about is whether I’ll return! I hope so!

I am in the middle of writing some training materials on using digital resources in language teaching and came across this mind map on using mind maps. I have to admit that I am not somebody who uses mind maps a great deal, but they are a tool I find useful in certain situations. This particular mind map made me think about a new way to help my EAP students this summer to summarise and write texts. In the hope that it might help others, here is the link:

https://www.mindmeister.com/143278182/how-mind-maps-help-teachers

The iPad outsold the Kindle by two to one last year. But that’s still 20m Kindles.

Last time we had a look at iBooks Author, Apple’s very own self publishing tool.  As I mentioned, the main problem – if problem it is – concerns the fact that any ebook written using the iAuthor platform will only work on iOS devices, which primarily means the iPad (though I personally am happy enough reading a text only book on the iPhone, too). The iPad is a massive seller, of course – but what about all those Kindles out there?

Sales estimates (unlike Apple, Amazon doesn’t publish Kindle sales figures) are that sales rocketed last year, especially after the Kindle Fire was introduced.  According to the charts at Business Intelligence, Kindle sales exceeded 20m units last year; this is roughly half iPad sales worldwide, but we should remember that a Kindle is primarily a reader, not a multi-purpose device like the iPad, and for the past year eBook sales have outstripped trad book sales . So if you don’t fancy a bite of the Apple – and of course Kindle formatted books can be read on the iPad as well! – you could opt to write your book for the Kindle / Kobo platforms, and put it up on Amazon, the mother of all online bookstores.

Writing an eBook for the Kindle means using the ePub format.  Best to start with a plain text file (not Word, which you will have to convert) and then edit it (and images if you want) using appropriate software. A good (and free) ePub software editor is Sigil , which can be found  at http://code.google.com/p/sigil/. You can add an image for your cover, contents and tagged contents respectively using Sigil’s semantics, headings and metadata tools (not as bewildering as it sounds, believe me).

When all is done, save it in Sigil’s ePub format. You’re now ready to go as far as the majority of eBook readers are concerned (iPad, Kobo, iPhone) but not quite ready for Kindle yet, as the device currently uses Mobipocket and you’ll need to convert it. This can be done for you using Kindle direct Publishing or you can convert and test it yourself (assuming you actually have a Kindle) using software such as Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/about).

Whew! By now – after much cursing and the odd sleepless night – you will have taken the raw text you started with and have an eBook ready to sell.

Next time – what to write and how to sell it.

Byron

I am having a great day here with a lovely group. This is the session on blogs.

The group have a few messages:

We’re havinga great time too!

It’s after munch!!! We had a nice lunch

The latest Macmillan business English blog post has recently been posted. It is about the black market in Olympic tickets. I cannot wait for the actual events themselves to start – I’ll be going to  watch the athletics. From Stratford to Stratford…………

To download the lesson, please visit:

http://www.businessenglishonline.net/resources/in-company-second-edition-resources/elessons

Following from our mini conferences on language learning in the digital age which we held this year in Madrid and Barcelona, I’m delighted to tell everyone that we can confirm our autumn conference will be held in Milan on October 4th.

As with the events in in Spain, we shall be working with the UK Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Italy; the conference will be held in the British Consulate-General in the very centre of the city.

Sponsoring the event and joining Pete, Seth and the rest of the PSA people in sunny Italia will be leading ELT publishers Richmond,  innovative primary software publishers Little Bridge and renowned interactive whiteboard manufacturers SMART Technologies^.

More about this later in the summer…given all the rain here in the UK, personally I can’t wait for October in Italy!

Byron

I had a great trip to Colchester last week to work with teachers on using IWBs. We had a very interesting look at pros and cons – lots of food for thought which is currently feeding into the training materials I am writing.

Here are some useful post session links:

Template for writing activities for the IWB template

Article from MET: 10 things to do with an Interactive whiteboard IWB

I am having a lesson with a very nice group of students from Saudi Arabia. We are studying blogs!

Here are some of their thoughts:

…………………………………………………….

I am having a nice time in England – Akram

i want to say thank you to Pete Sharma  and we had a useful time with him.

The univesity of Warwick is a masterpiece – I am a happy student

Pleased to visit the Univesity of Warwick.

I am Saud: about Taiba university: It is the best of many universities in the kingdom of saudi arabia. We visited warwick university from 18 jon to 13 July in (teach development programme). we very happy to meet our teachers in warwick U.  We lwerning great information.

I am interesting in learning English Language. First, I found The University of Warwick is a very nice university. It hyas many good facilities. Second, we met very nice teachers like Mr Sharma who tecahes us many things and a lot of information about educational technology.

…………………………………

The lesson threw up the washback effect on the accuarcy of student posts. Some of the above posts have been corrected for spelling; not all the posts were completely corrected.

Pete

Something special to start the week, as we welcome our new guest blogger, Jo Steel.  From now on we’ll be inviting the occasional blog from writers who work with us on special projects, and Jo will be helping us out on future training activities in Spain.  Jo is a Teacher Trainer and Teacher at the CSIM, Universidad Complutense in Madrid  and has been teaching English since 1995.  She is particularly interested in learning how to use new technologies in and out of the classroom, teaching and training online and developing professionally online. Wikis are a sadly underused resource, yet relatively easy to set up – here, Jo gives us a few pointers!

My boss started an email to me last week about the wiki I’m designing as an ‘online staffroom’ for teachers at our centre. ‘You have great ideas and vision,” he wrote, “but we shouldn’t be surprised if the take-up is slow.’ I was flattered and gutted at the same time! I was thrilled that he appreciated what we are doing to give our teachers more flexibility to develop together, but was also saddened by his lack of faith in it. If it’s promoted well and there is good support, it can only benefit teachers and kick start their online professional development, now known as PLNs or Personal Learning Networks. So, what are wikis?

Well, they’re sites where you can share materials and collaborate on projects. You can make them public or have private groups and all participants can be informed of contributions by email or you can set them up without email. In my experience, these communal spaces really facilitate the whole learning experience. This video from Common Craft shows how they can work.

I woke up to wikis about two years ago at a conference and it took me about a year to actually design one myself. Why? Because I was afraid I didn’t know enough about them and that I’d get it wrong. Then I saw a talk on using ICT in ELT and I was convinced that I could learn by doing four things. 1 Do a little at a time (say 20 mins). 2 Do it often (or you’ll forget what you learned). 3 Expect to make lots of mistakes. 4 Don’t give up. I’ve heard a lot of resistance to learning how to use tools like this, but I’m not buying any of it. Education is moving on to what is called ‘21st Century Skills’, which refers in part to how digitally literate young people need to be to cope in a digital world. I think that as a result of this view of education, we as teachers need to have our set of digital literacy skills, in addition to our set of teaching skills. You may know the term ‘Bring your own device’ (BYOD) which refers to jobs where you have to provide your own tablet, smart phone or laptop. Well, I think that soon, in job interviews, we will be asked to ‘Bring your own digital literacy skills’ or BYODLS!

We are in a period of transition with teachers with varying levels of knowledge and experience of using ICT working together and we won’t be on the same page for some time. In addition, many managers have little or no training or experience and so don’t know how to help themselves or their teams. Lucky teachers will eventually get training and support from their centres. But the rest will have to train themselves or pay to do courses themselves. So, by now I’ve taught myself to use lots of technology and tools, but how have I used wikis? Well, my first one was a training course for teachers at my centre to learn how to develop online. We wanted to allow teachers to choose between online or face-to-face (F2F) training. It was quite interactive with collaborative and research tasks, and a tutor monitoring and guiding. Teacher feedback was good so it also prompted me to start wikis with my classes.

I think you should wake up to using wikis too as it’s a springboard to help you develop your own digital literacy, which, let’s face it, is just like teaching, you’ll never stop learning about it!

Jo Steel

jobethsteel@gmail.com

Twitter: @jobethsteel