Pete Sharma Associates

What a venue! It was a good idea to arrive early just to soak up the plenary room, rarely opened, I believe. All that history, a fitting place to signal the move into Teaching in the 21st Century and the move to digital. If you would like a six page handout [.pdf] of the presentation, please click here:

plenary-barca-lite

If you would like a one-page handout of the references, please click here:

References

Thanks to Lindsay Clandfield for taking these great photos. I will always remember the face to face part of the plenary! Barca – I’ll be back!

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to Izmir, Turkey last weekend. Hard eating choices – meat or fish? Luckily (like Blended Learning) I managed the best of both worlds.

Thanks to everyone for coming to my talk – here are the References, as promised. References

I’ll be back in Turkey (sponsored by Macmillan) in December for the conference on technology in ELT – really looking forward to it!

Pete

It’s always good to report a new event in the publishing world. Of particular interest to those teaching business English was the launch, on April 11^th, of Business Spotlight International.

Edited by Ian McMaster, Business Spotlight has been well known in Germany for many years. Its informative, newsy items, magazine format and teaching tips have made it a favourite among both English teachers and students, and it’s supported by an excellent website which offers up-to-the-minute comments, teaching tips, lesson plans and words of the day.

Only trouble is, it’s all in German. Or at least the glossaries and rubrics are. This is great if – as a teacher – you intend to work in Siemens München or Audi Akademie. Not so good if you’re working in Korea or Chile.

Now that’s all changed with the launch of the new magazine, which is digital only – so no problems about late deliveries, your copy getting lost in the post or being sold out at your local newsagents – just three reasons why digital news beats paper news hands down, in my view. Just as long as you can get it on an iPad. Excuse the plug, but if I were still teaching business English rather than advising schools on learning management systems I’d sign up to the international version like a shot.

Business Spotlight International comes out bimonthly (yes, you can download it on your tablet, too) and is aimed at those who need English for their work – or teach people who do. Like the original, it contains a wealth of informative, entertaining articles. Topics in the new edition range from Burmese politics to independence for francophone Canada (just remember the War of 1812, guys), and from how to do business with Spain to planning a wedding in New York (quote…”for a wedding in New York City, $250,000 won’t get you very far”. How about for a divorce in NYC?)

Accompanied by a Workbook, monolingual glossaries and loads of teaching ideas and lesson plans, if you’re in business training – wherever – it’s well worth a close look.  And not a word of German in sight. You can download the first issue for free here!

Byron

An excellent conference at International House London on Saturday, as Business EnglishUKorganised their trainers’ day. The weather was appalling, which made being at the conference even more attractive! The opening plenary by Evan Frendo dealt with specificity and the complexities of teaching ESP (including the reluctance of many teaching organisations – for a variety of reasons – to carry out thorough needs analysis for clients and individuals).

Thanks to IH London for the use of their facilities

My own session, a Tale of Two Platforms, discussed choosing an appropriate LMS – so it also centred on needs analysis – but in this case the importance of deciding what your priorities were, whether an LMS was really suitable for your institution and if so how to prepare for making the choice. We offer consultancy and advice in doing just that, so if you’re thinking about an LMS get in touch!

Immediately afterwards Cleve Miller spoke on Three Principles for Blended Learning, which referenced his own outstanding LMS, English360

The day was rounded off by a great presentation from Ian MacMaster on the importance of teaching general communication skills in BE. For the coffee and lunch breaks there was the usual publishers exhibition. I was very interested to see the latest development at Macmillan English Campus, the new Culture World plug in.

If you weren’t lucky enough to be there, full details of what you missed can be found in the programme  here. Many thanks to Huan Japes, Tom Weatherley, Sarah Wang and the other EnglishUK team members for organising such a useful and interesting event.

Byron

Once again, the British Embassy, Madrid played host to this, the second PSA symposium on digital technologies. This year, we ran a second symposium in Barcelona. Thought-provoking and inspiring, both events were successful.

Pete in action on the IWB

Pete Sharma began the morning, backgrounding the field with a picture of how much digital is changing the face of education. His session touched on some of the more exciting innovations in language teaching including the inexorable rise of the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), award-winning software, the prevalence of m-learning and the ubiquitous ‘app’.

Jim Dunne of Macmillan Training Services

Jim Dunne’s presentation title and blurb paid homage to Charles Dickens in the title: “A tale of two systems”. Jim eloquently drew the parallel – digital! It’s the best of times, the worst of times…..  Speaking on behalf of Language Training Services, he explained why Macmillan is promoting e-learning alongside its face-to-face methodology courses.

It was wonderful to explore the IWB with an IWB in the room, kindly provided by Promethean in Madrid, and by tech re-sellers Audiocerver in Barcelona. In Madrid we were able to have a hands-on with the Promethean Learner Voting devices. In Barcelona, Pete waved the latest IWB book around, mentioning its alternative title of ’400 ideas for teaching in the digital classroom with (or without) an interactive whiteboard’. A bit too much of a mouthful to catch on, maybe, and certainly not quite as snappy as ‘400 ideas for the IWB‘!

The morning was rounded off beautifully with the session from Trinity on the challenges and opportunities of digital media within English language assessment. This superbly brought into focus the bizarre spectacle of students (having grown up in the digital world) dumbing down for a test where they pick up a pen – ouch. Huge issues were raised in a superb PowerPoint showing not only the range of digital media being used today, but also the many skills used by successful language students in communication, and raised the central questions: what are we testing and how do we do it?

Carlos Bautista from Trinity Exams

As a company, we at PSA are now keener than ever to organise successful follow-ups to the events. Pete is back in Barcelona in May to meet with attendees at the same venue, the British Consulate on Diagonal. Byron Russell and Pete are back in Madrid  in June to enter discussions with schools, universities language training providers to discuss a range of services including teacher training in ICT, consultancy and bespoke materials creation.

Many thanks to our wonderful sponsors, Macmillan and Trinity, the superb support of the UK Government’s Department of Trade and Industry  in both cities and to everyone who came along to join us in this essential debate.

Only three things in life are certain. Death, TAXES and the fact that Barca will not be in the 2012 Champions League final

The UK government has recently (and anonymously) investigated the tax returns of a number of wealthy individuals. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the UK finance minister, is apparently ‘shocked’ that is many of them pay little or no tax. Just how do they do it?

How indeed! I wish I knew! For the rest of this new blog post, please visit Macmillan In Company site

Coming soon…………….PSA symposia in Madrid and Bar…..

Many Business English language learners need to give presentations for work and professional puprposes. This blog post looks at some of the techniques and technologies they can use.

For the rest of this post, please visit:

Linguarama blog

Just bought a £2000 interactive whiteboard? Or spent £500 on the next generation iPad? Dude, like, what a waste of your hard-earned cash. Whiteboards, as we all know, are so last century. What you should be doing is popping down to Specsavers for the very latest in designer eyewear.

If you think I have totally lost the plot, I‘ve actually been looking at Project Glass, the latest concept in augmented reality from the Google skunkworks. By combining various existing technologies, Project Glass combines all the features of a smartphone with a heads-up display on custom spectacles.

The youtube demo video is (almost literally) eye-popping – the device is always on, always accessible, and responds to voice commands. It guides you round the streets, orders your gig tickets, snaps the view, plays you music, calls your friends. The first adopters will think you’re bonkers when you start talking to your glasses, but it won’t be long before everyone’s doing it. And countless irritating advertisers will be sending you messages as you walk past their outlets.

Of course, it may be a while before the technology actually takes off. And you have to wear glasses, so those of you with 20/20 vision, forget it. But of course what Google are actually doing is demonstrating how they can put together the various parts of the Google “ecosystem” – maps, social networking, Android communications, Picasa – to meet everyone’s needs. They’re saying Google really can do it all, and have the content too – and that’s another poke in the eye for Apple, of course. Bit scary, when you think about it.

As for the actual glasses – well, in certain circumstances they might catch on. Needing glasses hasn’t done 3D cinema any harm. Imagine a class full of studious, bespectacled students avidly watching your latest presentation, all heads up and alert and watching YOU at the same time. Or an individual interacting in real time with their teacher during a distance learning class. As for me, I wear glasses anyway, so the moment they’re in the shops I’m sooo getting a pair…

It was really great to meet everyone in Chile last week. I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions covering 40 practical ideas – run in Vina del Mar (Thursday) and Santiago (Friday). On the personal front, it was fabulous to have a chance to take photos in Valparaiso [left].

As promised, here is a Handout with a pdf version of the PowerPoint.

practical_ideas

Hope it’s useful guys! Don’t forget to get your school to buy our new book – there’s 360 more ideas there!!

Hasta ahora…….

La Formacion de docentes de ingles en Chile

Here we go, 168 hours (give or take!) after being there face-to-face, I am delighted to post a lite-version of my PPT in .pdf and the References, as promised!

Click below for the PPT of the session: Is it possible to train teachers by virtual media? pros and cons

plenary-lite

And click on the link below for a one-page list of References

References

Thanks to everyone who came, and to everyone at the Council for organising such a great day. Did I have great time in Chile? Well, some things don’t need much thought before answering!! I hope to do my usual impersonation of Arnie, and return……