Pete Sharma Associates

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

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

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

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.

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/

It’s been a good day on the IWB front, for three reasons.

1. I was chatting (through the keyboard) with a colleague with a brief to buy an IWB and I was interested in learning what his choice would be. SMART? Promethean? Hitachi? He went with a Panabord (from Panasonic), mostly for the local support offered (Kalyan works in India) and looking at the info, I think he made a good choice.

Wanna check it out? Click here:

http://panasonic.com.au/Products/Electronic+whiteboards/Interactive+whiteboard/UB-T880/Overview

2 I managed (all on my ownsome) to download Promethean’s ActivInspire software onto my new Mac in advance of the English UK Training day on IWBs. The Wimbledon school of English, the host school, has Promethean boards. First impressions: the interface actually looks much easier than the older version (Active Studio)

3  I even found time to watch half of Barbara Garner’s recent webinar – Cool ideas for IWBs. Isn’t that a great thing about recorded webinars – you can watch them as and when you wish to. Second half tomorrow, yeah. If you are a member of the IATEFL LT SIG, you can watch the webinar for free. If you aren’t, join.

http://ltsig.org.uk/

How are you going with your IWB? Are you in full flow, or is it gathering dust? If it’s the second scenario, there are still places on English UK’s Training Day 11th February in London. For more info, visit: http://www.psa.eu.com/event/getting-the-most-out-your-interactive-whiteboard-approaches-and-pedagogies

I’d love to see you there!

Steve Jobs believed that textbook publishing was an ”$8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction” and with the ever-growing distribution of tablets – particularly, of course, the iPad – into state schools, the time could be fast approaching when the swinging ball of digital content delivery smacks good and hard into the traditional textbook publishing establishment. On January 19th Apple announced a series of related initiatives designed to “modernise learning” (their words) based around the iPad tablet. Apple is hoping to “reinvent textbooks” and change the way we teach and learn with an updated iBooks 2 app. This works with interactive textbooks built with the iBooks Author desktop app, and an expansion of iTunes U that offers course materials and K-12 access. Effectively they are launching the equivalent of iTunes for textbooks with the kit to publish your own.

Like iTunes and the App Store, Apple appear to have no interest in creating the content themselves – simply in getting others to do the creative stuff, and then taking a slice of the pie for themselves as “resellers” of content. iTunes U hasn’t really taken off until now, but this could change everything (where have I heard that before?).

What is really significant is that potentially this opens the door for any number of indie publishers to create their own materials, and Apple is providing just to tools to do this. For relatively little investment, a school, an education ministry or even a group of teachers could become their own publisher, by-passing the major ELT publishers altogether – and on the way making a massive dent in publishing revenues. Couldn’t happen? No doubt Kodak executives were saying the same thing a dozen years ago when digital cameras started to first make real inroads into the film market. And all of a sudden Kodak is filing for bankruptcy, and new players like Panasonic and Sony are dominating the photography business.

So what can publishers do about this? An obvious place to head is down the digital road, and of course major publishers are now investing heavily in new digital divisions – though someone I was talking to today suggested that around 70% of editors working in publishing houses knew relatively little about digital publishing (we have a course for that!!!)

But I think publishers will also have to change the way they do business, offering not just content but services – such as teacher-training, course design, maybe editorial and design support. They may also want to consider offering language teaching themselves, as Pearson has already done with Live Mocha and its acquisition of Wall Street. After all, no need to set up a bricks-and mortar school – as is a growing trend in the US, a call centre would do the job. Interesting times indeed.

Byron

It’s hard to overstate just how amazing  this visit to Bangla Desh was.

Tuesday saw the British Council Conference on the Innovative use of ICT in Education. I had heard about the Connecting Classrooms concept, and here it was brought to life by a series of enthusiastic, eye-opening presentations from teachers and educationalists across the country. It was great to hear about the social projects and meet such inspirational department heads.

You can read a lot more about the day, as well as the projects and presentations, at:

http://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/ict-conference-secondary-schools-bangladesh

It was the first time I had given a presentation which was translated, bit by bit – thanks to Ahsan for a great job!

On Wednesday, I headed out into the rural area north of Dhaka to see ICT in action. The teachers face some incredible challenges: will students leave their studies to become child brides? will students come in the afternoon, or be kept at home to help the family earn money?

We visited a school where one of the classroom was kitted out with a laptop computer and internet access. The internet in the class we saw was being used to enrich the learning from the course book, bringing the concept of volcanoes to life.

In the second school, the only computer was being used for admin. The ICT teachers deliver their curriculum without a computer…..

Truly memorable; humbling; inspiring. I’m sure I’ll return…….

We had a great time at the PSA Christmas party. Not sure who sneaked in a video camera, but the video has now appeared on the web. We hope you enjoy it. It is only available until mid January 2012, so see it while you can.
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/FsWRDZ202idVROhS

I’m really pleased that George Drivas, the Head of the Department of Foreign Languages at Doukas Schools is posting over a copy of his book Education, learning and training in a Digital Society (Express Publishing). I understand this is a practical handbook which aims “to help educators to become aware of the digital learning environments”.

Not only that, I believe I’ll meet the author himself next January. On Saturday 21 January 2012, I’ll be at the Hellenic American Union, Athens giving a talk for the Panhellenic Association of Accredited Quality Language Schools. Then on Sunday, I’ll be at TESOL Greece, Patras.

See the Events page for more details of the talks.

I haven’t been to Greece for many, many years and I’ve never been to a TESOL conference there – so I’m really looking forward to this trip!