Pete Sharma Associates

I really enjoyed giving the talk

Dealing with differentiation in Business English teaching

with Louis Rogers for Richmond last week at IATEFL, Liverpool.

Great to see so many familiar faces in the audience.

As promised, the Bibliography.

Handout

The amazing Roadshow has come to an end. Wow. What an experience…… could I ever forget……:

Jujuy….how do you PRONOUNCE it? spell it? agonising over whether a carnivore should or shouldn’t eat cuddly animals llike llamas…can you resist llama kidneys in white wine……

Salta….agonising over whether sucking coca leaves is (or isn’t) legal….

Running (by the grace of heavenly powers, and the kindness of Maria Jose) a session from the Universidad Catolica for a conference in Madrid

Tucuman….hot,hot,hot….taping a polystyrene makeshift screen to the wall, and the world’s cutest projector…

Santiago del Estero….and the reaction to us ordering a taxi in the rain….“A taxi! ha ha – sorry, it’s RAINING!!!!” (Can you imagine that in England ha ha)

……or asking what time a restaurant will open….’Nueve y algo….” (My favourite time: neuve y algo. Can you imagine that in Germany?)

And finally, Cordoba….ten minutes before the plenary and the door is locked and you haven’t hooked up the MacAir to the projector – but am I worried? worried I am not. It’s Argentina time…..hang loose and all will be well…..and it was!

Wonderful memories of superb organsiation (thanks, Calum), great co-trainers (Ricardo / Rosa; Ceci; Ana; Lucia and Jen); sharing and input….

Here are my plenaries as Handouts:

Plenary 1 -plenary1

Plenary 2 -plenary2

Nice travelling out with Nik Peachy, and meeting Nicky Hockly and Gavin Dudeney on the way back. a truly amazing professional (and life-enhancing) experience. Thanks, British Council.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was attending this conference in Madrid this weekend (9 February 2013) in person, and Pete was hoping to do his presentation from a computer in Argentina. I was very much hoping that everything worked, as doing somebody else’s presentation is not easy. The night before the conference, we were still unsure where Pete would do his presentation from. The hotel connection was too poor, so he was going to take up an offer from a student of his in Argentina to use the broadband at her home (at least that was how he explained it!). In the end, he was able to use the facilities at the local Catholic university. In the meantime, we had arranged that we would do a test at 2.15 Madrid time in the lunch break. After 45 minutes with the willing and able assistance of Gerry Lerner, we finally managed to get an Internet connection on my laptop – the login page for the hotel didn’t like Firefox! After that, technically it went perfectly, and the immediate response to the talk was very positive as well. I had to disconnect the sound and the projector from the laptop quite quickly to allow us all to make generally celebratory noises because it had been such a success!

When I write all, I must make special mention of Cornelia Kreis-Meyer. She donated her Adobe Connect room, her time and her expertise without complaint, and without her it would not have happened, so many thanks from us.

From a general perspective, this was a nice conference. The range of talks was very interesting, and I attended one that was probably the most exciting presentation I have ever attended. Borja Uruñuela, of the St. James Language Center in Seville, may have solved a question I have been grappling with for years. I can’t say what, but hopefully I can write more on this in the future. The conference was well-organised, the organising team were friendly and always willing to help. It was a good atmosphere, and when I finally got there, lunch was good too. The coffee break was even better though – a wide range of beverages, and some of the best pastries I have had for a long time.

We have an interesting event coming up in Madrid at the beginning of next month. Pete is making a presentation, but due to other commitments, Pete will be presenting via Adobe Connect from his hotel room in Argentina! Just in case the technology lets us down, Kevin will be physically present in the room, and will also be able to feed questions to Pete from the audience. Should be fun! Kevin will also be manning a stand at the event, so if you are going, come and say hello. Here is the link to the event details on our site:

http://www.psa.eu.com/event/fecei-conference-madrid

I’ve been trying to collate all the apps mentioned by participants at the end of my session on Apps at the BESIG conference in Stuttgart …. so far to no avail! Thanks to the generosity of participants, there were so many of them!

Finally, here’s the collated list! BESIG apps apps-handout2

I’d be keen to invesitigate many of them further, and will continue to do so as Barney and myself finalise our forthcoming e-book on Apps!

In the meantime – hope this one-page Handout gives a flavour of the incredible range of Apps out there. The next questions are – which are best suited to the needs of our business English learners, and how can they best be exploited? Keep your eye out for news on our next book…..

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 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 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…….

Webinar: 400 Ideas for Interactive Whiteboards

Here are all the LINKS  and MATERIALS from today’s webinar:

Download Barney Barrett’s fantastic lesson using Google Earth – Directions giving directions

Watch the authors of 400 Ideas on Macmillan ELT’s YouTube channel

Download a template for generating ideas for use with an IWB template

Read Wayne Trottman’s insightful review of our sumptuous tome http://www.waynetrotman.com/wp/?p=643

Download free updates to Blended Learning http://www.macmillanenglish.com/methodology/books/Blended-Learning.htm

Read out about future IWB webinar from Barbara Gardner on the IATEFL Learning Technology webinars http://ltsig.org.uk/

Find out about the English UK training day on IWBs in London next February http://www.englishuk.com/en/training/training-days

Find out 1 and 2-day training courses in IWBs for ELT from PSA (aka acronym city) http://www.psa.eu.com/training/courses/three-hour-modules

PSA one

PSA two

Visit iTILT Interactive Technologies in Language Teaching http://itilt.eu/

Read a version of the article ’10 things to do with an IWB’ published in Modern English Teacher Vol 19 Number 1 January 2010 IWB

Don’t forget – if you have any post-webinar thoughts or questions, you can always use the Comment box below!

Here’s all the LINKS  and MATERIALS from my conference talk:

Download Barney Barrett’s fantastic lesson using Google Earth – Directions directions

Watch the authors of 400 Ideas on Macmillan ELT’s YouTube channel

Download a template for generating ideas for use with an IWB template

Read Wayne Trottman’ brain-melting review of our sumptuous tome http://www.waynetrotman.com/wp/?p=643

Download free updates to Blended Learning http://www.macmillanenglish.com/methodology/books/Blended-Learning.htm Update 10 on IWBs – coming SOON!

Find out about the IATEFL Learning Technology webinars http://ltsig.org.uk/

Find out about the English UK training day on IWBs in London next February http://www.englishuk.com/en/training/training-days

Find out 1 and 2-day training courses in IWBs for ELT from PSA aka acronym city http://www.psa.eu.com/training/courses/three-hour-modules

PSA one

PSA two

Visit iTILT Interactive Technologies in Language Teaching http://itilt.eu/

Read a version of the article ’10 things to do with an IWB’ published in Modern English Teacher Vol 19 Number 1 January 2010 IWB

STOP PRESS!!!!

How does YOUR country score of Hofstede’s Uncertainty avoidance dimension? Find out here Hofstede

Definitely not flawless but great insights for a lesson on cultural awareness……