Pete Sharma Associates

Pete Sharma examines a new platform for producing top-notch web-driven business English programmes.

Many business English providers believe that ‘blended learning’, combining face-to-face teaching with online support, is best. But creating such a course is far from easy. What happens after the needs analysis tells you that your students need to prepare a presentation on exhaust-pipes for the Minneapolis trade-fair? Do you issue a course book, with a CD-ROM at the back? Unlikely. Do you create the course from the students’ own materials, with scissors, glue and a photocopier? It’s time-consuming, re-inventing wheels. In the digital age, should we go on-line, search for, download and customise authentic material from the web, and blithely ignore the copyright issues?

[To read Pete's complete review of English360, please see the latest EL Gazette article May 2011]

Can it be empirically proved that using an IWB improves educational outcomes? Clearly, longitudinal studies are necessary before any serious pronouncements can be made. The fact that better presentations are possible using an IWB (Task 1997), kinaesthetic students are catered for (Parkinson 2008) and lesson review is superior (Nostalgia 2004) should, I believe, be largely ignored.

This new book (Publication date: April 2011), however, implies that IWBs can have a “motivational effect on learners”, a serious claim given the absence of adequate peer-review.

A number of teachers teach using interactive whiteboards; most don’t. This new book clearly favours the privileged few, and neglects the hoi polloi. Moreover, the book has a number of serious gaps. There is no extensive Bibliography. There is no section dedicated to making an IWB with an X-Box remote control. Furthermore, the practical teaching ideas can  be used with minimal preparation, which is both misleading and seductive to many busy teachers, implying that such successful and off-the-shelf lessons which are pleasing to students can be trotted out without the necessary adherence to deep-structure, socio-cognitive principles, constructivism and Vygotskian thinking. The tasks and ideas can, moreover, be practised by small groups, and have very little to do with traditional transmissive approaches practised in the hallowed plenary theatres of august institutions.

It has to be said that it is highly likely that this long-awaited tome will succeed in language institutions around the world, and help innumerable ELT-initiated teachers deliver better lessons, thus holding back long-awaited research and ultimately atrophying the advancement of world knowledge through the pursuit of PhD’s into outmoded technologies. The prose is crisp and racy, far too easy to understand, and eschews the long and complex sentences of academic writing.

I trust that only Directors of Studies and teachers in need of a quick fix will pay for this book, which I fervently hope will not find its way onto the shelves of any serious library.

Reviewer: Dr Si Fiction (University of Patagonia)

I have recently reviewed Teaching Online, by Nicky Hockly with Lindsay Clandfield. I have to say that it was a most enjoyable experience, and it actually left me pining to…. TEACH ONLINE!!

“Increasing numbers of language learners are opting to take online language courses; increasing numbers of teachers are teaching online. For many, (this) is a leap into the unknown……….. The appearance of Teaching Online is therefore both timely and welcome”.

The complete review is available in the ELTJ and can be cited as:

Teaching Online: Tools and Techniques, Options and Opportunities
Pete Sharma
ELT Journal 2011 65: 217-21

Any opportunities out there? Back to bricks and mortar tomorrow……..

Just received a digital copy of Interactive Whiteboards for Education: Theory, Research and Practice edited by Michael Thomas and Euline Cutrim Schmid for review purposes. Thanks

As I leaf through the virtual pages, I encounter the contribution from our own Byron Russell, Woodstock Publishing.

There are sections on classroom research, professional development, and an afterword from Stephen Bax….boy, cannot wait to read it BUT there are ONLY 24 hours in a day, as Keifer Sutherland may have said……

An essential read (I feel) before unleashing the brain-destroying 400 Ideas for Using Interactive whiteboards, our own brain-melting tome (courtesy of Macmillan), on an unsuspecting world, IATEFL 2011-time…

Woke up to the sound of the postman delivering this door-stop-size new dictionary….within seconds of finishing my Shreddies the CD-ROM was loaded on my desk-top. I mean, where else would you start looking at a new lexicon? Dove straight into the iWriter and can already see some templates for writing which will make the lives of my academic writing students easier. Notice the Genie is still called the Genie and that a thesaurus has been added. The arrival of a new dictionary from the Big 4 or 5 UK publishers is always an event worth celebrating, although the price tag on this one seems a tad high at over twenty-five pounds. That’s pounds sterling, not weight.

Will no doubt explore the delights of this new dictionary over the coming weeks in advance of reviewing it for the Reviews in brief column in the EL Gazette.  I love being a reviewer, although there is now a car in our garage (bizarre concept) which rather cuts down on the space available for books. Maybe I should sell my burgeoning ELT library and get an e-book reader?

Our latest newsletter is now available for subscribers to te4be to download. It contains articles about Pete’s trips to south America and what he found out about how they are using technology in their classrooms. There are also up-dates on the progress of Pete Sharma Associates.

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Just found the following review in Language Learning and Technology, February 2009.

The fifth update for our book Blended Learning is now available on the Macmillan website.

So, if you want to revisit Power Point and read about the latest developments on Google! just download you free update!

Exciting developmenst in the world of electronic dictionaries. Longman have ‘raised the bar’ with their latest offering, which is on DVD-ROM. It took Barney and myself a while to load it, and we are keen to explore it! More anon when we have had a play….

We have just mailed out the latest Newsletter. It contains articles on BESIG Bonn, the latest electronic dictionary from CUP and news about PSA (Pete Sharma Associates).

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