Archive for the ‘Teaching tips’ Category

Music for podcasts

Sunday, 18th July 2010

One of the most popular sessions on the PSA Blended Learning courses is on how to make your own podcasts. Recording and editing voice is straightforward. Adding music is also easy to learn. However, the question that arises with music is always the one of copyright. Most people know that if ...

Tools for the 21st Century Teacher: free eBook

Wednesday, 16th June 2010

Came across this free eBook from Michael Zimmer. Thanks to Chris Stanzer for the original tweet, and the free technology for teachers website.

Blended Learning – 8th update available

Tuesday, 4th May 2010

We are delighted to say that the next update for Blended learning is now available This focuses firstly on M-Learning - mobile learning - and then provides a practical, step-by-step guide on how to upload videos to the popular website YouTube. To download your free .pdf of this 5-page update, please ...

Interactive whiteboards and learning curves

Saturday, 26th September 2009

So, interactive whiteboards!! This is a subject that both Pete and I have brought up on this blog and is an important element in both the Blended Learning book and PSA's Blended Learning training weekends. In fact, even as I sit here typing this, Pete is across the corridor leading a ...

Wordle again

Tuesday, 4th August 2009

A slow day at Stratford resulted in everyone playing around with Wordle. Here's a great idea that came from Mark: At the end of a lesson with - especially - lower level learners, grab a couple of sentences from the board and type them into Wordle. Wipe said sentences from the board ...

Blended Learning – update 6

Thursday, 25th June 2009

The latest update to our book has just been uploaded to the Macmillan website. It looks at the mimio, New Inside Out Digital and the new on-line Macmillan English Dictionary. Enjoy - it is completely free to download!

Something extra from TED.com

Thursday, 11th June 2009

I wrote about TED.com, in an earlier post which you can read here. This website, which contains a huge archive of presentations from luminaries and experts in a variety of fields, has added someting which will make it even more useful and attractive to those teaching and learning English. On the ...

“The times, they are a-changin’…..”

Thursday, 11th June 2009

Using interactive whiteboards in the language classroom Pete Sharma In some countries, no child can go through the state education system without being taught by teachers who have access to an interactive whiteboard (IWB); in others, using an IWB is a distant dream. Almost no other educational tool symbolises and typifies the ...

BESIG Newsletter

Friday, 15th May 2009

In the Learning Technologies page, Barney Barrett looks at two exciting developments in the world of electronic dictionaries. Then, Pete Sharma shares his experiences of 'process writing', based on his involvement in authoring some of the multimedia content of The Business, a new advanced level DVD-ROM. For the rest of this ...

Webinar

Thursday, 7th May 2009

Macmillan have now made the webinar available to download for people to view on their iPod/iPhone. They can also watch an edited version that streams right on the webpage. The direct link for this is here: http://www.macmillanenglish.com/Course.aspx?id=43864. You can also get to this now from the webinar page at www.macmillanenglish.com/season. Thanks to ...

Interview in Second Life

Tuesday, 5th May 2009

Here is a recent message from Nik Peachey: for those of you who weren't able to get into Second Life for these chat shows, you can find audio recordings of the interviews here. Scott Thornbury http://tinyurl.com/dzd5xa Jeremy Harmer http://tinyurl.com/dgvghz Sound quality is far from perfect , but not too bad. Hope you enjoy these and try to ...

Webinar

Monday, 23rd March 2009

I'm delighted to be speaking next month on a Macmillan webinar. If you want to sign up, just visit the Macmillan site. It's free to view, but remember, you have to pre-register!

Longman dictionary and Firefox

Saturday, 14th February 2009

If you use Firefox to browse the web you will probably know that it features a search box on its tool bar. This is usually set to Google when you first install the browser. However, if you click on the tiny down arrow next to the Google icon, you are ...

Blended Learning – update number 5

Thursday, 5th 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!

The six best business English books ever!

Wednesday, 4th February 2009

Many thanks to Lindsay Clandfield for including this offering on his blog: six things Do visit the blog - it's one of the best six around......

Language for negotiating – website of the month

Wednesday, 21st January 2009

I've been having a start-of-year clean out and came across a piece of paper with the address of the Changing Minds website. I had clearly found and used this resource some time last year to provide a learner with some advanced negotiating language but then filed the piece of paper ...

Interactive graphics from the Financial Times

Tuesday, 14th October 2008

The graphics department of the Financial Times have been working overtime recently to provide visual and audio summaries of the events of the current crisis hitting the business and financial world. They can accessed by clicking on In depth on the website's main menu and selecting Global financial crisis. My favourite is ...

Online listening – TED.com

Saturday, 27th September 2008

Here's a website that contains a large number of authentic videos that could form the basis for listening and discussion lessons with higher-level learners. TED.com hosts videos of presentations by a remarkable range of people including environmental activist: Al Gore, founder of Amazon.com: Jeff Bezos, particle physicist: Brian Cox, musician: Evelyn Glennie, ...

Macmillan on YouTube

Thursday, 17th July 2008

Some interesting videos here - including Adrian Underhill on pronunciation, plus videos with Scott Thornbury and Michael Hoey.

Online listening for the oil industry

Thursday, 3rd July 2008

BP's 2007 annual report, which can be downloaded as a PDF from their website is accompanied by a set of downloadable MP3 recordings of the parts of the report. Although these are, no doubt, intended as an aid to BP investors who, for whatever reason, are unable to read the text, ...