A good reminder about why I try to avoid acronyms and jargon in my writing.

PLN is an acronym for Personal Learning Network. The acronym is relatively new, but the idea is not. Teachers have always had learning networks—people we learn from and share with. Teachers are information junkies. We’re also social. Put the two together and you have a personal learning network.

The structure of my PLN has changed since I first started teaching.

The pre-Internet 80s

Yes, there was an internet of sorts in the 80s, but I wasn’t on it. Teachers at my school made up the core of my PLN. Network central was wherever we gathered between and after classes. Most of the information we shared came from articles or books we’d read, conferences or workshops we attended. Books came from the bookstore, information from conferences came home in suitcases. The good stuff was photocopied and filed for future reference.

My PLN was very small—the teachers in my school, a few colleagues from graduate school, workshop presenters. Most information was shared face to face.

The e-mail 90s

I sent my first e-mail message in 1995. I could find information about books online, but had to buy them in a store (or, ask someone in the US to buy them in a store and ship them to me). I saved bookmarks for websites I liked, but still printed out pages for my files, and still shared information face to face.

My PLN got a little bigger in the 90s. I could use the Internet to look for infomation, and I could use e-mail to communicate with people after I met them at conferences. However, the people in my PLN were still mostly teachers I had met face to face.

The social 2000s

For information junkies, this decade has been amazing. Not only can I order books online and have them shipped to me in Japan, I can order books and download them to my computer. I access most journals and newspapers the same way. Information is waiting for me each morning in my inbox from discussion groups. The sheer volume of information available can be overwhelming at times.

The  biggest change has been in the way I meet and communicate with people in my PLN.

First, there is Twitter, which is like a big noisy teacher’s lounge. Everyone is talking (texting) at once. I might share a conversation with one or two teachers in the lounge, and catch fragments of other conversations around me. As I read the newspapers and group digests in my inbox, I share the good bits by sending short messages to other teachers on Twitter. Since they do the same, there are a lot of good bits being shared.

Most of the resources are in the form of links—to websites, to e-books, to blogs, or to activities. Rather than printing out copies for my files, I save the links on a social bookmarking site, like Delicious. Because I use tags instead of file folders, I can easily search for specific items. And because teachers can look through each other’s bookmarks, it’s easy to share.

Discussion groups (like JALT’s Teaching Children SIG or IATEFL’s Young Learners and Teenagers SIG) are like conference breakout sessions, where teachers have extended, and topic-oriented conversations.

Nings are like subject area resource rooms in a large school. They’re social networks connecting teachers with common interests. In addition to discussion forums, members keep blogs, share resources, and plan group activities.  EFL teachers might belong to EFL Classroom 2.0 or English Companion, or both.

I attended more conferences than ever before, but travel much less. I still prefer to physically attend a conference, but online sessions and summaries allow me to be there in spirit even when it’s impossible to be there in body. For example, the IATEFL conference this year broadcast plenary and workshop sessions (and then archived the videos available on the website), Twitter allowed workshop participants to share updates and allowed teachers not at the conference (like me) to ask questions during panel discussions. Issues raised during the presentations were discussed in online forums.

The kinds of discussions I have, and information I share with my PLN hasn’t changed all that much over the years–what works in class, how students learn, how to become a better teacher. How I meet other teachers, where we discuss ideas, and how we share information has changed. Significantly. My PLN now includes teachers who live quite far from me—in Asia, Australia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. I meet them online. I learn from them online. I share with them online.

The teachers in my Personal Learning Network are some of the best friends I’ll never meet.

I’m here to tell you about how a simple acronym – EVO – changed my life and was a true turning point in my professional development. When I joined the Electronic Village Online for the first time to take the online session Becoming a Webhead (BaW), I had the feeling it was special in the sense of learning something new, understanding more about this online world, and connecting to like-minded educators for a period of time. Never could I imagine that the Electronic Village Online would be way more than my initial expectation. The Electronic Village Online was a new beginning of renovated passion for my profession as an educator, of lifelong learning and the joy of being always connected. It was not about a definite time, it was about constant feeding and improvement in who I was as an educator and person.

Every year, we gather for five weeks to network, to connect, to have fun, to meet like-minded international educators, and to dare. It is that time when we gain new insights on how to make a difference in our educational contexts, when we give ourselves some time to test new possibilities in the classroom in an environment where every educator is invited to experiment with the many choices they are given in the many online sessions they can opt to join. Throughout the years, as a moderator and part of the EVO Coordinating Team, I’ve come to see many educators flourish and gain new insights, finding new meaning to their professional lives and spicing up their teaching practice with a myriad of classroom ideas, activities, resources they learned in the EVO Sessions. I’ve seen them bloom to become great local leaders and multipliers of the ideas they’ve gotten from the different Electronic Village Online sessions. Some have even become digital stars, well-known in the online circles of educators via Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Webconferencing, among others.

In 2012, the prospect of educational training for educators looks more exciting than ever with our traditional sessions and some brand new ones. EVO will run from January 9^th to February 12^th. Here’s the list of what you’ll be able to choose from:

• Becoming a Webhead
• Developing our Mentoring Skills
• Digital Storytelling for Young Learners
• Digital Tools with Purpose in the Classroom
• TESOL-Drama Workshop: Teaching and Assessing English Through Drama
• Teaching and Language Learning Through Gamification
• MachinEVO – Video Productions of Language Learning Conversations
• MOODLE for Teachers
• Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments
• PLEs and PLNs for Lifelong Learning
• Podcasting for the EFL/ESL Classroom
• Social Networking: Making it Work for You and Your Students
• Teaching English to Young Learners and Teens
• Tutoring with Web 2.0 Tools – Designing for Social Presence

To check the session abstracts and to register for them, access http://evosessions.pbworks.com/Call_for_Participation2012

EVO is an eye-opener for everyone interested in improving the way we teach, share, connect and interact. I do hope you have the chance to experience this professional development program that is free, welcoming of novice teachers and more experienced ones, and totally addictive! I started as a participant and have never stopped joining the sessions and moderating some as part of my own professional evolution and the need to belong to this group of educators who are pure inspiration and passion.

Join us  to see what I mean!

Carla is a teacher, teacher trainer, and Ed Tech Supervisor at Casa Thomas Jefferson in Brasilia. She has been using social media to explore the potential of educational technology in the classroom and beyond. Carla is part of the TESOL’s Electronic Village Online Coordinating Team and has been co-moderating the EVO online sessions to help educators develop their digital literacy and fluency. You can find Carla in Twitter @carlaarena or in her blog http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com

I currently give most of my online time to three networks: Teaching Village (this blog), International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi.pro), and #ELTChat on Twitter. I KNOW that the people I work with are incredible, but it’s even nicer when other people recognize them as well. That’s what nominations do–help us notice the great things that people are doing to help other teachers and improve the teaching profession.

First, a huge thank you on behalf of the guest authors on Teaching Village. I am always thrilled to have Teaching Village nominated for anything, but am especially happy to see the blog nominated in the “Best Group Blog” category!  (“Whoop!” as Villager Vicky Loras would say!) With 70 guest authors from every corner of the EFL world (and growing), I am lucky to be the steward for such a fabulous group of Villagers. (P.S. If you’re on facebook, please “like” our new Teaching Village page. Thanks!)

Now, here’s my hat tip to the guest authors for Teaching Village, the faculty and associates for iTDi, and my co-moderators for ELTChat who have received nominations this year:

Here’s what has been published on Teaching Village recently:

In May

Mark Kulek shared some practical ideas for using chunks of language in young learner classes. Since it’s no harder for students to memorize chunks of language than it is to memorize individual words, knowing how to exploit these lexical chunks can be a real help for teachers. Check out Mark’s post, Lexical Chunks for Kids, and see for yourself.

Have you ever wanted to teach debate in your kids’ classes? Randy Poehlman shared simple steps to move from the basic “I like….” to true debate. Since we all teach lessons about likes and dislikes, you’ll want to read Randy’s post, Moving Beyond “Do you like?” to see how easy it is to get more mileage out of the topic than you ever imagined possible.

In June

These days, a lot of teachers are interested in teaching in a more student-centered, materials-light way, but aren’t sure how to start. Chiew Pang explains how using images can be a simple way to try this approach. In his post Images à la Dogme, Chiew offers clear examples of lessons building on the power of images to draw out language.

“We’re better when we work together” isn’t just the byline on my blog–it’s one of my core beliefs. When I was invited to join the International Teacher Development Institute and to help develop a course for teachers who want to improve their language skills, it felt like a natural step. Now that Chuck Sandy and I are working with an amazing community of teachers to create materials for the course, it feels more like a dream come true for me. You’ll have to wait until September to see our finished product, but you can read more about iTDi in Steven Herder’s guest post, Teacher Development 2.0.

Tara Benwell will be the first to tell you that she’s not the driving force behind My English Club–members are. On the one hand, she’s right. But, Tara is the energy behind this community that empowers its members to teach themselves and each other. In her post Teaching Pronunciation Online, Tara explains how the Internet enables members of MyEC to  learn pronunciation more effectively than in a traditional classroom. After her post was published, Tara sent me a link to show me how members of the Audio Speaking Group had turned the content of her guest post into material for their pronunciation practice. I’d love to share that page with you, but you have to be a member of MyEC to see it. Of course, if you’re a teacher or a student, MyEC is a very good group to join!

It’s hard to find teachers who feel lukewarm about teaching teens. It’s an age group that teachers tend to love…or hate. Luckily, Mari Nakamura falls into the first category. She’s also a fan of Paul Nation’s Four Strands (meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning and fluency development). In her post, Creating a Buzz in Teens’ Classrooms, Mari walks us through the way she uses video with her teens to get them excited about using English in a meaningful way.

Bob Middleton teaches elementary school in Japan. He has come up with a topic that children here get very excited about (rice) and created a comprehensive unit that teaches English along with science, social studies, world geography, and math. In his post Rice in Japan and Rice around the World, Bob provides an excellent example of how a teacher can build an incredible thematic English unit, starting with student interest.

One of the most frustrating situations for a teacher is when students aren’t able to answer simple questions in a way that makes any sense. Especially for students with limited vocabulary, coming up with answers that are relevant to questions can be a challenge. Naomi Ganin-Epstein helps students develop these skills by removing text and having students practice “reading” pictures. Check out her post, The Reading Pictures Strategy, to learn more about this interesting technique.

All teachers want to create a positive learning environment for students. Eric Kane builds a lovely garden analogy to help teachers establish a pro-active approach to classroom discipline rather than a re-active one. His post, Proactive Discipline–Tend to Your Garden, explains how to use Eric’s Three Cs (clarity, consistency, and caring) to keep your classroom garden healthy and free of weeds.

While most of the posts over the past month or so have been from guest authors, I did make a few contributions! In How Culture Matters and How Context Matters I used examples from my life in Japan to explore ways that culture can affect what our students find easy or difficult in a language class, and the role of context in teaching.

I had a chance to interview Sandy Millin as part of Brad Patterson’s PLN interview challenge. Sandy is a fascinating member of my personal learning network, and I invite you to get to know her in Sandy has a real job, thank you very much! And finally, Chiew Pang interviewed me for his new blog, Iasku. If you’re curious about me beyond my “about me” page, you might want to check it out

Whew! While you’re getting caught up on posts you might have missed, I’ll get to work on the next series of guest posts–there are some great ones in the wings, from both familiar and new Villagers!

What is iTDi?
ITDi will be an online portal offering professional development opportunities for the full range of teachers from beginners who want to get off on the right foot, to veterans who want to reconsider or re-energize their approach in the classroom. Initially, two courses are being offered: Teacher Development (TD) and English for Teachers (EFT).

Who can join us?
Well, we need more writers, investors and supporters. With the size of our goals and the demand for professional development from teachers literally around the globe, we’ll always have room for more passionate educators to join us. For more information, please contact us through the iTDi website.

How did iTDi begin?
As the era of Collaboration 2.0 has now clearly arrived, just about anything is possible these days and almost everything is attainable for people with good ideas and the drive or determination to make them happen. As the world continues to get smaller, I now regularly have Skype meetings with people living on 3 or 4 different continents. The seeds for this kind of synergy began for me personally about 5 years ago.

MA TEFL/TESL Studies
I enrolled in what I worried might be a notoriously lonely, distance-learning Masters program and almost before my eyes, it morphed into a dynamic weekly online study group with colleagues who were eager to exploit the online tools that were suddenly at hand:

Back in 2006, we used a new thing called Skype, discussion forums, and then Google Documents to study together. We debated and defended our opinions about teaching and learning; we often laughed together and sometimes whined to each other; and we shared the small victories and listened intently during the stressful times; it offered all kinds of growth throughout a busy but meaningful 3-year period. In doing so, we also learned more than we could ever have imagined and built up enough trust to know that we’ll be friends and colleagues working on projects together forever.

MASH Collaboration
With the end of the MA TEFL, I wanted to continue collaborating and used the MASH Collaboration umbrella to embark on a number of new challenges with both old friends and new colleagues Theron Muller, Philip Shigeo Brown, Mark de Boer and Gregory Sholdt, and we produced eight one-day professional development seminars, embarked on two book projects and created a full 4-day conference “Equinox” featuring world-class presenters Scott Thornbury and Paul Nation. In the past 3 years, we have been able to reach out to many other passionate like-minded ELT professionals including Curtis Kelly, Marc Helgesen, Tim Murphey, Chuck Sandy, Marcos Benevides, Andy Boon, Steve Brown, Steven Nishida, Ann Mayeda, Alastair Graham-Marr, Joe Siegel, Colin Skeates, Jason Peppard, Kishiko Nashimoto, Joanne Sato, Andy Lawson and another 100 or so presenters and regular attendees of MASH events.

The seeds for iTDi
Then came a late-night Skype call that was to up the stakes and change the way I would be spending all of my free time for the foreseeable future.

Chuck Sandy and I were talking about what he might do for the 7000 teachers on the Facebook page that he shared with Curtis Kelly (Over 8500 now). There were educators from around the world gathering together online – looking for a friendly forum to share ideas, a community to connect with like-minded teachers, and ongoing opportunities to improve themselves professionally. As more teachers continued to join the page, Chuck felt a growing and pressing need to offer them something more tangible.

On a quest for a good idea, Chuck began to do what he does best: reaching out and talking to others who might see the potential in helping teachers to empower themselves. Everyone he talked to agreed that there was a need and a market for some kind of online teacher development program, but it wasn’t until Chuck spoke to Gareth Knight and I spoke with Scott Thornbury that we finally had the core set of people with the right synergy to change this great idea into something concrete: The International Teacher Development Institute (iTDi).

ITDi Teacher Development (TD) Course
Scott Thornbury, Adrian Doff and I are pooling our considerable writing and teaching experience to write the TD course with over 100 lessons offered within 24 different modules. Our focus is entirely on providing practical ideas that any teacher can use, and helping teachers to identify and solidify their own beliefs about teaching and learning.

English for Teachers (EFT) Course
For the EFT course, Chuck Sandy, Kate Cory-Wright and Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto have formed an inspiring team, bringing their unique teacher-training voices and well-known ability to communicate with people globally, to offer an English language course built around the one topic that all teachers are interested in: teaching and learning.

The rest of our growing team
ITDi has brought together a growing team of movers and shakers; authors, teacher trainers and pioneers in the ELT world, all under the leadership of our Managing Director, Gareth Knight. Gareth had 15 years experience with Cambridge University Press and immediately knew how to make iTDi a viable and sustainable business venture.

The strength of this new venture is built upon people first: technology second. We are a company created by teachers that will grow with the support and energy of teachers. We decided to build and finance this venture through our teaching peers, and likewise, we will share the profits and future opportunities of the business with our teacher colleagues. In addition to the core writing and management team above, iTDi has a growing list of authors, contributors, advisors and investors, including: John Fanselow, Paul Nation, Theron Muller, David O’Callaghan, Marcos Benevides, Mark de Boer, Neil. J. Anderson, Adrian Doff, Curtis Kelly, Philip Shigeo Brown, Todd Rucynski, and Mike Welch.

For many of us, this project is a culmination of the many years of experience that we have gained on the front lines of teaching in our EFL context. Not only do we have a chance to create something meaningful and important, but also, you have the chance to be a part of that experience with us.

Sincerely,

Steven Herder
Program Director, Founder, iTDi
steven.herder@tdinstitute.com

Darren Elliott began his video interviews in October of 2009. His approach was simple—Darren contacted speakers and asked if they’d be willing to be interviewed at an upcoming conference. Most said yes, and his archive of video interviews is a rich resource of ELT-related interviews (now also downloadable as podcasts). Social media is an equalizer, making it easy to contact people you may not otherwise have access to.

Click here to go to to the Lives of Teachers Video Interview Index.

Networks like Twitter and Facebook give us access to international news at a personal level. Larry Ferlazzo is connected to a LOT of teachers around the world, some of them teaching in places we see on the nightly news.  He started a series of interviews with teachers in hot spots around the world. I’ve really enjoyed reading about current events from a teacher’s perspective.

Click here to go to Larry Ferlazzo’s list of interviews with teachers in Hot Spots around the world.

Brad Patterson and several online friends met face to face at the recent IATEFL conference. After a bit of late night banter on Twitter, Brad issued a blog challenge for teachers to interview other teachers in their PLN (personal learning network). These interviews have been great fun to read, and are a way to make our networks feel truly personal. Although it started with teachers who met in Brighton, the challenge is open and ongoing. The interviews are spread over several different blogs, but I’m being lazy and using Brad’s blog as a launching point, since he has been kind enough to list all of the posts in one place.

After you’ve enjoyed reading these, think about who you might like to interview, and go ahead and ask! If you do interview another teacher, be sure to send Brad a link to it so he can add your interview to his list.

Click here to go to Brad’s blog, with its list of PLN interviews.

Have you found other interview series that show teachers making great use of their networks? How about other similar collaborative projects? Please share them in comments so we can all enjoy!

P.S. If you’re not sure what a personal learning network is, you might enjoy What is a PLN, anyway?

Flickr: accent on eclectic

It has been a rough couple of months. With teaching, writing, and travel, and a few natural and man-made disasters, I’ve done a poor job keeping up this blog, a worse job of reading other people’s blogs, and an embarrassingly dreadful job of commenting on blogs (to let people know that I actually did read their posts). I’m home this month and enjoying getting caught up a bit. My Villagers page of guest authors is finally up to date!

Just in case you’ve been busy, too, here are some guest posts that you may have missed

In March

Patrick Jackson found a way to use St. Patrick’s Day as a way to share some excellent tips for effective language teaching. His post, What Every Teacher Should Know about St. Patrick’s Day, is wonderful any time of year, so if you missed it then, be sure to take time for it now.

Naomi Moir wrote a post with great advice for teachers of young learners. Naomi is an extremely talented teacher trainer, and I always learn a lot from her. Whether teaching children is your vocation or simply the job you got stuck with, you’ll appreciate her post, Lessons Learned.

In April

Zahra is the first student to have written a guest post for Teaching Village, but hopefully not the last! Zahra is a member of My English Club, and I met her through that group’s administrator, Tara Benwell. If you’ve ever wondered how students feel about online learning, you’ll enjoy Zahra’s post, Benefits of Learning Online. (By the way…if any of your students would like to write a post for me, I’d love to add them to the Voices of Students category!)

Marc Helgesen is one of the best teacher trainers I have ever known because his advice is not just useful, it’s memorable. When I read his post, Classroom Management: Stuff they didn’t mention in teacher training, I found myself nodding at tips that seem really obvious, but that I hadn’t thought of until Marc mentioned them. I’m sure you’ll find something in his post that you can take into your next class.

In May

Anna Greenwood was a lovely surprise. Usually, I ask teachers to write guest posts, and then nudge gently (and repeatedly) until they find time to write. Anna sent her first post already written to my inbox. Her Teaching in a Buddhist Monastery in India is a unique addition to our Stories from the Front Lines of EFL. She followed that post with another, Personal experiences of a new EFL teacher, that shares some lessons she has learned working with her monastery students. I look forward to hearing more from Anna in the future!

In a comment on recent post of mine about including and playing with context in lessons, Randy Poehlman mentioned that he had his students select pictures to create their own context, as a way of owning the English they were learning. I asked if he’d be willing to write a guest post to explain how he uses student selected images in class, and he agreed! Students Picking Pics is the result. Randy gave me courage to let my students try searching for their own photos online.

That brings me up to date on this blog! Tomorrow, I’ll highlight some great posts on other blogs.

If you are new to online professional development, or looking to expand your network, this is one of the best opportunities around to discover new blogs. The blogs on this list are there because they’ve been nominated by readers, which means that they come with recommendations. Last year, I found blogs that I’d never heard of before, but now love. Cyberspace is a big place, and there are always gems waiting to be discovered. Regardless of how you feel about rankings and competitions, I encourage you to go window shopping for new blogs to read!

If you receive Teaching Village updates through an rss feeder or by email, you may not have noticed the two award badges in the right sidebar. One is for being the 3rd ranked language teaching blog last year in Lexiophiles’ annual competition. (The other is for being tefl.net’s Site of the Year last year.)

Teaching Village has been nominated again this year as one of the top 100 language learning blogs. Like everyone else on the list, I’m thrilled to have received a nominated, and am fully aware that any recognition this blog gets is a reflection of the fabulous teacher community we have in our guest authors, commenting readers, and silent supporters. Thank you for your continued support.

You can go vote by clicking on the image

I’m doubly thrilled to see so many of Teaching Village’s guest authors nominated for the writing they do on their own excellent blogs. They include:

Eva Büyüksimkesyan for A Journey in TEFL. Eva’s guest post, Being an EFL Teacher, is a lighthearted look at all the unpaid perks we get for doing something we love.

Janet Bianchini, for Janet’s Abruzzo Edublog. Janet’s guest post, Do it Your Way, is an inspiring message of staying true to our teaching instincts in the face of changing trends.

Anne Hodgson, for The Island Weekly. Her guest post, A Socializing Game: Driver’s Seat, introduces a speaking game that will get your more advanced learners taking a more proactive role in conversation.

Shelly Sanchez Terrell, for Teacher Reboot Camp. Shelly has written two guest posts for Teaching Village, both with the mix of practical help and technology savvy she is known for. Her first post, EFL Teacher’s Kit for Surviving Kids, provides exactly what the title promises, and her second, Digital Digits: Creative Ideas for Finger Plays, demonstrates a really simple way to update a young learner staple with a technology twist.

Graham Stanley, for blog-efl. Graham’s guest post, One Week in My Second Life, gives us a peek at real teaching in a virtual world. The post was actually written by Graham’s Second Life alter ego, Baldric Commons, but Baldric never minds sharing credit.

There are also a number of nominated blogs written by teachers I like and respect, and hope to persuade to add to Teaching Village’s collected wisdom as guest authors in the future.

A CLiL to Climb by Chiew Pang

Burcu Akyol’s Blog by Burcu Akyol

English Spark by Neal Chambers

Free English Lessons Online by Sue Lyon-Jones

Ken Wilson’s Blog by Ken Wilson

OUP ELT Global Blog by Oxford University Press. The phenomenal webmaster here is Alex Williams. Alex’s work also earned OUP a nomination for top Facebook language page for Oxford University Press – ELT.

Sean Banville’s Blog by Sean Banville

TEFL Matters by Marisa Constantidides

TEFLTastic by Alex Case

Teacher Training Unplugged by Anthony Gaughan

The Lives of Teachers by Darren Elliott

Websites of the Day by Larry Ferlazzo

If you aren’t following these blogs already, you should be.

Over on Twitter, Brad Patterson and OUPELGlobal (Alex Williams and Verri Toste) also received nominations in the top language twitterers category.

You can get competition updates on Twitter, as well, by following @babla or the #tll11 hashtag.

After you’ve browsed through the language learning blogs (and language professional blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts) listed on the Lexiophiles site, and found some new gems of your own, please show some love to one of the nominees in each of the four categories. Everyone likes to feel appreicated

Vote here: Language Lovers 2011

You can go vote by clicking on the image

Since fun is always a good thing to have on the brain, I’d like to share a few of the blog posts, discussions, and resources that I’ve enjoyed on this topic.

One of ELT Chat’s January 27th Twitter discussions was dedicated to the Role of Humour in the EFL Class. There are a lot of great resource links, and ideas in the Dave Dodgson‘s chat summary.

Bruno Andrade explored the chat topic in greater depth with a post on his own blog. In addition to some excellent guidelines for including humor in class, he suggests some fun activities.

If you’ve ever visited Chiew Pang‘s A CLIL to Climb, you know that he takes his fun seriously! Recently, he introduced a soccer-themed game to practice chemical elements. I think my students will  have a lot of fun using Zondle to create their own games.

Aaron Nelson was inspired by my post to expand on the idea of fun in class with his own post, Spark: Why Make Fun Part of Your Class. I enjoyed his practical tips for making classes enjoyable.

Ceri Jones took the piano stairs video and used it as the basis for a lesson for. Because it’s on her class blog, it’s could also be a fun, ready-made lesson for your students!

Finally, Clive Ellsmore created a Lino It message page based on the question “How do you bring FUN in to the classroom?” The page is full of ideas teachers use to keep their classes fun. Because the page is a work in progress, you can add your own ideas to the collection, too!

Have fun!

It’s been awhile since I’ve written one of these posts. It isn’t that I haven’t learned anything from my personal learning network recently, just that it’s way easier to learn than it is to share what I’ve learned (I’m still very slow working online, especially with links).

I have a bit of free time now before lessons and workshops begin again, so it’s a chance to catch up a bit. Here are a few of the sites I go to on a regular basis for resources and professional development.

If I need something specific for a class, I know that it’s probably on David Deubelbeiss’ EFL Classroom 2.0. If I can’t find what I’m looking for, one of the other 11,000+ members of this active community can usually help. For example, my young learners enjoy the flash games David has shared with the community, like Don’t Gross Out the World. I sent the parents of my young learners a link to this so the kids could play during their winter vacation. I just recently noticed that he has also shared a “how to” document so that I will be able to have them create their own games in class once we start up again. David also put his picks for the “best” of ELT resources into a free e-book called All the #1 Picks in ELT, which is also offered as a free download.

ELT Chat is a weekly discussion for English Teaching Professionals that happens every Wednesday on Twitter. It is moderated by several incredible teachers located around the world: Marisa Constantinides, Shelly Sanchez Terrell, Berni Wall, Olaf Elch, and Jason Renshaw. If you are a teacher, you ought to seriously consider joining Twitter (if you haven’t already). However, if you aren’t ready to join in the discussions, or they happen at a time that doesn’t work well with your own location, the ELT Chat website keeps archived transcripts of past discussions. One tip: The transcripts are loooong (it is a chat after all!). If you want to see what kind of links were shared during the discussion you can search the page for anything starting with “http” to see links (control key + F opens the search for me in Firefox). The first ELT Chats of the year will be this Wednesday, January 5th. The first chat starts at 3 p.m. London time (what time is this for you?) and will discuss the number one topic (based on member votes). The second chat session starts at 9 p.m. London time (what time is this for you?) and will discuss the second choice topic.

Rob Waring is educator and researcher based here in Japan. His website is a treasure trove of resources for teachers who want to learn more about incorporating extensive reading and listening in lessons. He’s put together the most comprehensive list I’ve found of links to research, presentations, and practical activities for both topics. One of my recent discoveries on Rob’s website was Spotlight Radio. The topics are current, the English is natural but slower, and there are transcripts of the radio broadcasts so students can read along as they listen. My adult learners all got a link to this site to entertain them during the break between classes!

Jason Renshaw was one of the first people I met when I ventured online, and he’s been a mentor ever since. I always find something on his blog that challenges me to be a better and more reflective teacher. One of his recent posts was a great example of creating student-generated writing projects and ways to use them for reading practice. Jason also maintains a resource website that is like the teacher supply store of your dreams, but online. It is a paid membership site, but Jason has gone with a “pay what you think is fair” approach so that membership is affordable for all teachers.

Jerry Blumengarten is the Cybrary Man. Visiting The Cybrary Man’s Educational Websites is like visiting a library with an extensive and well-organized section for EFL teachers. When I was looking for vacation resources for my students, I came across Speak English! on his EFL page. Speak English is part of the Speak Languages family with similar sites for several different languages. The site has useful phrases and vocabulary separated into categories (meeting people, making a reservation, buying things, etc.). My students like it because it’s really easy to navigate, they can find topic categories that they’re interested in, and they can use the recorded models for pronunciation practice.

I look forward to each issue of The Internet TESL Journal. Its articles are practical, written for and by classroom teachers. What makes it better (for me) than most of the paper journals I subscribe to is that it’s all online. That means that the archive can be easily searched and the articles easily shared. It’s not as flashy as a lot of websites out there, but that’s an advantage if you don’t happen to have a fast internet connection. The most recent issue had an article on using skype in EFL classrooms. Even though this isn’t something I’m likely to do anytime soon, I learned a lot more about the potential of this tool. In the archives, I found a great article on language learning strategies for L2 teachers. The journal website is one of those places I like to browse when I’ve got some spare reading time–I can download the articles and read them on long train or plane rides to and from workshops!

All of these sites–EFL Classroom 2.0, ELT Chat, Rob Waring, English Raven, Cybrary Man, and The Internet TESL Journal–were named a TEFL Site of the Month by TEFL.net (an excellent resource on its own). They are now among the 12 websites up for consideration as the TEFL Site of the Year 2010 (along with Teaching Village). I’ve learned to pay attention to TEFL.net’s selection each month because the websites they highlight are always great additions to my professional development resources. I invite you to hop over to the listing of the sites for 2009 to find some winners for your own resource collection. Then, show one of the sites some love by participating in the poll for Site of the Year. Any one of the sites is worthy of your consideration, and supporting TEFL.net’s efforts to make us aware of excellent websites benefits us all!