A good friend (and a great teacher) e-mailed me after my last post. “Great links,” she said. “But what’s a PLN?” 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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘JALT’
Bringing Happiness to the Classroom (by Vladimira Michalkova)
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful. – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama A real authentic smile of a student is worth every single minute you spend on giving them a reason for it.
2011 Challenge: Become a Beginner (again)
This year Try something that makes you feel foolish. Something that guarantees you’ll make mistakes. Something that frustrates and overwhelms you. In other words, do something that helps you remember what it feels like to be a beginner.
Very Cool! Meeting online friends face-to-face
Last year, I had my first ever “Tweet Up” at the JALT Conference in Shizuoka. For those not familiar with Twitter, a Tweet Up is when people who know each other through Twitter have a chance to meet face-to-face. Even though we were still a relatively small group of Twitter-using teachers, the excitement was huge. [...]
What I did on my summer vacation…
Ohisashiburi! That’s a Japanese greeting for when greeting friends after a long absence, and I certainly have been gone a long time! Where I’ve been…. I actually planned on unplugging for a little while this summer. My daughter was home from college and I wanted time with her. Then, we went to Maui, and most [...]
How to Create a Jazz Chant by Carolyn Graham
Part of the series: Stuff All EFL Teachers Should Know Last November, Carolyn Graham did a workshop at the JALT National Conference in Shizuoka, Japan, on how to make a Jazz Chant. I taped her workshop, and with her permission am sharing the part of it where she demonstrates her technique. One of the many [...]
Flap Books: A Simple Secret for Student Support! (by Lesley Ito)
I think what every teacher needs to know is this simple secret to successful ESL/EFL classes: Students can accomplish so much more if the lesson has proper support. It is very difficult for students, particularly at the EFL level, to stand up in front of the class and spontaneously tell a story or talk about [...]
An invitation to participate in academic publication (by Theron Muller)
I fell into the world of academic publishing a bit accidentally. After finishing my MA in TEFL/TESL I was interested in maintaining familiarity with what I had learned and was worried that if I didn’t actively maintain my participation in the discourse of the profession, then the MA would become little more than another piece [...]
