If there are any readers left of this blog, I’m sure you’ve noticed the incredibly slow trickle of entries over the last year or two compared to the frequent posts of yesteryear. I’ve kept this blog alive for a couple of reasons. One, I still get a lot of hits on the older articles and I’ve met several people over the years (and recently as well) who told me they’ve come across the blog while googling for something and found their answer.

Second I was hoping to get reinspired to write like I did in the past. However that has not happened and I don’t see anything changing in the future. I do have things to write, but most of it is negative and I am not interested in putting the effort necessary to write it – especially in light of the Korean laws on libel and slander (even if it’s true, if it damages someones reputation you can be sued and will lose).

I’ve also been planning my move back to Canada in Summer 2011 and once there I will not be teaching English but doing web development. Once I made that decision last year, a switch inside my mind flipped and I 100% lost the drive to blog about language teaching.

This is my final post on the EFL Geek. The domain here will expire in 1 year and 2 months (April 2011) and when it does this blog will disappear. I am willing to sell the domain if anyone is interested in purchasing it – make me an offer and it’s yours. I will not however sell the content.

I would like to thank all my commenters and readers for dropping by and visiting.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Mar 3, 2010 at 06:41 PM
META | (8) | |

A few days ago I was interviewed by email for Why They Teach. If you’re interested in learning more about me go check it out.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Apr 13, 2009 at 07:06 AM
META | Random_Ramblings | |

Just add a new css style sheet to the blog here. Now when you print, only the entries will print – no longer will the navigation, header or sidebar stuff show up on paper. I’ve also set it so that comments start on a brand new page, thus enabling you to only print the article (assuming you do a print preview and know how many pages an entry is.)

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Feb 7, 2009 at 10:21 AM
META | |

I just realized I missed my 5 year anniversary of blogging which was on January 29. I was reminded when I saw that Zen Kimchi also is 5 years old.

In 5 eyars I have:

1. gotten my M.A. and blogged it.
2. started a wiki – didn’t take off
3. started forums – also didn’t take off
4. rebranded my site from blinger to EFLGeek and changed domains in the process.
5. started a group Korean learning blog – which goes on and off
6. started bloggin on Movable type
7. switched to ExpressionEngine Which has got to be the best CMS around – it’s more than just blogging.
8. worked at 3 different universities in Korea and blogged about all three
9. wrote a newspaper column for the Korea Herald as a direct result of this blog.
10. set up guest authoring (this is still open to anyone)
11. recieved several offers from various companies for link exchanges, but never took them up on it – though I am considering redesign the site (again) to allow for advertisements
12. redesigned the site 3 times
13. decided I love web development and opened my own web development firm – CreateSean Web Design.

wow 5 years. it’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging that long. But what’s even harder to believe is that in May I will have been living in Korea for 12 years.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Feb 5, 2009 at 09:12 PM
META | Random_Ramblings | |

The random quote at the top of the page has been upgraded to automatically cycle through 25 random quotes from the database on each page load. I attempted to do the javascript myself, failed, but received some help from the EE forums so now its working. If your browser has javascript turned off the layout of the page will be broken, but everything will still be readable.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Jul 5, 2008 at 06:38 AM
META | web_site | |

This is the 1000^th post on EFL Geek. I would say that over 90% of my posts have been directly related to ELT with a few non-sequitors over the years and recently a few posts on web design.

Of course I’ve had a few posts by guest authors as well and am always looking for more guest authors who would like to contribute either once or even regularly.

Looking forward to the next 1000 entries.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday May 20, 2008 at 01:01 PM
META | web_site | |

During my upcoming summer vacation (mid June to end of August) I’m going to completely redesign this site. I’m fairly certain that the forums and wiki will be gone as there is no traffic there. Since there isn’t any action I don’t see the need to spend time designing and coding for an unused portion of the site. If the forums or the wiki suddenly picks up in traffic I will of course keep it.

Sometime this summer Expression Engine will be releasing version 2.0 which is a major upgrade and will no doubt add new features (as of yet unknown) that I may or may not added. In any case, I’m planning on transitioning out of EFL in the next 3-4 years and moving into web design.

The upcoming redesign of my blog will be the first site that I code from the ground up. Previous sites I have used templates as a framework to build from there. At the same time I’ll be creating my portfolio site for web design in order to attract paying clients (I’ve already had one and have another potential in the pipeline). And a third site will be my teaching portfolio site to supplement my hard copy portfolio.

Do I really need to make a teaching portfolio site if I’m moving out of teaching? No, but it’s another site design that I can feature on my web design site and who knows, in the next 3-4 years I may need to change jobs. It never hurts to be prepared.

Coming soon a new look for EFL Geek - more streamlined and without the forums/wiki. I’ll probably also rethink a couple of other features of the blog including the links to various social networks on each entry, trackbacks (which have been turned off for ages), and membership in general.

I’m looking forward to exercising my CSS & XHTML kung fu skills.

Comments, thoughts?

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Apr 19, 2008 at 10:32 AM
META | Expression_Engine | web_site | |

Looks like I missed my fourth blogiversary - it’s hard to believe that this blog has been running for four years. The first, second and third blogiversary posts detail early changes in this blog.

I guess now that I’ve entered my fifth year of ELT blogging that I can safely say that I am a veteran blogger with few ELT oriented blogs around for the same amount of time as mine.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Feb 6, 2008 at 09:29 AM
META | Random_Ramblings | |

I’ve finished teaching for summer semester. All lessons went better than expected and overall I’m very satisfied with this course. Tomorrow is a holiday and then Wednesday is the final exam so a little bit of grading and then I will be finished until the last week of August. There will probably be very few entries between now and then, but don’t give up on me, I’ll be back.

Just so everyone knows, I’m still looking for guest authors either as a one off entry or a semi-regular contributor. You can write on anything you want as long as it is somewhat related to linguistics, teaching, language, or language learning.

Finally I’ve just finished the upgrade to EE 1.6 and all went smoothly. I also added the new social bookmarking module. The bookmarks will only be available on the permalink/comments page. The control panel for the module is a little buggy right now so I can only have the default two social sites, but once it’s fixed will add a few more. Will complete the forum upgrade probably tomorrow, right now I’m off to relax with some coffee and DVDs.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Jul 16, 2007 at 01:07 PM
META | Expression_Engine | Guest Author | web_site | Teaching | |

Expression Engine has released the latest version 1.6 (change log) with a major upgrade to the forum module 2.0 (change log).

Of particular interest to me is the ability to have seperate forums for each blog. Previously it was only possible to have one forum per installation.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Jun 21, 2007 at 12:27 PM
META | Expression_Engine | |

Expression Engine is about to release EE 1.6 and a new module. Their having a contest to give away 3 copies of the new module and I’ve decided to enter. The rules state that I must post my entry on my blog so here it is. You can see the contest and new release details here. Hope you enjoy the picture below and if you haven’t already switched to Expression Engine, ask yourself why? click the image to see full size.

update
I’ve added another picture to the extended entry.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Jun 16, 2007 at 02:07 PM
META | Expression_Engine | |

Update II
I’ve just enabled editing of comments. comments will be editable for 30 minutes after posting.
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I’ve received a couple of reports that comments are being rejected by my site by logged in as well as not logged in readers. Will be troubleshooting this soon. However if you have a comment you would like to share the email form is still working. Sorry for the trouble.
update
I think the problem was my spam protection was set a little high. comments with multiple urls were being automatically rejected. This should be fixed now.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Jun 15, 2007 at 06:18 AM
META | web_site | |

This is a test of the guest entry form. If it works this entry should go to the submission queue for moderation. AFter moderation it will be approved and appear with a guest entry icon.

Let’s hope everything works out.

I am planning on getting two to three semi-regular guest authors here. It is not however necessary to write regularly, if you want to guest author, just click on the guest entry link above and post your entry. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask in the forums or send me an email using the links above.

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王音癡 inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday May 20, 2007 at 09:21 AM
META | Guest Author | web_site | |

Did you know about guest authoring?

Total Votes: 25

Yes

 12% (3)

 

No

 48% (12)

 

I had forgotten

 40% (10)

 

Sometime in the next few weeks there will finally be a guest author on this site. I’ve had a guest entry form available on this site for ages, but no one has taken advantage of the opportunity. That is probably due to my lack of promotion of this option. Just to let you know, any registered member is able to guest author an entry on this blog. Once your entry is submitted it will go to a moderation queue for me to approve. Approval is basically a rubber stamp as long as your post is on topic and the language is clean.

One of my close friends has recently embarked on a distance Masters Degree and has expressed interest in posting here. I’ve had the pleasure of proof reading the two essays that he has submitted so far and must say that he is a better writer than I ever was. He’s got a lot of interesting ideas that I’m sure readers here will enjoy reading and commenting on. As soon as he registers you can expect an entry.

Did you know about the guest entry option? Vote in the poll. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on guests authors and blogging in general.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday May 18, 2007 at 06:44 PM
META | web_site | Polling_Station | |

update
parts III & IV are now available. I’ve temporarily made this entry a sticky.

Katie at TEFL Logue has interviewed me.  Coincidentally last May I was interviewed as well by GalbiJim.

Anyhow Katies Interview is in four parts with the first two parts already published and the remaining two to get posted when she’s ready.

• part one
• part two
• part three
• part four

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday May 12, 2007 at 05:33 AM
META | web_site | Random_Ramblings | |

I recieved a comment from a new reader today and I followed the link to Steli Efti’s Blog. The second post from the top is 5 Reasons Why I Blog and I thought I would play along with this. In no particular order:

1. Reflective: I blog so I can reflect on my teaching and what I want to do with my classes. It gives me an opportunity to organize my thoughts and ideas before implementing them in the classroom. It also gives me a place to ask for advice from other teachers - see this recent post for example.
2. Creativity: Blogging gives me the opportunity to be creative. Writing some entries requires careful thought, but more importantly I get to work on my web site design and features from time to time. This is pretty much my only artistic talent that I am aware of.
3. Development: Reading other blogs helps me to grow as a teacher. I find new ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of and can try them out in class. I’ve found interesting articles and books to read based on other bloggers posts. Additionally it’s pretty hard to keep abreast of all the technology/web2.0 options available for ELT teaching but by reading other ELT blogs I feel I do a pretty good job of it.
4. Enjoyment: Because it’s fun.
5. Resources: It’s a great way for me to centralize resources. Searching through my blog allows me to find ideas that I’ve forgotten about including lesson plans, links to web sites and contact info with other bloggers.

Why do you blog?

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Mar 19, 2007 at 08:38 AM
META | Random_Ramblings | |

update 2
I recieved a couple of emails this morning and it looks like my domain transfer has finally gone through and been extened until 2009. This entry will remain sticky until April 2nd when I know everything is good.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Mar 17, 2007 at 03:40 PM
META | web_site | Public_Service_Announcement | |

I regularly get requests for me to link to sites. Usually these sites are commercial ESL or teaching sites but sometimes I get asked by a new blogger. I have always said no to commercial sites as well as sites that are unrelated to the content of this blog. However once or twice I have blogrolled a blogger after watching their RSS for a few weeks.

At this point I’ve decided to publicize my blogrolling and linking policy. I’ve copied this directly from The Big Hominid as it captures my feelings exactly, and for the record The Big Ho doesn’t link to me and that’s fine even though I link to him.

BLOGROLLING POLICY: I don’t do mutual linkage, and have no problem with asymmetrical linkage: I link to bloggers who don’t link back, and that’s fine by me. Please DO NOT ask to be linked. Please DO NOT expect linkage just because you’ve linked to me. Also, if I don’t link to you, please do not assume I think your blog sucks.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Feb 22, 2007 at 11:30 PM
META | web_site | Public_Service_Announcement | Random_Ramblings | |

Today is my third blogiversary. Unlike the first and second blogiversary I’m not going to go through and make a list of my favorite posts of the past year. It is difficult to believe that I have been blogging for three years already.

The focus of the blog has changed somewhat as has the frequency of posting. The blog has clearly grown in size as well with forums, a wiki, and other features that have come and gone like the ESL/EFL blog ring. I’ll bring that back if Expression Engine gets an integrated blog ring module but for now it’s gone.

Happy blogiversary to me.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Jan 28, 2007 at 11:01 PM
META | web_site | |

A great new module: Title Images just became available for EE. I’ve installed it and changed the look of the Entry titles on this blog. I’ll probably do the same to Let’s Learn Korean as well. Let me know what you think? I may change the font used in a couple of days, but then again I may not.

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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Jan 25, 2007 at 03:17 PM
META | Expression_Engine | web_site | |