Random Quote
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
"It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'"
---- Sam Levenson
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
---- Albert Einstein
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
---- Franklin D. Roosevelt
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
Children’s Education Subsidized
Starting next month my childrens education is going to be subsidized by my employer. As far as I know this is the first time a university has provided funding for foreign employees’ children’s education. The support is not nearly enough to pay for a foreign school, but it will nicely cover daycare expenses for my son.
My daughter doesn’t receive any money but that’s because elementary school is free, though if I were to stick around through middle & highschool that is subsidized as well. It also appears that university is full covered for four years - I can’t see myself being in Korea that long so that’s not an issue.
Anyhow it’s nice to see the suppport.
ESL Stand-up Comedy
Brian Aylward is a comedian who performs at clubs around Asia.
the first 2-3 minutes is really funny - watch the video.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Nov 13, 2008 at 08:57 PM
Random_Ramblings | Video | Teaching | (0)
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Book Review: Moodle 1.9
A while back I was approached by Packt Publishing to review Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development: A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle 1.9, by William H. Rice IV. I was approached to review this book due to my semi-regular blogging about Moodle as well as my extensive experience using it as a teacher of English as a Second Language.
Moodle 1.9 E-learning Course Development is a book that achieves its goal of being a complete guide to successful learning with Moodle. This book will definitely be useful for newbies as well as experienced users such as myself. Rice takes the reader through a tour of Moodle in the first chapter that serves as an excellent summary of its capabilities as well as a roadmap for the rest of the book. A friend who is a newbie to Moodle visited my house and read the first third of the book and expressed how helpful it was just reading it. He was very impressed and bought the book.
I would highly recommend any teacher or site administrator new to Moodle to read this book.To get the maximum benefit out of this book it would be best for the reader to have access to a Moodle installation, preferably as an administrator. However, if you only have teacher access this book will still be highly useful. For those curious about what Moodle has to offer but without access to a Moodle site this book will provide you with the insight you are looking for to decide if Moodle will meet your needs.
Read the rest of this post
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Nov 5, 2008 at 11:37 AM
Teaching | Moodle | Book_Gigilo | Book Reviews | (0)
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EFL Classroom 2.0 blog
David Deublebeis is now blogging at the EFL Classroom 2.0 blog. I strongly recommend that you subscribe to his feed - I expect great things from this blog.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Oct 29, 2008 at 03:26 PM
Teaching | useful_web_sites | (0)
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Quality Education, Qualified Teachers
Phil Owen, KOTESOL President, wrote the following peice for the Korea Times. I’ve copied the entire piece here as I feel it is worth it. ATTENTION Phil: if you want to guest author here, feel free to do so.
There is a general assumption that one of the problems with English education in Korea is the poor quality of English teachers. Is this true? How do we decide who is a ``quality teacher?’’ How do we define ``qualified?’’
article continues in the extended entry.
Read the rest of this post
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 18, 2008 at 10:11 AM
Teaching | ESL_in_the_News | teaching_application | (3)
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Web 2.0
My latest article for the Korea Herald is now out and it is on web 2.0 in the classroom. Read it at the Korea Herald site or look in the extended entry.
Hope you find it useful. I know there are many many more sites that could be introduced but due to space constraints I had to limit myself.
My Last Column
This is also my final column for the Korea Herald. I notified my editor when I submited this lasted column. I’m just too busy to continue writing this column. I’ll be watching the Expat Living section to see who my replacement is and I’m sure I’ll be linking to it in the future.
Korea Herald Readers
Welcome. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this weeks column. If you would like to learn more about me visit my bio page. I have also been blogging at this site for 4 years so there are a lot of entries if you care to look through the archives. Some of my favorite or more popular entries are available on the classic entries page.
Read the rest of this post
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 4, 2008 at 08:59 PM
Teaching | KH Column | useful_web_sites |
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100 pushups
Today is the first day of the second semester, so back to work for me. The web design business is doing pretty well, since I’ve got about 3 clients backed up.
Today will be a quick meet the students and a 4 minute level test to see how many students I can kick out of my class and move them to the advanced class. Real lessons will start from day 2 this week. In other news, my university finally got around to giving us a raise after three years, so morale is much improved.
Finally, I’ve decided to take the 100 pushup challenge. I took the strength test on Friday and I’m in column three (the most difficult). I did my pushups for day one this morning and will work on day 2, come Wednesday.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Sep 1, 2008 at 08:00 AM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching |
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Olympics News
I’ve been using newspaper articles with a couple of adult students for some time now. I thought it was time to share another resource - I just finished preparing an article to use later this week - it’s olympic related and was published today.
If you haven’t milked the olympics to death with your students you might find this useful. Taekwondo fighter kicks referee in the face - I took one article reformated it and found comments on another article and added that two page two - I think it should make for an interesting discussion. If you like it please leave a comment. As usual it’s available both pdf and
publisher.
Online learning
I spent over 15 years attempting to teach English conversation in Japanese schools and colleges. Getting students to talk to each other was often hard work, but it was better than having no conversation at all! However, now I’m back in the UK I have seen how much better the communicative method works when you have a variety of different nationalities. Wouldn’t it be nice to recreate this in classrooms in Japan, Korea etc. Well, now we have the technology! What you need is a good broadband connection, webcameras and headsets. And a link with a school or college in a neighbouring non-English-speaking country who have similar goals in mind.
I know of a couple of schools and colleges in Japan who would be interested in taking part in such an experiment with a school or college in Korea.
Maybe some of you are already doing this. Maybe some of you are interested in trying this out. I’d be grateful for any information, advice or leads anyone has.
Please contact me via this site or directly by email at
Thanks.
japanbond inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Aug 21, 2008 at 06:38 AM
Teaching | Languages_&_Cultures_in_Contact | Guest Author | (3)
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Mad About English
Hat tip to Dekita.org
Mad About English, a film by Singaporean filmmaker Lian Pek, humorously documents China ‘s passionate love affair with the English language and their obsessive quest to learn it (some through very unorthodox methods).
This TechCrunch article shows another opportunity to_grow_ your_ career by pointing to a very grammatically (and politically) incorrect website, EngrishFunny, to which users send in photos of poorly translated or odd variations of written English in products, signs or instructions.
Deivis Pothin, a student of linguistics in London, shares his impressions and worries about the underlying message.
11 reasons to avoid TEFL
Mr. D points to a list of 11 Reason not to Stumble upon TEFL at Notes from the TEFL Graveyard, a blog I hadn’t seen before.
I’d like to add a couple more.
- Locals think you are here, because you are a loser and couldn’t make it back home
- There is absolutely no job security - you can easily be replaced by another native speaker who is younger and better looking than you. Even if they are completely incompetent cheaper is better.
Got some more? Add them in the comments.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Jul 26, 2008 at 04:12 PM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching |
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Video in the Classroom
My latest article for the Korea Herald is now out and it is on using video in the classroom. Read it at the Korea Herald site or look in the extended entry.
I have previously posted several entries with materials for download on this blog. You can find them below.
There might be more, but I can’t remember everything I’ve written on this blog in the last 4.5 years. If you find these useful, please leave a comment and let me know.
At the bottom of the article I’ve included a reader question - the first on the column, if you can help out, why not leave a comment.
Korea Herald Readers
Welcome. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this weeks column. If you would like to learn more about me visit my bio page. I have also been blogging at this site for 4 years so there are a lot of entries if you care to look through the archives. Some of my favorite or more popular entries are available on the classic entries page.
Read the rest of this post
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Jul 22, 2008 at 02:43 PM
Teaching | KH Column | teaching_application | Readers_Questions |
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Real English
I’ve been clearing out some email and came across another email from a reader with a site for students using real people called Real English - sounds similar to what I posted two days ago - Real ESL.
Real English is produced by Mike in the south of France. The videos head out to the street and stop random people and interview them on a specific point illustrating a language point. I can definitely see this being useful for very low level students. Mike says:
I interview people in the street in order to get original, spontaneous speech on camera. Then I take this very messy spontaneity and organize it into structures and functions for beginners and intermediate students, and then make lessons around these video.
I really like the intro to each video - it’s catchy. Below is the video for lesson six - introducing people, introducing yourself. This video also has participants spell their names.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Jul 3, 2008 at 10:37 PM
Teaching | useful_web_sites | Video |
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How many hours are you contracted
How many hours are you contracted for? There’s a poll so if you’re reading in RSS, come on down and vote. I know it’s vacation season for many public school and university teachers so you should vote for how many hours you are contracted to teach during the semester. If you do over time or have something else to say, please leave a comment.
looking forward to your responses.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Jul 3, 2008 at 07:33 PM
Teaching | Polling_Station |
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ETP conundrum
Go read Alex’s post on the Conundrum of being an ETP (English Teaching Professional). Alex leads off with a story about a teacher with a self inflated sense of importance inversely related to his professionalism and then comes this quote:
So what about us English Teaching Professionals (and borderline ETPs)? What philosophical basis do we have to sustain us when we are working in the same profession as such people, and sometimes even in the same schools for more or less the same money? Is the satisfaction of doing a good job enough, even when the main result of that is to give Jabba the Hutt (the school owner) more money to buy young virgins with?
Go read the rest.
good posts - no time to comment
here are a few posts that I have been saving in my bloglines account intending to comment on or write about here, however I find that I don’t have the time and instead am just going to share. Go read them.
- Web 2.0 in 64 seconds
- Is reading to students bad (not elt specific)
- Describe the skills or attributes you believe are necessary to be an outstanding teacher (this is one I’d really like to spend time writing about)
- How to use voice thread
- Social Networks for the classroom
- Create your own social network
- Pronunciation goes 2.0
- Wordle
Summer Vacation
Summer Vacation officially began about three minutes ago when I submitted my grades and emailed off the last of the reports that I had to write. I am now free until September 1. This however does not mean I will be sitting around drinking margaritas all day - no, I’m going to be smoking busy as I launch my new career in web design and take on a bunch of extra work on the side - here’s the to do list as it stands:
- private kids class twice a week 1 hour each time. This is actually more stress than you think as I don’t really enjoy teaching kids, but the money is good.
- private company class twice a week 7:30-9:00 am. This is easy, but involves getting up early some travel and prep - but the money is good and I enjoy it.
- In august I’ll be picking up 3 extra private classes for a woman going on vacation - this will be a lot of work, but it’ll also be a huge chunk of cash that will help us pay off the house loan faster
- This semester I’ve been doing classroom research and it is now time to compile the data and write an article for publication. My co-researcher has also submitted an application to present at TESOL 2009. If we get accepted I’ll be going to Denver at the end of March.
- I’ve recently launched a new web design venture. This is essentially my career transition plan for when I move back to Canada. This involves a lot of work and learning on my part:
- Just finished redesigning this site, but it still needs a little work
- received my first confirmed client, but this client is using a software that I am unfamiliar with (wordpress). I was planning on learning it later, but I guess it’s time to dive in.
- I need to figure out how much to charge, how to receive payments, and a billing cycle
- I still need to get my portfolio site (web business) off the ground. Was going to do that next, but paying clients get priority.
- I want to redo this site, my Korean learning blog, and set up a teaching portfolio site for myself.
- design and print business cards
- Learn JavaScript (which is giving me headaches already) and Jquery.
- I have another client setting up a business site for the first time - but for this I get to use Expression Engine so will be more fun.
- Yesterday I restarted my exercise routine - 5km on the running machine, chin-ups and push-ups daily.
- I also need to upgrade my student site and the department moodle
- modify my class materials for next semester.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Jun 20, 2008 at 08:26 PM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching |
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Tech in the Classroom
Gord has a long post about using Tech in the Classroom that is well worth the read. Gord’s post talks about how some things are used primarily for flash and impress, but in my opinion students will know when something is being done to impress them versus actually impressing with a pedagogical purpose.
Gord also talks about the various uses of the internet that are available. Everything that Gord says is spot on. I would like to do more such as using Second Life (what’s the point you ask?) and more online tasks with my students but due to contextual constraints I can’t. Last semester I did have the opportunity to teach English education majors a course on “How to teach English through the internet” that I got to explore a lot of these opportunities with web 2.0 applications and second language learners. Unfortunately at the time my PC was not powerful enough to run Second Life so I could explore in advance of class and was forced to leave it off of the activities though I did suggest my students explore it on their own.
In any case as Gord says below, all of this will be second nature to the next generation and if teachers and institutions want to engage future students on any sort of meaningful level, they need to start adapting now. This means change now and continuous change in the future as technology is not static - teaching in the future will require a constant change and professional development through the internet - using the tools you teach your students with will lead to greater professional development and ability to connect with students.
The next generation of students? All this will be their natural language, all this and more. (Actually, I think this will be to them like “lisp” or “BASIC” is to those of us who know what lisp and BASIC were. So far in the background or foundation of their natural language that if that’s all we grasp, we’re going to look very, very silly.) If teachers are going to find a way to be relevant to those students-to-come, it’s going to have to be through inventive use of these kinds of technologies in ways that actually facilitate the learning that goes on outside the classroom. This will make both students and teachers alike happier campers.
Professional Development Part II
This is part two on Professional Development - part one came out a couple of weeks ago. Part two was delayed due to more important pieces but has finally been published - you can read it at the Korea Herald or look below.
Part 1 has been edited in the newspaper, below is the original version as I wrote it.
Korea Herald Readers
Welcome. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this weeks column. If you would like to learn more about me visit my bio page. I have also been blogging at this site for 4 years so there are a lot of entries if you care to look through the archives. Some of my favorite or more popular entries are available on the classic entries page.
Read the rest of this post
BitStrips
This week I had a student who has been absent several times explain his situation and ask how he could make up the classes. Being in a good mood and liking this student I decided to have him create three comic strips using BitStrips.
I included the one below as a sample when I emailed the assignment to him. Click for full-size.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Jun 6, 2008 at 07:07 AM
Teaching | useful_web_sites |
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