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Celta without tears
Any fool can pass the Celta. However, one or two trainees are so thick, pig-headed or lazy, they do not. Of course, Celta trainers like to implant the possibility of failure firmly in their charges’ minds, to keep them pliant, while schools fail a few trainees now and then, so they can boast about their rigorous standards. (And they do not have to give you your money back.)

The course normally lasts four weeks. It is fairly intensive, which means the typical bone-idle wasters who want to go into English language teaching find it a bit of a shock. Often they panic, weep down the phone, stay up all night writing and tearing up lesson plans, and so on. This is all quite unnecessary. Passing the Celta is a simple matter of following the tips on this page.
On arrival at the training institution of your choice—perhaps the hallowed halls of International House in London, where you imagine bumping into Liz and John Soars (who are in fact flying to Tahiti on their private jet), or perhaps somewhere less prestigious, like the McDonald’s of language schools, English First—you are shepherded into a room where three people of breathtaking ugliness await you. These are the trainers. Sensitive trainees have been known to bolt at this point. Averting your gaze, you sit down. The ugliest of the trainers (the course leader) then gives you a pep talk.

The talk makes English teachers sound like a tough, dedicated, close-knit squad of highly skilled professionals, instead of the squabbling bunch of drunken layabouts they really are. The more naive trainees sit there wide-eyed, imagining themselves transforming some Third World language school into a pedagogical paradise. The course leader, who models herself on a Marine sergeant, says it will not be a picnic. No way. Wimps, cissies or milksops should leave right now. The other trainers smile lopsidedly in feeble attempts to look like Humphrey Bogart.

You glance around the room. There are keen students fresh from university, writing everything down. There are a few people like you: discontented bank clerks, bankrupt businessmen, discharged soldiers, bored librarians, resting actors, failed lawyers, disillusioned double-glazing salesmen, and so on, between the ages of 25 and 45. There is one old, inflexible, eccentric character, at the moment scrutinising the ceiling tiles, who will fail the course.

The course has two main parts: input, in which you learn all about the Communicative Approach and how much better it is than the atrocious language teaching you experienced at school, and practice, in which you are let loose on some real students.

In the input part, the trainers demonstrate the sort of annoying activities you will be expected to use with your own students. For example, to help you remember the other trainees’ names, a ball is tossed around the group. You have to call out the name of the person who throws the ball to you or to whom you throw the ball. Needless to say, this is an extremely stressful activity. You can remember the names of only the trainees you would not mind shagging. You resolve never to do this activity with your students.

In the practice part, you have to teach some lessons. If you are doing the Celta in an English-speaking country, you will have a multilingual group of highly motivated adults who are exposed to English every day and need it for their work, etc. They will speak English to each other in the coffee breaks. This is in complete contrast to most classes in real life, where will you teach monolingual groups of bored teenagers who have virtually no exposure to English outside class and speak in their native language throughout lessons.

As the students are being taught by trainees (ie teachers even crappier than usual), they get cut-price classes. Their expectations are low. They have seen so many awful trainees, they will not be in the least surprised by anything you do.

Top Ten Tips
1. Do not argue with the trainers. They are irreparably sad gits with Deltas who have been teaching English since before you were born. You are an inconsequential pipsqueak who knows nothing. They are not remotely interested in your point of view. What they are interested in is asserting their dominance over the trainees and buttressing their enormous fragile egos, so they will not take kindly to challenges. Instead, suck up to them shamelessly. They like to think they are doing something terribly important. Take advantage of this. Nod a lot, write down everything they say and make little gasps of astonishment every five to ten minutes.

Of course, the trainers are in fierce competition with each other to be the shrewdest/most sensitive/least ugly. Exploit this by subtly slagging them off to each other. (You could try flirting with them, but be warned this is a high-risk tactic. You might be taken up on it.)

2. Pretend to be fascinated by the students. They may be the usual collection of spoilt brats and dim-witted yobs, but try anyway. Even though your practice lessons will be crap, you can score points by appearing to take an interest in students’ individual needs.

3. Treat the students as if they were retarded four-year-olds. This is the correct ELT approach. Speak slowly in a bright, singsong voice, with exaggerated intonation and lots of hand gestures. For instance, whenever you use a past tense, point over your shoulder. The students will not have a clue why you are doing this, but the trainer will approve. Say things like, “Well done, Julio!” and “Goo-oo-ood, Irwan!” to your denser students.

4. Say as little as possible. Elicit, rather than explain. Check your instructions.

Eliciting: asking the students for information that they will not have, then dropping increasingly unsubtle hints until the nerdiest student finally gets the answer.

Example: “What is this tense called? Begins with P. Present, yes, well done, Julio. But Present what? Begins with C. C-O. C-O-N. No, not condom, Irwan, yes, very funny, good, OK class, that’s enough, you can all stop laughing now. Ends with O-U-S. Yes, brilliant, Julio, Continuous. The Present Continuous. Now how do we form the Present Continuous?” (etc etc)
5. Do not slag off the other trainees’ crap lessons. Praise them extravagantly, with one or two telling caveats. “Great lesson, Judy, I loved it and I learned a lot myself. Just one little query: in that absolutely brilliant exercise they did—weren’t all the examples you gave them conjunctions, not prepositions?”

6. Draw a line down the whiteboard a foot from the right edge. Write new vocab in this column and do not rub it out until the end of the lesson. Some teachers elicit the date and write that up too, but as students invariably make a pig’s ear of dates, this could take a lot of time. (Useful in real lessons, of course, but not in your practice slots.)

7. Write extremely long and detailed lesson plans. The lesson itself may be a stinking pile of incompetent ordure, but the plan has to be brilliant. Omit no detail, however trifling. If you need to fart during a lesson, put it in the plan. (Remember the focus (T to Ss) and the aims: minimising discomfort that could reduce T’s concentration.) Do not worry about sticking to the plan: it is a sacred document unsullied by vulgar practice.

8. Bring in loads of stuff. Flashcards, realia, pictures from magazines, games that took you ages to cut up beforehand… you will never do it again after passing the course, but it is expected of you now.

9. Do not try to be a smarty-pants. Some trainees show off by using ELT jargon or boasting about their previous teaching experiences. Remember your role is to abase yourself humbly before the trainers, who may, if you are sufficiently obsequious, grant you a Celta. Any hint that you think you know as much as they do will bring down reprisals.

10. And finally, try not to touch the students, say “fuck” more than once a lesson, or stroll in drunk.

Isn’t that original!? There’s plenty of other wit around the site so head off and take a look for yourself. Have fun!

Source English Droid (Celta without tears)

I finally got to meet my virtual sister after various attempts, this time it happened. I have known Shelly since 2008 pre-twitter days and we got to know each other very well during 2009 where we spent a lot of time learning, teaching and living on Second Life. Spending so much time together brought us very close and since then we have shared a true friendship so much so that we call each other sister. Back in our Second Life days although we learnt a lot about virtual worlds and how we could teach our students via it we often ‘just had fun’ and got up to all sorts, so we named ourselves Thelma & Louise. I wasn’t quite sure which picture to choose for this post but the one above just about sums us up lol. The laughs we’ve had outweighed the tears, we had those too. On my recent trip to the U.K – I went for pleasure Shelly was working (well someone has to be the spokesperson) we had lunch together in Starbucks, after lunch whilst still in Starbucks our photo shoot began, well that got slightly out of hand from the fits of laughter, I had to tell shelly to calm down before we got chucked out lol see below.

I have many colleagues and aquaintances but only a handful a real true friends, I prefer quality to quantity and meeting Shelly was as if we’d known each other all our lives – this sensation has happened to me on very few occasions, but those friendships have lasted a lifetime…When we don’t hear from each other we just pick up from where we left off. Apart from being colleagues are friendship reigns over – and this is one of the wonders of the technology age.

Now before you start thinking here she goes again with the mobile phone lark, please read on…

There have been a lot of discussions to whether mobile phones should be allowed in classrooms – if they were put to good use as an educational tool both teacher and student would benefit, right?

I was asked by a friend and colleague of mine to expose the following as to help get votes for the following project (see above via YouTube video), of course I said yes but could have changed my mind ’cause I didn’t really know what I was letting myself into lol but like you who is reading this now I read on and I really liked the idea, especially anything that has to do with technology and or mobile phones – if only they were about when I was a teen, no doubt I would have been top of the class, but I wasn’t haha..
So these kids are our future, so I ask you readers to vote for them by clicking here if you scroll halfway down the page you will find Recharge the battery and instructions on how to vote.

So what are you waiting for? Go vote for the kids of Saltash Community School and thank you!!!

Guest appearance The Chickenman

Back again after quite a while (no use writing when A. Have nothing to talk about and B. No motivation C. Busy.) Actually nothing to talk about isn’t really true, but putting it down on pen and paper so to speak.

My last post was dedicated to the iPhone 4 as I had discovered there was much more to it than when I had first bought the iPhone 3G, I did eventually buy it and loved it to pieces as I did with my very first iPhone 3G 2 years earlier. But after a few months I missed some of the basic things a BlackBerry does I missed the fast messaging services that I had been used to, of all the million apps the iPhone has I used very few and a lot were just a waste of time IMHO (although there are some very good apps – and the Blackberry can’t compete) but don’t get me wrong the iPhone is a great device it just depends on what and how you want to use it and your personal needs, as are other smartphones. Coming from a smaller BlackBerry device the 9700 to be precise I’m not quite sure when I became interested in the BlackBerry Torch (see image above)  but it suddenly started to grow on me. I was invited to the presentation of the BB Torch in Milan by RIM and went with a colleague of mine from www.blackberryitalia.it the rest is history. The Torch uses the new OS6 webkit which in my opinion is definitely a step in the right direction, there are a few bugs which need to be seen to and no doubt they will be in the near future . Why RIM didn’t add a URL shortener to their social feeds is beyond me – with that it would have been perfect. The battery (which is most important to me) gets me through the day with extra to spare  (sometimes) which is good enough for me. Another issue I personally had with the iPhone was not being able to write and hold it in one hand – I am a multi-tasker!

I had plenty of comments from the last post I wrote, more in fact than anything regarding teaching etc., oh well perhaps I should change jobs lol – that said I would love to hear from any teachers using a BB, if you’ve used an iPhone too and gone back to a BlackBerry I would be interested to know too – I have found that most real BlackBerry lovers who have gone astray and used other devices usually come back to a BlackBerry, one of those reasons I  think is that the BB is more addictive in it’s simplicity (although it is quite a complex device for some) but I am noticing more people using them as RIM has reached out to the consumer market too….

Well that’s about it, perhaps I’ll write another post soon, or… next year….maybe I’ll be on Android then.

It’s no secret that I like gadgets – and up until now it’ always been a BlackBerry device. But following on from the various Macs I have when Apple released the iPhone 3G here in Italy I jumped at the chance of getting one and thought I’d be a paradise, I wasn’t, I missed the BlackBerry that I had become accustomed to, the battery life that lasted me all day, the multitasking and the speed of the e-mail and messaging services not to mention the reliability. I left my iPhone on my desk to collect dust for such a long time, but would occasionally use it as a calculator lol. It wasn’t until my presence on Twitter and forever hearing and noticing that most of my colleagues supported an iPhone – after a while I found I was quite curious to understand why they raved so much about the iPhone, I wondered if there was perhaps something I was missing so I dusted down my iPhone and gave a it a second try. The first thing I did notice after a long time of not using it was the vast amount of apps, this is very much the down side with the BlackBerry some of the popular apps that the iPhone has aren’t available on the BlackBerry or aren’t as good as and sometimes the BlackBerry folks miss out completely. This was really the only thing that hit me initially – I tried to use the same programmes I have running on the BB, wifi and 3G , push notifications you name it everything that I use on the BB, guess what??? The iPhone’s battery was flat by lunchtime whereas the BlackBerry would get me through the day – how ever would I survive on the iPhone? I actually bought a battery booster which gives you 3 extra full charges, not cheap and seeing as Apple doesn’t give away iPhones it really is a let down.

That said after the initial Keynote at the beginning of the year with mention of the new iPhone os and then with the recent one earlier this month announcing the latest iPhone4, excites me and that much to get another one, what you say after moaning about the other ha ha. The things I complained about multitasking and battery life will be a leap forward and many other added new features one of which is FaceTime. If I abandon my BlackBerry completely then it will mean that Apple have put their finger on the button if not I will continue to use both devices as I do now, some things a BlackBerry does better and viceversa.

A growing number of teachers now use smart phones whether BlackBerry, iPhone or something else. Personally I find for social networking I couldn’t live without my gadgets, I can be on the go and be updating my Twitter account answering tweets, messages and emails, chatting on Skype and/or booking lessons for students – I would never have the freedom and extra time if I had to do this stuck sitting in front of a computer.

Do you use a smart phone? Are you passionate about the BlackBerry? Are you tempted by the iPhone4? Have you already pre-ordered it? I know a lot of my colleagues who do use smart phones but there are many of you who I don’t know. Leave a comment with your preferences of what and why you use them or if you hope to get one in the near future – finally, how can education benefit from this forever growing technology?

Seeing as I haven’t written for so long I have put myself in the corner – this is an ongoing joke between myself a a few Twitter friends – if they misbehave I send them to the corner lol…As you can see from the photo above I (my second life avatar) am wearing a tall pointed hat. A dunce cap, also variously known as a dunce hat, dunce’s cap, or dunce’s hat, is a pointy hat. In popular culture, it is typically made of paper and often marked with a D or the word “dunce”, and given to school children to wear as punishment by public humiliation for misbehaviour and, as the name implies, stupidity. While this is now a rare practice, it is frequently depicted in popular culture such as animated television series.

The images used are from Second Life – and the school is a very quaint victorian style school (owned by myself) – it also reminds me of one of my favourite television programmes when I was a child “The little House on the Prairie” feel free to visit The Schoolhouse –  and please leave your name and a message in the guestbook – I would love to know you dropped by.

Since then I’m glad to say things have got better. I have lived in Italy for many years and although education continues to make progress there is something that rather distresses me. From elementary right through to Secondary school students are graded half way through the year and if their grades aren’t sufficient they have the rest of the year to catch up. That said by the end of the year if more than 4 grades are insufficient they must then repeat the whole year – unless they spend part of their summer catching up and studying they are then given an extra chance of a final exam which then if passed in the various subjects entitles them to continue into the higher class the following school year. This is all very well and good for students who are prepared to take on this commitment not all are this way inclined and some students unfortunately have taken their lives. Does this happen in your country? Do you have a better or worse education system and what and how would you choose to make it better if you could?

Another year over and a new one begins. WhenI started this blog I was just experimenting and had no idea anyone would actually read it, at this point I realize that they do lol. That said, I feel I have to write something to keep it going and that won’t do, I don’t always have the time, energy or motivation, but sometimes I like to express something I’ve read, heard or for no particular reason write something that is close to my heart whatever that may be.

You may have noticed that now under The English Teacher reads The Life and Times of The English Teacher Online, which can also been seen on my Twitter profile, this would seem more appropriate as 2009 was definitely a Twitter year for me, anyone can pick up on news, gossip, and of course educational resources, plus just by clicking on any links for blogs aka Teacher’s Pets (soon to be updated) you will find a never ending list of my colleagues and friends who make a better job than me That said any students (or teachers) wishing for advice, help or anything else can use the help desk button. (NB Time wasters, spammers and idiots just get filtered and thrown away so don’t bother wasting your time.)

As for the Social Media Counter seen above, it was love at first sight the first time I saw it a few months ago on The Educator’s PLN by Tom Whitby and I think it’s very appropriate to start the New Year off using it.

Last but by no means least I would like to thank you readers and anyone else who pops by and reads my blog, a special thanks goes out to a whole new bunch of people who I have got to know via Twitter this past year and are a lovely bunch of people, I have my favourites and they know who they are, so thank you! What will 2010 have to offer you?

I wish all my friends, colleagues, students and followers a Very Happy Christmas, here below are the lyrics to my favourite carol and also performed by the Celtic Women, enjoy! )

Carol of the bells

Hark how the bells,
sweet silver bells,
all seem to say,
throw cares away

Christmas is here,
bringing good cheer,
to young and old,
meek and the bold.

Ding dong ding dong
that is their song
with joyful ring
all caroling.

One seems to hear
words of good cheer
from everywhere
filling the air.

Oh how they pound,
raising the sound,
o’er hill and dale,
telling their tale.

Gaily they ring
while people sing
songs of good cheer,
Christmas is here.

Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas,
Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas.

On on they send,
on without end,
their joyful tone
to every home.

Ding dong ding… dong!

Source YouTube

On behalf of the #teachertuesday series I thank everyone who nominated. An idea I had back in April which was backed up by my colleague and friend Kirsten Winkler. The idea was to nominate a teacher, school or anything connected to education using the hashtag #teachertuesday the nicest thing about it is it has brought a lot of teachers together from all over the world and helped share resources. By clicking www.teachertuesday.info you will access the web page of teachertuesday and be able to see all the tweets made by teachers/schools and bloggers via Twitter.

It’s been a while now since my last post, no I am not lazy but I have had plenty to do. As I promised a follow up to my first post here is the second. I was waiting for feedback from my students but they have been busy too so it hasn’t been possible apart from feedback from one, if in the near future they have the time I will certainly add their comments on to the post as I’m sure it will be of interest.

Thierry says…

“Some weeks ago, my English teacher Aniya proposed me to have a lesson

on Second Life. I knew the latter by name but I never tried it.

I was very astonished by the tool and how it could be used for learning.

As a matter of fact, having lessons in this way is really amazing since

you have the ability to visualize things and to be in real cases and

situations. Aniya built a dedicated place for learning and knows all about

the uses of the tool. She guides you in its use and using the tool is

very easy. I think that this method is the future of language learning

and really innovative! Have a try!”

Since writing the first post I have been able to explore Second Life more. I have given lessons to a few students and this is my conclusion. Any students already taking online lessons will find this innovative, basically it gets you out of the virtual classroom and into a simulative almost ‘real’ environment where anything and everything goes. First time students find it quite hard to get to grips with all the various tools you need to use in Second Life, but having said that so do us teachers, so it’s quite a normal stage. This does force the student to understand new terms used in Second Life and understand basic explanations from their coach. Students can choose what and where to visit after a few lessons of understanding the basics. Having said that it is also a fun experience for students even though they might misunderstand what you are telling them to do. I was surprised by one of my students knowing so much vocabulary, and what she didn’t know remembered the next time as she had visualized it there, this is the key factor of visual based learning via Second life.  Business students can learn in a typical office environment and act out a more realistic role play. And/or lessons can be split into Second Life and virtual classroom lessons as a follow up.

Second Life is still quite unknown to a lot of people, and it is more than just a game, you need to be able to have the time to actually understand how it really works, and this helps if you have a guide and or coach. My colleague Shelly Terrell and myself will take teachers through the basics to get you on your way. We will also make you an avatar if you are short of time (see below). We co-own The Teacher’s Haven (see photos) which is situated on Norris Point The Norris point Estate is owned by Joy Canedeo who is a great landowner, she is Canadian and has based the land on Norris Point, which really exists.

Norris Point is a picturesqe Newfoundland coastal community located at the doorstep of Gros Morne National Park of Canada.

There are plenty of schools, universities on Second Life which both teachers and students can visit, what we offer is something different, we offer our friends, teachers and students the chance to come to a peaceful haven, get a coffee, have a picnic,  chat in the peaceful surroundings and even a massage for those suffering from stress ha ha there are other things to do too which you will discover when visiting. Regularly we have a meet up with other teachers and go out dancing or to Karaoke venues, you name it we do it! The social events are a way of getting used to Second Life in a relaxed atmosphere and learning how your avatar works, our outings are not short of fun, we are NOT traditional teachers, whatever that is supposed to mean. .

Here below we have the avatars of 2 teachers a colleague and a friend, who’s who?

These are amongst some of the avatars I have made, avatars take time to make and most people don’t want the default one they are given so as not to stand out in a crowd, if you are an educator and are interested in approaching Second Life leave a comment below.

Lastly unfortunately several of my friends and colleagues are unable to use Second Life because their computer  doesn’t meet the minimum requirements here is a reminder of what you actually need.

An anecdote is a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is “too good to be true”. Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence. A brief monologue beginning “A man pops in a bar…” will be a joke.

My husband, usually a well dressed man went off to the market to buy himself a mozzarella cheese to eat for lunch, on that particular morning he’d gotten up late and knew the market would be closing soon, so he threw on the nearest clothes he could grab, and a baseball cap to hide himself from people he might know lol there was no time for him to shower let alone shave. As he arrived at the market most stalls had already gone and others were being taken down. He approached one of the market stall holders and asked if they had a mozzarella left, no he was told but had got some roast beef, so he asked the stall holder if he had some bread to make a sandwich, he didn’t but sent my husband to another seller, when my husband asked how much the bread cost the market seller told him nothing. He then went back to the other market seller who had the roast beef as to make his sandwich. The sandwich was then cut, prepared and paid for. As my husband bit into the sandwich the market stall holder said with great glee “that’ll be the best sandwich you’ve ever eaten in your life” he had mistaken my husband for a tramp…

Photo courtesy Laurel Fan Flickr Source Wikipedia

In the depths of a land called Second Life lies a place called The Teacher’s Haven, teachers go there to relax, chat and discuss teacher related topics… Coming to a blog near you soon and based on that very land, is The Teacher’s Haven Blog, for teachers and written by teachers.

In collaboration with Kirsten Winkler Enterprises, Shelly Terrell and myself, oh yes I have my ‘wicked’ stepsisters with me this time we will be choosing some of the best bloggers, writers and teachers to have their own spot on The Teacher’s Haven, in return regular guest writers will receive their own personal name@theteachershaven e-mail address and of course their name to fame for being on the site.

kirsten winkler

Kirsten is a self made woman, smart, bright and human, I met Kirsten a year ago via Myngle the online platform we both work for and have never looked back. We have shared the #teachertuesday project together, tidbits and her so called nerdy slave Kay (the man out of the limelight). On New Year’s Eve, right through to New Years Day we had a Skype come YouTube party online which finished in the early hours of the morning, they, both worse for wear after I don’t know how many beers they had ha ha… What I like about Kirsten is she “bites” she is direct and we are somehow on the same wave length, so we have this thing going on about being virtual sisters. I admire her and I know it’s reciprocal. You can find Kirsten on Twitter.

Thomas Skennerton

Thomas is my favourite Twitterer, you can usually find us on Twitter up to no good with our comical ongoing saga. I have known Thomas aka tferthomas for several months, and although I wasn’t mad on him at first (in fact, I unfollowed him on Twitter) I thought he was a bore ha ha, (quite the contrary) until I started talking to him about our shared love the BlackBerry and then on to anything else under the sun. I was soon to discover an in depth guy who has been on a journey and knows what life is about. You can find Thomas on Twitter.

Shelly Terrell

Last but not least the terrible Shelly ha ha I will try to be nice in this post though. I met Shelly through various things, Twitter, Myngle and recently through Second Life (oops said it again) it was there that I really got to know this vivacious bubbly girl. She is smart, kind and I know she has helped a lot of people, this is one of her natural traits. Good grief this girl never sits still I’m not sure she actually sleeps, she is into everything something, and I really think of her as my little sister. You can find Shelly on Twitter.

I have found these three wonderful people online, each of them are from a different continent but they all have something in common, they are all genuine, fun loving sincere people who make the world a better place. I consider myself lucky to have met them. Thanks Kirsten, Thomas and Shelly.

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…

A colleague and I were talking the other day of the effect and some what chit chat from other colleagues about our recent interest in Second Life, Twitter etc., and that it has made us the talking point (Oh I didn’t know I was famous). That said, I don’t really care what people think of me when I like what I do, if I can help others, meet others and learn from my experiences whatever they maybe, then so be it.

I don’t intend filing up my blog with Second Life posts all the time, but at this moment in time it is what interests me the most, readers are free to not look at it, and perhaps I don’t have any readers anyway, I made this blog for myself and never had any intent whatsoever in people reading it, but people do read it, ’cause they tell me about typos (oh dear I hope I haven’t made any this time) or they liked what I’d written, or perhaps didn’t, but someone read it and that’s nice just the same..

So here goes with another Second Life post, not the usual but a few tweets ago I did tweet something about Second Life and Autism, apparently autistic people can relate to the use of Second Life, they can use its channels to communicate with. This is something I will look into as my 18 year old son is autistic, he does not use the computer, he seems uninterested, having said that he does come and look at the screen when he sees me, mind you it’s probably to say will you get off that damn thing lol (No I won’t).

I have many weird and wonderful ideas for Second Life (although I will not say now) I think it’s a great communicative tool, for many different reasons and for many different people from all walks of life, the important thing is knowing how to use it properly and this is where some people fail, myself included in the past.

Oh dear someone at the back there is yawning, time to say goodbye, enjoy the video!

Source YouTube

I am not going to bore those of you who are not interested in Second Life with post after post about Second Life, but as I gave my first lesson the other day, I will boast about it This is still very new to me, but it has become a passion, and anything which becomes a passion to me I do with ease and enjoyment, so if my lessons can be fun and educational at the same time, so be it!!!If you are a student and are interested in approaching Second Life please contact me for ulterior information (I will give you a FREE orientation lesson to learn the basics) and then you decide whether to continue or not..I will conduct these lessons via Myngle, Aniya’s Profile.

Although there are a lot of educators on Second Life, there are still many who are either unfamiliar with it or who look down on it as some stupid virtual game. Well, I can say that a couple of years ago I turned my nose up at it because I was unaware of how it worked, only now can I see it’s potential. I have turned back the clock and become a learner myself to understand how Second Life works. I was all fingers and thumbs to start with understanding how to use the controls etc., that said in a month I have learnt all the basic steps, I have bought land, a house and will run my private language schools office from there. We have also acquired a beach hut which overlooks the sea, a place for students and teachers alike to hang out, chat and relax.

I would urge all online teachers and any tech savvy educators to give it a go before giving the thumbs down. The mechanism I see is very similar to online teaching, but with the extra visual elements which make Second Life very realistic. Instead of the classical online classroom here we have a virtual world, where you can do almost anything and everything, infact some of the things I’ve tried in Second Life I have never done before in real life.

Students taking Second Life lessons will have to use plenty of conversation skills, backed up with listening (the use of audio makes SL even more realistic) and also reading. They will meet other teachers/students and anyone else who we may meet on our travels. I don’t intend using the Second Life experience sitting in a SL classroom, I really don’t see the point, but getting my students out and about to explore the ‘virtual’ (real) world. This would act out real situations and this is where I believe Second Life’s strong points are, especially for language learning. What we explore would then be followed up by either an online teaching session and some correct terms to use for future outings so to speak.

Another aspect of Second Life is socializing with other teachers Shelly tell us why. I have met several other educators in Second Life thanks to Twitter and especially amongst us ladies have never laughed so much. I visited the Macbeth sim hosted by Barbara Sakamoto which I thought would bore me to tears, quite the opposite in fact, it was a very interesting expedition, and this could be a great way of waking up younger and lazier students, I think I was one of those years ago ha ha…

Below you can see what happens when you play around in Macbeth….You lose your head!!!

So what are you all waiting for? There are lots of other weird and wonderful places to visit in Second Life. If you want to give Second Life a second chance I will be holding my real life Birthday Bash on there at the end of the month, if you are curious enough to try, please let me know and I will show you around before the event. Hope to see you all soon.

This post is dedicated to those teachers I have already met on Second Life, those who have helped me along the way and those who have become friends, if you are asking, I’ve met her, then you know I’m talking about you!

Source Second Life Myngle Twitter

To be continued…

What not to do..

Source YouTube

Virtual Classroom: A virtual classroom is a learning environment created in the virtual space. The objectives of a virtual classroom are to improve access to advanced educational experiences by allowing students and instructors to participate in remote learning communities using personal computers; and to improve the quality and effectiveness of education by using the computer to support a collaborative learning process. The explosion of the knowledge age has changed the context of what is learnt and how it is learnt – the concept of virtual classrooms is a manifestation of this knowledge revolution.

Following up from the recent very interesting first etcon=(E-Teachers Conference) the debating topic was on Virtual classrooms, do we really need them? Firstly and unfortunately the virtual classroom/meeting room that we were using for the debate, hosted by dimdim crashed. Needless to say after the introduction lead by Kirsten Winkler we had the first crash of the evening followed by others which lead the organizers to change platforms and use that of edufire. Unfortunate yes, but useful for the so called experts to get a taste of what we teachers experience frequently, that is unrealiable virtual classrooms to teach our students. Another of the questions debated and asked by Heike Philp was 10 reasons why Skype alone is not enough. I personally feel safer with the use of  Skype it is much more reliable for audio, but of course it does not have a virtual classroom etc and tools. There is a really interesting post on the forum at Myngle (viewable only for teachers) started by Kirsten, who has added a poll Virtual Classrooms and Skype in Online Teaching. So my question is, which Virtual Classroom do you use and what are the pros and cons?

Source  etcon kirsten Winkler dimdim edufire Myngle Wikipedia