Random Quote
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
"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
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
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
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
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
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
The MPAA is Freaking Insane!
Ars Technica reports that MPAA: teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs.
Basically the MPAA thinks that having teachers record a video using a camcorder videoing a tv is a good way to not pirate. Isnt’ this essentially the same thing as a cam version of a current release movie? They suck, so why would a teacher show an inferior product in the classroom that requires more work to produce than just ripping a clip from a DVD.
Watch the video below for an example of the whole convoluted mess.
MPAA shows how to videorecord a TV set from timothy vollmer on Vimeo.
After how many years the MPAA and RIAA still haven’t gotten it and now they’re going after underfunded schools with overworked teachers. Unbelievable.
10 myths about foreign teachers in Korea
Brian Deutsch has a long piece up inthe Korea Times that is well worth reading. I’m copying the entire thing here because I think it’s worth archiving and am not sure how long the Korea Times keeps these things around for. Brian also has more about this on his blog, which you should read after finishing this bit.
There are many misconceptions about native speaker English teachers in Korea and profound ignorance about who we are and what we do. This article will look at 10 of the most common misconceptions about us. It’s not compiled for the sake of complaining or for being clever but rather to look more closely at 10 misinformed assumptions that are repeated so often that they’re practically taken for granted.
(1) We’re Unqualified
This is an extremely obnoxious misconception because it can neither be confirmed nor denied. That’s because the definition of qualified is constantly changing to suit the needs of the person offending us. Does qualified mean having the proper visa? Does it mean having undergone teacher training? Or does it mean being able to competently speak and teach English in English? It’s the Korean government and its citizens who’ve come to define ``qualified” as merely possessing a bachelor’s degree from an English-speaking country, and it’s unfair to turn on us because of consumers or a government that demands no more.
(2) We Don’t Care About Teaching
Tell that to the teachers who, beyond teaching 20-30 classes a week, spend hours preparing materials, grading papers and putting together lessons that are both entertaining and educational. Tell that to the teachers who stand alone in front of a class of 36 students who neither speak nor understand English, yet who still make it work. Tell that to the teachers who cry when their students graduate and light up when they see them again on the street. On second thought, you’d better not tell those things to those teachers.
(3) We’re Sexual Predators
This is unfortunately a common motif in the media, especially as it pertains to foreign men. Television shows will depict ``English teachers” _ usually played by Koreans or Eastern Europeans with noticeably poor English _ harassing, molesting or raping Korean women. Papers and news programs will run sensationalist stories about the debauchery of Hongdae and Itaewon, or that teachers are constantly on the prowl for ``easy Korean women.’‘ Why are foreigners being held to higher standards than their Korean peers?
(4) We Just Talk in Class
Because we usually teach English conversation classes, there’s an assumption that all we do is go to class and talk. We’re native speakers, so ``teaching” is pretty easy for us, right? Perhaps the biggest challenge we face is creating a classroom environment that encourages learning in a way that’s so contrary to the traditional Korean style. By creating lessons that give students a chance to use the language they’ve studied for years, we have the difficult task of bucking the system of passive rote learning and obedience. Assuming we just talk or play games is insulting to the hard work we do every day.
(5) We Can’t Teach on Our Own
Though we are contractually paired with a Korean co-teacher in public schools, we often do teach on our own when these co-teachers don’t show up for class or prove unable or unwilling to participate. Ideally, the two teachers would find a way to compliment each other, but this rarely happens. In fact, sometimes the class is more effective when taught entirely by a native speaker.
(6) We Can’t Find Jobs at Home
This stereotype predates the current economic crisis. Besides denigrating the teachers who come here, all of whom are college-educated and have been employed in the past, this misconception is also an insult to the Korean education system because it implies that it can do no better than to hire cast-offs.
(7) We’re Uppity.
A prominent scholar in the field of English education here said recently that native speaker teachers ``often cause problems,” though he didn’t expand on his comments. This is a good catch-all misconception that covers pretty much everything from ``doesn’t like the school food” to ``complains when not paid,” and is likely code for ``doesn’t fit in.” It’s too easy, and has been far too common, to simply blame the foreign teacher for misunderstandings, miscommunications and failures. It would behoove the schools who hire foreign teachers, and the imported teachers themselves, to be understanding of the communication breakdowns that will invariably occur, and not reduce everything to a cultural problem.
(8) We’re Criminals.
Every year we hear the news that foreign crime is on the rise. The papers usually fail to emphasize that the number of foreigners in Korea is also dramatically increasing. Most of us agree with requiring public school teachers to submit criminal background checks, though the panic is in the wrong direction. The frequent stories about teachers behaving badly are not about foreigners but rather about Korean teachers who beat children, sexually abuse students, take bribes or participate in anti-government rallies. It’s unacceptable to generalize about Korean teachers based on a few news stories, and it’s even more wrong to generalize about foreign teachers based on none.
(9) We’re Here for Money
This misconception is insulting to Koreans as well as to foreigners. This is a country, after all, that spends a lot of time, money and advertising space building its image and trying to entice foreigners to come here. As Korea welcomes more and more foreign teachers and laborers, it will need to get over this one-sided stigma attached to economic migration, especially since historically so many Koreans have left in pursuit of a better life.
(10) We’re Unhappy
It’s odd that we stand out so much, considering how often Koreans complain about the weather or the food, or how often they take to the streets over something or other. Less anecdotally, Korea has the highest suicide rate of the 30 OECD countries, and suicide is the fourth-leading cause of death here. It is the leading cause of death among males 18 to 35, and the second-leading cause for teenagers. And, according to the ``OECD Factbook 2009,” Korea ranked the lowest for life satisfaction.
I won’t deny that we are an opinionated bunch. Sometimes too opinionated, and the need by some to pass judgment on every little thing is a phenomenon that deserves fuller treatment.
It certainly deserves more analysis than ``we are unhappy.” There are, of course, plenty of reasons why foreign English teachers complain: cheating bosses, indifferent students, uncooperative authorities, and a media that constantly portrays us as sexual predators, drug users, unqualified teachers, or bitter imports. Or maybe it’s just a bad day or plain old culture shock.
But we’re not unhappy. On the contrary, we’re active in our communities and our neighborhoods. We volunteer at orphanages, organize charity events, adopt animals, and participate in clean-up campaigns. Like our Korean neighbors, we relax in `jjimjilbang,’ sing in noraebang, go hiking on the weekends and have a beer or two on a Friday night. As information on Korea is becoming more widely available online and in print, we are becoming better teachers, better travelers, and with more frequency, better residents.
Teachers come here and stay here because they want to be here. This is something Korea should be proud of. It shouldn’t wave them in with one hand and nudge them out with the other.
20 Online Resources for EFL Teachers
The web is an excellent resource for EFL teachers who are looking for jobs, career information, lesson plans, worksheet generators, blogs, and other helpful resources. Here are 20 websites worth visiting today:
General Resources
- TEFL.net – Designed specifically for teachers of English as a foreign language, this site offers a wide range of resources for EFL teachers.
- About ESL – This About.com site offers articles, lesson plans, a blog, and a community forum.
- EFL.net – This EFL learning site is a great place to find articles, audio books, language software, and other helpful teaching tools.
- TEFL Job Database – The TEFL.com database is a good place to search for EFL teaching jobs in any country. New job listings are added Monday through Friday.
- ESL Base – This site provides an introduction to TEFL. ESL Base also offers career and education information, job listings, and other EFL resources.
EFL Lesson Plans
- The Internet TESL Journal – The Internet TESL Journal offers hundreds of free teacher-submitted lesson plans for EFL teachers.
- A4esl.org – This no-frills site offers quizzes, tests, podcasts, puzzles, and other activities for ESL/EFL students.
- i to i TEFL – This is a great site to find TEFL lesson plans, writing activities, and other classroom helpers.
- ESL Flow – ESL Flow has hundreds of pre-made lesson plans for EFL teachers. Plans are split into three categories: elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate.
- ESL Mania – This site is an excellent resource for classroom materials, grammar quizzes, lesson plans, teaching tips, and other helpful resources.
Worksheet Generators and Flashcard Makers
- ESL Worksheet Generator – This site makes it easy for EFL teachers to generate their own printable worksheets with answer keys.
- Super Teacher Worksheets – Although you can’t generate your own worksheets on this site, you can find plenty of pre-made English Language Arts worksheets and printables.
- Cramberry – Students and teachers can use Cramberry to create flashcards online and track learning progress.
- ESL Flashcards – Teachers can download hundreds of free, pre-made flashcards and printables from this easy-to-use site. Flashcards can be printed in three different sizes.
- Flashcard Exchange – This web-based flashcard library is used by more than 400,000 people. You can download pre-made flashcards or create your own.
EFL Blogs
- My ESL Corner – Inma’s blog is a place for educators to share ideas and teaching resources.
- Becoming a Better EFL Teacher – Prof. Larry M. Lynch covers everything from foreign language teaching to speaking presentations in his EFL blog.
- Randall’s ESL Blog – Written for both teachers and students, Randall’s ESL blog offers study tips as well as information about ESL programs, accent reduction, and cultural understanding.
- ESL Superblog – The ESL Superblog provides a summary of some of the things language teachers from around the world have written in their blogs.
- Larry Ferlazzo’s Website of the Day – This teacher-written blog is an excellent place to find additional online resources for EFL teachers.
Guest post from Karen Schweitzer who writes for TeachingDegree.org, a site that provides teaching degree information.
Karen inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Apr 29, 2009 at 07:14 AM
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7 Open Source E-Learning Applications
Web Resources Depot posted up a list of 7 Open Source E-Learning Applications. Other than Moodle, Claroline and Sakai were the only two I’ve heard of before.
Do any readers have experience using any of these e-learning platforms? I’ve been using Moodle since around version 1.3. It’s been great, but in the last while I’ve started to think that it’s a little bloated and that the community support pretty much stinks. Support at Moodle used to be top notch but over the past couple of years as Moodle has grown.
I’m curious what others think of Moodle or the other platforms listed – What do you see as the pros and cons of each? Also if you like something other than Moodle, do you know if there is a migration script available so that it would be easy to migrate moodle courses over to another system?
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Apr 24, 2009 at 07:26 AM
Teaching | Moodle | teaching_application |
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