Random Quote
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
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III
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
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
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
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford
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
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
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.
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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Inspiration for a song
Today my students did their first graded presentations for my presentation skills class. The students in this class are all native like or near native speakers. The assignment was a 5 minute presentation which the student could choose a topic from a list of about 30.
Several students did the topic “having a hobby is good for my life”. Yeah I know it’s a bit of a fluff topic, but the point is to get students talking and also not to focus on content so much as their presentation – body language, eye contact, organization etcetera..
One student wrote about how he enjoys composing songs. He took 30 seconds of his alloted time to sing part of a song that he wrote two weeks ago after my class on overcoming fear in presentations. The song title is “The Embrace” and is about the need to embrace fear. Anyhow, it was rather interesting to find out that one of my lessons inspired a song.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Apr 3, 2009 at 03:51 PM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching |
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Moodle Grading
I’m in the midst of planning for the upcoming spring semester starting on Monday, though I actually start on Tuesday since Mondays are my day off. While setting up my homework for the first week in moodle I discovered that there is a new rating option.
Average (default)The mean of all the ratings given to posts in that forum. This is especially useful with peer grading when there are a lot of ratings being made.
I won’t be using this for the first homework, but have definite uses for it in the future. I love peer evaluation, but dislike aggregating all the scores. This will make things so much easier for me in the future.
I’m not sure if this has been in Moodle for a while or is new. I just upgraded last week, but haven’t really changed the way I grade things for a long time so it’s possible this has been around. Anyhow if it’s new to you, check it out.
Foreign(ers’) in Seoul?
If you have lived in South Korea for more than a few years you will have noticed that the country and the Seoul metro region in particular are becoming increasingly diverse. If you only just arrived in Seoul and don’t think it’s very diverse, just ask someone who has been here a few years. This just doesn’t mean more tourists, but also large numbers of migrant workers, Korean-Chinese, marriage migrants, international students and, of course, English teachers. Let’s be clear, Seoul is hardly a New York, Toronto, London, Dubai or Singapore, but its increasing diversity is making a big difference. From a wider range of restaurants, public festivals celebrating different cultural backgrounds, new churches and mosques, a wider range of languages to be heard and, of course, the different sorts of people you will meet.
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Francis Collins inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Feb 9, 2009 at 04:59 PM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching | Guest Author |
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TEFL authors who blog
Alex Case has posted an entry titled: Clash of the TEFL heavyweight bloggers where he links to four published authors who also blog; unfortunately the last two are unfamiliar to me.
Alex then goes on:
So, where does that leave us humble English teachers who blog and are just starting to enjoy being a medium-sized fish in a tiny pond? Is it all over now the big boys are moving in?? Will we have to get a real job and start publishing real books to start getting noticed???
Well I’ve been blogging for 5 years come the End of January so I haven’t exactly just started - however when I did first start there were less than 20 EFL/ESL bloggers that I could find. In that time the ESL/EFL blogging field has grown enormously. At one point for about 2.5 years my blog was the #1 search result in google for a number of terms as well has having a page rank of 7. Unfortunately my ranking at search results have gone down. I blame that on my reduced blogging frequency and the rapid growth of high quality teacher bloggers out there.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Jan 1, 2009 at 02:22 PM
Random_Ramblings | Teaching | useful_web_sites |
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How to Make Google Your English Teacher
Google is a very popular search engine, but did you know that it could also serve as a Tutor?
Google is a very popular search engine, but did you know that it could also serve as a Tutor? Click here to download a 5-page guide, or scroll down to preview a few tips from the guide itself.
Enjoy…
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englishcafe inscribed these words of wisdom on Tuesday Dec 16, 2008 at 03:59 AM
About_Language | Teaching | teaching_application | useful_web_sites |
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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 07:57 PM
Random_Ramblings | Video | Teaching |
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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.
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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Nov 5, 2008 at 10:37 AM
Teaching | Moodle | Book_Gigilo | Book Reviews |
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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 02:26 PM
Teaching | useful_web_sites |
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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.
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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 18, 2008 at 09:11 AM
Teaching | ESL_in_the_News | teaching_application |
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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.
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Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 4, 2008 at 07:59 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 07:00 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 (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Thanks.
japanbond inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Aug 21, 2008 at 05:38 AM
Teaching | Languages_&_Cultures_in_Contact | Guest Author |
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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 03:12 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 01:43 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 09:37 PM
Teaching | useful_web_sites | Video |
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