Back to the Future

Photo on Flickr by Herr Bob

In my previous post I wrote about how difficult it was for me to juggle my online and offline obligations. I named it Swimming or Drowning.

That was almost three months ago.

So, what happened to the writer of that post? Did she drown?

No, well, you see, she decided to take a holiday. A real holiday, away from it all.

Photo on Flickr by Nattu

Normally, when I am on holiday, I use it to spend more time online, trying to catch up with everything I have missed. Not this year, folks. You see, I was really tired. I needed time to think and relax and be selfish. I still went online quite a lot, but the things I did while online were significantly different from what I normally do.

I wasted time. I had fun.

I went to YouTube to listen to music. And I started Bliping. Then I decided I really like Blip.

Blip is like Twitter, except it is not about words. It is about music. You find a song you like and then you share it with others. You can write a message to follow your Blip, but you don't have to. I mostly keep silent. If you are interested in the kind of music I like, here is my Blip channel.

We spent a lot of time in our country house this year and that meant prolonged periods away from my computer. There is no internet connection in our country house. Even the TV doesn't work. It broke down a year ago and we forgot to fix it. We had to spend our time in a very old-fashioned way - talking to each other, reading, taking long walks... I have to say, and it isn't easy for me to admit this, but I didn't really miss my computer at all. I filled my ipod with audio books before we started. There is something comforting about someone reading to you, especially if your eyes have been failing you lately. I got addicted to Jonathan Kellerman because, as some of you might know, I really love crime stories.

When I came back, I checked my email for important stuff and then (get this) I deleted the rest.

In August we went to Alanya for a week. It was our fourth time in Alanya and I'll never get tired of the place. I didn't even bother to take my ipod with me, though I did pick a crime story from the shelf in the hotel lobby.

How selfish is that? Obviously very selfish because, as soon as we came back, my computer decided to go on strike. It would just look at me defiantly for hours and refuse to obey my orders. We had to have it repaired and it was gone for two weeks.

So, here I am now. I am back. No more fooling around. But there are some things I learnt on my holiday that I believe will make me more efficient online.

One evening in Alanya we went to a place called The Chocolate House. The name says it all. I ordered an assortment of dark chocolate on a plate. It did say 120 grams in the menu, but that didn't deter me. I wanted to try as many chocolates as possible. I am not going to go into how I felt afterwards and, of course, I didn't remember the taste of any of the chocolates I tried.

Photo on Flickr by Laughing Squid

This is the way I have been behaving on the net. Signing up for too many newsletters, too many courses, too many applications... Then never reading the emails, never visiting the places I have signed up for and dropping out of the courses. I need to choose my battles more carefully. Yes, the internet is like a chocolate shop. Everything is there for you to sample, but if you are not careful you will overeat. And that might put you off the internet for a while. So, here is the list of my priorities in the future:

1. The People

I have met some great people during the past two and a half years. They are members of my PLN and I have learnt a lot from them. But some of them are more than that. They are my friends.

2. The Blog

Yes, this blog. No matter how infrequently I publish something here, blogging is still the most important thing I do online.

3. The Groups

Even if I succeed in cutting down the time I spend online, I will still keep participating (or rather lurking) in my online groups and forums.

4. Pure Fun and Just Surfing the Internet

Not only is this very important for my mental stability, but often that's where my best lesson plans come from. Reading interesting stories, browsing through Flickr photographs, listening to music, watching cartoons on YouTube... Sooner or later I will come across something that I can use in class.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you who kept my blog alive during the summer by leaving new and fresh comments in my old posts.

Swimming or Drowning?

Photo on Flickr by Online Photography School


So, how are you doing today? Have you managed to read all your emails, answer the urgent ones, delete the unimportant ones, read all the relevant tweets, retweet the good ones, tweet something yourself, check your Facebook home page, rant against the new policies of Facebook and Ning, write back to all the kind people who wrote to you in all your different forums and groups, leave comments in various blogs and tweet the links to a couple of great blog posts? And how about your blog? Eh? When are you going to finish that post you started some time ago?

How were the classes today? Were your students happy? Or were you distracted because you were thinking about that blog post you haven't finished yet? It is really important to finish that blog post. Blogging will greatly improve your teaching, you see. Clears the mind and helps you focus. Are you focused right now?

Are you swimming or are you drowning?

Right now I am drowning. It always happens when I have too many offline obligations. I try to compromise by losing sleep, but my treacherous body starts complaining after a while and my mind refuses to work. So, every now and then I disappear from the internet for a couple of days, or even for a week or two. It is terribly difficult to come back after two weeks. Your inbox will be full, you'll find a dozen different messages addressed to you all over your forums and your poor blog will be neglected and lonely.

If I was a digital native, I would probably not worry about this. I would simply erase all my email messages without a second glance at them and write a blog post about what I did during my absence. However, I am not a digital native. When I was a child, my parents taught me not to procrastinate and never to let others wait for me. It is the feeling that I am letting others down that makes me feel like I am drowning. And it makes me procrastinate. Just like this guy:





There has to be a better way. What do you do to find that perfect balance between your life online and your offline obligations?



Photo on Flickr by Paraflyer

It's Worth Keeping an Eye on This Blog

The image you can see at the top of this post is an award. I am very proud to have received this award, especially since it came from Janet Bianchini, whose blog I really love. Anyway, as Janet says in this post: "This award is part of an initiative called "Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog", which means "It's worth keeping an eye on this blog". The chosen blog has to copy the picture above, with a link to the blog from which it has received the award . Then write ten more links to the blogs which you think are well worth a visit. They in turn if they would like to, of course, copy the image above and link to 10 blogs, which shouldn't be the ones I have chosen below."

Copy-pasting the information from another blog was the easy part. The difficult part is choosing only ten blogs to link to. I read a lot of TEFL blogs. Like most people, I often lurk (oh, you know, lack of time, not being able to think of anything clever enough to put into the Comments area, etc). I think this initiative is great because it shows bloggers that what they do matters and that there are other people out there who are reading their blogs. So, in no particular order, I will list here some of the the blogs I often read:

Kalinago English (Karenne Sylvester)
Miss Shonah (Shonah Kennedy)
Six Things (Lindsay Clanfield)
TEFLtastic (Alex Case)
Teacher Reboot Camp (Shelly Terell)
Ozge Karaoglu's Blog (Ozge Karaogly)
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day (Larry Ferlazzo)
Nik's Learning Technology Blog (Nik Peachey)
English Virtual Community (Nelba Quintana)
My Integrating Technology Journey (Jennifer Vershoor)

As usual, I am quite late with this post. I started writing it on 4th May and, as you can see, it hasn't been 4th May for some time now. My offline life interfered with my blogging once again. I have been really busy for the past two weeks. Among other things, I have been to a conference and I am planning to blog about it soon (though you should notice that my definition of "soon" is a little flexible). In the meantime, this "chain blogging" phenomenon as one blogger called it has spread over the TEFL bloggosphere. Quite a few blogs already have this little stamp proudly displayed somewhere.

There is a good side to everything, isn't there? If you have missed the main wave of "chain blogging", here is your chance to catch up. Visit the blogs I have linked to here and enjoy.

Murphy's Law for EFL teachers

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1. If you have prepared a really cool warmer, everybody will be late for class.
2. If you have planned an important pairwork activity, an odd number of students will show up.
3. If you give your instructions so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
4. The student who misunderstood the instructions will explain them to everybody in his/her team.
5. Photocopiers always break when you have an important test.
6. The enthusiasm the students show for a worksheet you created is inversely proportional to the effort and creativity you invested into the worksheet.
7. No technology will work properly inside the bounds of a classroom.
8. The vocabulary the students memorise is inversely proportional to its frequency and usefulness.
9. When you are being observed, all good students stay at home.
10. The students will remember the exceptions, but not the rule.
11. When explaining grammar, you will only be able to remember cliche examples from your old secondary school books (such as If you hurry up, you will catch the train, or Look at the clouds. It is going to rain.)
12. Words misspell themselves when you write them on the whiteboard.
13. Whenever you spill coffee at home, it will land on a student's homework.
14. If you slip and fall in class, all your students will be present.
15. If you slip and fall in the street, at least one of your students will be present.

Well, I got as far as number 15. It is your turn now. Your suggestions are welcome.

Embedding PDF files into your posts

In my last post I outlined a lesson plan and I provided links for two PDF files. In order to get the files, you need to click on the link that will take you to the file page. Well, that is the usual procedure. The only problem is that the readers will then leave your page and might never return. Why should they continue reading your carefully written post once they got the PDF files?

There has to be a better way.

There are quite a few tutorials on how to embed PDF files, but I used this one. It worked like a dream, as you will see in the comments, but then Fileden got infested withTrojans. I was going to delete this post completely, but then I decided to follow S. Bolos's advice and try EmbedIt. Here is the result:







So, what do you think? When you read a blog post, do you prefer the traditional way (clicking on a link which takes you to another page), or this? And, if you are a blogger, do you think embedding PDF into your post would encourage the readers to stay on your page?

By the way, you can also upload your files to Scribd and it will generate the embed code for you.

Tags: TEFL, LessonPlans, mobile, worksheets, tutorial, Scribd,

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Trouble with the Mobile Phone

Photo on Flickr by William Hook

I am going to share with you a role play I created a while ago.

I don't know what gave me the idea. Must have been the fact that my students constantly forgot to turn off their mobiles. There was this one student... The class started at four o'clock. His phone always rang at 4.30. He would try to hide under the desk and he would say in this loud, hissing whisper "I'm in class. I'll call you later." They informed me afterwards that he had this really jealous girlfriend.

Or maybe it was another student who ran a multi-level marketing business. Her phone rang several times during the class and I somehow managed to teach her to go outside while she talked to her clients.

Anyway, I had a long break between two classes and that's when the idea hit me. I could see the following bit of news in my head:



I wrote it down. I had some empty library cards in my handbag, I was doing a project or something, I can't remember. Anyway, haven't I told you that it's always useful to have things in your handbag? You never know when you are going to need library cards, for example.

So I took those cards out of my handbag and I wrote the roleplay onto them. I put the cards into my handbag (you never know when you are going to need stuff) and went into the next class.

The last class that day was with a very lively and creative group of intermediate students. We opened our books and started doing whatever we were supposed to do that day.

It was boring.

I don't remember what the topic of the class was, but I still remember the blank expression on their faces.

"Is this boring?" I asked.

"Yes," they said.

"Would you like to do something else?"

"Yes, please."

I pulled out my handwritten role cards. You really never know when you might need stuff. I explained about the angry teacher and about the phone. I spread the cards onto a desk and let each student pick one.

They screamed at each other. They argued. They negotiated. They went on and on for about an hour. They reached a compromise. I didn't have to do anything, except sit back and enjoy.

It was a magical experience.

It never happened again quite in the same way, of course. Still, whenever I did my little role play, the students liked it.

It had to evolve over years. What started as a discussion over how old children should be before they get their first mobile and whether mobiles should be allowed at school at all changed into how we could use mobiles in a constructive way in class. Some characters left the play (teachers who were firmly against mobiles at school and students whose parents couldn't afford to buy them mobiles) and new characters replaced them (the under-cover journalist and the geeky teacher).

The procedure for this lesson is really simple and you can improvise as much as you want.

I would start by asking them whether they had ever been in an awkward situation because they had forgotten to turn off their mobile. That serves a double purpose - it introduces the topic and it reminds them to turn off their phone in case they haven't already done it. Then they can talk about the mobile they are using at the moment, the mobile they would like to have... It depends on how much time you have.

After that, introduce the topic of the lesson. You can simply read out loud the bit of news about the angry teacher, or you can download it here, cut it into little strips of paper and give it to them. Ask them to discuss what might have prompted the teacher to do that. Ask them to try and predict what is going to happen.

The main part of the lesson is the role play which you can download here. Cut it into role cards and give each student a card. There are nine roles in the play, but it can easily be adjusted to suit your class. The first four roles are crucial (the student's parent, the principal, the student and the teacher) and if your class is small you can choose who else you want to keep. Some roles can be repeated (the journalist, the student's friend, the teacher's friend...). If your class is large, you can put the students into groups of nine.

By the way, you might want to pre-teach the language for agreeing and disagreeing and (why not?) a couple of taboo words.

As a follow-up, you can discuss various ways in which mobiles can be used in class in a constructive way. There are tons of great blog posts on that subject. This one, for example. And here is a nice vocabulary test connected to this topic.

And if, like me, you teach in a country where geeky teachers are an endangered species, you might enjoy this little video (which is not a part of the lesson plan, but, shall we say, a freeby). So, sit back and enjoy:



If you decide to try it with your students, do let me know how it went. Just post me a note in the Comments section. I have only ever done this with adult learners and I am really curious about what would happen if you gave it to teenagers.

And, in case you got so carried away by my elegant prose that you somehow missed the download links for the worksheets, here they are once again:

Angry Teacher Breaks Mobile Phone
Trouble with the Mobile Phone




This lesson plan by http://lunas994.blogspot.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Tags: TEFL, LessonPlans, BELTFree, mobile, worksheets

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Which came first - the picture or the caption?

Let me start where I finished last time:



I am not going to talk about the tools here. There are lots of great posts on that topic. Or you can go through the Images4Education wiki. You can even download this wonderful ebook free of charge.

I am going to concentrate on a single question:



And if my new habit of speaking in pictures is starting to get on your nerves, do stop reading, because there is more coming.

To answer my own question (I know, I am a bad teacher), when you are telling your story, sometimes you will write the story first and find or create the pictures afterwards. I often do that in my blog by searching for Flickr photos that could illustrate what I am trying to say. Or you could start from the pictures and use them as an inspiration for your story, the way Janet did here.

Why are images important in TEFL in the first place? To answer that, I will have to use more images, I am afraid. So here is a slideshow I created during the third week of Images4Education:

Images and the Learning Process

View more presentations from lunas994.

I am an extreme right-brainer and I really do think in pictures all the time. Even if we take different learning styles into consideration (not everyone is a right-brainer), images are always useful in a TEFL class. They help us explain new vocabulary, they can serve as speaking or writing prompts, they can make grammar less boring... I am not going to talk about what you already know.

Even if the image has no immediate practical purpose, it is still good to have one. Let's say you are writing a blog post and you don't know how to end it. The words just won't come. You can place a nice image where your conclusion should have been and make your readers wonder what you were trying to say with it.

Frost on Red.egg by lunas994 on Aviary

Tags: TEFL, Images4Education, Aviary, Flickr, Slideshare, images

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