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EFL
Watch BBC iPlayer in Europe and Beyond!
11 year ago
Great news for EFL teachers and English native-speakers bringing up children in an L2 situation; there is now a quick, simple and best of all free way of watching the BBC iPlayer from abroad. ExPat Shield gives you a quick and simple way to get a UK I.P. address which fools the BBC player into letting you watch content from its website.
Note the word fools above though. Although you are not breaking any copy-protection (like on DVDs or software) and you are using a tool that has legal and legitimate reasons to be used (it gives you a secure connection for things like transactions with your bank, stopping your passwords being stolen by tools like Firesheep etc) watching the BBC’s content from abroad is probably against the BBC’s terms and conditions.
There are other tools out there that do the same job, too (like VPNs) but i have never had any success with the free ones. They are either too slow to be useful, overloaded or simply don’t work. For those of you who want to give it a try, Ex-Pat Shield does work and is very simple and easy to use, too.
Basically you need to download the program from their website (you can get it by clicking this link here) install it on your computer (you might need to tell your anti-virus software that it’s allowed to install) then off you go. It took me 3 or 4 minutes only and I was watching the CBeebies content on iPLayer!
Obviously this will be great for my daughter growing up in Italy, I think it’ll also be really useful to Young Learners English teachers who’ll now be able to access content wherever they’re teaching, it’ll also be very useful for adult teachers, too as you’ll be able to use any of the authentic material available on the BBC iPlayer in your classes too.
A great, but simple TV lesson I’ve done in the past for example involves giving out TV timetables for the week to students, having a look through (possibly discussing the different categories of programme available) with a partner. You then ask the couples to decide on a programme to watch, they suggest their programme to the rest of the class and try to persuade them that it’s the best programme to watch (with all the rich language that can be drawn out for activities like this: “I would prefer to, don’t you think that, what about if we….” The lovely thing about this activity ios that for 10-15 minutes at the end of the lesson, you really could watch the programme that the class decides upon!
Have you got any ideas on how to exploit this material in your lessons? Would you feel uncomfortable using a “crafty trick” to access content in your class that would otherwise be blocked? Have you found another way of accessing online video content from sites like the BBC and ABC? Do be sure to let us know in the comments section!
DISCLAIMER: I have no idea whether this might even be questionable legally in some countries. if in doubt, please check before going ahead with trying this. I am of the opinion that this isn’t illegal, but I’m not a lawyer so my opinion isn’t worth a jot! If in doubt, don’t use it!
The Language of Successful Presentations
71 year ago
Ever wondered how Apple manage to do such great presentations? Well, apart from the fact that they have fabulous designers who make wonderfully simple, easy to understand slides, they also use exceptionally positive language in their presentations.
Take a look at this video, what do you notice about the language used?
So, okay the video is actually a bit of gentle fun-poking at Apple (it’s a summary in 120 seconds of a 90 minute recent Apple talk) but it does illustrate really well the power of positive language in a talk. I don’t even remember what I saw in the vidoe, but I do remember that it was “great, fantastic, incredible, amazing” and other things like that.
Next time I, or one of my students present something, I’ll be sure that it’s amazing, incredible, fantastic, great, too. Won’t you?
Have you got any other key language, phrases or words that you encourage your students to use in their presentations? Be sure to share them in the comments section!
All the best, Seth.
The 10 Best Ways to Look Professional Online
11 year ago
Maintaining a professional image on-line is vital nowadays for everyone. From newly qualified students looking for their first job to top managers with years of experience under their belts. If you’re on-line, you’ll be seen more easily, so it’s a good idea to make sure what they see of you on-line makes a positive first impression, hey?
Image From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleen-lane/
The How Stuff Works site is often a great source for authentic material for EFL teachers. It is regularly updated with articles about, well… how stuff works and things like that 
More than this though, it also often has some handy little “Top 10″ lists which are easily exploited by language teachers. The article they’ve just published today, 10 Tips for Maintaining a Professional Image Online is perfect for in-class activities, both for business English students and for high school students. To be honest, it’s pretty darn good advice for a lot of language teachers, too. Here’s the introduction:
Whether you like it or not, you probably already have a significant online presence. Between government documents, newspaper articles and self-generated content, it’s not hard for others to dig up information about you. And whether those people are potential employers, co-workers or casual acquaintances, it’s generally a good idea to put your best foot forward on the Web.
For example, although social networks like Facebook were designed more for casual socializing, more and more human resource managers use these sites to screen potential employees. You must realize that personal Web content can have an effect on you professional life.
As a class activity, I will probably give 1 of each of the 10 pieces of advice to a different student. Ask them to read it, then do a mingle activity where they summarised their advice to each other, noting down what their partners told them. Probably afterwards I would read one or two of the key articles again as a class and do some vocabulary or comprehension work.
Anyhow, without further ado, here are the 10 headlines, or the 10 best ways to look professional online. Click the individual headline to read more.
10: The Best (or Worst) Stands Out
9: Professional Perception is Reality
7: Protect Passwords and Other Vital Information
2: Prepare for Potential Employers
1: Privacy is Still Real — If You Want It
What do you think? Do you agree with How Stuff Works’ list? Would you add anything else? Make sure you let us know what you think in the comments section!
EFL Learner-Blog – A Rubric
11 year ago
Last year, collaboratively with some great colleagues from Twitter and Posterous, I wrote a blogging rubric for my EFL students, based on the excellent work by Andrew Churches. The idea of the rubric was to help them gauge what they should aim for in a “great” blog post. Although I didn’t continually refer back to the rubric all year, it did give my students an idea of what I considered, and is considered, “excellence” in blogging. I think that a mix of my students’ enthusiasm, their talent, and the clear nature of the goals in the rubric helped many of them to achieve the excellent results they did last year.
Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangeacid/
Below, there’s a copy of the rubric if you’d like to try it out with your students, but before you look, there’s a link to a Google docs version beloiw, too. So if you are feeling in the mood, you can improve the rubric / alter it etc and of course USE it with your own students, too!
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYJvrliG5l6WZGhxNXpjajNfMzNnY3NndjhmdA&hl=en_GB
Again, please, please do feel free to add, remove, alter or in any other way you feel fit improve this EFL blogging rubric. If you’d rather just print it, or browse it, here it is 
Quality Blogging for Language Learners – A Rubric
All the best, and happy blogging!
Seth.
The 10/20/30 PowerPoint Rule.
11 year ago
If you haven’t heard about it, Guy Kawasaki coined a clever little expression a while back to help folk improve their PowerPoint presentations. He called it the 10, 20, 30 rule.
Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/
- 10 – No more than ten slides in your presentation. This key number is supposed to help focus your audiences minds on your message, rather than your slides.
- 20 – If you have a one hour meeting, aim to finish your slides in no more than 20 minutes. What with technical problems, questions and chatting, you’ll end up running out of time and going too fast at the end if you try to cram in too much.
- 30 – No font size smaller than 30. If you want your audience to be able to read your slides (you do!) then make sure your text is legible. If you find yourself trying to use a smaller font to squeeze it all in, ask yourself:
- do you need all that text anyway?
- shouldn’t the main message come from you, not your slides?
- wouldn’t it be better to spread the information over more than one slide?
What made me decide to point all this out here though is because I found a nice little presentation on SlideShare today by Cory O’Brien that explains all of this in a nice, visual way. Have a look:
Guy even goes as far as giving us a suggested theme of what should go on each slide. Although I think this is far more relevant to marketers and business-people, I think it’s worth bearing in mind for education, too (and of course it works excellently for a business English teacher.) You can see Guy’s suggestions on Cory’s slide number 3 above. Better still, why not listen to it from the horses mouth Guy himself:
So, there we have it. If I haven’t convinced you, I hope Guy has!
Got a great PowerPoint tip? Is there a mnemonic-like “rule” you tell yourelf before starting to plan a presentation? Be sure to tell us about it in the comments section below!
All the best and happy presenting!
Seth.
Blogging with EFL Students – Part 3 – Get Your Blog Moving!
01 year ago
In this final part of my short series on how to blog with EFL students. If you missed the first two you can find them here:
Blogging with EFL Students – Part 1 – Setting Up a Blog
and here:
Blogging with EFL Students – Part 2 – Blogs Grow With Comments
In this final set of slides I’ll discuss a couple of the essential things every blogger should be able to do to whether they be a teacher or a student. This is certainly not an exhaustive list of everything a blogger should do, but it should help you get the final basics in place.
Uploading a photo to your blog post makes it far easier on the eye and therefore more likely to be read. Adding a link to other related posts or interesting information helps give your reader a bit of background and adds context to your post and finally sorting out your profile lets your reader find out a bit more about you which, hopefully, will make them more likely to want to connect with you.
So, on to the slides: Once again, please do ask if there is anything you’re unclear about or if you want a bit of help with something. If you think I’ve missed out another vital skill for bloggers, do tell me. I’d love to know and will happily update the slides in the future. Down there at the bottom in the comments section, let it rip! 
Take care and all the best,
Seth.
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