Teach English Online - Top Ten Platforms

If you'd like to teach  English online and you are looking for a reliable teaching platform, first you need to decide which group of teachers you belong to:

Source: morguefile.com

A- If you don't have your own blog or site and have no idea how to attracts students, the best option for you is to apply to teach via one of the sites which hire teachers on a regular basis:

1. Myngle
2. English Town
3. Rosseta Stone
4. LanguageLab

B - If you don't have your own blog or site, but want to attract new students by promoting yourself by giving free lessons of English online, check out the following sites:

1. WizIQ
2. EduFire 
3. BlueTeach

C - If you have your own blog/site and your followers are asking you to teach them online, the best sites for you are:

1. Vyew  - the most interactive virtual classroom
2. Udemy - the best place to promote your courses
3. WIZIQ - the simplest and most appealing virtual classroom

How to Edit and Annotate Youtube Videos

I've been thinking of how to edit and annotate Youtube videos which are not mine for years. I use them extensively in my online/offline teaching and there are these awkward moments when I have to find 1minute and exactly 22 seconds and then my mouse cursor keeps searching, while the students get impatient.

Not only that! 

I'd always wanted to annotate videos, mute them and let MY STUDENTS speak while watching them. I'd successfully mute the videos, but it wasn't possible to annotate them. I would give my students clumsy prompts when to say something, and I was often a bit late or early...and again there was always me in the picture, while I wanted them to be on their own with a video, speaking. 

Take a look at this sample exercise, which can be adapted for any language (here's my version for Serbian). Simply click on play, then next or previous and let your students speak. This is extremely useful with the longish videos and for speaking exercises.

For example, with this video, one can learn / teach the following English language phrases:

• There's / there're ...
• I'd like to see ...
• Let's go to Belgrade to see...
• Shall we visit ... 
• Are you going to Belgrade to see ... ?

LOOOOOOOOOOOVEEEEEEEE IT! Thanks EmbedPlus and @redmamy!

Teach Critical Thinking while Teaching English

Search for more videos with Dan Ariely

How to Avoid PowerPoint Presentations when Teaching ?

Using 3-D books



Prezi Presentations

Movers - Family on Prezi

Can Teachers Make Money Teaching Online ?

Surely they can!

All they have to do is:
1. Start their own blog
2. Share their knowledge and experience
3. Start creating free teaching materials
4. Learn a thing or two about online marketing and start implementing what they've learnt
5. Focus on their students

Success is inevitable :)

Teachers, Implementation ?

Howard Gardner of The Multiple Intelligence Theory




Practical points about new kind of education.
Ideas worth implementing:
(synthesizers needed!)

1. ACTIVELY involve your students
2. All students CANNOT be taught in the same way
3. EVERYTHING can be taught and shown in many different ways
4. Nowadays the educational system gives superficial knowledge
5. Assessing is mystified nowadays
6. Give feedback from as early as possible (moving towards self-assessment)
7. Students can exibit their knowledge publicly
8. Educators should guide students
9. Assessment schemes should be improved
10. Political commitment needed

CAE Parts of Speech Race

1. Jot down only Nouns while watching the video
2. Group A: write down their verb 'counterparts' Group B: adjectives (Group C: adverbs)
***
3. After listening to the video several times, mute the audio and ask each group to recall the gist of a certain part of the video (tell them which parts they'll have to do in advance - give them bonus points for using different parts of speech, mentioned in the previous exercise)
***
4. General discussion based on the video

Teaching Online via SuperCoolSchool.com

I'll be doing a workshop tomorrow evening about teaching online with AdobeConnectPro via SuperCoolSchool.

Adobe Connect Pro is one of the three most reliable virtual classrooms I've used so far. Besides Vyew.com , it's the only one to offer asynchronous component to online teaching. In reality it means that a teacher can add extra materials in the forms of quizzes or tests for their students to access at any time. While with Vyew the material is within the classroom, with AdobeConnectPro Training, a student gets a special link to the page where the additional material is added by their teacher (a training manager). Here comes an excellent YouTube video about it.

Social Media Map - Why Do We Need Maps ?

Social Media Map

Youtube Lessons of English

Would you use this video to teach ...



a. future tense ?
b. imperative ?
c. infinitive ?
d. reported speech ?

Teaching English with YouTube

Which group of students would enjoy talking about weather while watching this video ?



a. adults learning business English ?

b. adults learning general English ?

c. young learners ?

d. teenagers ?

YLE Flyers - School

The flyers school collage I incorporated into my site. It can serve both as an interesting language presentation, as well as a drill. Students can take turns, asking each other questions, and at a later stage they could practise giving presentations, based on the photos and questions added to the collage.

FCE Exam on 20th November & 11th December

Recycling FCE 'environmental' vocabulary can be fun with videos like the one below! We watch it once, jot down the  familiar collocations (hopefully :o). Then we watch it again, this time muted, trying to recall the language chunks & even whole sentences. Finally, my students' favourite part (hehe): making a presentation and doing a written task!

Creating Language Learning Content with Vuvox

Here comes my first piece of Vuvox presentation which I incorporated into my Movers page about work. I was so happy when I discovered that I can introduce the audio links, so that the presentation can be quite interactive. The only thing I missed is possibility to link the text if added separately (look at the last part of the following presentation):

Using TimeLines to Practise Past Time

How to introduce or practise the Past Pefrect, Past Simple and Past Continuous in a meaningful way? Take a look at this lovely TimeLine, created with TimeRime timeline tool - isn't it cool? The best part is that there are downloadable timelines in different languages. I think I'll use one with Michael Jackson, although it's in Dutch - I'll make my students guess what's written under each photo. It'll surely be fun!