IATEFL Manchester Feedback

I originally wrote this feedback post on another blog, but thought I would like to add it here on my main blog.  Better late than never :-)

 I was very happy to be able to travel to Manchester on Saturday April 11th to attend the IATEFL conference for 2 days. I went there by train direct from Oxford.  The journey was very smooth and in no time at all I arrived in Manchester Picadilly and met my friend and colleague Carol.  I stayed in Manchester for one night at the Abode Hotel.

The conference was a great event all round and it was wonderful to have the chance to meet up with so many members of my PLN, albeit briefly. Below the only conference image I had taken from my mobile and this is a lovely one which includes Dr Nellie Deutsch and Vicky Loras.  It was a pleasure to meet them and so many others. Here's a link to a fabulous slideshow of IATEFL 2015 Manchester created by Dr Nellie Deutsch.

It was also a great pleasure to spend a lot of time with my colleague Carol Rainbow, and some time with Sue Annan from the Project 52 blog, Marisa, who has written an excellent feedback post here , and Sue-Lyons in the break times, and members of the Consultants-e team, on Sunday over cocktails :-) 
Sadly, I missed a few people I wanted to meet such as Sandy Millin, and Sharon Hartle, but being such a huge conference centre with over 2,000 delegates, it was not possible to see everyone amongst the crowds....

I attended a super British Council hosted event on Saturday night at the Manchester Town Hall, and was blown away by the magnificence of its grandeur and the awe-inspiring gothic architecture.  I had a truly super evening there, mingling with so many delegates and people I knew.....
The canapes and refreshments were delicious and the wine flowed!!  I found out that the bees painted on the floor of the town hall denoted the symbol of Manchester as a leading industrial power in the past (as busy as a bee).


Below a collage I created using Fotor.com of 4 images kindly shared by Carol Rainbow:

Prior to that I had also attended a Cambridge University Press party where the new series of Empower course books was presented at the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology, and that was very enjoyable as well.  Images below reproduced with kind permission from Carol Rainbow:

I received a free copy of the new B1 level Empower coursebook, which looks impressive.

I was lucky enough to be able to sample a slice of the delicious Going Mobile cake.  Pictures below reproduced with kind permission of Carol Rainbow :-))

I asked the authors Nicky and Gavin if they could sign my personal copy of Going Mobile, and they did!  I hope to write up a book review of it on this blog, so watch this space!

All the sessions I attended were very interesting and I learned a lot.  It was good to benefit from the knowledge shared and this certainly enhanced my CPD.  In particular I would like to mention the following ones:

'Spice up your lessons with a song' by Sandra Vida from Slovenia was inspirational and offered some practical and fun examples to use straight in the classroom.  Sandra has an excellent blog called Lessons with Music, which contains a huge source of lesson plans and ideas for using contemporary pop songs.

 I discovered some new techniques for using Pink Floyd's 'We don't want no education' as a topic to get teens to brainstorm what they DO want from education.

 

Also the song 'Add Me' by Chumbawamba to get students to discuss the dangers of friending strangers on Facebook was thought-provoking:

Paul Driver's session on using Augmented Reality was fascinating, and the future use of AR in EFL classrooms is probably just around the corner for most of us.

He gave us some great examples of work he is already doing with his students at the British Study Centre, Oxford, in this innovative and cutting edge area.

I also found  the talk by Jason Anderson on 'Lying is the best policy', based around his new publication called 'Speaking Games', very practical and will implement some of the ideas into my future teaching.

The many uses of 'GET' by Kate Evans appealed to me and I wasn't disappointed!

In addition, I will mention the talk by Candy van Olst, called ' How does chatting become a purposeful conversation'.  I think I already apply quite a few things she pointed out to her audience.  I will make sure I include even more fillers for 'just chatting' with my classes in the future!

Finally, I found the Sunday morning plenary session by Joy Egbert to be very informative and useful.  She mentioned lots of tips on how to promote task engagement and demonstrated a variety of technological tools, including Bighugelabs Magazine app, which I love using.

I am so thankful for having had this opportunity to develop my CPD and to meet so many people I connect with online.

Next year the IATEFL conference is held in Birmingham, and I would love to attend!!!

IATEFL Manchester 2015

I have booked my train ticket to Manchester and I will spend 2 days there, more or less.  I haven't attended a live international conference like this since IATEFL Brighton 2011, when I presented as well. The past few years I have kept extremely busy attending and presenting at online conferences, and I have to admit, the experiences have all been just as exhilirating and exciting!!
 
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I wrote a few blog posts about my time in Brighton:

IATEFL Brighton 2011 Rocked! http://civitaquana.blogspot.it/2011/04/iatefl-brighton-2011-rocked.html
The King & I at IATEFL Brighton 2011: http://civitaquana.blogspot.it/2011/04/king-and-i-iatefl-brighton-2011.html

The question is: does attending a conference in person have the slight edge over an online conference?  Well the obvious advantage is that you can physically meet and greet someone, you can have coffee, lunch or drinks with them, you can go dancing, you can share jokes, you can take group photos, selfies, swop business cards, swop stories and so on.

However, believe it or not, at an online conference, you can do all of the above, virtually, 24/7.  In 2nd Life I have attended a virtual drinks party and lots of food was present, and dancing too!  In online webinars I have shared virtual food and drinks from around the world, and attended farewell parties, the EVO Podcasting webinar, being one of the most amazing and memorable ones.  Also singing and dancing along to rap tunes at an online conference closing ceremony springs to mind....

So, what is the verdict??

I can't wait to meet members of my PLN on Saturday April 11th and Sunday April 12th!!  Please do come up and say 'Hi' if you see me!! I am very excited about the chance to catch up with so many people!!  It will be a dream come true....

I will be meeting members of The Consultants-E team on Sunday!

You can find out more about this great international event by clicking on the image below:


 http://www.iatefl.org/annual-conference/manchester-2015

Project 366: An Image a Day for 2012

I have been uploading an image every day onto my new Project 366 Posterous blog in order to record my life in 2012. It's a great project, and I found out about it via my Personal Learning Network on Twitter, where else!! I enjoy viewing the images posted by my fellow bloggers such as Chiew, Anna, Sue and Mike amongst others....

Why is Project 366 such a great one? Well, it will be a record of my thoughts and actions in 2012, a place for adding things I maybe wouldn't normally write about on my main blog. I will have a useful bank of images to use for activities in class.

I like the way Posterous Design template adds all the pictures and posts on one page, so I have an overview of up to 16 posts per page. This is a very cool feature! The design template theme is by Cory Watilo.

Below you can listen to a Jing screencast I have just made, which explains this project a bit more.

Janet's Nominations for the 2011 Edublog Awards

When everyone is outstanding, it is always difficult to choose excellence. The yearly nominations phase for the Edublogs Awards 2011 has come round again, and here are my choices below:

Best Individual blog: The English Blog by Jeffrey Hill
Best teacher blog: English Raven by Jason Renshaw
Best group blog: Teaching Village by Barbara Sakamoto
Best librarian/library blog: The Daring Librarian
Best new blog: A Journee in Language by Brad Patterson
Best Edtech blog : Free Tech for Teachers
Most influential blog post: Blog Challenge: What's Your Story? by Vicky Loras
Best Twitter hashtag: ELTChat
Best free webtool: Fotobabble
Best educational wiki: Greeting From The World by Arjana Blazic
Best educational use of audio/visual/podcast: Teacher Training Video Tutorials by Russell Stannard
Best open PD/unconference/ webinar series: Reform Symposium
Best educational use of a social network: English Companion Ning
Lifetime achievement: Scott Thornbury

I wish I could have nominated everyone I follow and admire, but of course it is not possible. Best of luck to everybody mentioned above!

A huge thanks to all the members of my PLN, who are a constant source of encouragement, enlightenment and engaging interaction:-)

Update on Award Winners!
The Edublog Awards winners can be viewed here. Many congratulations to everyone involved! Vicky Loras has just written a lovely post called Educators Everywhere, Congratulations!

Thank you Vicky for this heartfelt and wonderfully uplifting post! You have expressed the true ethos and benefits of such events in a very eloquent manner indeed.

The Fabulous PLN Challenge - Interview with Leahn from Early EFL

Brad Patterson's inspirational PLN Interview Challenge brought me to Leahn Stanhope, a member of my fab PLN. Leahn writes the lovely Early EFL blog and she lives and works by the beach in the Canary Islands. I was delighted when the opportunity arose to ask Leahn the PLN Challenge questions. Here below are the standard 5 questions with an extra two thrown in at the end.

1) If your students were to label you with 3 adjectives, what might they be?

FUNNY seems to be a word I hear a lot lately, and I hope they would say knowledgeable and patient.

2) What would we find in your refrigerator right now?

I’ve absolutely no idea! The shopping and cooking are left in the hands of my boyfriend. Let me just get up off the sofa and check. Okay, lots of salad stuff, fruit, chicken, sausages, feta cheese, camembert, olives, orange juice, eggs, melon, yoghurt and sandwich making stuff too!

3) If you weren’t a teacher, what might your profession be?

That’s such a difficult question. I know what I wouldn’t want to be but it’s much more difficult to say what I’d like to be. Perhaps a foreign aid worker, dog trainer or horse whisperer!

4) What do you find most difficult about the teaching profession, or What has been your most difficult class as a teacher?

Don’t get me started with TEFL (it’s a love-hate relationship). It’s great when you start out, but as you get older it’s much more difficult to put up with nine month contracts and working in the evenings! Luckily, I now work 10 months of the year and have a morning job!

I’ve been lucky with classes, most of the teaching I’ve done has been in private language schools. The most challenging teaching situation I’ve faced has been in the last three years working in the state system, which has meant large classes, mixed abilities, children with no pencils and teens with no motivation.

5) What was the last book/movie you read/saw, and what have you seen/read way too many times?

I’m mad about books and films. I’m currently reading a graded reader as I have a German exam on Thursday but I’ve got a Spanish book on the go too, it’s called La Catedral del Mar by Idelfonso Falcones. I love Isabel Allende. I can’t help re-reading her books. My all time favourite is Stories of Eva Luna.

The last film I saw was Babel with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. I love the Aliens films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, ET, all the Star Wars films, Platoon and so many more. Just remembered, Gladiator, I must have seen it five times at least!

And here are the two extra questions!

As having quite a few furkids is a connection between us, can you share a few stories about 1 or 2 of your pets and how you first met them or got them?

At the moment we have 6 cats and 6 dogs. Three of the dogs are foster dogs. I seem to have been collecting animals over the past 6 years. I got involved in voluntary work for a cat British based cat charity called Twinkle Trust and the rest as they say is history.This is CC or Crissy as she’s called. I met her a couple of weeks before Christmas last year. She was sitting outside a big electrical and household store. It was really strange; she was just sitting on the door mat as people rushed in and out. As I walked in, I bent down to stroke her and was surprised because she was very friendly. I went in and bought my paint. Feeling guilty, I asked the security guard about her. He told me that he’d been feeding her for a few weeks. I reversed out of the parking lot thinking that it was fine. She had a feeder and she’d be okay. By the time I arrived home I’d decided to go back and get her. It has taken her ages to integrate into the household but now she’s a happy little cat..

What's the best part of living in the Canary Islands? (For me it was definitely the fab beaches!)

The weather, the beaches, the completely laid back pace of life here and most importantly wearing flip flops to go to work!

Thank you very much Leahn for answering these questions!

It was lovely getting to know Leahn a bit more and our love of furkids and our considerable combined collection of 27 of them is quite incredible, I think!! I lived on the same beautiful island in the Canaries (see photo above) as Leahn for a year in 1984. I also love Isabel Allende's the Stories of Eva Luna! So, quite a few connections between us both.

Leahn is an active member of ELTChat held on Twitter every Wednesday, and recently she summarised the "Storytelling" session held on May 18th. It's an excellent summary and contains lots of fantastic links and resources on this very interesting subject.

If you like, you can read another PLN interview on Eva's post "My Wonderful PLN -2".
Watch out for more PLN Interviews on Brad's blog here. Thanks Brad for coming up with this challenge!
You can read all about the Challenge Interviews on Dave Dodgson's amazing Scoop.it page as well.

IATEFL Brighton 2011 - Here I come!

I am delighted to inform my readers that my call for papers has been accepted for Brighton Iatefl 2011. My presentation is on "Teaching idioms effectively with web 2.0 tools". It will be my first time as a presenter at IATEFL.

Last year, the conference was in Harrogate and I wrote some feedback here. I also wrote a summary post of Tessa Woodward's really inspiring Plenary talk on "The Professional Life Cycles of Teachers". I was an online moderator on the Learning Technologies Forum and it was an amazing experience. Being in Brighton in person, and having the chance to meet so many members of my fabulous PLN, will be absolutely awesome, or should I say "wicked!"

I look forward to sharing my experiences in April 2011. See you there!

#ELTchat - My Personal Thoughts

Recently I have been following the newly formed #ELTchat on a Wednesday. The most convenient time for me is usually the first session of the day, which begins on the dot at 3pm GMT (4pm Rome time). There is also an evening session at 9pm GMT. These two slots cover most time lines around the world so teachers can choose a convenient time.

What is #ELTchat? Well, it is a weekly discussion based on a pre-selected topic, which is held entirely via Twitter.

There is a poll where teachers can choose what they would like to talk about and this poll is posted up on Sunday evening for people to vote for their choice of topic for the following Wednesday.

Here is the poll to vote for the choice of topics for Wednesday 6th October. The top 2 topics are discussed either in the afternoon or evening session. Therefore, if you wish, you have the opportunity to attend 2 different #ELTchat topics on one day!

The chats in the past few weeks have been varied and very interesting, including the latest one I attended - "Given the demands of a full-time teaching position, is using a coursebook really a bad thing?" Despite encountering a few technical difficulties, almost 700 tweets were exchanged on this lively topic. You can view the full transcript here. The chat is moderated by an excellent crew of moderators, and they are able to keep the chat on track very skillfully.

Over the weekend, I will be looking through the transcript of the evening session I missed, which was "Critical Thinking vs Comprehension". Here is the transcript for you to get a taste of how it went.

The Art of Being Concise
How can you say what you want to say in only 140 characters, you may be thinking to yourself.
Well, I thought that as well, before I started my learning journey on Twitter. My doubts were soon dispelled. You can definitely get to the heart of the subject, cutting out all the waffle and perambulations of the language, all within 140 characters.

When I attended my first #ELTchat session, I was a bit lost initially, as you really have to be "on the ball" to follow a lot of people tweeting at once. The one-hour is fast-paced, action-packed and truly exciting. Time literally flies! Despite my initial feelings of "Oh my goodness!! This is too fast for me! I can't keep up!!", I was hooked from the very beginning. I am getting better with practice.

Reasons for Participating
Why should you take part? Well, here are a few of my personal thoughts for starters!

• It allows you to discuss with your peers from around the world valid topics of educational interest.
• You can connect with not only teachers, but also publishers, ELT authors, people from all sectors of the industry.
• You can learn a lot from the discussions.
• You can feel a part of how education is evolving.
• You can make things happen via your input.
• You can make new friends and expand your PLN.
• You can feel part of a unique experience.
• You can use some of the ideas in your own lessons.
• It will stimulate your world!

If you can, why don't you join me and other teachers from around the world on Wednesday 6th October? It will be an enriching experience, I assure you!

Follow all the updates via twitter by using the hashtag #ELTchat.

Hot off the Press!
#ELTchat has just won the TEFL.net Site of the Month Award October 2010! Wow, that is amazing for something which has only been going a few weeks. Many congratulations to the organisers of #ELTchat.

3rd Virtual Round Table Conference 8th - 9th October 2010

Visit Virtual Round Table

Will you be joining me and other educators at the 3rd Virtual Table Conference organised by Heike Philp on 8th to 9th October? This is a free event and it will take place completely online. The conference is dedicated to language learning with technology.

You can watch a live presentation on "Teaching Online: The Key Ingredients" published by Delta Publishing on Friday October 8th. The authors of this book, which is hot off the press, are Nicky Hockly, Director of Pedagogy of the Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e.com) and Lindsay Clandfield of "Six Things" blog fame. You can read more about the presentation at the Virtual Round Table Conference here.

You can follow The Consultants-E via Twitter and Facebook. You might catch sight of someone you know if you scroll down the FB page a bit:) More on this very exciting news in another post....

I am very proud to be presenting at the Virtual Round Table Conference on Saturday 9th October at GMT 09.30 am. My presentation is called "Fun with Phrasal Verbs!". Watch this space for futher details.

All you need to do now is sign up and register for the conference and then you can look forward to an entertaining and very rewarding time! Hope to see you there.

Click on the Makebeliefs image to make it bigger.

Project PLN - 1st Edtion Issue

Project PLN: September Issue 1

View more documents from ProjectPLN.

Press the "Full" icon for a much bigger view.

I would like to spread the word about this fantastic new initiative in the shape of a monthly e-magazine based entirely around the important theme of building and developing a PLN. I found out about it earlier today via kelly Tenkely's popular elementary education technology integration blog called iLearn Technology. Project PLN consists of fantastic articles written by various educators from around the world. The very first September edition paves the way for an incredibly rich reading experience. I urge you to have a look through the magazine and then spread the word yourselves!

I also came across this very interesting article via Twitter by Tom Whitby, entitled "Short Term Learner", also on the theme of PLNs.

My Top 5 Blog Posts for Reflection

Summer has been hectic and continues apace. Life in Abruzzo is full of gardening and animal tales, in addition to surfing the vast online Information Highway. Information comes in, is logged by my brain, digested and then is dutifully filed away in my memory bank somewhere.

There are 5 blog posts I have read recently, which I would like to highlight here, because they have resonated with me in some particular way. The eyecatching titles did not disappoint. These posts are full of personal thoughts, and practical insights. I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

Multitasking or "making a hole in the water" by Marisa Constantinides is a great piece which acts as a catalyst for reflection on what modern 21st century educators have to deal with on a regular basis. It is good to share such thoughts as we are all in the same boat and can help one another, just by listening and commenting.

10 More Twitter Faux Pas To Avoid When Building Your PLN by Sue Lyons-Jones is an essential read to guide you through the pitfalls on twitter. It's a very useful guideline to bear in mind for all tweeters.

Boomerangs:No blog post ever really goes to waste by Jason Renshaw.
I really like the encouraging message it contains about the worth of writing posts which may not receive views or hits at the time of writing, but which may certainly be appreciated in the future.

I enjoyed reading Vuvuzela Enters Oxford Dictionary of English by Jeffrey Hill from the English Blog. I am presenting at TESOL-Italy in November this year and my talk will be based on the theme of "Language Flows". I have already begun my research into my presentation, and am keeping tracks of useful links such as this one.

A Glossary to DEMYSTIFY the jargon of the online world by Sue Waters is an incredibly useful post to bookmark for learning about specific words used online.

A Fearless Kitten
I will leave you with a picture of little Samantha, who bravely took on 5 chickies today and managed to scare them away.....butter wouldn't melt, eh?

2010 Reform Symposium -The Afterglow

Two weeks ago at about this time, I was fully immersed in the incredible 48-hour live event -the Reform Symposium 2010 E-conference. I had done my presentation on The Power of Images and was feeling very happy to be attending an action-packed programme of fabulous talks by educators from around the world. I drank a lot of coffee in order to keep me awake late at night and also to make me concentrate fully on what I was listening to!

I was on a virtual and physical high the whole weekend. Why was this? Well, I was learning a huge amount and at the same time, evolving as a teacher. To hear so many educators, each and every single one of them without exception, talking passionately about their job was an absolutely mindblowing experience. I was totally engulfed in a global educational-fest. In fact, Ingrid Veilleux from Edculture, has written a very interesting post called #rscon10 as Woodstock. In her post, Ingrid reflects on the powerful effect that the conference had on her. The analogy of an educator's 21st century Woodstock is a really cool one!

The After Effects
I am still thinking about the Reform Symposium now. It has entered my psyche. I don't really want the feeling to go away. I felt part of a global community, all with the same ideals and aspirations. Even though it was a virtual event, I experienced the sensation of feeling close to everyone who was taking part.

My whole weekend was geared around the presentations and I am glad that I was able to carry on with my composting, animal husbandry and a bit of gardening, inbetween breaks. It was something I could never do at a real F2F conference. I wanted to attend all the talks, but of course, that was impossible, so I have a lot of catching up to do over the coming weeks.

All the talks can be accessed via the link here. You can now also listen to the podcasts of the talks and download them via iTunes for free here.

Presenting an Award to..


all the organizers, presenters, moderators, volunteers and members of the audience for making it one of the best virtual events I have ever attended. I would definitely like to present again next year. Why don't you join me? I promise you, it will be enlightening!

Further Links
Sue Lyons-Jones from The PLN Staff Lounge has written a comprehensive feedback post called"Pick of the Week: The 2010 Reform Symposium". Please check out all the fantastic links to the talks and related blog posts she has carefully selected.

Iconscrabble of Reform Symposium discovered via this post on Larry Ferlazzo's blog.

Guest Post by Karenne Joy Sylvester

3. The Best Edu-Bloggers Write Often

Whether you aim to write 200 word thought pieces or 2,500 word academic essays, as I mentioned in part 1 of this article, it takes time to blog.

Unless you're paid to blog and tweet on behalf of a company or you're currently in between jobs/ are an ex-teacher/ part-time trainer or superman, then it is unlikely that you will have time to blog daily.

When you're starting out, it can be incredibly daunting to discover that 800 word articles take 8 hours to write.

Add to that time the time you need to edit, to rewrite your posts because you've just got to get them perfect - there'll be other teachers/ students reading it after all - well, you might end up feeling like packing up shop after just three or four posts. Might as well stick to writing for teaching journals.

But here's the thing, you're honing a craft.

A very special, emerging craft.

You're developing a life skill and trust me, after you've been doing it for a while, those 800 words will begin to fall from your fingers in less than an hour. Over the months, once you've stuck with your blog, you'll find yourself organizing your thoughts way before you hit the page and you'll become more confident in the strength of your voice; more in touch with your style with its stable (or diverse) personalities and you'll lose the (ego)attachment to perfection:

you can always edit, it's yours, you know - it's online - it doesn't matter if that that i wasn't dotted or that t wasn't crossed, most people don't mind, and if they do...

keep focused,

keep in mind that blogging is a written conversation which occurs within a community and as in speech: we forgive, on the page: we forgive.

Many other niche areas of blogging have readers in the millions. To stay fresh for their readers they do need to post obsessively, on the hour, but our readers are mostly made up of other educators or students or our parenting communities - many of whom are regular and loyal readers and they simply do not have the time to listen to your thoughts, participate in your conversations at the same rate of output - to be honest, if you do this, apart from burning yourself out, you might end up finding some of your followers actually becoming a bit irritated with the feedburner's delivery of your posts into their in-boxes/Google readers, watching you fill their twitter stream every day.

However, if your goal is indeed to move on, beyond from blogging as a hobby or from using your page to make announcements of your upcoming training sessions, boast about recent achievements, awards or the place where you go to rant about life's injustices but instead you've decided that you would really like to become a lead blogger in your edu-niche or the sub-sub-sub niche of that, then you really must persuade your stubborn, lazy fingers to tap at that keyboard more than once a month.

You must arrive at the page as often as you can make the time to do so.

*click here to read full-sized + legend

Why?

Well...


a.

practice....

.......makes

perfect.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, refers to 10,000 hours as being the time required to become truly successful in anything that people set out to do and all those who made it there, started out with their first hour and then one hour after that, and another hour after that...

b.

Google is a hungry beast: it needs feeding with fresh content regularly or it'll dismiss your blog and all of its posts and in the end, send you packing, out to the outer realms of the nether-sphere.

c.

Your readers will get completely bored with you if you're constantly apologizing for, yet again, writing to say you have nothing to say. Schedule slots, regular chunks of time into your diary, fix an editorial calendar to the wall and take it seriously; convince yourself that those deadlines are as important as anything else in your life.

In fact, ask yourself:

• How can I make the time to provide content consistently?
• What commitments do I currently have that I can get rid of?
• What television programs do I really not need to watch?
• Can I wake up an hour earlier? (I did that for a year)
• Can I go to bed an hour later? (I do that still).

4. The best edu-bloggers understand that

Content is King

Content is everything and don't let anyone tell you different(ly).

Above everything else, what you have on your page and within your archives is what determines, what separates an amazing Edu-blog from other blogs. It isn't about what connections you have, privately or via social-media, it isn't the back-links you have or don't have, it isn't what you have done or haven't done in your life up to the point when you enter the 'sphere.

And seriously, I mean - how can I say this strongly enough - completely forget about stupid, illusory things like counting the number of hits you receive; do not count how many comments you get versus how many another blogger got.

Your own personal readers might not feel like commenting, are shy, don't feel like they have anything to add - some people don't like to be the first commenter or commenter number 15+, some people only comment on blogs written by VIPs (to get their attention) so ignore this.

In fact, never,
ever, ever, ever
compare yourself
to someone else
who you think
is getting more attention
than you are.

Abandon those thoughts.

Hits, number of visitors, they are not important and they take a really long time to build.

This is not why you entered the blogosphere. In today's long process, this journey towards the democratization of education, in this level playing field you have now entered or are considering entering, you lone blogger teacher: you are writing with not against your peers so even though competitiveness can be healthy, don't let it shape or cause you to abandon, your work.

To become a truly great edu-blogger, stay true to your purpose and passion: you are making a repository of articles, you are honing your skill, you are learning your craft. You are creating a body of work and this will astound you, once the years past and you look back and see your own professional growth.

If you remember this - keeping it as your priority - you will never become discouraged.

And all the other stuff follows, in its own time. Once the world has realized that, indeed, you have made with your own two hands something worthy of commenting, praising, reTweeting, conversing, sharing with friends and linking to from other blogs, then you will still be there, still with both feet planted on the ground and you'll be able to keep churning out the good stuff.

Any questions?



image credit
Google in the afternoon, after Gari Melchers by Mike Licht, Notions.com

This post is part of a new series: Thoughts on Edu-blogging. For part 3 of this particular article, please visit Berni Wall's blog (coming soon). For glossaries related to some of the jargon mentioned in this article, see Mike Harrison's blog and Sue Lyon Jones on words related to the word blog. Please view Nick Jaworski's blog for "The Dogma of Blogging".

(c) KarenneJoySylvester, 2010
Karenne is an ELT-edu-blogger, a ESP:IT teacher, EdTech teacher-trainer and materials writer, originally from Grenada in the Caribbean. She currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany and blogs at Kalinago English (Bab.la/Lexiophile's #2 Global Language Teaching Blogs) and BusinessEnglish~5mins.

Find her on Twitter as @kalinagoenglish.

I am very honoured to have Karenne do this amazing guest post on my blog. She is my inspirational mentor. I owe a lot to her generosity of spirit. Her continuing quest to help fellow edubloggers is awesome. My heartfelt thanks, dear Karenne.

Multi-Tasking:The Way to Keep Busy!

Picture above shows Multi Janets Tasking!

The past few days I have literally been making hay while the sun shines, getting up unfathomably early, in order to take the dogs for a walk, then hack away at the ever growing jungle at the back of our home, sorting out 3-4 compost piles, building my huge haystack in the middle of the land ready for a future blog post (I'm not joking!). In addition, I have had to constantly check up on the 5 incorrigible "Amigas" and sort out the never ending trail of devastation that they leave in their wake. Several cucumber plants trampled, tomato plants decimated, pepper plants pecked at and well, a lot of other misdemeanours. Anyway, apart from all these daily tasks, I have been as busy as a bee online!

As this blog serves as a personal diary for me as well as my personal development portfolio, I would like to share links to the following posts and say a big thank you to everybody that is mentioned.

A Journey in TEFL:Guest Post
My dear friend Eva Buyuksimkesyan from A Journey in TEFL, invited me to do a guest post on her blog a few days ago. I didn't hesitate in accepting. I wrote the post "The A - Z Files: The Secret to Organising your TEFL Life! in a very short time, because I felt inspired by the subject and I wanted to share a few of my secrets to keeping organised.

On this post I revealed that I have started a wikispaces A- Z folder where I keep all my bookmarks in alphabetical order of subject. It is a private and personal reference sheet for me but you are welcome to browse through it and check out the links if you wish. I won't be accepting contributors to this venture for the time being as it is purely intended for my own CPD and for ease of finding sources at the drop of a hat.

OUP ELT Global Blog:Guest Post
I have just written a guest post for OUP ELT Global blog called "Renew the Passion and Go with the Flow!". I enjoyed writing this post very much, as it made me think what useful tips I could share with teachers. Please do share your thoughts with other practical tips you have in the comments section on the blog post. That would be great!

Teaching Village:What you Can Learn from Barbara's PLN Quiz 2 (June 18th)
I was delighted to be one of the 4 winners of Barbara Hoskin Sakamoto's first PLN quiz What you can learn from my PLN -1 (June 13th), which I took last week. Barbara now has her 2nd quiz up and running on her Teaching Village blog and you can find it on What you can learn from my PLN Quiz - 2 (June 18th) . I am thrilled that one of the five posts selected for this week's quiz includes a post from me called Do It Your Way. Please do try out the quiz and you could win some lovely chocolate and goodies!! I'm looking forward to receiving mine in Oxford soon. Thank you very much Barbara for creating such an inspiring way for us teachers to learn more about each other and to share resources.

Teacher Reboot Camp:Future Guest Post
All in all, a very busy but rewarding few days. Why has there been such a flurry of guest posting activity? What has motivated me? What has urged me to get out of my Comfort Zone? There is a clue in Shelly Terrell's inspirational The 30 Goals Challenge Continues This Summer post on Teacher Reboot Camp. After I have checked up on my menagerie, done a bit more land work, I will be writing a post for Shelly, one of the most inspirational people you could ever hope to meet. I haven't met her, but I feel as if I know her. Watch Shelly's space!

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Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide
I am putting the final touches to my next book review -Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide by Paul James Gadsdon published by Packt Publishing. Watch this space!