English Raven

Do "self-selected" membership fees for a teacher resource site actually work? In a word, YES!

I've been somewhat missing in action from this blog over the past couple of weeks. There are a plethora of reasons, not least my wife's recent induction into an AMES language program here in Australia (thank you, Australian government, for footing the bill for 510 hours of language instruction leading to a real work qualification for new permanent residents, offering free child care, and providing a free voluntary tutor that does house visits to boot!). I've also had an explosion in demand over on RISE for TOEFL speaking and writing subscriptions, and I've been struggling to keep up with it all!

So partly to allay the great Alex Case's fears that something must be wrong for me not to post, but mostly to explain another reason I've been too busy to pop in here and write something, let me now give you an update on the intriguing "let members choose how much they pay" experiment I've had going for a month or so now for my main teacher resource site/service: English Raven.

Inspired by Radiohead's move a couple of years back, where they let fans choose their own price to download their whole new album of songs, I decided to scrap a set fee for membership in English Raven and let teachers decide for themselves how much they could/should/would pay for access to all of my materials for an entire calendar year.

Of course, it went a bit beyond that. I had always been concerned that one set membership price could (a) disadvantage or turn away teachers who were only after a couple of specific things or sections of the site materials; and/or (b) slap those teachers who happened to be in a country where the income or exchange rate made purchasing a membership with my site inordinately expensive; and/or (c) get away from the basic idea that money earned through English Raven would basically help the site pay for itself in terms of hosting, space, time investment, etc.

After I made the change to a self-elected fee, word got around pretty quickly, and I've had dozens of emails from blogsters and site owners wondering how it is all going.

  

Early days yet, of course, but here's what I've noticed from all the various numbers:

1. Generally speaking, although almost all teachers pay widely different amounts for a membership, the average is about the same as what I had originally as a pre-set figure.

2. My rate of membership sign-ups has almost doubled. It usually comes close to doubling at this time of the year anyway, but I'm talking "double the number that already doubles" - or something like that!

3. I'm getting a lot more members from parts of the world like Eastern Europe, which tended to be a source of a lot of visitors in the past but not paying members.

4. Site visitation in general has gone completely through the roof. I've had some generous WOM support from some great and influential people lately (namely Larry Ferlazzo and Sandy Kemsley) which needs to be factored in there, but I do believe the "choose your own membership fee" has had a definite impact on general visitation as well.

   

So far, a resounding success. It works. If you let site visitors choose their own fee, you will get a lot more members and most probably make more money than you were making previously.

That's the theory, anyway, and the pattern for my own site at this stage appears to confirm it.

 

Why does it work? Well, I may have already sort of answered that in some ways above, but I may pass it over to some of you readers to ponder and comment on for a while...

AND, could I be so arrogant and bold (and/or naive) as to say this little experiment may pave the way to more teacher resource sites using the same sort of pay-for procedure? Would it be such a bad thing?

  

:-D

 

Eyejot Video Mail for online language teaching

I've been using Eyejot video mail for a few years now, and found it to be an excellent fully browser-based tool for not only communicating via video with my students, but also for generating and embedding language learning tasks in any of my various online applications (website, blog, forum, etc).

 

 

A similar service is offered over on Tokbox, fully free, with longer recording time allowance and some really nifty online video conferencing tools. It basically does pretty much everything Eyejot does and then some (I'll be demonstrating and reviewing Tokbox as an online language teaching tool later on this blog) - but my main issues with Tokbox at this point are that the embedded videos tend to look pretty tattered and (most importantly) it is a free Beta service.

Free/Beta can often mean periods without access, bugs as new features are built in, and potentially a nasty surprise if/when the makers decide to start charging for things. That's fine if you're just experimenting and doodling with an online video mail application, but if you want something stable and guaranteed (to apply pre-set curriculums or programs that students pay you for), then a moderate pay-for application like Eyejot is probably better (and remember, you can still use it in a limited fashion for free and your students probably won't need anything above the free service).

As I mentioned in the Screenr cast above, you can embed the Eyejot video recorder widget almost anywhere - including blogs - so if you'd like to leave a comment, ask a question, or just say a quick hello, please do so below!

It's time to break the old paradigm of Korean education

Helen Lee, a student with Jason's RISE (Renshaw Internet School of English) program, makes the case that Korean moms and dads need to teach their children how to fish - rather than just giving them the fish...

According to the National Statistical Office, one out of three Koreans aged over 15 were jobless for the whole of last year. People who stayed employed for the whole year totaled 69.1% of 26.15 million, or 18.25 million. The rest held jobs for less than one year.

 

As the number shows, the problem of unemployment at young ages seems to be one of the severe headaches for Korean society.

   

In my opinion, there is a major reason why such high rate of unemployment among the young is inevitable. Although it is true that general employment number is reduced by the advent of machine manufacturing, the most crucial cause is in fact based on the general characteristic of young people’s attitudes these days. The generation has changed and the teenagers of today have grown up in the relatively prosperous environment compare to that of their parents’ adolescence.

   

In the past, many teenagers had to work to earn money and support their families but these days, the financial task is the responsibility of parents in a big way. Thus, teenagers naturally become accustomed to the easy way of life and this tendency makes them seek the easy route when they choose their future careers. As many Korean rich kids prefer to wear clothes with famous brand name, many Korean young people pursue their jobs based on company or profession ‘name value’ and generally avoid any physically demanding occupations. In addition, their pride that they have in being high educated with college diplomas does not allow them to feel satisfaction with the idea of work related to blue-collar jobs.

   

I think that we, as a country and as a society, must quickly take action to change this perception. For this, systemic alternative in the education options for the young is necessary. Korean students are pushed to focus on only their studies by the system of Korean education. It causes a shortage of working experience for the young and such shortage greatly narrow the range of possible future careers. Thus, the purpose of Korean education should not be stay locked in only academic pathway but try to expose students to the real world life and work as well. For this to happen, assigning certain time for part time jobs or career experiences in addition to the academic curriculum would be helpful to relieve the problem and to encourage the Korean teenagers to recognize the importance of perspiration.

   

Also, in order to improve this situation, parents’ attitudes toward their kids need to change in some ways. Most parents usually want their children to not go through the hardships that they themselves had to encounter during their adolescence. Thus, they have tried their best to raise kids in the best environment possible for as long as they could provide it. However, this way of education is to give the kids fishes. Korean parents need to change their way of education in order to teach their children how to fish. Although it can be hard for the parents to see their kids working or fighting unsupported against hardships, it is obvious that this way of teaching would greatly help their children to be strong and to open their eyes, breaking the set notion about demanding careers and setbacks.

   

The great number of unemployed young people is challenging problem for Korean society. It might even cause problems in the longer term. However, as long as the Korean education system and parents allow a little change and broader vision, I believe that the rate of jobless young people could be decreased. A balanced rate of participation in variety of career fields would in turn encourage Korean society at various levels and facilitate a stronger, more diverse economy overall.

 

 

Helen Lee (이가현) recently graduated from Kyoungbuk Foreign Language High School in South Korea. She comes from a small city called Haman in Gyeongnam province, and is currently preparing for business management studies at universities in the United States.

 

Helen's essay is a follow up to online interactive discussion about current national and global issues in English language news media.

 

 

 

 

[+] interTalk - Trialing online conferencing for English discussion skills with TokBox

I am currently in the process of developing a fully Internet-based school of English - something that has been challenging but loads of fun as well (more details on that to be unveiled in the not-too-distant future...). This evening I got a chance to trial group-based video conferencing (something I'm calling [+] interTalk for the moment) with some of my online students, using the great browser-based conferencing service provided by TokBox.

Wow!!! It went down an absolute treat!

To the left you can see a screenshot of the conferencing session, featuring myself with my great students Soorim, Helen and Jeanie (all of them advanced level students in their late teens developing their English skills for Academic Purposes).

Once we got over a few very minor technical hitches (more to do with individual computers, mic settings - that sort of thing), we got down to the business of having an extended discussion focusing on news and topical issues.

Soorim and I presented and summarized articles we had read online representing issues we thought would be interesting for the group. We then took turns with a Q&A process to elicit more details and opinions about the articles, somebody summarizing the interactions, then follow-up discussion based around hypotheses and opinion-sharing.

The group handled the discussion process and technology involved really well, and I was so impressed to see/hear so much free-flowing discussion. These students also gave me a lot to think about through the questions and opinions they presented, and that is always a very stimulating experience for a language teacher. All up, the trial worked brilliantly and after an hour of in-depth talking face-to-face online, I think we all left the experience motivated and satisfied.

TokBox's video conferencing set up has marvelous potential. We did experience some hiccups in the form of time drag and sometimes some confusing echoes, but I'm really not sure how much that had to do with our individual computers and Internet connections. I did notice, for example, that when I took a couple of seconds to take a screenshot of us chatting in the conference room (to post here, as you can see!), my connection in the conference room slowed down tremendously as I quickly grappled with some copying and pasting into some image editing software. Once I'd shut that down, my connection to the other participants picked up noticeably.

The great thing about TokBox is that it is fully browser-based, something I've mentioned as a major plus elsewhere (see for example my post about Eyejot Video Mail). Having trialed what seems like hundreds of other audio and video applications for online teaching purposes, I now basically only ever really pay attention to services that allow me to link up with other users directly through an Internet browser-based service. I (and my computer dashboard) got sick to death of time and space consuming downloads and installations for other services (things like Sightspeed and Skype included), and my users appreciate access to services that don't require complicated (or for that matter compulsory) sign-ups, installations, and finnickly little free services that in effect force you to pay expensive fees for anything close to a useful and practical application.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against paying for good applications and services. I'm perfectly willing to pay for them, if they are practical and easy to use. As a teacher with fee-paying students, I also don't mind making an investment in the necessary technology. But for the students themselves, they shouldn't be forced to go through brain-busting installation and sign-up procedures, or for that matter fork out money in expensive fees. I've already tried that with one service provider, and when it came time to forward on the costs as part of the students' fees, I realized the process had made online learning somewhat prohibitively expensive for my students.

In any case, for the moment TokBox appears to be offering online video calling, video mail and multiple person (up to 6 at a time) video conferencing free of charge. It looks really impressive, remembering of course that they are in Beta mode and still developing their services. At the moment, I find their video mail a little unwieldy compared to the polished service provided by Eyejot, but the live video calls and conferencing service direct out of an Internet browser (with only myself required to have an active membership) - that's some sweet stuff they've got going there. It certainly helped facilitate a great online group-based class with my learners tonight!

TokBox also has some cool "embed" features that make it great for integration into websites. You can, for example, embed your own personal Video Mail / Video Call service into a page on your site, where users can contact you live through a video call or leave you a video message.

The question now will be, when will TokBox move out of Beta mode and start requiring payment for their services? I sincerely hope they don't go the way of companies like Sightspeed, Webex or for that matter the Adobe-based conferencing set-up. There is some undisputed quality in those set-ups, but the prices they charge are so steep I doubt any users outside a major company set up will want to use them. These companies also need to recognize that smallish set ups like myself are willing to pay and sign up for certain services, but forcing our clients/students to do the same becomes prohibitive and frustrating.

And there's always another outfit on the rise out there ready to do the same basic things for a whole lot less...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for TokBox - they so far have all the functions that could help make online education really rock. By all means slap me with a feasible charge for your services, but please, please, please! keep things open and accessible for the people I need to deal with online. In my case, they don't realistically have the budget, and in terms of English language learning - sometimes don't have quite the language or computer skills to handle complicated sign-up procedures.