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

 

Becoming an ELT Materials Writer Part 2: Investing in technology

This follows up from an earlier post I wrote about becoming an ELT materials writer (a little belated, I know!), and it explores some of the ways I recommend you think about making some effective investments related to technology.

Some of these points relate to actually obtaining certain technology tools (to help materials writing/designing processes), while others explore different formats for actually delivering and marketing (or sharing, if you prefer the friendly/helpful collegial approach to things!) your ELT content. 

 

There isn't graphic detail there or lists of specific things to buy or try, but hopefully there are some things for you to consider!

   

:-)

 

Using Lefora (cross between a forum and a blog) for teaching

I've been using Lefora, an interesting combination of forum and blog, for a while now as a language teaching and teacher training tool.

The video below shows some of the main features and some examples from my own Lefora forum:

  

It wasn't possible to cover all the features in a five-minute screencast, but I hope that gives you a quick overview of some of the main ones.

Definitely worth trying out - I've found it extremely useful for not only managing large numbers of students online, but different kinds of courses and even teaching tasks and materials.

  

:-)

  

Why I click on the ads on free teacher resource sites and blogs!

Many (if not most) free teaching resource websites (including blogs) feature ads on them, in the hope it will generate a little income for the hard-working person who designed, wrote and uploaded all this material.

Unfortunately, in the case of teaching resource websites, in most instances it generates so little income that it is almost negligible.

The following video explains why I click on 2-3 of the ads (as a habit) whenever I visit sites or blogs made by teachers who are sharing their materials and wisdom!

 

  

:-)

   

The place to go for all the latest and best blog posts about English language teaching

There are so many English teachers blogging out there these days (and there are so many facets to ELT) that it can be pretty hard to know which ones to follow, or which ones you're missing out on. I have a few personal favourites that I visit quite regularly (like Alex Case's TEFLtastic, Lindsay Clandfield's Six Things, Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day, Burcu Akyol's Blog, Shelly Terrell's Teacher Reboot Camp, and Karenne's Kalinago English), but I also like to visit new ones and - most importantly - just go to the actual posts that are likely to be of some personal interest to me.

So eventually I found OneStopBlogs, an offshoot of the popular OneStopEnglish service from Macmillan, and all my wishes were granted! Basically, most of the ELT blogs worth reading register themselves here, and all the posts for all of those blogs are accessible from one central place.

In addition to a handy top stories page, OneStopBlogs has an ongoing and regularly updated listing of all blog posts. Very easy to use, very informative - a great way to get just enough information about each and every post to help you choose quickly and easily what's worth reading in more detail. I glance through this while the kettle's boiling, then sit down with a nice cup of strong coffee (maybe a chocolate biscuit or two, if my wife allows it...) to read the full posts I'm interested in.

I'm also a bit of a fan of their Blog Site Stats page, where you can see their ranking of the Top 50 English language teaching blogs (very happy to note that I've gone from 19th place to 8th as I type this - or is it because I'm typing this?? Exactly what sort of tracking tech are those guys using over there?), a ranking of blogs based on Readability (happy to see I'm just over the cusp into Thomas Pychon range while Mr. Case is in the Scientific Journals category - that's what you get for using too much sarcastic language, Alex), and even lists based on Most Active, Wordiest and Friendliest blogs.

   

Anyway, it's a fantastic resource for following ELT bloggers in terms of finding the current posts that you're most likely to want to read - all in one place. Thoroughly recommend it.

   

:-)

  

   

Interesting article about "the new literacy" and how today's young writers are benefitting from things like social media

I recently read this interesting article from Clive Thompson about "The New Literacy", drawing on research findings from Andrea Lunsford at Stanford University.

I like the fact that this article explores what appear to be some serious benefits of modern social networking and its effects on today's young writers, rather than wailing on about how the Internet and social media are destroying writing ability in young people. Lunsford goes as far as saying that she thinks "we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization" and that technology is reviving (rather than killing) our ability to write.

 

A few findings from the study that really opened my eyes:

- 38% of writing done by university students done outside the classroom

- Young online writers better at assessing audience and adapting tone and technique to get their points across

   

It's an interesting read, and worth looking at if you're the sort that worries about the writing skills of young people in the age of technology and social media.

 

:-)

Jason's guest post about ELT materials writing on Burcu Akyol's blog

I recently contributed an article to Burcu Akyol's excellent series of guest blog posts oriented around the idea of spreading your knowledge as a teacher. My particular focus was writing (more of) your own ELT materials.

  

I'm not sure how worthy I was of a guest piece in this series, but it is definitely worth checking out all of the guest articles contributed in pursuit of this "spread your knowledge" concept.

   

Here's a list with direct links to the various articles in the series:

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part I) Do A Presentation At A Conference This Year! (by Burcu Akyol)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part II) 'Start A Blog' (by Lindsay Clandfield)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part III) ‘Leave Comments To Teacher Blogs’ (by Sara Hannam)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part IV) ‘Join Second Life’ (by Gavin Dudeney)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part V) ‘Join Twitter’ (by Shelly Terrell)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part VI) ‘Make a PRESTO’ (by Heike Philp)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part VII) ‘Write An Article For A Magazine’ (by Alex Case)

- SPREAD YOUR KNOWLEDGE! (Part VIII) ‘Write (More Of) Your Own ELT materials’ (by Jason Renshaw)

There's a great spread of excellent ideas there, and I encourage all teachers to get over to Burcu's blog to check them out.

Thanks Burcu!

:-)

   

Some great reading on "Six Things - a collection of miscellany from the world of ELT"

   

Lindsay Clandfield's Six Things blog has been giving me some great reads of late, and I think it would have to be one of the better ELT blogs around the traps these days. Lindsay's posts are always entertaining, thought-provoking, and well-written.

Here are some of my favourite posts from that blog so far:

Six highly provocative quotes in ELT

Six rumours and conspiracy theories in ELT

Adrian Tennant’s Six Acts of Sheep in ELT

 

There are many more great posts there, and clearly many more to come, so if EFL/ESL/ELT is your thing, I think this is a blog worth following.

:-) 

 

Upcoming interview with Bob Stein (The Future of the Book) - add your questions here!

Well, I have some wonderful and exciting news: Bob Stein (one of the founders of the Institute for the Future of the Book and writer of the article A book is a place, which I posted about >> here << a few days ago) has agreed to an informal interview with me, to be published here on the English Raven blog!

It's going to be fun and intriguing to ask Bob about his thoughts on educational applications for the future books he has in mind, as well as what he figures this could mean for both authors and readers.

I'm putting together some questions to ask Bob, but I thought it would be even more interesting to open the field and let YOU contribute some questions for our discussion! What would you like to ask Bob? Post your questions here (I may not be able to ask all of them, but it will be helpful to identify some common threads of interest or concern).

              

Look forward to reading and discussing your questions! Remember, this is THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE!

           

:-)

          

             

What is your blog's "angle"?

I was recently perusing Burcu Akyol's outstanding EFL blog and I had a good read of the guest post there from Lindsay Clandfield about spreading your knowledge by starting a blog for fellow teachers.

The article describes six essential tips (Lindsay is very fond of the number 6, it seems - part of his beastly nature, no doubt!) for starting and maintaining a good blog. Given that I'm rather unsure of how well I am doing as a blogger, I had a careful read.

I seem to be doing reasonably well within five of his criteria (reading what's out there, being passionate about it, choosing a good platform, preparing material in advance, and having fun), but to my shock and horror, I realised I may be failing dismally on the second tip: thinking of my angle.

Lindsay describes this priority in these terms:

There are lots of reasons people blog, and no one reason is better than the other. However, people are more likely to visit and remember your blog if there is an angle, a certain hook to it. A few years ago, your hook could have simply been “An English teacher’s reflections” or “Thoughts on the English language” as there were not many of us out here in the blogosphere. That’s changing now. People are more likely to be drawn to something specific in your teaching context (e.g. the challenges of teaching senior learners, teaching English in a small town in North Korea) or about language (e.g. a blog about idioms, or new words, or typical errors). [See the whole article here]

   

So for me, and the English Raven blog - what is my angle? Where's the hook? What is there that is specific? I mean, Lindsay's advice is very sound, and glancing around my blog I felt like I was being slowly impaled by a sort of "six things" sense of perspective.

This blog has more angles than a badly drawn polyhedron that got stuck in a seriously cranky photocopier. One moment I'm blabbing about how to teach English or new materials I'm writing; in another instant I'm uploading videos of my son Jamie to showcase his thriving bilingualism (and/or young learner reading development), the next I'm doing a review of Teaching Unplugged, and then trying to impart advice to would-be ELT writers, then flapping away about Twitter, and solemnly introducing the idea of a book is a place, and - well, the list goes on.

I guess the truth is that I have far too many angles going on. And you know what? I'm perfectly happy with that. The various angles may not be heading anywhere all that fast (so there's no hook, I'm afraid), but they're well - heading off someplace... To me, a blog has been a very enjoyable way of unloading and exploring an overcrowded mind, and seeing which tendrils can be cast out to connect with other teachers/writers/bloggers out there.

I'm thinking of volunteering for a new guest post on Burcu's blog. My post will be "Tips for starting a blog for people with confused polyhedron-like thoughts" or "How to write a blog with 6+ angles." Only fair that we don't exclude those disorganised scatterbrains out there (like me) who don't have the demeanor for a nicely organised and cohesive blog with a definitive purpose or angle!

But Lindsay's advice is great, as is Burcu's blog - so get on over there and check them out!

Oh - and wait! I've just found something in Lindsay's article that may save me... He says: "Think outside the box!" and, more importantly:

That being said, if you write with a distinctive voice then people will come to see whatever you’ve written just for the pleasure of reading it.

How about: If you write with a distinctive but confused voice from one day to the next then people will come to see whatever you've written just for the confusion of being confused by it?

Oh well - if you're a polyhedron brain like me, welcome to the English Raven blog and enjoy your confusing adventure here, and rest assured I'll be just as happy to read your blog, too!

     

:-)

     

Great list of speaking games for false beginners from TEFL.net!

Alex Case (from TEFL.net and - more notoriously! - the TEFLtastic blog) recently posted an excellent list of very practical speaking games catering to false beginner learners of English.

In introducing the activities list, Alex points out that "Many teachers seem to think that using games in very low level classes is almost impossible, and the lack of photocopiable materials and game ideas for students under Elementary [level] in books and online reinforces this impression."

Very true indeed, and the great games/activities Alex posted there are abundant evidence that this is not the case at all.

Given that "false beginners" are pretty much the new standard of "general" beginners when it comes to learning English, these classroom ideas are particularly valuable.

Thanks Alex!

 

:-)

 

 

Probably the best blog in the world for teachers of English as a second or foreign language!

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day (...for teaching ELL, ESL. & EFL)

 

 

This guy is just amazing. Every time I go to this blog I'm blown away by the references to new tools and ideas for teaching English.

Larry usually manages to post a link to something interesting every day, and he really does his research on it.

In particular, I recommend his websites of the month and websites of the year sections, which is where all Larry's daily work gets condensed down into the very best resources and links.

 

Thanks Larry - your blog is awesome!

~ Jason