How then can this expansion of communication be used in charitable organisations? And what are some of the problems that disadvantaged communities face that these technologies could help to overcome?

Firstly some of the world's poorest communities live in some of the least populated parts of the world. People in rural areas of our poorest countries probably don't have the same possibilities to attend language courses, and if they could, they would probably not be able to afford them. There are many good charities that organise volunteer teachers to teach at community centers, these can provide a real boost to the local people and give them enhanced possibilities for progressing in their careers, finding new opportunities and maybe helping their own communities in return. However, logistically, it is difficult to send over teachers and it's also very expensive to facilitate. A cheaper option would be to have a community center with some basic computer equipment where lessons with small groups could be held over Skype. The costs are much lower as the volunteer teachers are not required to travel, they could donate a few hours each week and the teachers would not be restricted to one small area. In theory, many small centers could be created in some of the poorest areas with teachers from around the world giving lessons. Our language school has created a charity scheme with a similar ethos – called 'English Enable'.  Although in its early stages, we feel it could be an idea that really takes off and could be a big benefit to many poor communities.

Another example of online language teaching used in charitable circumstances has recently been noted on the Guardian website, regarding English lessons for recent immigrants to London. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, suggested that vulnerable groups of immigrants with low levels of English could access training through the internet and mobile phones. He was cited as saying that often migrants are restricted because of their language barriers to low paid jobs and very long hours, with internet lessons seemingly offering a solution. Critics pointed out that those who could not afford fees for an ESOL course, might not be able to afford the equipment and internet cost for online lessons.

I feel however that this misses the point; it would be relatively cost effective to have lessons by Skype for immigrants, if the lessons took place at local community centers where computers and internet connection are already in place. It is a system that would rely on volunteers, but with a potential catchment of volunteers from around the world, it would be easier than relying on just London based volunteers.

Language training is usually about words, but Skype also offers another potential tool, in its video technology. Sign Language has increasingly been learnt by people to either provide support to hearing impaired or to help in the language training. As covered in the last chapter, Skype's 'video chat' allows both callers to see each other. In a world where sign language teachers are relatively sparse (compared to English teachers), it would seem a good use of the technology to widen the potential lessons availability. Sign language is also increasingly popular in child development, with sign language helping children to read in early stages.

James

Read more in the 'Online language teaching' series by following the links below:

Introduction

Modern technologies in language training

The teacher calls the student by Skype at the beginning of the lesson; they then proceed in discussing materials, going through exercises, listening to pronunciation, or any other topic that is the focus of the lesson.

What is different about the lessons is the flexibility it affords students. In a normal English lesson students are expected to be in a certain place at a certain time, but with new technologies, such as Skype, students can organise their lessons more freely. It is increasingly possible to have lessons late at night or early in in the morning as a teacher doesn't need to travel to the school or meet a student; they just open their computer and start the lesson from the comfort of their home, as does the student.

Skype also comes with a number of tools that can help replicate a 'normal' lesson. Firstly, the synchronization of a webcam on the Skype platform allows the teacher and student to see each other during the call. Although disconcerting for some, this does allow some key components of a lesson to be realised. Students often find it very useful to see the teacher's mouth while they are explaining new vocabulary so that they can formulate the words correctly. Another benefit of video calls is that often we express ourselves not just with words but with body language as well. Explaining a word can be very difficult without using body language, it helps greatly to gesture and use 'international symbols'. How many of us have walked into a shop in a foreign country and asked for something using our hands?

Another tool on Skype is the file share function. Often during a lesson a teacher will need to pass some materials to a student – on Skype this is also possible. By simply 'dragging and dropping' the file into the Skype chat window the selected file can then be downloaded by the recipient. This has an advantage for the teacher as all those materials that have been carefully filed and saved on the computer are a click away from being shared, no more photocopying!

The chat window itself is also a key component in the classes, it offers a sort of 'white board' that can be used to help explain words that are not understood, to send links to websites and to provide a written version of what is being said, which can help lower level students.

Social networking is another internet phenomenon that is becoming more widely used in language teaching. Like everything else it has become entwined in our everyday lives and it is a real benefit for a language school to have a good online presence on sites such as Facebook, Bling and Twitter. People use these sites in different ways, but I will give an example of how we use Facebook to help our students.

Facebook is an attention deficit sufferers dream. Just when one thing catches your eye, it's led into another, whether its photos of your sister's cat stuck in a box, or the latest absurd music video – it's hard to stay focused. With this in mind we've created a very simple application for English learners, called 'Daily English Expression'. Each day a user has a chance to listen to a new expression in English read out by a native English speaker with a translation. This obviously takes very little of the user time, but could give them one new expression daily and help them to broaden their vocabulary.

Other ways social network sites can be used is just that, as social networks. Students who have joined language learning pages on Facebook can connect with each other, ask for advice, organise informal conversation practise with each other and contact teachers. Where before students were possibly confined to their language school or classroom for these opportunities, now they have the whole world a few clicks away.

James

Read more in the ‘Online language teaching’ series by following the links below:

Introduction

The series offers some fantastic articles for use with advanced students, for example how cities are the answer to our growing population, and how we can ensure that we have enough food to feed everyone when climate change is threatening food production. In themselves, these interesting texts would be a fantastic resource for a reading lesson.

On top of these informative articles, however, National Geographic has created a fantastic video about who the most typical person in the world is: their nationality, their native language, their income and job type, and so on. It's a really intriguing video and will present your students with an interesting perspective on the composition of our global population. And the answers might even surprise them!

The resources in National Geographic's 7 Billion series could provide countless opportunities for lessons. Why not ask students to compare themselves individually with the world's most typical person, or you could get them to discover the most typical person in their class by doing group questionnaires on age, nationality, native language, how many languages they speak, and any other information included in the National Geographic video or that you or they think necessary to a 'class census'. Once they've compiled the data, they could work in groups to create posters or even a digital infographic! They can then present their posters or infographics to the rest of the group to promote discussion and conversation. Alternatively, you could split your class into groups and give each group some individual country data and ask them to compile such posters for each country, and then present that to the rest of the class.

If you wanted some simple activities to use to introduce the topic, the English Campus contains lots of relevant activities. Two nice news items you could use are 'Why megacities pose big problems' and 'China's economy to outgrow America's by 2030 as world faces 'tectonic shift'. For a nice language exercise, try 'Protecting our planet' to get your students to practise phrasal verbs as well as learning about the global issues affecting us today.

And if your students do create any posters or infographics with the findings of their class surveys, please share them with us here on blendedmec, or over on our Facebook , Twitter or Google+ pages!

Becca

The headline in the news sounds pretty ominous: “Boring lectures are doomed”. It's something teachers understandably dread to hear – 'is this the end of my livelihood?' you can hear them cry. Jimmy's thoughts are interesting – he stresses that the teacher should remain a central part of the teaching process, and that online learning can be used to make the most of students' and teachers' time by encouraging students to explore, research and interact outside of the classroom, and open up opportunities available to us in a connected world. People in the Wikipedia era are used to being able to dip into information when and where they like.

The founder of the fifth-most visited website in the world also talks about the benefit of online education for distance learning. People who have never had access to schools, books or teachers should be able to connect to the world and learn; the same as people in developed communities. This is already happening with the One Laptop per Child scheme, which aims to give kids from all walks of life access to computers and to the internet, whether it's a school in an urban centre in a fast-developing country like Armenia or in a remote place in Africa or South America. In Uruguay, for example, a government-funded project is underway to reach people living in small villages so they can learn English via distance learning – classes given through an online classroom (think WebEx, Skype, Blackboard) with the help of interactive resources.

This point might seem pretty specific, but I think it can apply to anyone – not least your own students. Businesspeople, as one example, don't always have time to devote to a weekly English class at a set time in a fixed place. To remedy this, you could go as far as giving classes over the internet, or just give students simple access to stimulating, interactive and varied material that follows what they want to learn. That's something we all discussed here for the latest updates of Macmillan English Campus– searchable resources, new videos, daily snippets of English and a new way of viewing courses and scores to make it easier for students to check their progress.

So it's not all doom and gloom. I recently gave a talk at the IATEFL conference with a teacher from a school in the Netherlands which uses a school-wide virtual learning environment where students can access not only their work, but also videos and other material teachers upload, as well as using English Campus to refresh and enhance their English lessons. She told the audience to take the plunge themselves. But most importantly she told them it was up to them whether to stay in the shallow end or dare to go deeper. It all depends on what works best for you, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of experimentation in the classroom. If you want to dip your toes into online learning and haven't tried yet, take a look at Nik Peachey's ‘Tech Tools for Teachers’ series on onestopenglish.com or at his Scoopit page. We also have a whole book of articels on getting started with digital availble to download for free, here. 

And, for some more inspiration, come along to our training expert Sarah Milligan‘s great “Do Something You Don't Want to Do Every Day” talk online coming up on 6th June!

Peter

How can I use technology with young learners?

With great tips on what to think about in terms of keeping your young learners safe, focused and engaged, find out Pete's answer by watching the video below:

And don't forget to find out answers to the other digital questions we've answered by browsing our Youtube channel!

Becca

Check out more from Digital Awareness Month by following the links below:

How can you teach speaking online and through technology?

Skype, podcasts and social media

Self-access centres: should you or shouldn't you?

We'll be releasing new videos every week throughout April, and this week, the first few videos have been made available on our dedicated Youtube channel!

To kick off this exciting series, we answered a very popular question:

How can you teach speaking online and through technology?

Watch the video below to discover Peter and Nana's suggestions!

Keep your eyes peeled throughout April for more exciting videos! Why not subscribe to our Youtube channel to get updates when new videos are available? Even better!

Becca

Check out more from Digital Awareness Month by following the links below:

Skype, podcasts and social media

Self-access centres: should you or shouldn’t you?

How can I use technology with young learners?

We hope you’ve enjoyed the series as much as we have. Thank you again, Rui, Chloe and everyone who has contributed to this series.

The IELTS skills (complete) app is now available for just £3.99 (was £9.99) and is available for download here.

Let us know your own thoughts on the app in the comments section below.

Read more in this series here:

Introduction

Reading between the bus lines…

Role-playing reality…

Break it down to build it up…

Don’t just sit back and listen…

It also got me thinking about questions I get from teachers when I'm out and about on using TV, film and video clips in the classroom and it seemed a great example of video material that's interesting, easy to understand and can be adapted to complement loads of different topics, grammar points and questions on British culture.

These clips, which you can find on the BBC iPlayer in the UK or on YouTube anywhere else, are just the right length to use in the classroom. The commentary features either an easy-on-the-ear American narrator or a plummy Brit whose accent would make even the Queen sound common and there are snippets of information flashed up as easy-to-read captions.

Take this clip of a London from yesteryear. For those of you teaching in schools in the city, you could use this great little video as a way to practise comparatives and superlatives, contrasting life back then with the modern-day London your students are living in.

There are plenty of activities on Macmillan English Campus like ‘Comparative Structures’ or ‘Spot the Difference’ that you can use to tie everything together. If you're teaching further afield, your students could compare London with their own city: take the listening exercise ‘Prague vs London’ as a starting point. Or why not use it as part of a culture lesson, which you could link to activities on Culture World or A Ghost's Guide to London on onestopenglish, our fantastic cinematic listening lesson series which mixes a bit of the old London with the new. You could even use something like this as a way to refresh looking at past tenses, describing what life was like back in the day and how it has changed, perhaps using the ‘Then and Now’ resource or ‘Past Simple’ grammar reference unit on the Macmillan English Campus.

The possibilities are endless. The programmes look at everything from business, travel, technology, fashion, holidays and anything else the discerning Brit used to do in the 1960s, meaning you can link to virtually any class topic, adding something a bit more refreshing than the usual grammar tables and business listening activities.

My personal favourite is a short clip (inexplicably narrated by Kojak) about my own hometown, Birmingham. A concrete paradise back in the sixties, it's certainly pretty funny to see life back when grey buildings and swathes of motorways were the pinnacle of modernity …but it's perhaps not the best advert for anyone considering visiting the UK's second largest city!

Peter

The Academy Awards are the highlight of the movie calendar and are the highest possible honour that can be bestowed on thespians from Hollywood and beyond. The rumour mill turns endlessly for weeks before the ceremony with both media and the public trying hard to guess which film will win Best Picture, which leading man and lady will get the best actor and actress awards and which talented technician will win the coveted prize for Best Sound Editing. Well, perhaps not so much the last category, but you catch my drift.

This year, to make the show a little less lengthy and to prevent acceptance speeches from dragging on, the orchestra began playing the famous theme tune to Jaws to cut the ramblers off.  You can find more good phrasal verbs in the How to Accept An Oscar activity on Macmillan English Campus. It could be a good starting point to prepare your students for their acceptance speech in perfect English when they become the next Marion Cotillard (who, in 2010, became the first person to win Best Actress prize for a non-English language role) This could actually be a nice introduction to hosting your own awards ceremony in the classroom, with a competition to see who can write and deliver the funniest or most inspiring acceptance speech. Halle Berry's tearful moment in the spotlight is how not to do it!

The Oscars are always interesting for the range of films that are nominated for a prize and a practical way of introducing different genres to your students. This year's crop included thrillers in Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, a musical in Les Misérables, cartoons like Brave, dramas such as The Impossible and movies with a touch of comedy in Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained.

This month's teacher-contributed lesson share B-Movies and Film Stars by Dimitra Eleftheriou-Ernst is a great activity to introduce students to different movie types, with speaking activities related to the Oscars and gives you a nice excuse to show some trailers in class. And there's a nice tie-in looking at sentence stress in the activity Film Trailers on Macmillan English Campus, considering B-movies in particular are notorious for their exaggerated narratives, as this video suggests:

If you're looking to get your own creative juices flowing, why not think about submitting your own lesson plan to the onestopenglish community page?

Onestopenglish has loads of other classic movie material from vocabulary, video projects and teacher tips on using films in class and can help bring some glitz and glamour to your next class Everyone likes films and it is a topic that always gets students talking. Using the Oscars, movies, cinema and television in class keeps things relevant, interesting and fresh with maximum personalisation and minimum prep time.

Peter

Every year when the dark, January days arrive, I attempt to hibernate until spring. It's not just the lack of light in the UK at this time of year but also the pressure that I put on myself that I must achieve more goals and how I can make this year better than the last. These are quite scary thoughts to have when it's so cold and dark and so I go into self-denial and duvet-mode. Before I know it the daffodils are out but I've missed two whole months and haven't even begun to tick off my goals for the year. I decided that this year I would need to stop burying my head in my duvet and get motivated.

I began by trawling the internet for advice on self-motivation and then asked a few colleagues as well. I came across a few general themes to the advice. Here are some of my favourite tips:

1. Energize yourself. If you don't have time for a run listen to some energizing music. Skipping over the run (maybe I'll go tomorrow), some music suggestions were 'Eye of the tiger' and 'I will survive'. Not really my taste and more likely to irritate than motivate me but I get the point and I can easily put together my own energizing playlist for my morning commute (or tomorrow's run). Perhaps I'll include Kylie Minogue's 'Do the “motivation” with me'.

2. Reward yourself! This is a great one. I keep treats on my desk for the moments when I finish something on my list. But the reward doesn't have to be edible or tangible, sometimes just knowing that I've made progress on my goal list, whether it's saving a few pennies, running an extra mile or seeing a new work project go live, is enough to spur me on.

3. Live fully in the present moment. When you live in the past or the future you aren't able to make things happen in the present. Hmm … sounding a bit like a therapy session now. But actually, if you can focus all your energy on the task in hand without any distractions you might find something quite interesting in what you're doing. You can always worry about the future tomorrow – on your run.

4. Make it fun! This is easier said than done but there are ways. When searching for new teaching material, for example, there are hundreds of websites with a wealth of entertaining stories, videos and pictures. Some of them are educational, too! Or you could turn your task into a game, even if it's just with yourself. Me: 1 – duvet: 0

5. Don't leave the things you hate till last! Oops, I seem to have put this last on the list. There are a few people in the office who use sticky notes for their lists, writing each 'to do' item on a separate coloured sticky note so they can simply whip it into the bin when it's done. I've taken this idea one step further by writing the thing I hate most on a colour I hate the most – the luminous yellow one – so that I can get it out of my sight as fast as possible.

 Right, must get on. After listening to 'Eye of the tiger' (OK, so it did work), I'm now pretty sure that this year I will run a marathon, learn the guitar and write a whole novel.

Check out some of our activities on Macmillan English Campus if you want to talk to your students about motivation, inspiration or inspirational people:

A great explorer! (MLA000752) – Pre-intermediate
A great British leader (MLA000650) – Upper Intermediate
CAE Paper 1 Part 2 What drives entrepreneurs? (MEP004986) – Advanced
BEC Vantage Reading Part 2 Staff motivation and duvet days (MEP005063) – Advanced

Sarah