Veewow

This site lets you compile playlists of YouTube videos. You can keep all your ducks in a row here for listening or speaking practice.

Amy Walker

Amy Walker does 21 different English accents on YouTube. Useful for demonstrating the varieties of English pronunciation. Her "Toronto" sucks, though. Previously featured in the CALL newsletter.

Swivel

Here's a great site for examples of the visual presentation of data; I say, that's charts and graphs, son. Credit John Allan.

How Not to Evaluate Instruction

Writing in the latest edition of TESOL Arabia's Perspectives, Kelley Fast makes the familiar point that the practice of classroom observation as a means of judging the quality of teaching has no validity. “Research shows that there is a problem defining what 'good' teaching is as there is no proof of any one method being 'best.'” She also cites the—putting it politely, I think--”questionable validity” of the checklists commonly used for such observations. These cannot work, because “criteria for effective teaching differ for every instructional situation” (here she quotes O'Leary). As she notes, the practice of classroom observation probably harms the quality of teaching, producing worse, not better, technique: it discourages sensitivity to situation and student needs, discourages student-centredness, and discourages all teaching innovation. It also, I would add, necessarily promotes a dreary sameness to all instruction, which works directly against the need to sustain student interest.

The practice thrives nonetheless, and seems actually to be growing. It is perhaps possible to understand why in the case of elementary and high school teaching: young children are presumably not yet capable of deciding what is best for them, and so of judging the abilities of their own teachers. It may be pointless, but at least it puts a false patina of professionalism on the teaching trade. But is is doubly disturbing to see the practice growing in the field of adult EFL. For it seems here the only justification can be unspoken racism: an assumption that foreigners too, non-English speakers, are not fully capable of knowing what is best for themselves. They are, in this regard, like children.

This, of course, is the essential assumption behind all colonialism. We ought to know better by now.

The proper way to judge the effectiveness of an intructor at the tertiary level, as instructor, is to ask the students.


Kelley Fast, (2009) "Classroom observations: Taking a developmental approach," TESOL Arabia Perspectives, 16 (2) pp. 6-10.

In support of her case against summative classroom observations, Fast cites:

Cosh, J. (1999) Peer observation: A reflective model, ELT Journal, 53 (1), 22-27.
Gebhard, J.G. (2005) Teacher development through exploration: Principles, ways and examples. TESL-EJ, 9 (2), 1-16.
O'Leary. M. (2004) Inspecting the observation process: Classroom observations under the spotlight. IATEFL Teacher Development Newsletter SIG, 1 (4), 14-16.
Leshem, S. & Bar-Hamam, R. (2008). Evaluating teacher practice. ELT Journal, 62 (3), 257-265.
Williams, M. (1989) A developmental view of classroom observation. ELT Journal, 43 (2), 85-91.

DimDim

Odd title--that I grant. But DimDim offers free, open source multimedia videoconferencing with live voice and video: in other words, a live classroom for anyone on the web.

Bricks and mortar? We don't need no stinkin' bricks and mortar!

Filminute

THis is the site for the international one-minute film festival. For our purposes, it is a great source of videos for listening practice, and for discussion topics, all free. Heck, your class might even want to enter as a class project.

Open Courseware Finder

Get ready for this one: a search engine dedicated solely to finding free courses on the Web. "Get a quality education for free!" Tear down those little red walls, indeed!

6Rounds

Here's what looks to be the ultimate chat site on the web currently: live videoconferencing melded with the social network concept. Obvious possibilities for conversation practice. So far it looks like audio is not part of the package, but it seems to be planned for the future.

Openlifegrid

Here's a new Web 2.0 site where you can actually build your own world. Possibilities for simulating real-life situations--and conversations--are infinite.

ImToo.Com - YouTube downloader

This site offers a free YouTube downloader. By downloading videos, you can avoid the problem of slow Internet connections during class—and of using quota time. From the May, 2008 newsletter; credit Cheri MacLeod.

The Academic Word List Highlighter

This handy site lets you paste in a text, and it will highlight all the words from the Academic Word List, or from one of its specific sublists. Very sueful for vocabulary.

ICT Training for Language Teachers

Boot camp for language teachers wanting to learn how they might use computers in the classroom, plus lots o' links. From Graham Davies of Camsoft.

Wikipedia in Simple English

Here's a positive boon to the EFL classroom: a version of Wikipedia translated into simple English. At this writing, they already have close to 60,000 articles.

Plato on Learning and Play

“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.” ~~ Plato

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." -- Plato

"A free man ought not to learn anything under duress." -- Plato

TechVideoBites

This site offers an almost enndless supply of tech-realted training videos, suitable for teacher development as well as listening exercises.