Get A Camera: Record Your Travel Memories

Traveling is one of the fringe benefits of working as a TEFL teachers. One of the things I prize the most is the ability to take untold numbers of pictures with my digital camera to share with friends and family members back home. When I was abroad I kept my photobucket and flickr accounts quite active. If you don’t have a great digital camera right now, then it’s time to get one. There is a great ongoing sale at Buy.com right now where you can find some great deals.
Read more

Education Leadership Programs For Success

Building leadership skills is very important in the path to success, no matter what career you are in. George Washington University is one university that has taken this seriously and understands that education is more than just books, it’s about melding the future leaders and giving everyone an equal chance at success.
Read more

Web Hosting: Put Your Teaching Portfolio Online

It’s popular to have a blog and a website these days for teachers. They serve many useful purposes. It’s a way to reach out to potential employers and to students. It’s a great way to have the look of a professional teacher. It’s also an important to control positive information about yourself since you can combat any negative information a former employer has left about you.
Read more

Using Social Networks For Teaching

There are so many social networking sites out there these days. They are a great way to connect with friends and family back home, but more than that, they are a great way to connect with students. It’s a great way to get your students practicing their English in a fun and interesting environment. Setting up a social networking account for your teaching is a great to really connect with your students and communicate lessons and homework.

As you know, there are several social networking sites out there. I am impartial to Friendster. It’s a great place to set up a full featured page to communicate with your students and put up videos, music and even a blog.

A good runner-up is Hi-5. Hi-5 has many of the same features as Friendster and your students may already be a Hi-5 member. This could be good or bad.

So what is the deal? Do you use Social networking sites in your teaching? Which sites do you use?

Utilizing A Student Forum

I am really encouraged by the use of new media in education. I think there are so many benefits to using this type of media in improving the educational experience of the students. I have previously talked about ensuring that you have web hosting to put your teaching portfolio online and it’s overall effectiveness. I barely touched upon the use of forums for your students to keep in touch with each other.

While it is a lot of work for you to maintain a student forum, there is a a huge benefit that comes from being able to interact with your students in a positive manner. You are able to have your students positively communicating about your lessons and best of all they are doing it in English.

One example of a forum for students is EnglishESLForum by the infamous Topper, the nemesis of TEFL School Reviews. While none of us may agree with his actions, his forum is a good example of something that works for the students. It allows the students to communicate and share their thoughts, in English.

The question pops up whether to do the forum as a school project or as a personal project. From personal experience, I suggest doing it as a personal project and make it clear that it is from the get go. The beauty of this arrangement is that when you leave the school, your forum can go along with you to your next school. It also is a nice bargaining chip when the school knows that your students will still be using the forum once you have moved on.

Next Page »