I hope you stay involved in teaching and don’t spend too much time on the beach bronzing up! But I hear you about the “flatter”.

No, it isn’t perception, you are bang on! For many years, I really have believed that and it is part of Freakanomics (also Signal37 – they have great advice in this regard) and an accepted psychological condition. People value what they pay for! And too, I think it is always good to go for quality over quantity. Too many people want to focus on “numbers” but I’d rather have a small community of teachers really interacting than a dry thing of thousands. I didn’t charge for EFL Classroom 2.0 despite the hours I put in but I did set a membership/sign up requirement for the same reasons you noted.

Don’t worry about getting me the presentation if not super handy! However, please keep in touch about the teacher training videos – great idea and much needed. There is NO where for the thousands of new teachers annually to go, to get great explicit, video instruction. I’ll promote that any day.

cheers,

David

So great to hear from you again – you have a unique aura with your postings, in terms of motivating and making sense! And thanks for those kind comments about the presentation all that time ago – I am genuinely flattered to get a comment like that from someone like yourself.

Reading and thinking about this issue reminded me of a peculiar trend I noticed a while ago and thought I might raise for your comment. For a very long time, the resources on my English Raven site were 100% free. In the schools I worked at and in presentations I ran, it was often difficult to get teachers to pay much attention to them or make the most of them. Funnily enough, as soon as they became ‘pay for’, they suddenly got a lot more attention and interest. One other interesting side effect of ‘pay for’ has been that I gather a group of members who almost always appear to have a deep regard for their profession and sharing ideas about materials and applications.

Do you think this is a perception thing?

I’ll have to rummage around and try and find the files associated with the presentation you mentioned – it’s been a while! I’m also working on uploading a ton of new resources and making a lot more teaching development videos, so I’m going to try and cross post on that great EFL 2.0 site of yours. I’m pretty sure I (and hopefully many other teachers) can make the most of both worlds (commerical ‘pay for’ and free/share)…

Let’s try and catch up soon – I’m into my last month in Korea. After 10 years in this context, and the arrival of two children of my own, time to head back Down Under where it’s warmer, flatter and somewhat slower in terms of pace!

Take care and very best wishes,

~ Jason

Great to hear from you and as always, very wise words which I agree with. I didn’t mean to infer any extreme and idealistic notion that there can’t be profit or at least compensation. However, as you rightly pointed out, we should direct our energies educating new teachers towards the “right” resources (in general) and also in getting them to make their own materials.

Your presentation at the same conference was the best I’ve been to since coming to Korea! I really mean that and you should go on the road with it. If you do have the time, I’d love to get a copy of the ppt. You outlined so well, why it is so fruitful for teachers to make their own materials…the benefits don’t just come in the student’s learning but ultimately the teacher’s own competency. I grew up making my own materials out of necessity (it was so long ago! no access to anything but a Cambridge textbook!). But I’m glad I did, taught me so much about the learning process.

I think all over the world, even our own Kotesol, we have to do a MUCH better job at basic training of teachers – real workshops and not lectures. Teaching about actual classroom delivery and not theory and description. Professional development from the bottom up.

But I really agree that we all have the freedom to follow our own models of curriculum development and sharing. We each come to teaching with differing value sets and I don’t think any is above or better than the next. Myself, I see my activities as volunteer. What I do extra. But just like with NGOs, there are a lot of people doing volunteer who do make a living… it just depends on your own perspective/values/approach. The important thing is to give value to “help” to others and not prey on their own “need”…I’m sure we agree there…

Cheers, keep up the great work for learners everywhere.

David

Great blog, and interesting topic for this thread. I was really happy to see my site (English Raven) had made your cut!

I also followed the link to Dave’s “strong feelings” about ELT resource sites, and it got me thinking a little bit. I’ve met Dave in person – having chaired an English for Young Learners and Teenagers conference in Daegu at which Dave did a great presentation on using Karafun Karaoke in the classroom. Great guy, and genuinely full of passion for his profession.

I love, and very much support, any site or blog that encourages and facilitates the sharing of materials – we need more of them. I think it might be a too harsh to denigrate sites that offer their ELT wares for a fee (to be fair, Dave referred to pay-for sites that are just churning out the same old stuff – but I was a little concerned the “pay for is bad” idea might become a generalization that sticks!). I do now have a subscription fee for English Raven – US$15 per year, for 3,000+ pages of material (and a lot more on the way in 2009). The site has been around since 2001 and represents 8 years of hard work and toil, and when you do the math – a teacher can come along and get access to all of that for a little more than $1 per month or a little less than 5 cents per day. All that material has been used in schools with real classes and real teachers, run through an informal action research development cycle, and improved or added to. In addition, rather than just flashcards and worksheets, a genuine effort has been made to include ideas, suggestions and guidelines on how to actually apply various materials in classrooms (and these portions – suggestions and guidelines – are almost always completely public and free for teachers to access). I certainly don’t think it is unreasonable to ask a teacher to pay a very moderate fee for access to quality materials. The very modest income this generates gives me more time to work on new and even better materials – though of course money is not the main motivation! As any experienced EFL professional will tell you – if you are genuine teacher with real principles about teaching and learning, don’t come to EFL expecting to become rich in monetary terms…

Dave mentioned teachers buy access to some pretty ordinary materials because they are new and don’t know any better. I think that’s a good point – and if anything, rather than portraying them automatically as “poor hard-working teachers” we need to encourage them to (1) do better research on where to find the best quality materials, and (2) make a start on developing their own materials. I have met a lot of hard-working teachers, and I’ve met just as many lazy unmotivated ones who don’t care what they take into the classroom so long as it makes life easier for them…

In any case – great blog and I’ve enjoyed reading the discussion. I’m in the process of updating my links on English Raven, so I’ll be sure to include your and Dave’s sites, as well as some of the other great ones people have mentioned in this thread.

Thanks muchly and all the best,

Jason Renshaw
http://www.englishraven.com
Author – http://www.boostskillsseries.com

More than welcome to submit on “this Dave’s ” site.

I have been really frustrated by trying to get a good model of teacher sharing and resource storage. Finally it hit me — the answer was right there in front of me. Why not my own site?

On EFL Classroom 2.0 , members can now upload and share all they want. Simply hit the “SHARE” tab and then upload under the appropriate category. Find what you want and download. Leave comments about the resources. Share by hitting the other share button and send it to a friend directly! I’ll be putting up all my own games/resources there shortly, so check in…..I think this is a great model for sharing in the EFL / ESL /ESOL world and us not having to keep reinventing the wheel given how many new teachers constantly enter the profession…

Cheers,

Dave, not on the beach.

Tried to submit to the Dave’s list and got a message saying “Submissions will be accepted in 2008″. Is he semi-retired on a beach somewhere, I wonder…

A list for video resources is a great idea! There’a a lot out there, but it takes quite a bit of searching to come across applicable/useful material.

Chris

Thanks!
Darce

Thank you for the kind words and reference.

Julie, I wholeheartedly agree about Real English. Well done and though dated — language never dates. I use this regularly and yes, especially with lower levels.

Is Aid the Children part of the Free Rice game? Seems like it….

I agree, great idea to list the best sites for students and ELLs. I really think the future should be more places where learners and teachers meet together online. There is a thin line between the two….

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com