30th August 2010
DEVELOPINGTHEWEB.COM - MOODLE HOSTING
You've probably heard lots about Moodle, the framework for providing online courses. Have you thought about having your own? At Developing TheWeb.com (a sister site of Developing Teachers.com) we provide you with your own Moodle for only $12/month. Your Moodle installation comes with1GB of space & 10gb/month of bandwidth.
We set it all up for you & you provide the courses. You don't need to provide the actual course, this can simply be an online presence, a way of keeping in touch with your students, a meeting place with individuals or whole classes, an extension of your lessons.
We like it so much that we run our own online development courses
at Developing Courses.com with Moodle.
For more information:
http://www.developingtheweb.com/moodle.htm
Reliable & affordable Web Hosting for the English Language Teaching Community!
I was browsing through the book 'Accelerated Learning' by Colin Rose the other day & he gives some interesting stories. Among many is the story of the man who accidentally got locked in a refrigerator compartment & had to spend the night there. Although it was not switched on, he was found the next morning frozen to death. The explanation goes that he was expecting to freeze to death & so he literally did, regardless of the temperature.
Then he also mentions the placebo's, fake pills, that are used in research & prescriptions. Quite a few experiments have shown that when a patient is given a placebo, being told that it will ease or solve a problem, it actually does because the patient expects it to.
And then there is the teacher who is told that one particular group is strong, while another weaker, when in fact there is little difference between them. The group labelled as strong is found to perform much better than the other group. This is down to the teacher's expectations & how she handles each group.
Have you taken over a 'difficult' group from another teacher to find that, yes, they are a difficult group to teach? What would have been the case if the previous teacher hadn't said anything? Maybe it would have been a challenge anyway, but then again maybe it might have been different. Before you hand over a difficult group next time, think carefully about how you are going to describe them.
Quite a lot of our adult beginners expect learning English to be a hard task. There's a good chance they have spent a good few years at school struggling with the grammar & they come along to continue much the same, so it's no wonder that the drop out rate for beginners if very high. It might simply be a question of the teacher selling it better from the start.
The same would apply when starting any course. Our learners bring their expectations with them & initially, in the first lesson or two, we have a chance to bend them towards a more positive stance. This is where first impressions really do count.
It's quite common for us to preview a heavy lesson with the cushioning comment ' It's a difficult area but let's see what we can do'. The students are going to expect the lesson to be difficult & it will be. An alternative would be to put a positive & light side to it & say 'Let's breeze through this & have some fun.' OK, some things are difficult but let's not make them doubly so from the beginning.
Expectations are just one variable in the equation, but one that is important & needs considering.
To buy 'Accelerated Learning' at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0905553128/developingteac0b To buy 'Accelerated Learning' at Amazon.co.uk:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0905553128/developingteache
Any more ideas on the above? Please post for all in the Forums at:
http://forum.developingteachers.com/index.php?topic=2000.0
********
ONLINE DEVELOPMENT COURSES
Online teacher development courses on Developing Teachers.com - individualised one-to-one course for ELT/ESOL teachers at any level of teaching experience. If you are interested in following one then do get in touch for more information.
We're taking a break for a couple of weeks so we'll be back with the Tip on 20th September.
The Weekly Teaching Tip is written by Alistair Dickinson at Developing Teachers.com.
This newsletter is a free service of Developing Teachers.com and is copyright © 2001-2010 Developing Teachers.com All rights reserved.
To subscribe to the Newsletters
To the Past Teaching Tips
Positive expectations
