Blended learning, English language teaching and the use of technology - the MEC blog - MEC authors

Meet a MEC Author

Steph — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:32:18 GMT

An interview with Patrick McMahon:

Meet one of our MEC authors Patrick who has bravely agreed to answer our gruelling questions. Patrick has written lots of EAP material for MEC and has recently completed some EAP lesson plans for our very own Teachers' support area.

1) What do you do when you're not being a MEC author?

I’m a full time lecturer at Plymouth University so being an MEC author is a very small part of my work. I also spend a bit of time on my blog English for university.

2) What do you do for fun?

I like being around water so things like boating, fishing and going to the beach are top of my list.

3) When and how did you become involved with Macmillan English Campus?

Jenny Lovel contacted me and asked me to do some authoring after she saw my blog. I've been involved with MEC since April 2008.

4) What kind of content do you work on?

I've written some EAP listening activities and some lesson plans for the teachers' resource area.

5) What are your views on MEC as a teaching/learning resource?

I think it's very good indeed. I think its strength is the blended aspect of face-to-face teaching and online learning.

6) How would you compare MEC with other VLEs you know or have worked on?

I think it compares very well. It offers a lot of support to teachers which other VLEs don't do.

7) Do you think that ICT training should be a bigger part of CELTA training and teacher development?

I think the basics of ICT should be included on courses but after that it should be an optional part of training. Lots of people go into teaching because they like to work with people, not computers!

8) What is your favourite MEC resource, and why?

I like the web projects in the EAP activities. I think language students learn a lot when they are involved in project work without realising it and I think these activities give a lot of opportunities for this unconscious language acquisition.

9) What are your tips for new teachers using MEC?

To spend as much time as you can having a look around MEC before you start using it. In class there’s nothing worse than a teacher trying to use resources that they are not familiar with.

10) What are your views on blended learning? (resources, teacher : resource ratio, etc)

I think blended learning offers a real chance to maximise resources. Blended learning means that students can spend a lot of their own time doing reading and listening which allows the teachers to focus on the productive skills. To be honest a student should spend most of the time working without the teacher.

11) Do you use a lot of technology in your teaching/work/life? If so, what do you use?

I use the web a lot. I put resources up for my students on our university portal and on my blog I point out useful online language learning resources

12) Do you have any favourite ELT websites, blogs, podcasts or other resources?

My favourite EAP sites are Andy Gillett's UEfAP site and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s English Language Centre site.

13) What do you think the future holds for ELT teachers and authors?

I think there will be a lot more learning online and online tutoring as technology becomes more reliable and faster. Teachers and authors will need to be very flexible and adaptable to deal with this.

14) Any parting comments?

I look forward to writing more material for MEC!

Patrick McMahon

Meet the MEC Author (Part 2)

Steph — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:32:42 GMT

An interview with Russell Whitehead continued:

8) What are your tips for new teachers using MEC?

'New to teaching or new to MEC? Either way, make it your own - but see what your students want of it. If you really are new to it, get a couple of your students - or some likely people - and sit there with them as they negotiate their way round it, and talk about it with them.'

9) What are your views on blended learning?

'Well, when I went to school/university/tried to learn various languages independently, the expression "blended learning" didn't exist. But combining or integrating resources and environments such as libraries, lectures, seminars, informal study groups, etc is what studying has always involved. And it still will, long after every single currently used PC is long defunct and buried in the Ozymandian sand of global warming.

Learning is tied up with crucial interdependencies between the social/interactional and the material. In the three years I spent at Oxford University doing my first degree, I had between 100 and 150 hours of one-to-one or paired tuition. Looking back, it doesn't sound like much, but it was very powerful. The rest of the time consisted of using the various other resources.

The thing that matters is that those few 'real' hours (i.e. face-to-face, real-time and absolutely not replaceable by any IT mediation) were the skeleton that made sense or gave shape to all the rest of it.'

10) What do you think the future holds for ELT teachers and authors?

'Teachers are no different from anyone else. If your job is very basic and poorly paid, nobody will be bothered to develop the software to replace you. If you're very highly paid and specialist beyond the ken of software developers, you too will be left alone.

Teachers float around between these two poles. Of course, it depends where you live, and at what level of the socio-economic scale your pedagogic efforts are directed.

Paperless IT-mediated educational material I suppose is likely to prove more helpful to most - it saves money in the end, it's easier on the planet and so on. But it requires a lot of costly hardware. I hope the rich/poor divide in the world isn't increased by all this. We need a lot more of the equivalent of the wind-up radio.

English is growing as a lingua franca, and inexorably so. Others will follow.

This takes me to areas where my head starts to hurt. I despise nationalism; but I think globalisation is a nonsensical and transparent veil for pre-Marxian exploitation.

Authors? I suppose we'll have to write either more and more for children or for increasingly specialised areas.'

Wind-up radio. Is clockwork the future for technology?

Do you have any response to Russell's comments? What do you think the future holds for English language teachers? Leave a comment.

Meet the MEC Author (Part one)

Steph — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:29:39 GMT

An interview with Russell Whitehead:

Russell Whitehead

1) What do you do when you're not being a MEC author?

'I write other stuff - books, CD-ROMs, etc - and do consultancy work.'

2) What do you do for fun?

'What?'

3) When and how did you become involved with MEC?

'I think it was 2002, and another MEC author, and friend, Mark Harrison, recommended me. (He, I think, was involved because he'd written the excellent Proficiency Testbuilder for Macmillan.) We were both taken on to write Cambridge test material for the site.'

4) How has MEC changed since you started working there?

'I don't know because I don't work there; I work in my own place. But I know it's got bigger, and moved from Oxford to London . They have offices near King's Cross station, which is handy for me if I go for a meeting. Or, if you mean the website, it's just got bigger, brighter, better. As a client, they are very optimistic, which is refreshing.'

5) What kind of MEC content do you work on?

'The Cambridge tests stuff, the general and the business exercises, teacher support material, advising other writers, some investigative efforts to explore potential future developments ...'

6) How would you compare MEC with other VLEs you know or have worked on?

'What I can call on to make comparisons with is a bit limited. But I've been involved a little with the interesting work that Cambridge University Language Centre have done in this area. I've done things for the Cambridge ESOL website. (I also did some research in the area of writing tests and computer-based testing.) I've done stuff for my friend (and OSE author) Nigel Haines' good new website IELTSuccess…

I suppose what MEC has that's special is the combination of enormousness and tailorability. There's a level of investment and commitment in it that seems pretty much unmatched. So then it's down to what you make of it.'

7) Do you think that ICT training should be a bigger part of CELTA training and teacher development?

'This is hard to answer. On the one hand, yes, of course, and it's head-in-the-sand recalcitrance to suggest otherwise. Newly certificated teachers shouldn't be going out there not knowing how to exploit the newer resources. And if you don't have a proper understanding of the principles involved, you can't really make the most of technology.

On the other hand, the CELTA (and similar course/certificates) are very small in relation to the world. Think of the differences among countries/economies/educational philosophies/realities/technology levels/ideologies that anyone called a language teacher may be situated in. So, how much can be sensibly included in such courses?'

Part two of Russell's interview will be posted next week.

Do you think ICT training is necessary for English teachers? Did you have any on your CELTA? Leave a comment.