'What homework have you been setting for your learners on MEC?  Have you been pointing them to a particular part of their course and giving them specific resources to complete or just letting them dive in and explore? 

While neither approach is necessarily wrong, a "guided discovery" approach will allow your learners to use MEC in a more structured way and give you scope to exploit the full range of resource types on the database.

To whet your appetite, below are a few ideas for MEC homework which you might like to consider. Have a look also at Part 3 of the Guide to MEC.

1. Get them to practise their basic MEC skills. 

We've put together some ready-made worksheets for you on our support site. You can print these off and give them out as homework. Easy! There are even separate teacher's notes with answers.

2. Give them a list of resources.

Another quick and easy way to set homework. Simply give your learners a list of relevant resources by title. They then find the resources for themselves at home, bookmark them and complete them. This has the added advantage of getting learners to practise their searching and bookmarking skills!

   3.    Finish an activity at home.

Start a MEC resource in class. For example, you could just do the first few questions of a language exercise together, get them to predict the contents of a news item from the photo or headline or just listen to the audio of a listening activity. Then you could get your learners to complete the activity at home.

4. Treasure Hunt.
   Prepare a hidden sentence comprised of, say, 10 words found in different parts of MEC. They could be words from an audioscript, from the questions to an exercise or even from the MEC interface itself. Your learners have to search the database to find the words and complete the sentence. They then prepare a similar sentence for their peers next lesson. This could be done as a race - first group to find all the words wins!'

Have you ever tried any similar ideas? Do you find them useful? There will be more tips from Mike in tomorrow's posting so keep watching the blog to find out what they are.

'Our June upload went live at the beginning of last week and we've published lots of fantastic new content, including the first two M Tunes videos. M Tunes is an award-winning multimedia series for children featuring contemporary live-action and animated music videos. Each video is accompanied by a set of interactive games which are designed to practice and improve the skills, vocabulary and grammar presented in the songs. If you're a Staff Room member (allowing you access to our subscription area), have a look at the Robot Calypso video and you won't be able to resist singing along - be warned, it's really catchy!

Robot Calypso

In the free area of the site we've published a reading lesson on Maritime mysteries, a lesson on Glastonbury festival (as part of our Festivals Lesson Share Competition) and launched a new series of TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test) tips by Jim Scrivener.

In addition to all our usual content, Staff Room members can also benefit from a 50% discount offer on Blended Learning by Pete Sharma and Barney Barrett. There was a lot of buzz surrounding this book at IATEFL in April and Pete Sharma recently gave a presentation on the subject at our head offices in London. The book contains a wealth of practical ideas and suggestions for ways to use technology to enhance and support your students' learning. 

Finally, we've also put together a short survey to ask our users how they are currently using the site and what they think we can do to improve it. The survey can be taken anonymously but as a thankyou for participating, we'd like to offer all entrants the opportunity to be entered into a draw to win an Olympus SP-310 digital camera worth over £200. All you need to do is enter your email address when prompted.

We always welcome feedback on the site, so if you'd prefer to contact us directly with any inspired ideas or relevant comments and suggestions then don't hesitate to get in touch - we'd love to hear from you. Send your comments to webeditor@macmillan.com. 

The Nile, Uganda

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about plans to build a new dam on the Nile in Uganda. What consequences might this project have for the future of the Nile and Uganda? Find out more by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

International House London CELTA training centre 

MEC Commissioning Editor and recent CELTA graduate, Jenny Lovel, writes:

'It's nearly over. We return from the bank holiday weekend having completed assignment four, a reflection on what we've learnt on the course and having had some sleep. Despite the end being in sight the class is feeling less than jubilant. Last week one of our classmates left the course, unable to cope with negative teaching feedback and a couple of failed assignments. We've become so dependent on each other that he's sorely missed. In addition, the bank holiday weekend has given us a taste of the social lives we've put on hold to do the course. Everyone tells stories of breaking down in tears of happiness in restaurants and partners with frayed patience. We've also all lost weight while doing the course but none of us would recommend the unique CELTA blend of sleep deprivation and sugary foods as an alternative to Weightwatchers.

On Wednesday I have my final lesson. I've now got the lesson planning down to a mere three hours so, in contrast to my other lessons, I've actually had some sleep the night before. The lesson is on the present perfect (shudder) so I decide to keep it simple and elicit the form of the language from the students. Unfortunately I write something on the board which isn't right and fail to notice until heckled by my tutor. Deeply embarrassed, I teach the remainder of the lesson looking a bit red and sweaty but in general the lesson has been a success. More importantly, it's my final lesson and my teaching practice is over! I feel like putting my jumper over my head and running round the classroom in celebration. The only remaining challenge is another un-assessed "carousel" lesson (where the class is divided into groups which rotate to a different teacher every 15 minutes) on the Friday. But a game of "Guess Who?" superficially to revise vocabulary about personal appearances goes down a treat and everyone enjoys it. We're in the pub by 4 pm eating baklava, a gift from a student, and drinking beer. We've all passed.'

Do you remember the day you passed your CELTA? Have you ever used MEC to help you reinvigorate the present perfect? What do your students think of MEC? Leave a comment.

Judith Dick

'Hi! I'm Judith from the French speaking part of Switzerland. I manage MEC at OPTI alongside Pierre-Alain who looks after the technical details. We have more than 1000 students and well over half of them are absolute beginners or low elementary.

Our problem: many of our teachers were reticent to use MEC at first, complaining that beginners couldn't understand the instructions! We devised the following solution:

When students start using MEC for the first time they download a pre-prepared exercise from their individual servers, or they watch and copy from the projector. They must translate and order the MEC vocabulary correctly. We used TextEdit to create these exercises as we are all using Macs here. You could also use Word on a PC. Here are some examples (tables are shaded in yellow where students have completed the exercises):

The exercises are then saved into a MEC folder on the desktop, always ready for use. Within this folder students keep the files for different MEC activities, vocabulary and instructions that they have translated. This helps them gain greater independence right from the start.

For translations we encourage students to open Wordreference.com in a separate browser. Monolingual dictionaries are great but not much use for real beginners. I suspect quite a number of elementary students find them a challenge too.

We also have another great idea for easy translation if you use Firefox as your web browser. Within Firefox2 (US) you can add a useful instant translation tool. Go to Mozilla Addons click on dictionaries and install the language you require. Then when you hover over a word in your browser, up comes the translation. It's brilliant and defies all those "can't dos"!'

What do you think of the OPTI approach? How does it compare to your organization? Leave a comment.

Judith will soon be back with a clinic on her experiences with MEC at OPTI. For more information, watch this space!

MEC Commissioning Editor and recent CELTA graduate, Jenny Lovel, writes:

'Week three of the CELTA course is a hot contender for the worst week of my life. I have two assignments due, on Monday and Thursday, and three lessons to plan. Lesson five goes well. The students are lively and chatty and I play a game with them that I've stolen directly from one of the teachers I observed last week. Each student has an expression on a piece of coloured card which he or she must describe to their partner. The game is great fun, with students proclaiming "Good Health!" and "Happy New Year!" joyfully. Once again I feel like I’m opening for a stand-up comedian, but the lesson has gone well and I've really enjoyed it.

Such feelings of adequacy are short-lived. In lesson six disaster strikes. Student numbers in our class have been dwindling, and before the lesson rumour has it that three new French students have signed up to the class. This doubles the size of our class, which is welcome news. Wondering if anyone is going to turn up for your class when you've spent five hours preparing it is not a pleasant emotion. The new students do turn up and I start my lesson enthusiastically. Within two minutes I realize that they have no idea what I am saying. They're not used to being taught entirely in English, my language isn't graded appropriately to their level, and they look at me in horror when I attempt some choral drilling. My confidence crumbles. No amount of coloured cardboard is going to get me out of this mess and the lesson is a disaster. The worst thing is that I have to bounce back from this experience quickly, so I can plan tomorrow's hour-long lesson and write assignment number three.

Deciding not to be beaten I stay up until 2 am planning and writing, and set my alarm for 6am to prepare my materials. After copious amounts of coffee I manage to deliver a lesson, and in contrast to yesterday the students understand my instructions and participate fully in class. Confidence restored! I've survived seven teaching practices and have only one more to go. I look forward to the fourth and final week by having a glass of wine and promptly falling asleep.'

Does MEC help you with lesson planning? How have you used support site materials to help you? Leave a comment.

The MEC word games for June are available now! How many words can your students find in Witch's Pot? This month's topics are 'types of music' (Easy), 'words which can mean "first"' (Average) and 'words which mean "surprised"' (Difficult).

The Swamp Disaster topics are 'clothes and related words' (Easy), 'find the countable noun' (Average) and 'relationships' (Difficult).

 Swamp Disaster

The Wordsearch topics are 'eating out'(Easy), 'types of ship or boat' (Average) and 'negative adjectives describing character' (Difficult).

As usual, there are new Crosswords and Bridge Builders at all levels too.

Visit the Word Games area to find them all. Which are your students' favourite word games? Please let us know.

 Wordsearch

The 'one and only' news item

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, looks at protests in China against the government's policy of allowing only one child per family. Find out why people are protesting by going to the Headline News section on your Study Area screen.