Don't forget about MEDO! To access it all you have to do is click on the Dictionary link in MEC as shown below.

Did you know that there are interactive games on the MEDO website? You can find them by opening the dictionary from the link shown above and clicking on 'Resource Site' which takes you to the 'Macmillan Dictionaries' page. On this page, click 'More interactive activities and games' which takes you to the 'Resources' page. Here, click on 'a whole host of games'. You will now see the 'Games' page and you can choose from the list of six games shown below.

Alternatively you can follow this link.

For a fun lesson warmer play one or more the games projected onto the whiteboard, or with an interactive whiteboard. If you don't have either of these available you can get your learners to play the games in pairs. You could even run a competition to see which pair can solve each game the quickest.

Your learners can use the online dictionary to look up any new words, either in class or for homework. Go over new vocabulary together and get them to choose the most useful words to put into their MEC wordlists.

We are delighted to introduce a new guest blogger today. Simone Sucupira is a teacher at Cultura Inglesa São Paulo (CISP) - Campinas. She writes:

Simone Sucupira

This year's LABCI conference invited us to discuss education in a situation of changing learning needs. We were challenged to think about what kind of education our society is likely to need in the near future. We asked ourselves the following question: 'How can we make a difference?'

Bearing this in mind, I chose the title 'The e-Campus and Self-Paced courses: the next revolution' for my presentation at LABCI.

Here at CISP, we've been using the e-Campus for quite some time and its adoption has revolutionized our regular courses. The e-Campus has made such a huge difference because although it's a single tool, it's brought many new innovations to our teaching! Here are some of the benefits of the e-Campus: 

•       It's a virtual learning environment which offers consistent content and flexible delivery: students can have optimized input of language anywhere, anytime they like.
  
•       It has added a new, less controlled, asynchronous element to our courses: students are much more free to decide what to do when they are not in the classroom. It promotes learner autonomy! 

One of my students, Guilherme Nunes, once told me: 'The e-Campus as it is now, offers students a lot.' This made me wonder what else we could offer given that the e-Campus has already been so successfully integrated to our courses. Then I realized that listening to what our students have to say about their learning needs is the key to understanding how we can make a difference.

Guilherme kindly granted me an interview which became the basis for discussing two of the most important questions I posed during my presentation:

•     What kind of learning opportunities could our students need that we might not be offering at the moment?
•     As an e-learning tool, has the e-campus achieved its full potential?

Here's Guilherme's interview.

In my presentation, I tried to demonstrate that the e-Campus currently offers students at CISP a great deal but has potential for much more! It might evolve from a supplementary tool into a self-contained, independent, on-line learning course.

At CISP we will be as ready to adapt as we are keen to offer the best learning opportunities to our students who, as in the case of Guilherme, sometimes cannot fit their schedules to our regular classes.

Football joy for Iraq

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about Iraq's football victory in the Asia Cup and the celebrations it caused around the country. What might this victory mean for the future of Iraq? Find out by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

Your students can find out more about what happened in the Asia Cup by visiting the official website: http://www.afcasiancup.com/en/.

Once you have used this news item in class, you can refer your students to the news item from 14 November 2006 for more information about the war in Iraq. To find it just click on 'More News' in the Headline News area.

Six new worksheets with accompanying teacher's notes have been added to the MEC Support Site for you to use.

MEC Skills

Aimed at learners of MEC level 4 and above, these free downloadable worksheets are designed to highlight some of the most useful functionality in the Macmillan English Dictionary Online (MEDO). There are tips on:

• Finding collocations, phrasal verbs and idioms
• Finding and distinguishing between words with similar meanings
• Finding the right definition
• Expressions with get, go and take

You can use them in class with your learners, or give them out as homework.   

In the teacher's notes you will find guidelines on timing, tips for incorporating any work done with MEDO into your learners' Word Lists on MEC and a full list of answers to the learners' worksheet activities. There are also some great ideas for follow-up activities.

Click here to go straight to this new material.

We're always updating material on the support site so please feel free to leave us a comment if you have a suggestion for other downloadable worksheets you would like to see! 

Marcela Moya

In a 4,000 kilometre long country where distance is clearly not a choice, the British Institute in Santiago started developing distance learning programmes of English as a foreign language in 2000. In 2004, we decided to incorporate the English Campus as a powerful online source of EFL learning resources into our face-to-face and distance learning programmes. We soon realised that the potential behind the possibility of generating tailor-made courses for every type of internal and external user with a wide range of needs was simply enormous.

At the moment, we have created over 100 different courses for our language school face-to-face teen and adolescent students, face-to-face students from our recently launched Universidad Chileno Británica de Cultura – The British University, students from traditional state and private universities which have signed agreements with us to generate blended English programmes and an important number of 100% distance students spread out along the length of the country. The courses designed for this last segment include Cambridge ESOL KET, PET, FCE, CAE, CPE and IELTS exam preparation courses online and Cambridge ESOL TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test) three-module courses for EFL teachers in need of an international teaching certification.

Map of Chile

Hispanic panic in the USA?

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about the growing Hispanic population in the USA. What are the consequences of this growth for the USA? Go to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen to find out. 

After you have looked at this news item, you could get your students to look at the news item from 1 May 2007 to find more information about immigrants in the USA. To find it just click on 'More News' in the Headline News area.

We're delighted to announce that Denis' School in Russia has recently started using Macmillan English Campus. Mike Green and I went out to run the MEC training sessions which were held at their St Petersburg school from the 20^th to the 21^st of July. Teachers and administrators came from as far away as Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod to learn about using MEC in class, course building and administration.

The spectacular Winter Palace in St Petersburg, which forms part of the Hermitage Museum

We also took the opportunity to speak to Irina Budtova, the Director of Studies, and capture some of her thoughts on video. Here she tells us a little bit about Denis' School and why they decided to adopt Macmillan English Campus.

In this next clip Irina tells us about how Denis' School plans to integrate MEC into their existing courses.

Irina and her team have already started building MEC courses to accompany their current programme of study. In this way MEC courses will be ready for students when the new term starts in September.

Jane Petrie

Since February, Macmillan English Campus has been attracting significant interest in Asia with the aid of Patrick Hafenstein, our Sales Executive, based in Taiwan.

He's been exploring how and why the Macmillan English Campus is generating such an e-learning buzz. We put some questions to Patrick, to find out more.

Patrick Hafenstein

Why do you think that e-learning is such a hot topic in Asia at the moment?

Where I'm based, in Taiwan, the government is putting a huge amount of money into an initiative known as 'the three Es' - education, English and electronic learning. This means that language institutions are increasingly looking for ways to implement e-learning. The Macmillan English Campus, of course, provides an ideal solution because it fits perfectly with all of the 'three Es'.

What is it about the English Campus that makes it so appropriate for this region?

Institutions which have seen Campus have been really impressed by its flexibility and by the ability it provides to design custom courses. For example, Taiwanese universities cater for a wide variety of language abilities among their students, and yet they all have to reach a particular level of English in order to graduate. The Macmillan English Campus can provide the university with a single solution to meet that variety of needs.

Where do you see the future of e-learning in Asia?

Asian trade is becoming increasingly international, so the demand for English is only going to increase. In Japan, for example, there has been a great deal of interest from corporate customers. The market is also increasingly driven by the need for academic qualifications and many people are trying to raise their English to a level where they can study abroad.

People like this can really benefit from institutions offering the English Campus because it makes it easy for teachers to set work to do outside the classroom, which can be completed anywhere with an internet connection. This is really useful for people trying to combine English learning with already busy lives.

What are your thoughts on e-learning?