MEC is currently being used by a number of customers in South America, including the Cultura Inglesa São Paulo (CISP). CISP is a chain of 27 language schools in São Paulo. They were the very first users of MEC, which they call the 'e-Campus'. They have been using MEC since 2003 and it is now used by 45,000 students and 750 teachers.

The Cultura Inglesa building in São Paulo

The Cultura schools have been very successful in incorporating e-Campus into their courses.

We caught up with Vilson Coimbra, e-learning manager for CISP, to find out more.

Supporting teachers

CISP has promoted the e-Campus to teachers energetically as Vilson is clear that this is the best way to integrate the e-Campus into the working life of the school. He explains how 'all new teachers are introduced to the e-Campus during our pre-service programme ... and work on its inclusion in their lesson plans.'

Indeed, at the LABCI conference last month, Vilson demonstrated in a presentation how effectively the e-Campus could be used with an interactive whiteboard, showing examples of creative activities that teachers could use.

All this really helps teachers to harness the potential of the e-Campus: 75% of teachers using it reported in a survey that they were 'Satisfied' or 'Very Satisfied' with its effectiveness.

Encouraging students

CISP continually encourages students to use the e-Campus at home as well as in the classroom. Research undertaken by CISP shows that 57% of students like using computers to learn English, and 71% say that MEC helps them to improve their English.

So how do they do it?

Crucially important is making sure that students are aware of what the e-Campus can offer. For example, the school's web portal offers sample resources and advertises new content that is published to the e-Campus by Macmillan. There have also been seasonal word games competitions for students to enter - which have proven to be very popular.

Vilson adds: 'Nowadays the e-Campus is part of the daily routine of students and staff. It is used in class as part of the practice needed for a specific language item or skill, as an assessment tool at the beginning of a term - and the exercises can be assigned for remedial work and revision.'

Murdoch buys Dow Jones

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the company Dow Jones and the possible impact this will have on its publications, such as The Wall Street Journal. Find out more about the takeover by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

As part of your lesson, you could direct students to The Wall Street Journal so they can get a clearer understanding of the material it publishes.

'Word of the Week' is a great tool for encouraging your learners to use their MEC wordlists. This week's word might be useful for advanced learners as it describes a dangerous activity, originating in the UK, which has recently become more popular with thrill-seekers.

To find the word of the week click on the 'New words' link at the top left of the dictionary.

The word of the week is updated every Monday.

For an interesting homework exercise for advanced learners, why not get them to use the word of the week as inspiration for a short story? Next lesson, share the stories with the rest of the class and add any new vocabulary they have found to their MEC wordlists.

For a fun revision exercise in a later lesson, try playing hang-man in teams with some of the new words you have learned from word of the week. Put the first and last letters of a word into the word list in your MEC teacher's Work Area. Enter the definition below the word and then click 'Done'. When you project your wordlist onto the whiteboard in class your learners will see the definition and the first and last letters as a clue.

When your learners guess a letter correctly, write it on the dotted line on the whiteboard. Even better, type the letters directly into your wordlist as your learners guess them.

To find the information you're most interested in on the MEC blog simply click on the categories button in the left hand margin of the page. There are currently four categories:

'Ideas for using MEC' is particularly useful as it contains information from MEC users around the world about how they have implemented MEC in their school. This posting, for example, has some very interesting comments about how various institutions are using MEC.

You can also click on the feed reader button next to the category to have category-specific updates. This means that your feed reader will receive notification every time that category is updated.

Don't forget:

To add this blog, or one of the blog categories to your feed reader simply click on the orange icon at the bottom of this page:

This will take you to a new page containing RSS data.

Copy the url of this new page and paste it into the 'Add new feed' field in whichever feed reader you use.

Your feed reader will now notify you of any new postings. Easy!

Monsoon mayhem

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about a monsoon which has hit parts of Asia. Find out what has happened to the countries affected by the monsoon by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

Get your students to find out more about monsoons and their effects by clicking here.

Becca Sams

At the beginning of August we published lots of fantastic new content including the first in a new series of ETp articles. This first article is available to all onestopenglish users. In it, Michael Hoey, the chief advisor on the Macmillan Dictionary of English for Advanced Learners, considers the consequences of changes in lexicography. There will be more of these methodology articles for Staff Room members in the coming months so keep your eyes peeled! This month Staff Room members can also benefit from a 20% discount on a subscription to ETp magazine.

You may have already noticed our summer series of podcasts 'Live from London'. We've now published four of these and in the latest one we visited a language school in South West London and asked teachers and students what they considered to be the most difficult aspect of learning English. These have been great fun to make and, accompanied by the lesson plans written by Lindsay Clandfield, they form an excellent source of authentic listening practice. Find out more here.

Becca interviews students for the 'Live from London' podcasts

In September the onestopenglish Staff Room will be celebrating its first birthday so we're busy making plans and preparing lots of exciting content and offers to mark this special landmark. We're really proud of the amount of content that we've added to the site in the last year and intend to continue doing so as we move forward. Look out for the new onestopenglish soap opera podcasts in the middle of September!

We always welcome feedback on the site, so if you'd like 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.

India awaits world's cheapest car

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about the development of the world's cheapest car in India. Learn what effect the car is having on Indian society by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

Ratan Tata, of Tata Motors

Find out more about the company making the car by clicking here.