'Since the launch of MEC two years ago, we've been travelling the world, training teachers and listening to feedback from thousands of users worldwide. This has led directly to the development of our new edition.

So what's new?

The new edition will enhance the functionality and navigation of the existing MEC and will maintain our high standards of English language teaching content, reliability of service and dedicated customer support.

Innovation and design

The new edition will reflect the structure of the current MEC but will also take advantage of new concepts in web design and navigation to ensure an improved user experience for both students and teachers.

Ease of administration

New functions will be included to help you manage your students more easily within MEC. For example, user and class administration will be integrated into the main MEC interface, users will be able to self-diagnose login problems and more detailed statistics will be made available.

What will this mean for existing users?

The new edition will be rolled out to all our current customers around the world over the next few months and will be made available to all new customers from September this year.

No additional face-to-face training will be required for teachers and students: the new edition has been carefully designed to be intuitive for users already familiar with MEC. For those involved in the administration of MEC, step-by-step training materials will be provided to walk you through the new system and we'll also be publishing more support materials on our MEC teachers' support site.

Watch out for more information on this exciting new edition of MEC here on the blog. You might also be interested to check out the blog posting from our very own CEO.

And, of course, if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us!'

Here's a helpful tip from the MEC Training Assistant, Steph Earnshaw:

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

The pronunciation tool is excellent for training students to distinguish between British and American English pronunciation of words. Simply click on the relevant speaker icon next to the word you have searched for.

For a fun, whole-class dictation exercise, choose ten words you want to practice or revise and use the pronunciation tool to "test" your learners. Here's how to do it:

1. Make sure your computer speakers are loud enough for everyone to hear.
2. Make sure that no one can see the word on your screen. You may need to cover up or switch off your projector, if you are using one.
3. Play each word twice, either with British or American pronunciation.
4. Ask your learners to write the word down with the correct spelling and to note down whether the pronunciation is British or American English.
5. When you have finished, go through the words together, beaming them up on the board and drilling any difficult ones.
6. If they haven't already done so, ask your learners to put all the new words into their wordlist for homework.

If you are using a computer lab you could get your learners to test each other in pairs or small groups.

For more ideas and ready-made worksheets to help you use the dictionary in class or as homework, have a look at the MEC Skills page of the support site.  

Have you ever used the pronunciation tool or other MEDO features in class?'

Jo Scellier

'How has English language teaching changed in the past few years with the increasing use of technology and multimedia? Is my experience similar to other English language teachers in Hong Kong?

I taught general and business English in Hong Kong from 1998 to 2004 at various language centres and companies. In my experience, we mostly tailored our teaching material to suit the needs of the students who were mainly local, Japanese or Korean. There was little use of multimedia in classrooms and although I came across some sophisticated computer laboratories they were used only on occasion. This was because it was seen as a bit daunting having to learn the software and deal with any technical concerns.

I found it quite common for teachers to steer away from the use of technology and multimedia in the classroom. On the other hand, students were very familiar with technology often spending time talking about and comparing their latest phones, cameras and computers.

Since returning to Australia, the use of technology in language learning seems much more prevalent.  Perhaps that's not so much a comparison of Hong Kong and Australia as it is a sign of the increasing use of technology and multimedia in learning today.

Having been involved with MEC over the past year, I want to point out a few benefits of using technology in the classroom that spring to mind when reflecting back on my days of teaching English in Hong Kong.

• Access 24 hours a day - MEC offers the opportunity for students to access such a wide variety of over 2800 resources whenever and wherever they want just by having a computer, the Internet and logging onto the system. This certainly appeals to students living in a 24 hour city!
• Course building - Courses can be built by teachers from the vast pool of MEC resources to supplement any current learning programme. This is a great way to supplement tailor-made materials and offer students a sophisticated and integrated learning opportunity.
• Use in classroom - MEC is designed for a blended learning approach so teachers can choose from the interactive resources and integrate it into their teaching. This allows both teachers and students to benefit from another dimension of language learning.
• Simple to use with lots of support - Not only is MEC really easy to navigate but there is also so much support provided by the MEC staff in the form of training for teachers and administrators, and also the MEC support site. 

What are some of the benefits you've found with using MEC?'

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about Bhutan's government changing from a monarchy to a democracy. Find out how the people of Bhutan feel about the change and all about Gross National Happiness by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

'No matter which country in Asia or which type of institution, blended learning is being embraced.

In Taiwan, universities are taking technology on board in the classroom thanks to a NT$50 billion academic excellence initiative from the Ministry of Education. Although hardware has been the first priority for the majority of institutions, software is now highly sought after. Blended learning has gained a lot of interest since the government allowed universities to use e-learning as part of their courses, as long as it does not exceed half of the course time.

Taipei, Taiwan

In Vietnam, private language schools are also looking to technology to facilitate language learning. The growing economy has seen a rise in demand for English language courses and private language school numbers have multiplied accordingly. Anyone looking to teach EFL in Vietnam will quite easily land a job - contact me if you have any questions about doing so.  Blended learning has therefore been explored as a means to keep up with this demand and ease the pressure of finding suitably qualified teachers.

Hanoi, Vietnam

In Japan, it is the corporate institutions who are adopting blended learning as part of their employee benefits. With long and irregular work hours, it is hard for employees to stick to a language learning schedule. E-learning allows them to finish their language activities at times convenient to them and then meet up less frequently for face-to-face instruction.'

Tokyo, Japan

What are your views on blended learning in ELT? What's the right balance between e-learning and face-to-face instruction?

To access the dictionary all you have to do is click on the Dictionary link in MEC, as shown below. For MEC worksheets to help you use the dictionary have a look at the MEC Skills page of the support site.

For a fun and noisy lesson warmer use the online dictionary to play 'Back to the board'.

You will need a data projector linked to a computer. Here's how to play:

1.  Divide the class into two teams. One person from each team sits at the front of the class with their back to the    whiteboard.

2.  Key in your chosen word so that it appears on the screen and with the accompanying definition.

3.  When you say 'go' each team must describe, explain or give examples of the chosen word without actually saying it.

4.  The first of the two people with their back to the board to correctly guess the word wins a point for their team. Then two new people are chosen to sit at the front with their back to the board and the game starts again.

Remember, if you need to enlarge the font size just go to 'Options' at the top of your MEDO search page and change the text size to large or extra large. Then click 'Done'.

If you are using a computer lab you could also get learners to play the game in pairs or smaller groups.

Have you ever used the MEDO word of the day in your class? What other MEDO features do you like to use?

Find out how universities are doing this by going to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen.

Byron Russell 

The clinic was entitled 'Stories around the Campus fire - top tips for using MEC in your school'. The aim was to outline some case studies of how MEC has been used in various organizations including OPTI, IH Pisa, CISP (Cultura Inglesa Sao Paulo) and the University of Trento.

Here is Byron's PowerPoint presentation: Microsoft PowerPoint - Stories round the Campus Fire.pdf (96.52 KB)

Online meeting software from Juniper was used along with a separate conference call run through Arkadin. The clinic lasted about 45 minutes - the first 30 minutes for Byron's presentation, the last 15 minutes to give the participants time to ask questions and discuss their different techniques for implementing MEC.

One point raised was that communicating ideas and methodology is an important part of making the most of MEC. This can be done through regular cascade training from one of an organization's appointed 'MEC Champions'. At CISP, MEC is integrated into lessons as well as being used for assessed homework. This embedded model is supported by CISP's teacher training site which is run on a Moodle platform. More traditional ways of sharing ideas, such as putting lessons plans on the staff-room pin board, are also used. It was suggested during the clinic that a blog shared by MEC teachers within an organization would also be a convenient way of communicating.

Another point was that the schools using MEC most successfully are creative and flexible (such as IH Pisa where a SKYPE distance learning programme is used) and integrate MEC into their overall programme of teaching and assessment (such as OPTI where online assessment and placement testing is used along with face-to-face computer-lab teaching).

Vic Richardson explained that at Embassy students use MEC as part of their coursework. Results in the MEC Markbook count towards their overall coursework grade. A recent survey at Embassy showed that while 75% of students give highly positive feedback on MEC, only 25% use it of their own accord outside class. Embassy's method of using MEC for graded coursework ensures that students get the greatest benefit from it. In addition to this MEC Champions at Embassy meet every three months to share ideas for lessons and blended learning courses.

The clinic participants were:

James Frith of Bell International

Mark Jasper of the British Council

Neil Ballantayne of the British Council

Vic Richardson of Embassy

Thank you to Byron and everyone else involved for making the first MEC clinic a big success!

The next clinic will be with Judith Dick of OPTI on Thursday 28^th June.

Keep watching the blog for more information or email s.earnshaw@macmillan.com

5. Peer teaching.

'Divide the class into two or more groups. Members of each group study a particular Grammar Reference Unit (GRU) at home and complete the corresponding language exercises. In the next class, they teach/tell their peers in the other group what they studied and what they have learned.  This could be done equally well to promote discussion by using different news items.

Grammar reference unit

6. Vocabulary quizzes.

Learners read a particular news item at home, check MEDO and add any new words to their Wordlists, but without the definitions. In pairs, they then "test" their partner next lesson to see how much they know and can remember. They then do the food for thought questions together as a class.

MEDO

7. Web projects.

Learners do a web project at home (remember they can also print them out in hard copy) and add any new vocabulary to their Word Lists. They then present their findings to the class. As a follow-up, they could create their own short web projects for their peers to complete.

8. Consider modifying the level of challenge or the task.

Why not rethink the way learners approach resources? For example, get them to read different levels of the same news item and compare the language used, suggest they use the Hint or Audio box to hide the questions when doing a listening activity or encourage them to use the audioscript as a reading text - but without the audio. Be creative!

This list is of course just a taster of what's possible. We'd love to hear the ideas you've got for things which have worked well! Leave a comment.'

'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.

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.