Hi everyone,

Well, the new MEC 3.0 is a super upgrade which integrates many of the requests that I've heard from our Australian customers. A couple of these requests from administrators and teachers include:

• Are we able to publish Web Links, Bookmarks and Word Lists to students?
• Can we send announcements to classes?

I'm really pleased to be able to answer 'yes' to both of the above requests. I know that our Australian customers are also pleased so I can imagine customers all over the world are really happy, too. I wonder which new MEC 3.0 functions most appeal to you?

Recently, I conducted an online training session, on some of the new functions of MEC 3.0, for Embassy in Australia and New Zealand. The online training session meant that Embassy MEC administrators from around Australia and New Zealand could link up to a shared computer screen and hook up to a conference call in order to participate in the training. I facilitated the session from Melbourne while each participant connected from their own city. What a bonus to deliver and participate in training without the need to travel from your desk.

Embassy ANZ were delighted to find out that they no longer need to send a report each week to Macmillan in the UK so their data on users and classes can be updated. Now, they are able to update users and classes and the changes take place immediately on the system. This means that they can administer MEC much more easily and efficiently. 

It's just super that these upgrades are as a result of real requests from MEC customers out there. Everyone likes to be listened to and Macmillan English Campus is doing just that.

If you are looking for something more specialised than the MEC dictionary, why not try some of these free online dictionaries?

Online business dictionary: http://www.businessdictionary.com/

French, Spanish, Italian and English dictionary: http://www.wordreference.com/

Index of specialist online dictionaries and glossaries http://www.yourdictionary.com/specialty.html

You could put them in your My Web Links area and publish them to your learners as a package of Web Links so they are easily accessible from within MEC, just like the MEC dictionary itself. All you need to do is go to My Web Links, click the name of the website and the page will pop up in a new window.

Pakistan elections in state of emergency

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about the president of Pakistan calling elections while the country is in a state of emergency. Why has President Musharraf done this? Go to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen to find out more.

You could get students to find out about more about Pakistan and its government by visiting the following website:

BBC Pakistan country profile

Here's a fun game to test geography and vocabulary skills for low or intermediate level learners.

Why not get your learners to play the game in pairs and then compare scores with the rest of the class? Remember you can put this link into your Web Links area and send it to your class before the lesson. Your learners can then access it easily from their own Web Links in their MEC study area.

For follow-up activities why not try the following MEC resources:

Web Project: Heathrow Airport (level 2)

Language Exercise: Plans: Future with going to (level 1)

Listening activity: Breakfast all over the world (level 2)

Listening activity: In another country (level 2)

Vocabulary activity: What language do they speak? (level 1)

You can also access more games and interactive maps of the world in the MEC dictionary. You'll find more ideas for using the dictionary here.

Since the first release of the Macmillan English Campus in 2003, we've been committed to expanding and updating the content available. In order to improve the design, add new features and allow us to develop new kinds of teaching material, we've just launched a new edition, which is now being rolled out to all our customers.

New features in the Macmillan English Campus include:

• Improved navigation - allowing users to find their way around with greater ease

• A new, updated look - with an improved design and more user-friendly interface

• Customization tools - letting users choose the graphic 'skin' they want and allowing institutions to include their logo on every page of the English Campus, in place of the MEC logo

• Improved user and course management - making administration of the English Campus much simpler

• More detailed usage statistics for institutions - allowing you to see how often your students are accessing the Campus and how they are progressing

Alongside this upgrade, we remain committed to continuing to publish fantastic new types of content in the future. Coming up next year:

• Test Compiler: over 600 new exercises across all levels available to teachers and administrators within MEC, allowing them to build tests and publish them to their students

• English for Academic Purposes content: a new flexible bank of EAP resources. This material will support both academic language, in the form of grammar and vocabulary, and essential study skills. It will also provide an introduction to life at an English-speaking university.

Africa becoming more mobile

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about improving access to mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa and the impact this could have on these African countries. Go to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen to find out more.

You can get students to find out about the following organizations mentioned in the news item by going to their websites:

The GSM Association

Connect Africa

Have you ever wondered where in the world other teachers using MEC and connect2mec readers are based?

Well now you can see for yourself with our new thumbnail map from ClustrMaps. Simply click on the map below to see the distribution of visitors to connect2mec.

The map will be updated daily from today, so as time goes by you will start to see where your fellow readers are logging in from.

If you host a blog yourself and would like to add a thumbnail map on your own webpage, simply register for free and you will be emailed a few lines of HTML script to add to your webpage. It’s that easy!

We’ve got some great new pronunciation material on onestopenglish this month, including a brand new series of articles and activities by Adrian Tennant. The first article explains why it's so important to teach pronunciation and the additional activities focus on the difference between two phonemes. The audio to accompany this series can also be received as a podcast.

Continuing with the pronunciation theme, we’re offering all Staff Room members a 50% discount on Adrian Underhill’s essential guide to teaching pronunciation, Sound Foundations. We’ve also published an article by Alex Case on approaching pronunciation with Business English students.

Adrian Doff has launched his new ‘Business tasks’ series with an introductory article and lesson plan designed to help students talk about their work experience. And, as if that wasn't enough, Lynda Ross has sent us another update on her experience as a volunteer teacher in Cambodia while Anila Scott-Monkhouse is this month's lesson share winner with a creative lesson on Fantasy creatures.

Last month we asked our users to vote for their favourite photo from a shortlist of entries in the Staff Room photography competition. We had a record number of votes in what proved to be our most dramatic poll to date and, although it was extremely close between three of the photos, a clear winner eventually emerged.

We also hope that you’re keeping up with the onestopenglish soap opera, The Road Less Travelled. In Episode 4 Katie broke the news to Mark that she would be leaving to visit her cousin in California. We'll be publishing Episode 5 this week so don’t forget to listen.

Finally, in a few weeks time, onestopenglish author Jamie Keddie will be speaking at TESOL France's Annual Colloquium. This year the event is devoted entirely to the teaching of spoken communication in all its forms and Jamie will be running a workshop on using corpora in the classroom. He will consider how user-friendly corpora such as Internet search engines, the iTunes music store, online film scripts and even your own hotmail account can be used to aid language learning.

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! webeditor@macmillan.com

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about the increase in obesity in Britain.  Go to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen to find out why there is such a problem.

You can get students to find out more about obesity in Britain by directing them to the websites of the following organizations mentioned in the news item:

International Obesity Taskforce

National Obesity Forum

On 6th November we held the fifth MEC clinic. Vilson Coimbra of CISP, São Paulo, Brazil presented his ideas for integrating Campus activities into your lesson plan.

Vilson Coimbra

Click on the links below to see a downloadable PDF of Vilson's clinic presentation:

Integrating Campus activities into your lesson plan.pdf (871.92 KB) 

Vilson has been working with Campus for over three years and was able to provide some really useful examples of how to use MEC in class. At CISP Campus is used as part of the general curriculum and also for remedial work and distance courses. They previously used Campus with data projectors for class work but they have now successfully moved on to interactive whiteboards for all their MEC classroom activities. You can find out more about Vilson and CISP by clicking here and here.

The clinic participants were:

Marc Pillich-Wright - EAQUALS, Romania

Katia Lotte - FL&C, France

Sandra Brady - FL&C, France  

Karen Thompson - FL&C, France

Astrid Krake - VHS, Germany

Donna Liersch - VHS, Germany

Thank you very much to Vilson and everyone who took part. Don't hesitate to contact us with your questions and comments.

November word games

The MEC word games for November are available now!

This month's Witch's Pot topics are 'places in or around the house' (Easy), 'camping' (Average) and 'adjectives describing build' (Difficult).

The Swamp Disaster topics are 'words related to shopping' (Easy), 'words related to money' (Average) and 'materials' (Difficult).

The Wordsearch topics are 'office items' (Easy), 'travelling by plane' (Average) and 'words meaning '"miserable"' (Difficult).

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

Visit the Word Games area to find them all.

India outsources outsourcing

This week's news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about Indian technology companies setting up global networks of offices to offer services to multinational companies. Go to the Headline News section on your Work Area screen to find out why they are doing this.

Infosys, Wipro and Tata are three major software and technology companies in India. You may wish to ask your students to look at the following websites for more information.

Infosys

Wipro

Tata

On 29th October we held the fourth MEC clinic. Simone Sucupira of CISP, Campinas, Brazil presented her ideas on using MEC for distance learning.

Simone Sucupira

Click on the links below to see Simone's ideas for using MEC for distance learning:

1. A downloadable PDF of Simone's clinic presentation: MEC for distance learning.ppt (3.87 MB)

2. Simone’s example of a study guide for low level students. This covers the Present Simple and telling the time using MEC Listening and Vocabulary Activities, plus extra MEC Grammar Reference Units and Listening Activities for further practice: STUDY GUIDE.doc (490.5 KB) 

3. Simone’s example of a discussion guide for advanced level students. This uses a MEC News Item and a MEC listening activity: CAMPUS DISCUSSION GUIDE.doc (30.5 KB)

By using online resources alongside her own worksheets Simone has created some really useful examples of distance learning lessons with MEC. You are very welcome to download these and adapt them for your own students.

The clinic participants were:

Olga Nikulina - Talisman, Russia

Natalya Sorokina - Talisman, Russia

Anna Sheshenina - Talisman, Russia

Ekaterina Savitcheva - Talisman, Russia

Thank you very much to Simone and everyone who took part. Don't hesitate to contact us with your questions and comments.

Our next clinic will be held on Tuesday November 6th 2007 at 11.00 GMT.

Presenter: Vilson Coimbra, CISP, Brazil

Subject: Integrating Campus activities into your lesson plan

If you are interested in attending this event or you require any further information, please let us know through the contact us section of this site or by emailing s.earnshaw@macmillan.com.

New CEF course pathways now available!

We are delighted to announce the publication of five new courses built to correspond to the levels of the Common European Framework (CEF) as well as 100 additional examination resources.

The CEF is recognized as a standard framework for language teaching around the world. Five new courses have been published to the English Campus, at levels A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. These will make it much easier for new and existing users to align English Campus content with their existing language programmes, by providing a truly global basis for comparison.

British English users can also access six new courses structured to correspond to the Macmillan Inside Out and New Inside Out coursebook series. These join the existing In Company courses.

100 new exam preparation exercises for the Cambridge suite of examinations are now also available.

Combined with the existing database of 300 exam exercises, the Macmillan English Campus now offers an even more comprehensive resource for students working towards the BEC, CAE, CPE, FCE, KET and PET qualifications.

This new update brings the number of resources available within the English Campus to over 3,000.