A good teacher: someone who...

To provide an example of what podcasting involves, in the session on our CELTA course last week, you had to finish the phrase "A good teacher is someone who..."



In order to put (or "embed") the mp3 file here, I've first uploaded the file on to Divshare.com, which has then provided me with the code which I've pasted into a new post here on the blog. It gives me 5GB of (free) storage space for media files.

I've used other alternatives to Divshare in the past, am just slightly worried about the risk of storing them there but -- because it's so easy to use -- like it a lot, and am grateful to Merce Barrull, who did a course with me in July, for suggesting it.

Blogging a trip abroad

Here's an interesting use of a blog that a colleague, Maribel Husillos, has been writing [some content in Spanish].

I'd always suggest that, to my mind, the best possible use of a blog would be to have the learners write it (which Maribel's learners have in fact done to a considerable extent).

However, as Maribel has been the group leader on a trip to Belfast, staying at Rockport School with IH Belfast, the real audience has been not the learners but their parents, as she's been using the blog to provide information on what they've been up to (and to demonstrate how much their English has improved!).

For a teacher taking a party of kids abroad there are lots of things you could do with a blog before and after, as well as during the trip itself -- to publish the results of a webquest about their destination, to give one example.