Here are 13 lessons I’ve made over the years your students might like -

1. 100 questions for Santa (role play) and other activities.

2. A listening lesson with 9 pages of printable worksheets on vocabulary and other skills (plus online quizzes)

3. Printable discussion worksheet on Xmas

From ESL Holidays.com:

4. A 13-page lesson with mp3 and online quizzes on Christmas Eve

5. A 13-page lesson with mp3 and online quizzes on Christmas Day

6. A 13-page lesson with mp3 and online quizzes on Boxing Day

 Various news lessons for pre-intermediate students:

7. North-South Korea tensions over Christmas trees

8. Brits Angry at Xmas Reindeer Steaks

9. 10-Metre Chocolate Christmas Tree on Offer

10. Traffic Safety for Christmas Reindeer

News lessons for intermediate (plus) students:

11. We Wish You A Merry Something, America

12. Bratislava Xmas Market Sees Bumper Crowds

13. Cold Weather Brings Xmas Chaos to Europe

Enjoy

A few ideas following the momentous events in Egypt on Feb 11

1. Which of these are most important in Egypt’s history? Rank them.

Tutankhamun’s death  /  the building of the Pyramids / Independence from British rule  /  The construction of the Suez Canal / The end of King Farouk’s monarchy / The signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel  /  February 11, 2011

2. Discuss what you saw of Egyptians in their pro-democracy protests using each of these words:

peaceful  /  proud  /  strong  /  dignified  /  brotherly  /  sisterly  /  hopeful  /  power of the people / pro-democracy  /  dignified / revolutionary  /  sacrifice  /  martyr  /  belief  /  victorious

3. What part did these play?

Twitter  /  Egypt’s Army  /  Al Jazeera TV and other global networks  /  Egypt’s people  /  Egyptian state TV  /  Egypt’s police /  Muhamed Elbaradei  / Wael Ghonim

4. Amazing tweets from my PLN – all within an hour of Mubarak’s resignation. Discuss:

• Hosni Dumpty sat on the wall, Hosni Dumpty had a great fall. All the Saudi King’s horses and Hillary’s men couldn’t put Hosni together again
• Egyptian opposition figure Mohd ElBaradei: ‘This is the greatest dayof my life. The country has been liberated’
• Bravo Egypt, bravo!!!!!!!!! Keep yourselves safe and in peace. Celebrate in peace!!!!!!!!!
• The people of Egypt are heroes to all the world. We are humbled by your perseverance.
• You made every Arab very proud today. Congratulation for all Egyptians FREEDOM
• Persistency, courage, one goal and a brave heart = #Egypt! Bravo, bravo, bravo!!!!!!!!
• Now, “Western” media and politicians, try and paint a negative picture of Arabs if you can.
• Those were Muslims peacefully persevering for more democracy. Worth remembering before stereotyping as a group.
• Lets not forget those who fell during the past 18 days. This victory, as sweet as it is, is dedicated to you
• Just imagine if #Iraqis were given the chance to bring about their own revolution
• Uninstalling dictator COMPLETE – installing now: egypt 2.0: █░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
• Ghandi wld’ve been proud of Egyptian non-violent pro-democracy demos
• Wikipedia article on #Mubarak already edited saying he WAS the president of Egypt!
• This revolution couldn’t have happened to better people. Patient, peaceful, good-humored, resilient, imaginative.
• celebrations erupt in Jordan for the egyptian victory <- They’re seeing their future
• The Egyptian people changed history without guns and with honor
• The power of people is proven today- the power of non-violence is shown today- The way to go oppressed nations
• Two words: Dream big. The world just had a masterclass in the art of stepping past yesterday, and creating the future
• On Feb 11 1990, Mandela was released from jail after 27 yrs Now, Egyptian people are free after 30 years of dictatorship. 2/11
• The flag in my hand and off to the street to celebrate with my people… YAAAAY!
• Dancing at #Egyptian embassy London as Mubarak resigns
• Wael Ghonim on CNN: “If you want to liberate a country, give them the Internet.”
• Website of the year – http://ismubarakstillpresident.com/

A few ideas for a lesson on this story:

1. Here is a Wordle containing all of the words in a recent BBC interview. Talk with your partner(s) about what you think the story is about. Share your ideas with other students.

2. What would make you join a street demonstration? Rank these, putting the demo you’d most join at the top. Share your rankings with your partner(s).

• education cuts
• rise in tuition fees
• hospital closures
• food shortages
• tax increases
• your country going to war
• loss of religious freedom
• nuclear power plant coming to your town

3. Jody McIntyre, a 20-year-old student with cerebral palsy, attended a demonstration in London against the recent increase in student tuition fees. Pictures appeared on TV showing police officers pulling him out of his wheelchair and dragging him across the road.
He was interviewed on the BBC. The interviewer received criticism for his line of questioning that suggested Jody was a threat to dozens of armed police officers.
Here are some of the questions the BBC interviewer asked Jody McIntrye. In the right column, write down some notes on how you think Jody answered. Talk about them with your partner.

4. Look at the video of the news story. The tapescript is below if students want to follow it. Listen to see if your notes are similar to what Jody said.

Interview tapescript (Word doc)

5. Post-listening discussion:

1. What did you think of Jody’s answers?
2. What did you think of the interviewer’s questions?
3. What three adjectives best describe Jody? Why?
4. What three adjectives best describe the interviewer? Why
5. If Jody and the interviewer met again in private, what do you think they’d say to each other?

6. Role play question number 5.

My 10 Reasons

I never understand why people think TEFL isn’t a career, or even a “real job”. There are other jobs I’d prefer to do. Playing Premier League football, being a top Hollywood actor or a rock superstar would be three. However, when I was a little’un, I had two left feet, was painfully shy and had an atrocious voice. So I had to get a real job… in a bank. Was bored, so I got a degree (in accountancy) and an even more real job (as an accountant) and became even more bored. And then I found a real career – Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language.

So in no particular order – why TEFL has been so great:

1. Cool people
I’ve met thousands of cool, weird, wonderful, interesting and brilliant people – students and teachers. I can’t imagine another career in which you work so closely with people from all over the world and learn so much about them and their cultures. TEFL teachers and students are pretty cool people in so many ways. The number of cool people I know has exploded since I joined Twitter. My PLN is the coolest online community ever.

2. Creativity
From the first few lessons I taught on my CTEFLA, I’ve loved making lessons. It has never been a chore. I’ve always loved making materials (the ones with coloured paper, scissors and glue) that get students talking. More recently, my creativity has included making materials with a computer and putting things online. There are few jobs where what you do at work spills over to a hobby at home.

3. Acting aspirations
Never quite making it to Hollywood, my thespian desires seem to have been fulfilled in the classroom. It is one place where my shyness goes into turbo-charged reverse. I love acting, being a clown and doing whatever ridiculous things I can think of to explain something or make someone laugh. It’s funny how often my students tell me I should have been an actor.

4. Confidence
When one of my best friends did his CTEFLA in the late 1980s, I envied him the chances he’d have to use it and travel, but thought I could never stand in front of a group of people and talk. I was terrified of public speaking. Events led me to travel and take over someone’s class for 10 weeks in Thailand and I loved it. I knew I could stand in front of students without fear. Six years later, I was invited to be a national teacher trainer for the school I worked at in Japan. Terrified at the thought, I did it. Never, ever been so nervous. I conducted 12 two-day workshops and really enjoyed it. Eleven years after that (in 2008) I did what I thought I would never, ever be able to do – present at an international conference. It went well and I’ve done a few more since. All this talking to EFL students and teachers has been amazing for my confidence.

5. I’ve learnt a lot of… good stuff
When I was an accountant, I don’t think I learnt a lot of… good stuff. My job consisted of drafting spreadsheets full of numbers all day, or spending hours at a company looking for invoices and receipts, or reading financial reports. The great thing about TEFL is that you have to learn a lot of… good stuff. The content you take into class is about everything and anything in the world. I now spend my days researching things on the Internet to make lessons for students and learning about… good stuff about the world, language, people, technology, and penguins.

6. July and August
Teaching in schools and colleges gives you eight weeks’ holiday in the summer. Nuff said.

7. My writing
I’ve noticed a considerable improvement in the quality of my writing since becoming a teacher. Studying for a Master’s really made me focus on being succinct, clear, persuasive and economical with words. Creating over 10,000 lessons for students has made me focus on keeping language simple. I’m happy I’m a better writer. This probably wouldn’t have happened had I not entered TEFL.

8. Travel and living in other countries
TEFL and travel go together. I discovered TEFL while I was travelling and decided it was a great way to travel forever. I have now spent over 20 years away from England, having lived in Japan for 13 years, the UAE for five and 40+ other countries for shorter durations. I’m happy I have a career that allows me the freedom to pick and choose the country in which I wish to live.

9. Money
OK, it’s not the most lucrative profession in the world, but I think I’ve been lucky job-wise in my TEFL career. I have always managed to get positions that paid well.

10. Technology
I love using technology in my job – either to create lessons or use it in the classroom. I never thought I would say this in 1996 when a student asked me if he could use the school’s new Apple computer, and I couldn’t turn it on for him. How was I to know the On button was on the keyboard?!?!? Or when, a few weeks later, I was paranoid my first nervously saved Word doc would be obliterated forever after my first attempt at “Save As”. Today, creating websites is my hobby; I give workshops to colleagues demonstrating online teaching tools. I think TEFL is a fantastic career to get to learn about, use and experiment with some of the coolest technology on the planet.

If you have time, perhaps you could share some of your reasons why this profession is great

11. OK… I said 10 but then these came along:

http://edublogawards.com/

I’m astounded at both of these. Perhaps the second one might be a little more warranted 15 years from now after I’ve made another 20 websites

Life in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE

Camels crossing

This post picks up from where I left off in posts two, three and four. They were the story of how I lost my life savings on a bright idea called BreakingNewsEnglish.com, the horror of a dream vanishing, and saying sayonara to my home in Japan and salam-alaykum to the UAE.

So, here goes part four of the BreakingNewsEnglish-and-beyond story.

My wife, children (aged 4 and 2) and I arrived in Dubai Airport at midnight in January 2006. All we owned in the world was what was on the baggage trolley – four suitcases and carry-on luggage. We looked for the man with the piece of paper with my name on it amid the hundreds of other people from every corner of the globe looking for men with the piece of paper with their name on it. We found him. He took us to a minibus and left Dubai and drove into the eerily dark desert.

Our destination was Ras Al Khaimah – a small city on the Arabian Sea 90 minutes north of Dubai. The man was the driver of my new workplace. He drove us to a nice hotel. The college put us up there for five days while we oriented to our new city and bought some supplies ready to move into our college-provided villa.

After breakfast the next morning, the lovely college HR officer met us. She gave me money to see us through our first week, and a furniture allowance to set up our home. We were amazed at how much was in the envelope. She then took us to open up a bank account and get connected with mobile phones and the Internet. We felt we were now safe.

Our huge villa had a swimming pool with an equally huge car-port roof – year-round swimming. Our kitchen was big enough for our three second-hand dining room tables (one for breakfast, one for the kids’ artistic adventures, and one for entertaining).  It felt like we were living in a palace – the large chandeliers hanging from our reception room and living room added to the sense of palacialitiness (don’t go looking that word up).

We lived a stone’s throw from the Arabian Sea, a 10-minute drive to the most special, spectacular desert and 20 minutes from the unforgettable Hajar Mountains. We went camping in the desert, took dhow rides to see pods of dolphins swim alongside us, four-wheel-drove in the mountains and dry river beds, frequently visited Dubai to have our senses assaulted, ate delicious Indian and Pakistani food several times a week, ate delicious Lebanese food several times a week, ate more delicious Indian and Pakistani food, and much more.

Hajar Mountains

I still really missed Japan.

Work was a huge challenge that totally changed me as a teacher. I did so much. I became team leader of my department; I wrote exams; I was responsible for organizing, administering and invigilating exams for 170 students; I presented at a conference for the first time; I joined committees, I helped organize a conference; I learnt all about course management systems; and best of all, I learnt absolutely loads about educational technology and totally loved it.

My colleagues were inspiring. I had never worked with so many highly qualified, experienced and dedicated teachers. The college director once visited my class and told the students they were lucky to have the best teachers in the world teaching them. I believed him.

But (1) … all this newness and learning and challenge nearly meant the end of my site BreakingNewsEnglish.com. I felt I couldn’t keep it going and decided to break free from it. For three months in 2006, I cast it aside. It had been a worthwhile and interesting adventure.

But (2) … during my summer break I missed it and started making lessons again. I couldn’t just let it go. But I did for a second time half-way through my second semester .  I knew this time it would be for good.

But (3) … then I got a mail from nowhere. A teacher in Slovakia sent me a mail. He told me he would write the lessons for me, which he did for several months in late 2006. His efforts spurred me for a third time to write again for my site and I haven’t stopped since then. He enjoyed helping me so much he set up his own site, NewsFlashEnglish.com.

We spent two years in Ras Al Khaimah before deciding to move on. We weren’t happy with the quality of our children’s education. I asked for and got a transfer to the capital, Abu Dhabi. I told my college director that I’d learnt more in two years at the college than I had in the previous 13 years of my career.

Camel train

I had also paid off the sizeable negative equity on my house in Japan and things looked a lot rosier than they had for years. The move to the UAE was a good one.

We arrived in the big city in January 2008. My time in Abu Dhabi has seen my teaching, learning, interest in online materials, and ambitions take on higher heights, and this will be the subject of my next post.

So how do we use Wallwisher with students?

1. Look at my explanatory Wall.

2. Look at the 105 ideas below.

For more info on how to set up your own Wallwisher, look at this post from Nik Peachey.

The 105 Ideas

Getting students interested

1. Use what’s on the Wallwisher.com Home Page to introduce vocabulary.
2. Create an activity for students to discuss the possible advantages of Wallwisher.
3. Get them to “test” Wallwisher without teacher help and then write a critique of it and its ease of use.
4. Students use the language in the black, green, purple and blue boxes on the Wallwisher home page to create a review or advertising spiel on the website.
5. Students discuss the concepts in those boxes in relation to their own learning or digital life.
6. Discussion over the pros and cons of online stickies versus real stickies (the ones you hold with your hands and stick to things). This could lead to a writing activity.

As a real notice board (all on different walls)

1. Orientation for students new to a course.
2. Put up the class and school rules.
3. Make a class profile – one sticky for each student with a pic and personal info.
4. Use a wall as a class or school calendar with stickies for different events. These can be revisited once they’ve past and updated to make a class journal.
5. Make a wall for the class timetable.
6. Days of the week / Months of the year (at the beginning of class).
7. Notify our students or parents of homework assignments and keep them up to date with what’s happening in class.
8. End-of-semester “best wishes” wall – students sign each others.
9. Birthday wishes, get well messages, messages of congratulations or farewell. (See Marisa Constantinides’ wall for a lovely example.

As a resource sharer – each sticky opens to a new site / video / image

1. Exam practice sites.
2. Grammar practice sites.
3. Games.
4. Project sites – students or teacher posts ideas for the project.
5. Exam stress and study tips.

Video

1. Create video tasks for students to post responses to.
2. Post YouTube / TeacherTube videos for students to comment on.
3. Students post their own (home) videos and create mini explanations with different posts.
4. News videos from the Internet – post two on the same news story and get students to post differences between them.
5. Music videos – students post the lyrics to the song (great for listening).
6. Movie trailers – get a Wall discussion going on the movie.
7. Movie dialogues – Post a clip from a movie and get students to write out the script.
8. Video script – students post ideas, dialogue, storylines for a class video.

Web quests

1. Post different links on different stickies for students to visit, look at and do some writing on / do a project on. Great for exposing students to different media.
2. Web quests – Type in each sticky  ‘find the answer to this / find a picture of… and paste the URL in the box.

Student walls

1. Give students a theme and get them to create their own walls based around that theme.
2. Get students to create fan walls based around a favourite band or celebrity.
3. Me – Students make an ongoing profile – they can allow other students to add stickies to ask questions, add comments, make suggestions, etc.
4. Students make a Wall showing their lifestory.
5. Students make a Wall predicting their life from now.

Grammar

1. Use images to get students to practicing different tenses and structures.
2. Get students to post what they know about different verb tenses or grammar points.
3. Sentence starters – Put the starter in the title of the Wall; students have to finish them by posting stickies.
4. Make a wall for each grammar point introduced in class – include websites with examples of the grammar, student-created examples, screenshots of concordances, YouTube videos explaining the grammar. Students will have a good revision source when exams come.
5. Teacher uses stickies as word magnets for students to move into the correct order.
6. Grammar correction – Teacher posts student errors as stickies; students have to post corrections. This can be revisited over several days in students’ own time. It’s also good for teamwork – how many students on the same team posted the corrected versions?.
7. Present perfect for life experiences – Teacher creates a “passport” using stickies of all the countries he/she has visited. Used to practice present perfect (she has been to…) and past simple (she went to X in 19XX). Also used for any other life experience.
8. Comparatives and superlatives – Students post examples of these based on images, text, audio or video in stickies.

Speaking

1. Post debates – put different arguments on different stickers for students to look at and respond to orally.
2. Strange pictures – post strange images in stickies for students to talk about.
3. Role plays – post different roles on different stickies – these become cues for the role plays.
4. Agony aunts and uncles – Post stickies that ask for advice. Students discuss the advice to give.
5. Talk for 60 seconds about… The teacher (or students) post images or videos in stickies for students to talk about for a minute.
6. Creating stories – put different, unrelated  images in different stickies. Students have to create a story relating them. They cold also write the story down.

Brainstorming

1. Can be used to elicit things students might not want to express in front of the class – they can post anonymously.
2. Brainstorming writing topics – Add a comment to each later.
3. Brainstorm ideas for what to do in tomorrow’s class / that ten minutes last thing on a Friday / as the next project…
4. “Five things each please” – Wallwisher means all students can have time to contribute five things each (or whatever number the teacher decides) to a brainstorming session. This could take a day or two and means quieter students contribute equally.
5. Picture ideas – Students could post images instead of words as part of the brainstorming session.

Feedback

1. Teacher creates different walls for feedback on a lesson, course, idea, project, coursebook, evaluations of his/her teaching style… Leaving the wall up for a semester means students can add to it at will.
2. Teacher can give feedback on the students – praise great behavior of highlight that which is not so great.
3. Instant voting – Teacher can get instantaneous and anonymous feedback by asking students to post their opinion on a topic / class decision…
4. Polls – Wallwisher is a great way of polling opinions.
5. Teacher feedback – if the students have their own walls, the teacher can post feedback on each student’s wall.

Evaluations and Reviews

1. Website evaluation – students leave stickies on their fave sites – learning or otherwise.
2. Book reviews – create a special wall for books.
3. Movie reviews – students put in trailers.
4. Restaurant / club / entertainment guide to the local town / city …

School life – A separate wall for the following

1. Open day wall.
2. The school football team – news and results.
3. Exhibitions.
4. School trips.

Classroom management

1. Use a wall to get ideas or to listen to everyone – great for allowing quieter, more shy students to voice their thoughts and opinions.
2. Put the class seating arrangement on it. This is a great way to change the seating quickly – students simply look at where / how you’ve moved them
3. Lesson aims – post them on the wall of that day / lesson.
4. Assigning different groups different tasks – each group looks at the sticky that relates to them.
5. Important information – the teacher can announce important information via Wallwisher. It works well if the teacher relays the information in front of the students, sticky by sticky – should keep students’ attention.

Writing

1. Wallwisher is good for lower level students to focus on writing a short sentence of two with greater accuracy (due to the character count). The teacher could ask them to write about anything – their weekend, hopes, likes…
2. Stickies for sentences (introduction, topic sentence, arguments, conclusion, etc.) Breaking the writing up like this makes it seem less like writing. The teacher can move the different parts around or add bits so all the stickies in a row make a better paragraph.
3. Simplified process writing – the teacher comments on the short sentences students write.
4. Images – students write about images the teacher posts on the wall.
5. Memos – Students use stickies for what they are.
6. Wish lists – Students write their wishes for class, life, hobbies… Other students can comment on these.
7. Note-taking – students write down information they need for a trip, project etc. in note form.
8. Essay plans – students write down their essay ideas on stickies. The teacher can choose the best plans to use as models of good practice.
9. Poetry – students write short poems. Good for haiku.
10. Dictation – the teacher posts audio in stickies for students to write down as a dictation.

Storytelling

1. Collaborative story writing – students take it in turns to add the next sticky to the story.
2. Students plan a story via stickies.
3. The teacher posts a video that students use to tell the story – short cartoons are good for this.
4. Stickies are a good way of moving the students’ writing around and inserting new parts to the story.

Reading

1. In snippets – fun way to introduce a paragraph. Breaking the paragraph up into stickies means you can add online images or voiceovers to make it more interesting or easier to understand.
2. Signs practice – Exams like KET, PET and IELTS have students match signs and notices – Wallwisher is ideal for this.
3. Paragraph reconstruction – students put the sentences of a paragraph back in the correct order.

Vocabulary

1. Create a wall based on a vocabulary theme (food, environment, sports…). The teacher could fill the stickies with online images, videos, sounds, etc or the students could make their own to share with each other.
2. Matching – students match vocab items with definitions, pictures.
3. Students post unknown vocabulary on the wall from a class reading.
4. Library walls of idioms, phrasal verbs, synonyms…
5. Word Choice: post several “bland” words and have students list synonyms that would be more interesting or descriptive.

Journals

1. Students could create a wall they use as a semester journal – They could section off different parts of it for learning, activities, weekends, hobbies, friends etc. They could open their wall to their friends to comment on.
2. The teacher could create a semester wall and log the class adventures for a record for students to look at after they graduate. They could contribute along the way.

Quizzes

1. One sticky for each question. The quizzes can be based on images
2. Multiple choice.
3. Watch a video (a link in a sticky) and answer the questions in other stickies.
4. Questions on pictures and images.
5. Record quiz questions and stick the mp3 in a sticky.
6. Use fotobabble.com to ask questions about a picture. See the truly excellent blog post from Ian James.

Multimedia projects

1. Students make projects and fill their wall with links to video, pictures, music, websites, blogs, etc.

Matching activities

1. Matching activities – pictures to vocab / vocab to meaning / text or paragraph reconstruction…

As moveable magnets

1. Students move stickies around in ranking, ordering, matching, timeline… activities.

No buts; get techy

Two recent tweets on Twitter prompted me to write this post.

The first tweet was from Tom Whitby (@TomWhitby), an ever-campaigning and always-sensible advocate of educational reform who wisely tells us we ignore technology at our peril:

A powerful question and one that should rightly make a lot of educators a tad uncomfortable. We all need to understand that embracing technology is an important part of being a teacher. It’s easy.

Two questions sprang to mind upon reading Tom’s words:

1. How literate / illiterate am I?
2. How literate do we need to be?

How literate / illiterate am I?

I think I do OK. I blog, I have websites and I do techy stuff in the classroom. I make mp3 files and get my students to use Web 2.0 tools. For some reason, my colleagues think I’m techy. For a very understandable reason, I worry I’m nowhere near techy enough. I would imagine this is a feeling common to most educators, regardless of how techy they are or appear to be. I like looking at new online tools but I always feel daunted by how much stuff is out there. And it keeps on coming.

I still have that procrastinatory-because-this-will-be-time-consuming-and-frustrating feeling each time I try a new techy online tool. Not sure why because all of the techy stuff I like is incredibly intuitive to use. Software developers seem to be spoiling us in producing instruction-less tools that we can be pretty much competent with after the first time of using.

How literate do we need to be?

Before attempting to answer this question, a reminder. Most of us are already quite technologically literate. We are all dab hands at word processing tools, spreadsheets, e-mail applications, uploading and downloading stuff on YouTube, Flickr, Pirate Bay (for the naughty ones)… We have all embraced social networks. We can all make something and put it online.

Now to answer the question – As a minimum for ESL/EFL teachers, I think we need to be tech-literate enough to be able to use a few tools for each of the four skills. That’s not much to start with. Perhaps…

• Audacity for making mp3 files and editing audio for listening and speaking
• VoiceThead for speaking
• Digital storytelling tools for writing  (my favourite is Carnegie Library’s MyStoryteller.)
• Quizlet and Wallwisher for simple reading.

Ten “buts” that need to disappear

These have all entered my head over the past 16 years, since the time I didn’t know where the on button was on my school’s first Mac. They get in the way of my technological literacy, but shouldn’t. I’ve added just one piece of advice to each.

1.  But I don’t know where to start!
Here are two excellent lists of cool tools posted on Twitter this week. “Tools for the 21^st Century Teacher” from Michael Zimmer (@MZimmer557 on Twitter) and “A New Educational Paradigm” from David Deubelbeiss (@ddeubel on Twitter).

2.  But my students won’t be able to understand.
The second tweet I liked from Twitter this week, from DB (@Nunavut_Teacher on Twitter) answers this:

3.  But I can’t possibly keep up
Join Twitter. The greatest source of helpful and up-to-date professional development ever. You get cutting edge tools and developments  and wonderfully helpful people who will help you with them.

4.  But I’m not techy enough
If you can use e-mail, save a Word document and open a Facebook account, you can handle most Web 2.0 tools.

5.  But I don’t have time
Start with one tool – give yourself a month to be comfortable with it. That’s 12 tools in a year. Probably more than I know now.

6.  But I can’t use this in class
Check out the blogs – there are dozens of posts for each Web 2.0 tool giving excellent classroom ideas.

7.  But I teach English
And luckily, most of these tools cope with this language. And what’s more, require students to use it.

8.  But I can’t handle change
You handled e-mail, Word and Facebook.

9.  But I’m too busy
These tools will save you time. Make time to learn a few.

10.  But I’m too old
Mwahahahaha.

Get techy. No buts.