Would you like to become an ELT materials writer?

There are so many talented teachers who create materials for their students each day and never have the opportunity to get them published.

 Perhaps this is you.

• Would you like to develop your career as an ELT writer?
• Would you like to generate an income from the materials you produce?
• Do you enjoy creating materials for your students?
• Do you write articles for a blog that you would like to put into a book?
• Do you create teacher development sessions that other teachers could use?
• Do you like creating your own stories or games for students?
• Do you have an idea for a teacher development book?
• Do you have an idea for materials that don’t fit within the usual ELT paper-based niche?
• Would you like some feedback and help with your ideas?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, please sign up here to keep in touch with me about a new opportunity that I’ll be launching soon.

• Sign Up

Over the last few months, I have been developing a plan to expand PeacheyPublications Ltd and turn it from my personal hobby into a disruptive digital publishing company by raising funds through Patreon.

Part of the plan is to involve more writers and develop and help them grow and become part of the company as the company grows.

What’s in it for you?

• If you sign up to become a writer you’ll get editorial guidance and help to develop your ideas into publishable products.
• Once your materials are ready we’ll do all the design and prepare the materials for publication on our platform.
• Once your materials are published we will market them to our customers and help build up sales.
• When the materials sell you’ll receive 50% in royalties.
• We will also enable you to market the materials independently to receive 75% royalties.

Initially, we are looking for 10 - 20 writers to work with. You don’t have to be a previously published writer. This is open to anyone who has an idea for a lesson, activity, book, game or story.

Why us?

• We can get your work published within weeks rather than years.
• We give you editorial support based on more than 25 years experience in ELT.
• We will market your materials for you through our networks and customer list.
• We help you develop your ideas.
• We look after design and make the materials look professional.
• Using our platform you can generate extra income by marketing your materials yourself and by helping to sell materials from our other writers.
• We will handle the VAT charges

Once again, if you are interested please sign up here

We’ll let you know when we launch.

Find out more about PeacheyPublications

Best

Nik Peachey 

What's new about Lessons in Digital Literacy

Over the last few months, I have been revising and redesigning the series of lesson plans I first published in 2016. These lesson plans help to develop students linguistic and digital skills as well as their critical thinking by introducing them to a range of topics and information-rich graphics.

What's New about the Lessons in Digital Literacy?


I've incorporated a number of new features into the redesigned lesson plans.

The biggest change is that I have created digital versions for both teachers and students.

Example: Studying How to Study

These presentations have been created using a technology called html5 which means that they will work in the browser in pretty much any device, including mobile phones, iPads and other tablets.

In order to make it easier for both teachers and students to access the infographic for the lesson, I've added QR codes, so that students can either scan them onto a mobile phone from the teacher's copy or if they are using their own version of the student materials, they can just click on it and the infographic will open and they can scroll up and down it.

Another feature that these digital materials include is a marker for annotating over the presentation. This is easy to access on both the teacher and student copies and can be opened and closed along with the annotation.

Where writing activities are suggested I've also created a link to an external notepad which students can use and then publish their work directly to the internet.

If your students don't have access to digital devices in the classroom you can still use these lessons as there is a PDF version of the students' version provided.


The underlying structure of each lesson looks a little like this.

As you can see I try to work from what students already know and believe, introduce new information to them, see how they respond to the information and then get them to examine and evaluate the information more deeply. The final part of each lesson helps students to synergise the information and incorporate it back into their belief system.

All of the lesson plans include detailed step by step instructions and guidance for teachers, as well as answer keys.

Although each plan contains eight to ten tasks and about 2 hours worth of material, they don't have to be completed in one lesson and some of the evaluation tasks used selectively.

 You can download all of these lesson plans and materials from: PeacheyPublications

I hope you enjoy themand sign up to my customer list to be informated when new materials become available and to get customer disocunts.

Related links:

• Creating illustrations and infographics for ELT tasks
• Exploiting Infographics for ELT
• Digital Video - A manual for language teachers
• Managing the digital classroom - Using a backchannel
• Managing the digital classroom - Getting students' attention
• 20 + Things you can do with QR codes in your school
• Brainstorming and polling with AnswerGarden

Best

Nik Peachey

9 Generic activities for exploiting infographics

This post has been revised and moved to my new blog at: PeacheyPublications.com

Kind regards

 

Nik Peachey

Online Video: As Knowledge Resource

Since the birth of YouTube, the web has seen huge growth in the availability and quality of user generated online video. With just a simple webcam, or a digital camera or camcorder it is now possible for teachers and students to create and share their knowledge and experience of a vast range of topics. It's also possible for them to access a global pool of knowledge and experience from cultures all over the world.

YouTube
YouTube was originally set up as an online dating site, but has become one of the biggest user created video libraries in the world. With quite literally millions of video clips, it is a fantastic resource for materials and information. You can find anything there. One of the biggest problems though is that you can find anything there!!!

Apart from being a place to find and store your own videos, YouTube also offers some editing features; You can add annotations, change the sound track and also create your own private or public channel.

• Read an article on Using Videos from YouTube
• Watch a video showing How to embed video from YouTube into web pages
• Download instructions as PDF
• I created my own channel to share my educational videos. Nik Peachey

TeacherTube
In an attempt to make video sharing safer for teachers, students and educational establishments, Teacher Tube was created. This is a site where any teacher can create their own account and upload their own videos. It’s also a great place to find educational videos for teacher development.
If you create your own channel and add the video you want to use with your students, you can choose to keep it private, so that only people you invite can see the videos.
TeacherTube has the advantage that you can also upload support materials, worksheet and presentations for each video that your students or trainee teachers can download.

• This is my TeacherTube channel where I share the video materials that I create.
• Here you can find a review of TeacherTube with more detailed information and some recommended videos to watch to help you use it.

Video sharing for young learners
Using online video with young learners can be difficult, but Totlol can really help you. The content for the site is selected by educators especially for use in education with young learners. The community of registered users ensures that only suitable and useful videos are included and makes sure the service isn’t abused. This is also a great site to recommend to parents who what to help their children study.
Read this article to find out more: Video sharing for young learners

Downloading Online Video
Because of the many problems associated with using online video sharing resources, it can be really useful to download the clip to your own computer. This can help you in a number of ways:
It stops your students wandering around sites and finding unsuitable materials

• You don’t need to worry about the Internet connection
• You don’t need to worry that the clip may get moved
• You can build the videos into other materials
• You can edit the videos

There are a number of online converters which enable you to copy in the link to a Youtube video, choose a suitable format and then download it to your computer hard drive. One reliable one is http://vixy.net/


Another useful tool for this is idesktop.tv
You can use idesktopTV to search for videos across a wide range of video sharing platforms. You can then either email a link to someone or download the video in a range of different formats:


Here you can read a more in depth review of idesktop TV: Downloading Online video

Video Clips for Teaching English
Creating your own video material is great, but having someone do it for you is even better. Jamie Keddie runs a great site with regularly published Lesson plans based on video clips from YouTube.
Read more about Video Clips for teaching English

I hope this posting has given you some insight into the wealth of what's available and how to overcome some of the problems involved in exploiting these materials.

Related links:

• Find out about free video editing software
• YouTube for IWBs with PicLens
• Free Educational TV Channels
• Open source video animation
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Lesson plan Top 10 Cartoons for Children’s Rights
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Update on the Education Clip Library

Best

Nik Peachey