Ebaby! Blog

The Internet is necessary to do a lot of things. Being an active member of a national government isn’t one of them.

It has recently become news that McCain doesn’t use email. When questioned, a representative of his campaign responded, that the senator, “is aware of the Internet.”

Well, I should hope so. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t aware of the Internet, but I’m kind of surprised that there’s anyone in the US who doesn’t use it–let alone a senator and presidential candidate.

According to this article about increasing Internet penetration in China, only 71% of the US uses the Internet, so McCain is by no means alone. But what’s important here is that McCain might know English, baby! exists. Apparently his wife commonly logs on for him and directs him to things such as his daughter’s blog. So there’s a very small chance that she has directed him to our site. But, if we were to get on John McCain’s daughter’s blog, those chances would increase greatly. So I hereby pledge to do my best to get the attention of Meghan McCain and have English, baby! join the Internet in the category of things that John McCain is aware of. Who knows? Maybe I can even get her to create a profile here. Since McCain’s competitor, Barack Obama is leading him in polls of our members by 60%, he could use some help here, so maybe Meghan will step in. Stay tuned.

CNN Report on Internet use among US presidents and presidential candidates:

My first contact with Meghan’s blog:

“Hoe was Saturday? I hope you had a great wicked.” Well, those sentences are really confusing because they have some pretty BIG typos or spelling mistakes in them. They should read: “How was Saturday? I hope you had a great weekend.” It might be hard to even guess what the person really meant, but I am getting really good at it. I have begun teaching typing to my ESL students and those are some of their actual mistakes! That’s why typing can be so much fun in an ESL classroom.

My students seem to like working on the computers a lot and are generally excited to learn anything (with some exceptions). So we have been spending a good amount of time in the computer lab. They all have pretty low computer literacy, so starting with typing seemed logical.

At first, we practiced some basics. But then I got more creative, I had them make a man by typing with the text centered. Like this:

llllllllllll
0 0
j
v

I
wwwwwwww
ttttttttttttttttttttt
wwwwwwwww
ttt tttttttttttttt ttt
o wwwww o
ttttttt
wwww
oooooo
ooooooo
oooooooo
ooo ooo
ooo ooo
bbbb bbbb

We highlighted the man and changed the alignment to right. So he looked like this:

llllllllllll
0 0
j
v

I
wwwwwwww
ttttttttttttttttttttt
wwwwwwwww
ttt tttttttttttttt ttt
o wwwww o
ttttttt
wwww
oooooo
ooooooo
oooooooo
ooo ooo
ooo ooo
bbbb bbbb

One of the students said the man looked like he had fallen from a tall building (all smushed). It was funny. And everyone was relieved when we changed the alignment back to center and the man “came back alive.”

Now, this may seem like a silly waste of time, but when students write paragraphs we often ask them to use three different types of alignment. Their name and date are right aligned. The title of the paragraph is centered and the paragraph is left aligned. Spending just a little bit of time teaching this can make a real difference for students who aren’t familiar with computers. And my 16-21 year old students love the little bit of whimsy and creativity in this lesson.

I personally love teaching creative typing. This is just one of the fun activities I have done. But I need to figure out how to help them use spell check because wicked instead of weekend just isn’t good. Do you guys have any ideas?

A few days ago, the Chinese Olympic team unveiled their uniforms, much to the dismay of many Chinese bloggers. The new uniforms are being called old-fashioned, but I think they’re totally retro and look great!

In any case, it seems high time to unveil our uniforms. Check out John and myself modeling the logo track jersey with matching shorts and wrist and headbands. I took the new outfit for a test drive in downtown Portland recently for a video shoot and turned more than a few heads. I wonder how much these outfits will stand out on the streets of Beijing.

What would you do if your students always came thirty minutes late to class and never did their homework? Well, you might pass it off as cultural or time management problems. On the other hand, you might say, “Who cares why they are late! They should be punished!” I don’t often think about punishing students. I tend to empathize with them.

Most of my students work at least one full-time job and many of them work two jobs. Some of them work a night shift and a day shift. So I find it hard not be impressed by what they do. They are my inspiration. They work so hard and they normally manage to come to class three days a week for two and a half hours.

The problem is that class is four days a week for three hours! And despite how busy they are, I am responsible for teaching them all of the course material. So the other teacher and I decided to “punish” them for missing class. Two days a week, we instituted a half hour homework time after class that is mandatory for students who come late or don’t complete their homework.

The first two Homework Half-Hours went brilliantly. Even students, who weren’t required to stay, decided to stay and work on extra homework or help other students. The time was very productive and I thought they were all very motivated.

But maybe they were just motivated because they wanted to leave! Because last night (which would have been a class followed by the Homework Half-Hour), only three students came to class. All three of them had completed all of their homework and didn’t have to stay after. I can’t help but think that the other students did not want to get “punished” for not doing their work, so they decided to skip class. It was very depressing because we only want to make them successful. And we just aren’t sure how to do that if they are gone so much! I honestly feel like I got punished last night.

Looks like covering the Olympics from Beijing is turning out to be a challenging task, even for some of the biggest networks in the world. NBC, who spent $894 million for the rights to televise the games and will employ 2,900 people to make it happen, will be broadcasting some of its coverage from studios in New York.

Olympic fans have no reason to worry, however. All of Ebaby! TV’s coverage will be broadcast directly from the streets of Beijing and will show a rare look at the Olympics and the many interesting people involved.

Stay tuned for some of the most unique Olympic coverage you’ve ever seen.

Have you seen this magazine cover yet? It’s THE story in the US right now. The Obama campaign is very upset about it.

A recent video by Jibjab that takes the exact opposite approach. It shows Obama skipping through a magical forest full of animals and rainbows. It’s funny because his opponents accuse him of being both a villain aligned with terrorists and an unrealistic idealist. It’s funny to look at these two parodies together since they’re both based on actual claims by the media, yet such complete opposites.

As an added bonus, the video includes subtitles throughout the entire thing. It moves so fast that if you’re reading along, you’ll probably have to watch two or three times. Sounds like a good English lesson to me! In fact it fits perfectly with English, baby!’s style of making it fun to practice English. There’s even a new phrase to learn: “no cigar.” It means “no success” or “no luck” but sounds pretty funny coming from certain former president…

It often comes up in lessons that Beren is in a band. (Check out this one about touring or this one about recording at home.) Her band plays really loud, broken garage rock and is called Eat Skull. Unless you’re into garage rock or live in Portland, you probably haven’t heard of them. But that might change soon.

A couple of months ago MTV came to our hometown of Portland, Oregon, to make a video about the music scene here. Beren and her band are featured in it. They’re playing at a house party which happens a lot in Portland.

Until this happened, Amanda was the most famous member of the English, baby! cast. She acts in commercials, but she’s going to have to step it up and get a role on a sitcom or something if she wants to compete.

Note the drunk person falling into Beren’s drums at around the 5 minute mark. Oh, and here’s a bit of interesting trivia. Beren is commonly mistaken for Kathy Foster of the Thermals when she goes out in Portland. Kathy’s featured in the video as well. Do you see a resemblance? I think it’s kind of a stretch. They used to have the same hair cut but it looks like Kathy cut hers.

It was so exciting as a kid to start summer camp. And let me tell you, as an adult, it is still exciting. This week I joined pbwiki’s summer camp for educators. Pbwiki is a simple place to make a quick publishing, collaborative website. I have been excited about my class’ wiki for the entire school year, but I need more ideas.

So for the next six weeks, I will be going to summer camp along with a thousand other educators. Together we will complete weekly assignments, learn how to maximize our wikis’ features and earn cool free stuff. If you’re interested, please sign up. It should be fun.

This week on our wiki, the students used the wiki to teach the world about English simple past. They even recorded little descriptions of simple past pronunciation rules with example sentences. Besides the recordings, our wiki is pretty simple looking. So I am excited to go to camp and learn how to do more exciting things.

In case you haven’t heard, English, baby! is fielding an Olympic team this year. We’re a band of rag tag underdogs that’s sure to win some hearts, if not any metals.

We’ve begun to order stuff for our trip like the special Ebaby! stop watch and sweatbands pictured to your left. I’ll be modeling shorts for you here by the end of the week.

Check out our official Olympics page or the press release about our trip. Also, each member of the Ebaby! team is keeping a profile blog about the upcoming competition. So take a look at Captain Jeff’s, John’s or mine.

Some people love worksheets, but I love note cards. No matter what the lesson is, I can always find a way to use note cards to improve my ESL lessons. I have already talked about using slips of paper or note cards for grouping activities. But here are more ideas:

1. Use note cards to practice word order in questions and sentences. I put each part of speech on a different colored card and then let students play around making sentences and questions. The colors help them “see” the difference in word order.
2. Note cards are great for beginning and advanced writers because they can rearrange their ideas and correct mistakes without having to start over. Have students write each sentence of a paragraph (or essay) on a note card. You can also use this as a brainstorming activity. Then have them arrange the sentences in order (or for essays into paragraphs) and write a topic sentence and conclusion. If you’re working with advanced ESL students, after they “finish,” give them three or four more cards and have them add details, reasons and examples. Some students feel really comfortable and accomplished on note cards. They end up with a big stack of cards that they can play around with.
3. I always use note cards when I talk about conjunctions. I create some cards with sentences on them. On different colored note cards, I put conjunctions and commas. Students play around with the cards rearranging the sentences, commas and conjunctions. It is really fun!

Generally, note cards are good because they let students move around and experiment. It is also really easy to use color well on note cards. Note cards help so many different kinds of learners. That’s why I use them at least one a week!