I am working with several teachers who are in the process of putting their course materials online. The question that keeps coming up is how much should I write and what will students actually read? One teacher has opted not to use any introductory text or conclusions. Sometimes, things don’t even have directions. On the other end of the spectrum, one teacher has written paragraphs and paragraphs. She has decided to make the introductions long so that the instructions and introductions are in and of themselves reading lessons.

We have tested both options with students and neither seem perfect. Like everything in life (and teaching), it takes a perfect balance. So if you are putting your courses online, my recommendation is to make it concise. If it is too long, students just won’t read it. If it is too short, students won’t know what to do.  It seems like simple advice, but it might take some experimenting with your students to find the right amount of text for your class website.

Today is a very special day for English, baby! After years of lessons about musicians and movie stars, we have our first lesson featuring an actual star! (Note: Our encounter with Jared Leto in Beijing came close but he didn’t contribute any vocab or grammar to the video.) Check out today’s music lesson, Party Vocab with Municipal Waste.

Now, Municipal Waste aren’t huge stars, but I’m a big fan and they are starting to break into the mainstream here and there (they got a review in Spin and I’m pretty sure they’ve been on MTV). Plus, the English lesson they could contribute was a no brainer. Who better to teach our members how to shotgun a beer?

So all in all, Municipal Waste turned out to be the perfect place to start my quest to get more and more artists to actually appear on the site. Bless them for being the first one! Now I will use their lesson as the example when I ask other artists to be in our videos. It may be a while until we’re doing slang lessons from the red carpet at award shows and breaking celebrity news with exclusive interviews, but today marks a small step in that direction.

If you feel like celebrating, watch the video and get wasted!

While I was researching the post on glocalism that I put up earlier today, I discovered the existence of global passports, a discovery that was apparently also a surprise to Slate a couple of years ago. Anyway, an organization called the World Government of World Citizens will issue you a world passport for about what it costs to get a regular passport.

Their idea is “no one has the right to tell you you can’t move freely on your natural birthplace,” also known as Earth. About half a million world passports have been issued in the last 50 years, and 150 countries have accepted one at least once. Although lots of countries, like the US, now deny them as a matter of policy.

The passport looks real and scans like any other passport. It’s even printed in seven languages, including Esperanto. Now, I have a US passport, which seems pretty useful, so I’m not really going to shell out for a world passport, but I have to say, I really like the idea. As I’ve written about before, ever since I was a child, I’ve identified more as a citizen of the world than of the US. The idea of formally renouncing my citizenship in favor of becoming an official global citizen is appeal in some ways, and that’s exactly what Gary Davis the inventor of the world passport did.

Ironically, for the moment it seems being a US citizen allows you to see more of the world and since our time here is short, I’ll take that option. Luckily, I can get my world citizenship fix on English, baby!.

A recent article in the Taipei Times by Nigel Daly helped me get some perspective on a concept very central to English, baby!. Our central idea has always been to provide a compliment to classroom learning, a place to practice the English skills you learn while having fun. That always made sense to me–the person on the abroad trip who dates a local always learns the language faster–but after a small window into the Taiwanese model of English eduction, it seems more necessary than ever.

English exams to get into schools or jobs are big deals in Asian countries so it’s no surprise that their education system is geared toward them. But according to Daly, some Taiwanese schools are so focused on the tests, the teachers speak Chinese to help the students understand what English they need to memorize! The result is a lot people passing the test whose memorized knowledge is about as useful in an actual English conversation as ancient Greek.

So, Daly argues, we must think “glocally.” “Glocal,” of course, is a portmanteau “global” and “local” and the global side of English and the doors it opens internationally are easy to see. It’s the local side that is both necessary to really the language and hard to come by. Daly supports a restructuring of the educational system in Taiwan. In the mean time, there’s the Internet.

I was surprised to learn from this Reuters piece that South Korea not only has the most students learning English in the US, but also is experiencing the largest Web boom for English eduction. In fact, private English instruction in Korea is a $13 billion dollar a year industry.

Any user of our site will notice there are many countries more represented than South Korea. It sounds like Koreans favor Skype-style real-time voice lessons so that would explain why their physical presence in the US hasn’t translated to such an overwhelming presence on our site.

Although I see the appeal of Skype lessons, I actually prefer the social network style English, baby! uses. It’s more casual and further from a classroom environment. Nonetheless, the size of the Korean market and their interest in real-time voice lessons is certainly something to think about. In any case, I think it’s great to see more and more people who aren’t able to study in another country use the Web to fulfill the local end of the glocal equation.

Image: Oddly enough, “glocal” seems to be a buzzword among church folk as well.

Here’s a thought: vocabulary words sent to twice a day in a nice little text message. As a teacher, it seems perfect. I get to catch my students during their social time and focus them (for just a second) on learning. The text message gives them a nice bite-size chunk of learning. There have been several research studies, like “Using mobile phones in English education in Japan”, that show text messages can help students learn vocabulary better than traditional methods.

In that study, students said they liked receiving the text messages, but I just don’t know. I guess, if it helps students learn more while “studying” less, then of course they would like it. But for those students reading this…should your teacher send you text messages? If you say yes, I am going to start doing it to my students.

In case you were wondering, Devan doesn’t actually have breast cancer. I was trying to think of where to take the soap opera. We’ve done more than 40 episodes now and almost all of them are about love (even Devan’s drug addiction was a result of unrequited love).

Part of the English, baby! mission is to always deliver a positive message. So, after reading a story about AIDS survivors in the Oprah Magazine, I decided a survival story would be a good way to go (not to ruin the surprise for you…I suppose Devan’s character could end up not making it if she decides to quit or something).

So I decided to ask the cast who should get cancer at the next session (we meet about once a month), but guess who didn’t show up that day? Yes, that’s how Devan ended up getting both cancer and a drug addiction and a broken heart. Let me tell you, she wasn’t happy about this new development.

But I think she’s doing a great job with it. Her acting is actually really good in the latest video. And she has no formal training or experience! It looks like a fictional case of breast cancer was just the motivation she needed.

Image: A recent photo of Devan with lots of hair. Did the rag fool you?

I love my work and my students. And, of course, my friends in Portland. But I am ready for some change. So for the 2009-2010 school year, I will be moving. I am not sure where I want to teach. All I know is that I want to experience something new and exciting.

My hope is that some of the students or teachers here could tell me about some great foreign schools or wonderful countries to live in. Ideally, I want to teach small classes (no more than 30 students) and live in a warm location (Portland rain is a bummer). But those are my only requirements. So do you have any ideas? Who knows I might end up being your teacher!

A few hundred other educators and I have spent the summer doing wiki summer camp. A program put on by the PBwiki team to help educators better use wikis in the classroom. It has been so exciting; read my first rave here. Well, this week was the end of camp and besides my cool new badge, I got a lot out of camp.

One of the most helpful pages was a list of some wonderful web tools to use in the classroom.  I really loved Go animate! There, you can make really cool animations that can be easily exported anywhere. Read an explanation and see an example from summer camp here. I am so inspired and simultaneously intimidated by it. I also loved bubbl.us. You can make very good flow-charts and visual aids and again easily save and share them. Like this one, describing my family and what my sister and I inherited.

These are just two of the fun things I learned during wiki summer camp. You can view my final project here and see some of the other cool gadgets in action.  Also look around the camp site at some other people’s work. I found it totally inspirational!

Cake and tears don’t usually go well together. But sometimes things aren’t purely sweet. Last week was the last ESL class of the year for me and my students. It was definitely bittersweet.

Students brought three cakes, two pizzas, Somalian food, Mexican food and chips. It was a huge amount of food for the ten of us! But the students wouldn’t have had it any other way. They are so generous and caring. Everyone was so excited to celebrate.

Sadly, their caring nature didn’t mean they could pass the tests. And before the party could start, we had to tell the students who had passed and who had failed. In our department, their grade is based solely on three final exams. So it can really be a surprise.

And it was hard for some of them to enjoy the good company and food after crying.  I don’t know, I love all of my students and I wish we could have all been joyous together. Maybe next year. This year our end of the year party was a bit of a flop. I don’t like to see tears!