Teaching with laughter

I have just learnt that ELT can well be blended with the Sience of Hapiness. This site, by Marc Helgesen, gathers a nice collection of tasksheets and Powerpoint slides that illustrate this concept.

The site writer is intersted in ways to use ideas from positive psychology in the ELT classroom.

Good Powerpoint skills

RSS in Plain English

How many websites do you check each time you connect to the internet?

If you open at least ten windows/tabs to check news sites, blogs and comments on posts, favourite websites, and other stuff each time you go online like me then you are in desperate need to know about RSS and this video should be a good starting point:

The transcript of this video can be found here and a subtitled version for those who want to follow while reading.

I use google reader as an online aggregator (offline is also possible) and RSS Bandit for offline laptop use.

Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson

Why you should listen to him:

Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. It’s a message with deep resonance. Robinson’s TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? “Everyone should watch this.”

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

Ref:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/69

Enjoy!