Our Educational Message

Hi, and welcome to our blog. This space is designed to share ideas and methodologies that we use to teach Turkish teenagers. In particular, there is a strong focus on ICT-ELT, which means if you like visual and technological support for your style of teaching, this blog is for you. My colleague, Brentson Ramsey, has been working alongside me for three years. He is also a big proponent of the ICT-ELT Paradigm, which means he will also be posting from his own teaching perspective on the blog.

2010 was the beginning of this new journey, and although there is no definitive ICT-ELT road map available for everyone to follow, it is exciting to explore the technological means to make teaching more fun and affective for students. Our main message is for teachers to ADOPT & ADAPT the paradigm shift for their own needs, and remember that
ICT-ELT is a TOOL, NOT a SOLUTION.

Wednesday 31 August 2011

My First Post of 2011 (on my new blog that is)

Hi Everyone, or Anyone, as the case may be. My name is David Mearns and although my bio gives you a brief summary of my career I just wanted to write it again as a blog, since this is my first blog on my own site, of 2011. I did actually come across a blog of mine from 2007 when they were just getting off the ground (as I could see- there were of course already thousands, hundreds of thousands, just no one connected to me had one). I had in fact set one up with a grade nine class of mine. I remember it as being fun, and students were certainly engaged at the time; however it was MSN that was the chat of choice, and that was how we really communicated :-(. But, to be honest, lots of other things were going on in my life, and it simply fell by the wayside as I moved house, changed jobs and started doing an MSc TESOL with Aston university in Birmingham, UK. Fortunately, now, though, I am back and with an ICT social-networking passion that means regular blogging.

It all started again for me when I was invited by an ELT colleague to post on her blog, Deniz Atesok ,and subsequently for Dave Dodgson a guy who I met at the Istek conference last year. Dave has set up a brilliant blog for ESL teachers to express themselves on a larger platform than the teachers' room at school or a cafe on Istiklal Caddesi. Each week he has a guest blooger posting away. It has been up and running now for over six weeks, so please check it out. It was really enjoyable and I thank him and Deniz for the opportunity to mouth off about my born again passion as an ELTeacher for a very exciting high school, Hisar Schools.

That is why I have decided to get one up and running again on my own. In fact I am putting the final touches to another guest post on Adam Simpson's blog which he will have for posting this week. Thus, once that is done, I plan to approach this blog-site discussing and sharing my methods, ideas and, lets not forget, complaints about the industry, for we wouldn't be ESL teachers without a nag and a moan on a daily and weekly basis.

So, as an opening foray into the blogging world, I will close and finish up Adam's guest blog. Rest assured I will be back very soon.... David M