Why I walked out – but would you?

Yesterday I walked out in the middle of someone’s conference session. In the scale of events that is hardly significant in any way, so don’t hold the front page (!) but as a serial conference goer and presenter it has been worrying me for the last 24 hours – and since I tweeted the anger that caused me to do this it seems only right to muse on why it happened.

This was the situation: Marc Prensky (who describes himself in his bio data as ‘an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer,, futurist, visionary and inventor in the critical areas of education and learning’) was on stage sitting there with four students (aged 15-16) and their teacher. The conference was the 2010 ABCI conference. ABCI is the Brazilian association of Cultura Institutes of which there are many all over this wonderful country (there are Cultura institutes all over Latin America). Marc Prensky (he’s the guy who invented the digital native/immigrant duality), the teacher and the students, were in front of 700 teachers, all of whom work at one of the Culturas in Brazil.

Prensky questioned the students hoping they would prove his point that all teenagers are wired into a new kind of digital world. It was nice to hear these children (all of whom study at a Cultura here) talk in their excellent English, though it was difficult to see who or what they were representative of. They were , after all, just four teenagers. They didn’t give him much of what he wanted, I suspect, though they were obviously IT literate, but that’s another matter. The whole thing made me feel mildly uneasy. But they seemed like nice kids.

At one point he asked the students what they liked best about being Cultura students and one of them said it was the e-board (he was probably very pleased about that). And then he said ‘so what are the things you don’t like so much about the Culturas? What would you like to do differently? What are the negative things? Come on! This is your chance to give good feedback to all these people’. Four teenagers asked, encouraged, in public, to criticise the 700 adults sitting in front of them. I was not sure I had heard it correctly. But I had.

My response? No one who has any dealings with teenagers in an educational field should or could ask such a question in such a forum. It was, it seems to me, grotesque in what he was asking the kids to do. It made me mad. I was about to voice my protest. Stand up and heckle. Luckily, however, wisdom suggested otherwise. I walked out and tweeted furiously instead. It’s only the second time I’ve done that in quite a long time. Walk out I mean (and I do try, normally, not be a negative tweeter). The last time was when a very famous plenarist spoke with such a lack of engagement and with such an obvious disdain for the act of presenting and his audience that I slipped out of the door I was next to rather than let my anger show.

Why is it worth talking about this? Apart from my angry tweet nobody (least of all Marc Prensky), noticed.

Or did he? I did a plenary here this morning. The same 700 teachers were there. One guy walked out half way through (was he angry with me?) and I noticed. Wim Wenders once made a film called ‘The goalkeeper’s fear of the penalty’. Perhaps there should be a movie called ‘The presenter’s fear of people walking out’.

It’s because (as a speaker) you ALWAYS notice when people walk out in your talks that I try never to do it myself when I am in an audience. I am not (I tell myself sanctimoniously) like one ELT author at this conference who often just gets up and leaves when he finds the speaker boring. At least I don’t think I am. I can’t be 100% certain.

But what about you? Do you think I was right to walk out? Do you walk out of talks? If so how does it feel, and what is the kind of thing that makes you vote with your feet? I’d love to know.

How do you plan a successful presentation?

I was chatting on the phone to one of my friends the other day. She is the deputy head at a large primary school here in the UK. She was telling me that she had to give a presentation to 300 or so primary teachers and heads in which her task was to explain her school’s approach to the curriculum. And so we got to talking, as you do, about how to plan a presentation, and how to make information transfer (which is what a lot of presenting really entails) engaging and thought-provoking. Inspiring even – and the work she does should inspire people, it really should!

And just for good measure we talked about the pitfalls of using powerpoint (a topic I have gone on about before on this blog).

An audience of teachers - the presenter's view!

The question that was preoccupying her – and which always preoccupies me when I start to plan a new session – is how to build a narrative through the presentation. What’s the best way of starting a talk or a workshop? How can images and audio/video be made to contribute to the whole thing? How should you end the session? In short, how do you plan a successful talk?

I think there may be (there MAY be, I am not sure) a difference between planning a good lesson and planning a good talk. But just supposing there isn’t? Scott Thornbury talked about planning metaphors in an article some time ago – teachers often think of good lessons as plays, novels, pieces of music etc. That certainly helps. But how do pieces of music start? Or novels? Or plays? How do they finish? How should talks, lessons, even conferences end? I Have done a big talk on that last point (one which I am thrilled to be repeating at BRAZTESOL in a few weeks)

I once went to a workshop on how to be a good presenter given by Mario Rinvolucri. He suggested you should always start by asking the audience to do something (dictate a sentence, for example, which they have to complete and then share with their partners). That takes the pressure off the speaker and makes the audience feel as if they are engaged. Another way is to start by posing a big question – a problem, a dilemma etc – and build a talk on that. You can also start by throwing up an image or recounting an experience which is so arresting (in the sense of attracting attention), that the audience is hooked straight away. You can start by launching straight into a compelling story, and then build a talk on that.

But however you start, you have to find a way through all the information that you want to share – or have your participants discuss or interact with. Where’s the path through the woods? Where is (to re-use a word I started with) the narrative?

I have to give a talk tomorrow at Christchurch University Canterbury in the south of England. I have decided to use some edited clips of little flipcam interviews (see my earlier post) which I have done with a range of teachers from the UK, Turkey, Pakistan, China, Grenada, Argentina and Romania. In these clips, the teachers describe a successful lesson they have taught. It usually takes them only about a minute or two (you can  usually find one of them on the Pearson ELT Community website). I want to get the participants to reflect on teacher beliefs and teacher practice. At least that’s what I THINK I want to do.

I could, of course, just show the lots of videos and then just say ‘discuss’. But that doesn’t seem right. I need a story. I need categories, threads (to use Tessa Woodward’s term from her book on planning), hooks for the participants to be able to hang things on.

I think it was Raymond Chandler who gave advice to writers who got stuck when writing. Just have someone walk into the room with a gun was his advice, and then the story will kind of take over.

Hmm.

So my questions for you are things like:

- How do you start your talks?

- How do you end them?

- How do YOU go about planning them?

- What’s YOUR personal take on this?

Because, even after all this time, it doesn’t get any easier!

My favourite new toy (technological)!

Niculae Alexandra (Dodo) talks about a successful lesson in Bucharest, Romania

Some time ago (well at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate actually – and that was way back in April! – Pearson Longman gave me (or at least loaned me, but I prefer ‘gave’) a Flipcam. And although I don’t want to sound like an advertisement, it’s fantastic. Not much bigger than a normal digital camera, all you have to do is point it, press the red record button, and you are done. No instruction manual necessary. And when you have done it you just plug it into your computer (with a built-in USB stick) and there is your film on your computer.

Why is that worth blogging about? Well because the reason that Pearson gave me the camera (see how quickly I’ve changed verbs!) was so that I could record little mini interviews with teachers. This was/is for the new ELT community site, a resource/place where teachers can meet online and talk with each other. When you go to the site now you will probably see one of the little interviews I have done on the front screen.

I am enamoured of this new toy because – well not just because of the simple technology! I have started going up to teachers and asking them a simple question – ‘Can you tell me about a successful lesson you have taught recently ?’ And pretty much every teacher can!

And when they do their faces light up and something really great happens.

And that’s why I love my little flipcam (see, it’s mine now!) – because not only do I (and Pearson) get what we want, but it makes people happy too! At least that’s my impression. Teachers spend a lot of time (rightly) worrying about things that DON’T work, but sometimes it just feels wonderful to say what DOES go well.

So if I have borne down on you with my little flipcam at the ready, I am sorry if it has unnerved you. It has given me hours of pleasure and when people (almost all of them) have agreed to let us use these little clips, we get to spread a little sunshine whether on the ELT community site or in presentations.

So I guess this is a thank you to Pearson Longman for the camera, and a thank you to you (you know who you are or will be!) who have made me feel great!

What about you? What’s your favourite new toy? And can YOU think of ways of spreading  methodological sunshine?!!!

Marking homework/papers – the unassailable wall?

It just happened to me again (as it has so many times over the years): the dread of marking. This time I only had a few final MA assignments to grade, but it made me insanely depressed just to think about it.

(If by any possible chance you are one of my current – nearly ex – students, don’t worry; I’m complaining about me, not you!)

I can’t remember how often, over the (many) years in the world of TEFL that I have seen a task as so insurmountable, so mind-sapping, so time-wasting, that I have put off doing it for years – or at least far longer than I should have done. Marking exams; correcting student essays; doing some task (usually, frankly, marking); writing up observation reports….. and so I have put it off and off until it becomes, frankly, embarrassing.

Am I the only one? I don’t think so. We all do it. We put off something we don’t especially want to do, and the longer we put it off, the bigger it becomes in our minds. And then it gets so huge that we just can’t face it at all!

That’s what happened to me over the last few days. I had to mark and grade just a handful of final assignments on an MA module. The number is/was in single figures. But I was ‘on the ‘road’ in Poland and Romania, giving talks and trying to keep up with emails. And the longer I put off spending a few hours on the task in my hotel room, the more depressed I became. I couldn’t face it. I started to have a big sulk. My wonderful co-tutor asked me how I was getting on. I metaphorically dug myself into my burrow.

But finally I HAD to start reading these papers. So I started in Bucharest airport and continued on the flight home. Right now that I am home, I’ve nearly finished. And the result? Magic! I have read a passionate defence of coursebook use and and then almost immediately found myself reading a paper which argued precisely the opposite with the same kind of energy (and I wanted to agree with both of them). I have read some great classroom ideas. And finally I found my 36,000 feet tiredness absolutely blown away by a bravura attack on anyone (including me, the tutor) who had ever allowed Gardner’s MI theory to be dragooned into a(n apparently) misunderstood view of learner styles in education. Electrifying. You know what? I really enjoyed my reading, and the hours of the flight literally flew (sorry!) by.

So what on earth was I so worked up about before I started?

I remember a lovely article by Lesley Painter about how she made homework writing and marking a joy for all by letting the students choose what their homework tasks should be. Sounded wonderful. Is that the answer?

How do you manage to climb the homework wall – or other similar tasks, if it comes to that – without getting all petulant like me? How do you make marking less of a chore?

I’d be fascinated to know!

There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

The other night over there on Twitter on one of those ‘nightshift’-tagged evenings, I found myself swapping music with Anna and Luke and Simon and Carol – and a number of others. It worked really well, all of us loving each other’s music and getting quite sentimental about it. Oh wow! Etc. People like doing that on Twitter. It’s like a virtual lounge, everyone sitting around drinking wine, playing music. Lovely really. And it goes on happening so we must like it.

Except for one person, that evening who just didn’t like any of the folk music that was being put around. They loved the choir carol, though.

Hmm. I found myself thinking ‘but how come they don’t like folk music?! Must be crazy’.

Here’s something else: the other evening we played a concert which included Elgar’s first symphony. For various personal reasons (to do with my father, the UK, who knows what else) and because of music itself, I was emoting so much (especially during that amazing slow movement) that I could hardly play my part as a humble not-very-good member of the viola section. I thought, even as we the music swelled, that everyone MUST love this music, how could they not? It’s beautiful, beautiful. And then I thought (as I often do), wouldn’t it be great if I could find someone who loved it in exactly the same way as me – who understood EXACTLY what I was feeling right then!! I mean exactly.

Can you ever?

And then (sorry if I am boring you, but we’ll get to the professional bit later), after the concert I started remembering those moments when not only can you NOT find someone who thinks like you, but actually people just don’t LIKE what you do, and how weird that is. Hamlet is taunting the king’s spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when he says ‘There’s nothing either good or bad/but thinking makes it so’, but of course he’s right.

I remember, for example, seeing Paul Haggis’ film ‘Crash’ – the one about racial tensions in Los Angeles. I really liked it as it happens. When I went to the Guardian’s ‘Have your say’ column I found other people who agreed with me. One person thought that “every second of this film was illuminating…brave, bold, brilliant”. Another said that the film was “intelligent, thought-provoking, gripping, emotional,” and there were lots of comments like that. But other opinions were not the same at all. The film was, according to one commentator, “simplistic, superficial, stereotyped, pretentious, predictable” , and another said it was “pretentious, predictable racist nonsense”.

And the thing is that these people saw the same film as me!

Except, of course, they brought their different brains and personalities along. It is humbling, after all, to realise that there are others out there who just might not share your own view of the world.

It’s like when we go to conferences, or when we hear about new methodology. Like the reaction people have to Twitter  (I love it, I hate it).

Recently, for example, people have started to talk about drilling and repetition in language teaching in a friendly, cuddly way – the first time for years. It used to be a subject on which we had all taken a more or less monastic view of silence!

Some people espouse technology, and tell everyone they have to come/go to Second Life (which for others is a no-go area, psychologically). Others argue passionately for teaching the`Dogme’ way (I am absolutely not having a go at Dogme here, by the way), or for whatever it is that takes their fancy.

And perhaps that is just the point. The same thing (like the same film) seen through different eyes and by different people can yield spectacularly different results. The same kind of teaching tricks can have the same effect.

It all reminds me of a passionate argument I once overheard in a staffroom in Cambridge between two teachers who were discussing a reading text in the coursebook Headway Intermediate about a woman called Sister Wendy, a nun who in those days was achieving television fame by making cute comments about works of art. One teacher (I kid you not) thought it was the best text in the book; the other wouldn’t use it because they thought it was twee, rubbish, irrelevant etc.

So, here goes with questions that preoccupy me pretty much all the time (well, ever since I started writing about methodology, anyway):

1

How can we ever achieve a standard that everyone can agree on? How do we all agree on what makes good teaching for example, when we come from different cultures, have different personalities etc? Is it really possible (as British politicians are currently attempting) to build a coalition of views?

2

Is all teaching a matter of style – I mean the style the teacher prefers? Do people teach ‘unplugged’ because it is intrinsically and provably better, or is it just because they themselves prefer doing it that way? Does that mean their students prefer it too? Are they and their students seeing the same movie?

3

Speaking personally, I guess I’m a bit of a technophile, and I am sympathetic to the evangelism of some of my Twitter friends. It seems unanswerable that technology is helpful. But maybe that, like everything else, is just my view of the movie.

Is nothing either good or bad?

Any comments gratefully received.

What it feels like to be surprised, very surprised!

In my blog I have tried, so far, to address general issues to do with presenting, conferences, writing abstracts etc etc. As with every other blogger, my ‘thoughts’ have been personal, of course, but I have tried to exercise some dispassion.

But not this time. Just for once I want to tell you how I feel – or rather what it felt like (and then see if there is anything to learn from that). What I am trying to say is that this post is going to be incredibly personal, and I hope you will forgive me for that.

This is how it goes: I was sitting on a train from Penrith (in the North West of England) to London. The route traverses the Pennine Hills, and as I looked out of the window I was awestruck by the beauty of the landscape, the young lambs, the hills, the green. It was the kind of scenery to make you feel glad (unaccountably, I often think) to be alive. The day before I had lead a workshop at International House in Newcastle, and then spent the evening with my brother and his partner. As a result I was feeling – how shall I put this – not the healthiest I have ever been. Nevertheless, the lovely scenery and the fact that I was going to meet up with my daughters in London to celebrate my birthday contributed to a general feeling of hazy-headed contentment.

And then I got a text message from my friend Petra Pointner. It read “Log on to Twitter! Right now!!!” So I did.

[A blank space follows here because it is the only way I can think of to describe the way my metaphorical jaw dropped through the train carriage floor as my iPhone exploded - it felt like - into life]

if you are one of the people who organised or joined in with my ‘surprise birthday party’ (#JHsurpriseparty) I want to tell you how absolutely wonderful (I need to repeat that…ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL) it was to be on the end of all that positive, kind, funny, silly, and totally uplifting energy. I was sent pictures of birthday cakes and lasered dogs (really), of modified book covers, of hugs and kisses, of foods, and links to  youtube clips and songs – and even of Greek primary kids saying ‘Happy Birthday Jeremy’. There was a Voxopop site of people leaving messages. There were messages and messages and messages.

And it went on pretty much all day. And beyond

I can only hope that all the people who organised and took part in this joyful ambush experienced as much real and profound pleasure from it as I did. I mean that. Speaking personally I have never really known anything quite like it. My caption for the day? Hate the age, love the birthday!

Is there any more to say about this?

Yes, I think there is. Firstly, in one of the sessions I do on teacher observation I say that we should spend much more time telling teachers how good they are, rather than identifying their weakenesses – and that complimenting teachers (something that doesn’t happen too often) may have a more profound effect on those teachers’ development than any manner of training sessions and observations. To be suddenly surprised with the kind of positive affection that I experienced – however and in whatever spirit it was given (I am not, I think, totally naive!) – makes you feel great, and as a result you go to what you are going to do next (like teaching a lesson or arriving in Cairo for a meeting) with a renewed sense of energy, commitment and enthusiasm.

Then there is the power of social networking – in this case the power of Twitter. How extraordinary to be able to ambush a slightly hungover traveller sitting on a train in the middle of nowhere as if a hundred people had suddenly turned up at his door carrying cakes and ale and singing at the tops of their voices. How wonderful to be able to ‘make things happen’ without the paraphenelia of, well, anything. Perhaps Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly (amongst others) are right. We are the mobile generation.

The next Twitter surprise birthday party will not be QUITE as surprising perhaps, but the power to unleash this kind of group experience is awesome. As Olaf tweeted towards the end of the day “I believe this may have started something though. The idea of Twitter birthday parties could be a spur for very creative actions.”

What could those creative actions be?

Over to you

(oh, and, in case you hadn’t got it, thank you for a really great birthday!)

Conferences, VIPs and equality – a corrective?

It seems to move in waves or stages – the Blogosphere, I mean, and the Twitter flock. One minute it’s all peace and love (and lots of mutual support and mutual ego-stroking), and the next people are ripping bits off each other and everyone’s outraged and hurt. And suddenly, too – and serendipitously, issues and topics coalesce and something which is worth talking about floats, briefly, around our virtually real world.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about conferences and inequality and VIP speakers. All that. Because recently people have posted in near ecstasy about the ISTEK conference in Istanbul, the IATEFL conference in Harrogate, and the HUPE conference in Croatia. And all seemed well with the world.

Except, apparently, it wasn’t. Other voices have now been raised; voices which suggest that conferences are elitist and excluding, run by conference organisers who are working to their own agendas and advancement rather than for the good of the teaching body as a whole. Meanwhile over on another blog a VIP speaker of considerable standing and intellect has articulated the familiar quandary of the invited outside speaker, namely whether such encounters (foreign ‘expert’ jetting in to an educational reality that he or she knows little about), are justifiable or desirable.

As far as I can see, the issues worth discussing in this sometimes unedifying climate (though Scott Thornbury’s musings about the danger of ‘native speakerism’ – and the discussions they have occasioned- seem entirely useful) are the following:

• Do most ELT conferences favour the outside VIP at the expense of local and/or less senior presenters?

• Do VIP speakers get preferential treatment?

• Are conference organisers just ‘in it for themselves’?

• Are conferences just money-making vehicles driven by a rapacious publishing industry?

(Of course  I need to declare an interest/several interests. To start with, I am invited from time to time to give talks to conferences around the world. I do, also, write books (from which I earn most of my living), and those books are sold by publishers who do go to conferences in the hope that it will persuade teachers to buy their products – some of which are mine. Occasionally (but not in the majority of cases) I am paid to speak at conferences.)

Here goes:

- Most conferences invite outside ‘name’ speakers. There are, as far as I can see, three reasons for this. The first is that the speakers have some kind of reputation as a result of their writing and/or other work and the conference organisers think/hope they will have something interesting to say; the second is because they have gathered a reputation as presenters; and the third (and this is a really big one) is that conference organisers hope that they will bring in the crowds. For without those crowds the conference will be a failure, both economically and emotionally.

Does this disadvantage local and more junior speakers? Are ‘name’ speakers getting unfair breaks? Well it depends. Most plenary speakers, for example, have been at it for years (and sometimes for years and years!), honing their craft after a lifetime of giving little workshops in back rooms and to small audiences. They too, in their time, started out offering sessions to tiny groups far away from the conference bright lights and big stars. And just like all the other speakers, they offered their experience with a mixture of a genuine desire to share and a big wish to impress. A mixture of service and ego.

But, and this is a big but, those outside names have never been, in my experience, the whole conference (unless it is specifically organised that way). At almost every conference I go to, there are workshops going on everywhere, often by first time presenters, and in the main, by local speakers (I mean people living in the region). A good conference mixes the two, and well-organised associations like IATEFL have specific scholarships for first-time presenters. Furthermore, as with TESOL, talk abstracts are frequently ‘blind-read’ by a presentations committee, no names attached, so that (and there are attested cases of this) some big names have their talks rejected.

But yes, plenary talks often favour outsiders for the reasons I have mentioned above. As I have said elsewhere on this blog site, they provide the mood music for a conference. But talk to any participants and they will tell you enthusiastically of other sessions they have been to, away from the main stage. The VIPs may THINK they are the main attraction, but in a good conference there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

- Are VIPs treated better than other speakers? Well that depends. Talk to any frequently invited conference plenarist and they will tell you horror stories of turning up to a conference, doing what they were invited to do (give an opening plenary, for example), and then finding themselves almost completely ignored by the organising committee and everyone else. It can be incredibly lonely out there. Really.

Of course this is contrasted with conferences where prominent visitors are treated very well – and it doesn’t feel bad to be in that position at all, of course. But it doesn’t always happen, and anyway it is amazing how quickly, after a big talk, the visiting speaker (rightly)? loses their status and reverts to being just another conference attender.

- Some teachers’ associations are run by megalomaniacs. It’s true. Empire builders, people who want to leave a legacy. They are pretty much like those presenters who mix ego and service, but they do it in the wrong proportions. However (and as an aside), it is interesting that many associations only exist because someone like that, someone with a driving force and ambition, kick-started the whole thing. But most teachers’ associations are simply NOT like that – and certainly not ones where I have been asked to speak recently. There is still the ego/service mix, but the balance is generally about right. And make no mistake; the literally hours and hours of time spent by many many volunteers in countries all overt the world, from Brazil to Bangladesh, from Poland to Portugal, from Mexico to, well, anywhere, beggars belief. And guess what! Most teachers are happy for other people to do that (I know I am) since, as for every voluntary organisation I have been involved in, the actual work is done by a small number of committed individuals whose work we are all happy to benefit from. But for anyone who doesn’t like what is happening and thinks the teachers’ associations (and their conferences) are going astray, there are Annual general meetings to go to, and anyone is free to stand for places on committees or propose motions or try to instigate change. It is, of course, easier to stand on the sidelines and moan, but real engagement is a much better option.

Or – and this really IS the best option for people who think that things are not being done well – they can start their own association IF they can find people who share their views and IF they are prepared to spend the time.

(Of course, if you attend a conference organised by a school or an educational organisation that you are not a member of, then you don’t have much chance to change anything – and it is arguable that you don’t have a right to instigate change anyway)

- And that brings me to the last charge levelled against conferences; that they are somehow in league with a bunch of money-grabbing publishers to make huge profits. Well, publishers DO want to make profits, of course. But many of them are also concerned to publish work of a high standard. When it comes to conferences, though, their role becomes incredibly important. They pay a huge amount of money to exhibit (and complain, in my view justifiably, when the exhibition room is badly located, or when the conference has less teachers than they had anticipated). Without them many conferences simply could not afford to take place. The teachers’ associations would go broke.

Are they (the publishers) trying to sell us stuff? Yes, of course they are. But we are intelligent enough and have enough integrity not to be hoodwinked by them. Aren’t we? Don’t we?

So that’s it. I don’t think conferences, VIPs, publishers or teachers’ associations are run by saints or even in a saintly manner. There’s a lot that could be changed and done better. But with any luck this blog is at least a little bit of a corrective to some of the things that have been said over the last few days.

But of course you don’t have to agree. And this would be a good place to say WHY you don’t.

Over to you!

When the dust settles

After the great IATEFL conference a couple of weeks ago I held off blogging about it. This was partly because I wanted to calm down after the huge rush of enthusiasm we all felt. I had already blogged about Twitter enthusiasm after the ISTEK conference in Turkey, and I knew that an early response to IATEFL would be over keen and perhaps not too thoughtful.

And anyway, others blogged happily and convincingly about one the great IATEFL conferences I have attended – and I have been to quite a few over the years. Gavin Dudeney had great fun celebrating the ‘triumph’ of technology. Nik Peachey praised some of the women who presented so effectively about technology-related issues. Ken Wilson expressed his huge enthusiasm for what had gone on, and Karenne Sylvester added her views about Twitter (and about me!) . Those were just a few.

For me, I felt a bit low too after all that fun and socialising – and after some wonderful sessions that I went to, and the Twitter rush.  But of course there is still the wonderful IATEFL site to go to (Thanks British Council and all the wonderful IATEFL team) where you can see talks and interviews and lots of stuff.

So I thought I would wait till the dust settled before I added my comments. And I contemplated a visit to Turkey for my next conference with some trepidation because apart from a much looked-for meet-up with Scott Thornbury, and some lovely friends, I feared a lack of  Twitter buddies and huggers, and so predicted an anticlimax.

But the dust didn’t settle. It rose high high up into the air, and suddenly there was no going to any conferences anywhere.

I don’t want to relate a really difficult situation for millions of people and businesses to any personal experience – or question, as the airlines are now doing, whether the fly ban was necessary – except to write a quick post about a new presentation experience for me – and the questions it raises.

When the ash cloud rose into the air it seemed possible that I would still be able to get to Anadolu university in Turkey. With Pearson’s help and encouragement I tried everything (well they did most of the trying) because it was an important date for me. But in the end we were defeated just like everyone else, and I went back to Cambridge, chastened (but quite pleased, in reality) not to be back in an airport.

We did one of my plenaries via Skype instead. I got up early in the morning in Cambridge. I dressed in a suit just as I would have done for the real thing, and sat and delivered my session to the camera at the top of my laptop screen. Over there in Turkey they turned their computer round so I could more or less see the audience, though there was a slight time delay and some pretty blurry vision.

Meanwhile I had sent my powerpoint over to Pearson. They set up a separate computer and projector and showed it on a separate screen with me telling them when to change slides (though I couldn’t see that second screen, so occasionally had to confirm which slide they were looking at).

It seemed to go all right. At least we tried. There was (as far as I could hear) an enthusiastic response. And when it was over I went back to bed!

Which leaves me with a number of questions:

1 is this the way of the future? I could cut my carbon footprint right down (and not just because of volcanic ash). Many more people could ‘attend’ conferences (as they did at/for IATEFL) from their offices and living rooms?

2 Would a combination of tweeting and watching a filmed presentation be a satisfactory substitute for the general melée of conference going? What would we gain? What would we miss? What would we lose?

3 Would giving presentations be anything like as scary and potentially rewarding as it is now? I was pretty wound up by the session in Turkey, but then it had been very stressful to get the whole thing up and running. But i couldn’t quite judge the audience reaction – which made the experience both more and, perversely) less relaxing.

4 Will technology soon be good enough so that skype live images, for example, are less clumsy. Is the low-tech ‘techiness’ of skype better than more vulnerable and better systems?

oh, and while we are about it…

5 Is the no-fly ban really necessary? Will we all be safe when we head up into the troposphere? Will I ever get to Moscow (Chekhov’s always there when you need him!)?

Do you have any thoughts (well of course you do, but I mean about this)?

What makes a good conference Pt 2 – a kind of twitter update

I arrived in Cairo on Monday afternoon after the 2-day professional ‘lovefest’, otherwise known as ISTEK 2010 in Istanbul. Ever since I arrived at Istanbul airport to board the plane (feeling slightly the worse for wear – but that was largely my fault!) I thought I would blog about the conference.

But then today I thought perhaps I shouldn’t. How could I write a better account than Mark Andrews’ blog about viewing the conference (and blogging about it) from outside, or Sean Banville’s wonderful story of his own ‘twitterfication’ and the conference. Ken Wilson provides some nice context and a picture or two on his blog, to give some background to ISTEK and Turkey.

And yet I think I might have something to add. Why WAS ISTEK such a magical event – and no one who follows any of the participants or tweeters who were ‘there can be in any doubt that it was a magical event? Why was the use of Twitter so crucial to that sense of wonder? Here are my thoughts.

Twitter first: even before ISTEK the thing that had most impressed me about Twitter was the levelling effect of its democracy. What I mean is the lack of hierarchy, ageism or sexism (mostly). On Twitter, anyone who engages, socially, who listens to what people have to say and interacts with them, is equal. A genuinely supportive and warm atmosphere. And mostly – but of course not always – the people I know who tweet are kind and considerate to each other, even when disagreeing slightly. Sure we go through the occasional ‘nasty’ patch (see an earlier blog of mine), but mostly people say nice things to each other. Is that silly? I don’t think so. On the whole it makes the world a better place.

Which is where ISTEK comes in – at least for me. On his blog Sean Blanville talks about how people who ‘knew’ each from twitter greeted each other in their first face-to-face meeting as if they were favourite family members. No defences, no ‘pulling rank’ or any of that stuff, and a rather pronounced lack of competitiveness, it seemed to me.

And so to the conference itself. Yes, it was beautifully organised bu Burcu Akyol who has justly received whole warehouses full of praise. There were two wonderful ‘masters’ of ceremonies, John and Vanessa, whose charming professionalism gave the plenary events a gloss all of their own. There was a Pecha Kucha evening helped immeasurably by the simple expedient of having everyone sit on beanbags to enjoy themselves. And then there were the dancers at the end – a veritable riot of love and energy and precision and sheer exuberance. Everyone felt just a little bit better to be alive.

But it wasn’t ALL perfect! The plenaries (yes I know what I am saying here) were not significantly better or worse than usual. The technology in the rooms was not always as good as it might have been. There were some fearsome glass stairs which claimed at least one victim. There was a falling off of attendance on day 2.

So why, why why is everyone raving about it?

Here are my explanations:

1 Burcu herself. Calm, organised, friendly, charming.

2 A whole gaggle of student helpers, energetic and friendly.

3 Teachers helpers assigned to look after guest speakers

4 a sense of newness and wonder (this was the FIRST ISTEK conference)

and two more things:

5 the sheer welcome of all the Turkish participants – their desire to have a good time, to fully participate in what was going on.

6 TWITTER – which created the most remarkable sense of community, of togetherness, of support. Look at the tweets which were sent during the plenaries (wow! It is some crazy experience to read people’s tweets about your own talk. Instant feedback. Bizarre. Nice). And as Mark Andrews so warmly describes, those tweets linked people inside and outside the conference. They drew the watchers of the livestream into the auditorium; they made the people tweeting OUT of the hall feel they were in touch with all the people they would have liked to have been there. This was, as both Mark and Sean have suggested in their own words, the apotheosis of Twitter; both informative, friendly and loving. For make no mistake, ISTEK was the friendliest, love-iest conference around.

And yet……

But ……………..

Twitter’s niceness may either be the result of the most extraordinarily nice bunch of people (the PLN there WAS very nice by the way), or perhaps the abdication of critical evaluation. No negative public tweets about any of the talks? That makes the tweet conversation quite unlike any other event.

And to come back to how I started this (long) post, Twitter’s sheer democracy may be its downfall. if everyone’s voice is equal how can anyone decide what to think (please don’t misunderstand me; I am not talking about age or hierarchy here, but about something else). Academic journals are refereed to ensure quality (doesn’t always work). Most other public utterances are subjected to a more rigorous scrutiny. Why not here?

See, I am slightly confused now. I absolutely LOVED that conference in Istanbul. I loved the sense of real brother- and sisterhood. But does it come at the expense of anything else? And even if it doesn’t can it come again?

I wonder.

I’d love your thoughts on this…..

10 things I hate about powerpoint

Recently, in a reply tweet to @shellTerrell (Shelly) I referred to an article I had written called ’10 things I hate about powerpoint.’ This was originally published on the ‘Humanising Language Teaching‘ website and in ‘The Teacher Trainer‘, a journal published by Pilgrims.

The power of re-tweeting! Shelly re-tweeted the url for the article and pretty soon lots of other people had done the same – because we have all sat through some pretty terrible powerpoint shows in the past (well the phrase ‘death by powerpoint’ has to have been coined for some reason!)

Quite a few tweeters have asked me to put the article on my blog so that they can comment, and so I am doing this now, with two caveats:

1 This is not a new article, although as a frequent conference goer I don’t see that things have changed that much since I wrote it some time ago, and

2 Powerpoint? I have become a passionate convert to ‘Keynote’, Apple’s powerpoint equivalent. But the comments about powerpoint in this article are essentially the same for keynote users too.

So anyway, if you have things you would like to say about powerpoint, here is your chance. Over to you.

______________________________________________

Ok, this is how it goes. I was at an international conference recently (I go to a lot of conferences) and I found myself in conversation with a colleague at the end of a long conference day. And we started rolling our eyes and groaning and generally being a bit melodramatic about the presentations we’d been to. Which is not very kind. But we weren’t complaining about the content of the talks and we certainly weren’t having a go at the presenters (people in glass houses….). No, what we were moaning about was death-by-powerpoint, the sheer ubiquity of that Microsoft platform that can induce catatonia in the liveliest mind – quite apart from the damage it can do to the sleepy middle-aged one that I am forced to carry around.

And the more I experience Powerpoint, and the more I think about it, the more overheated I become. Why, I can feel myself getting all steamed up even as I type. And the reason I’m getting worked up is because there are ten things about powerpoint that I absolutely hate. I mean hate, OK?

1 Powerpoint as lecture notes

Sitting in the front row at a big conference recently I remember feeling trapped and tortured with that desperate urge for escape which you know is impossible. And then you feel like screaming or carving up texbooks or even teachers. What brought about this madness? The little figure on the powerpoint screen which said 4/52. That meant there were another 48 slides to go (think about it! FORTY-EIGHT). And the sad thing is that the fabulous educator was using the slides as her lecture notes. But I don’t want to see a presenter’s notes. I want to see how they come out the other end as discourse when the presenter is in full flow.

And the other terrible thing is that if a presenter chucks up what they are going to say on a slide, before they say it (and they often do) you can read it in 45 seconds – and then what’s the point of listening at all?

Powerpoint offers so much more than this: a chance to show pictures, play music clips, show video clips of teaching. But it’s a lousy reading machine unless the words are used as signs or staging posts to structure a talk.

2 Visual assault

Pictures, flashes, whizzy entrances, funny faces. It can all get far far too much. Sometimes you want to hear what’s in the presenter’s brain, not be dazzled by a kind of pyrotechnic ejaculation.

Ooops! Myself I use pictures and animation a lot. That’s what powerpoint is so damn good for – a whole visual vocabulary that overhead transparencies could and can never match. The images from a data projector can be so much clearer, so much sharper and cleaner. If you’ve ever seen a presentation given first with OHTs and then again with the pictures on a Powerpoint slide you’ll know what I mean.

But I’ll need to re-evaluate what I do with pictures and animation. Someone told me I was overdoing it the other day so I’ll have to get feedback to see if other people think I’m also guilty of visual overload. Hmmm

3 Aural assault

Thwack! Zing! Bzzzz! Kerpow! Wow. There’s one presenter I know who is totally brilliant and loved almost everywhere he goes. His powerpoint presentations literally erupt into the room and if there’s a new gizmo to be had, he’ll have it. And then he’ll chuck in all the latest VERY LOUD sound effects. I can only take about 30 minutes of this before my head starts exploding. But you can’t walk out. It’s rude! It’s just that aural overload is horible.

Ooops! Myself I use music clips in almost every presentation I do (if I can find some daft excuse to include them). It’s not just for the ‘Auditory’ people in the audience, it’s for my own enjoyment too – a total self-indulgence. But maybe it’s too much for everyone else. I’ll have to get some feedback.

But one of the great things about Powerpoint is that you can bring in little audio and video clips at the click of a mouse. All you need is to download some audio editing freeware, the simplest kind, and you can cut little excerpts from audio tracks and give them fade-ins and fade-outs so that they sound good. Even I can do that so it can’t be very technically challenging.

4 Bullet points

If I never see another bullet point again I will be

• Happy
• Relieved
• Surprised

They’re everywhere in Microsoft’s Powerpoint template and they screw up the hierarchy of information. And they’re boring. And there are other means of showing the much more subtle ways that different bits of information relate to each other. Powerpoint – with its animation and varied letter shapes – gives the users a myriad of means in which to show main and subsidiary points. I mean one of its greatest tricks is to allow material to arrive and fade away and then reappear. That’s using the medium properly. Bullet points aren’t. They’re for paper, not for an animate screen.

5 Powerpoint backgrounds

Oh please spare me from another wishy-washy Microsoft background with a translucent globe or the intimations of water or any of the other lacklustre visual ‘washes’ that the designers have chucked in there. The moment you see one of those your heart sinks and you know the user has just taken something off the shelf, and lecture notes (see above) are probably on the way. I’d much rather see a blank or monochrome background. There’s a reason why the walls in many art galleries are plain white. You can do some much more with visual presentation if you don’t have to worry about clashing with some Gatesian view of subtle harmony.

6 Early closing

This really gets me mad. I mean mad. Oh dear I’m overheating again. But I get all steamed up when a presenter finishes their talk and the moment – I mean the second – any applause stops they start clicking away and closing up their powerpoint so we can all see the programme and their desktop. I reckon that’s just plain rude – especially if the presenter has put their email or website address up there and some poor teachers are scrabbling away to try and write them down.

You wouldn’t expect an orchestra to start folding up their music stands before the audience had even got out of their seats at the end of a concert. They wait till the hall is pretty much empty. So why do presenters look like they care so little? Leave the last screen up there until people have left the room. It’s good manners.

7 Lecturers who stand in front of the projector

I reckon it should be easy to spot the difference between a human-being and a machine. One walks and breathes and talks, the other just beams. They don’t mix. They are different media. But presenters often stand right in that beam so we can all see the coursebook excerpt being projected slithering all over their tie or their dress or whatever. And it’s kind of irritating.

And we all (I mean us presenters) do it.

8 Lecturers who are stuck to the computer

Look what Powerpoint can do to a person! When you speak to them in the breaks, or they are talking about their presentation they are all animated, they move around, they seem to function perfectly well as breathing humans. And then they give their sessions and they turn into statues with only one moving part, an index finger which goes click click, jabbing downwards – the only sign of life in the paralysed creature in front of us.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Cordless clickers and controllers are easily available. They can have a range of thirty metres, big enough for a presenter to stride around in just about any room or hall. The moment you get one you morph from paralysis back into teacherdom. It’s a great feeling.

Ooops! Except a colleague said to me the other day – when I had presented in a room which was very cramped (and thus didn’t allow for any wandering about) – well it was nice to see you stay in one place just for once instead of galloping around. I don’t like statues, but maybe striding the aisles can be just as irritating. I’ll have to get some feedback on that.

9 Technology experts

I’ve been to a couple of sessions recently where people got really really excited (almost indecently) about all the wonderful new chunks of hardware and software that are on offer. Interactive Whiteboards – swoon – Google maps – ooooh – computer-mediated communication – aaaaah! And what did we see on the screen? Lecture notes. Bullet points. Ugly little pictures coming up – splat – on a vacuous background. Why do technology fetishists make such a mess of it I wonder? Perhaps it’s because when they talk about the technology they sometimes forget to remember that it’s teaching they should be talking about – fitting the technology to the child, not the child to the technology as the British academic Susan Greenfield said in the House of Lords (Britain’s second legislative chamber) the other day.

Of course not all IT experts are like this. Far from it. We all know people who are brillinat at using the resources they have to hand. They know what I also believe which is that if technology is your thing then you are sort of obliged to show it in its best pedagogic light. The medium, in this case, really is the message.

10 Technology failure

It happens. It’s always happened. The tape recorder doesn’t work. The OHP goes phutt! as the bulb explodes. The video/DVD player has a monster sulk.

Computer’s do it too. They freeze when you try and engage Media Player or they go all funny when you bring in a music clip. And if – as happened to me in Abbottabad last Autumn – the electricity goes, you’re back where you started: just a presenter and two hundred teachers, and the fans have stopped working in the fetid heat and there’s still sixty-three minutes to go and they’re looking at you expectantly….

And then, once the panic disappears you suddenly remember what it is to be a teacher.

Phew. I’ve got all that off my chest then. I feel much better now, thank you for asking. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m actually a huge fan of Powerpoint. I use it all the time. It allows me to add extra dimensions to teaching and presenting that were never previously available. But I’m still a novice, really, and probably irritate people with the way I used the medium just as much as people (as you have seen) irritate me. So I need your feedback (see above). Which is why if you see me presenting at a conference and I make a mess of it do come and tell me. I’m sure I’ll be pleased to hear from you.

Won’t I?