THE START OF SMRT-ENGLISH PROGRAMME

Dear students,
SMRT-ENGLISH programme of Canadian College of the English Language has started. 

This is the massage from your Canadian Teacher.

Dear students:

Welcome to the global network of SMRT English users!

To start please follow the instructions below:

1) Google Chrome

It is absolutely imperative that students use the Google Chrome browser when viewing the Smrt curriculum.Google Chrome is the fastest web browser available and works best with the various Google Apps used in the curriculum. If your computer does not already have Google Chrome, download it here.  We recommend downloading it on any machine that you think you will use to view the Smrt curriculum.

Once Google Chrome has been installed, open it up.  

2) Go to www.sg9.smrtenglish.com and Log In

3) If you have a google account please log in with it. If you don’t have a gmail account please Create an Account

4) Do the placementtest

****It is very important that you do the test by December 21. PLEASE include the name of your school when registering.

Good luck and thank you for choosing SMRT!

DIffERENT STYlES

Of blOG pOSTS

(Text below is copied from British Council User guide for blogging by David Blundell)

 When you start out writing your blog, staring at a blank page can really make your head spin. fortunately, just considering the different styles of blog posts you can put together can give you some inspiration!

“How to” Posts

“How To” posts, give your audience valuable information that shows them “how to” do something. How To posts can come in a few different varieties for example:

A) Straight forward “How to”

The most common way is to walk someone through a process of doing something.

For example: How to pick a college to study at in the UK or how to create your own art workshop. The best kinds of how to posts are ones which are very detailed. As a result you might want to focus in on a specific but small problem.

 So instead of saying “How To Study In The UK” You might instead decide to write about:

 ·         How To Pick A College

·         How To Get Funding To Study

·         How To Apply On Line

Choosing a smaller problem and covering it in a lot of detail is much more valuable to your reader than to take a big problem and gloss over it.

 B) Tips and techniques

 Whilst your How To post generally leads you through a process, tips and techniques can be short snippets of useful information, for example tips for getting students engaged in a lesson, or ways to increase attendance to an event. Smaller bits of useful information are easier to digest than longer more details posts and it gives people techniques that they can use easily. These styles of posts are generally a lot less involved than a How To post. 

 Inspiration Posts

Inspirational posts can be very valuable to your audience. Sometimes they don’t just want information on how to do something, they want to read something that makes them feel good about themselves or inspires them, motivates them or puts a spring in their step. Inspirational posts are like cheering someone on. You might be openly encouraging people to stick at their goals, or telling people how to feel better when they’re struggling with a certain topic.

 Some different ways of writing inspirational posts include:

 A) Success stories

If you have something that you are proud of that you or your team has done, share it with your audience, especially if they can feel like they could be part of the same. for example, share a story of a student who struggled to learn English but overcame their challenges and succeeded in their goals. If you can show someone solving the problems that your reader is having it will build a connection between them and your content. 

 B) Personal stories

Remember, your blog is personal to you and the more your audience feels like they know a bit about you, the more likely they are to come back and read what you’re doing.

If you’ve got some kind of relevant personal success, or a story that you’d like to share about overcoming an obstacle, this can be very engaging for your audience.

Interviews

Think about who you could interview on your blog and don’t be afraid to reach out to experts who you think might turn you down – you’d be surprised at how open people are to giving interviews, especially if you can make them less than 20 minutes. Ask yourself who would your audience like to see interviewed and what would they like to find out from that person. You could even ask your audience to submit their questions in advance and make them a part of the interview!

 Reviews / resources

Your blog audience looks to you as an expert in your field and one of the ways to do this is to provide honest advice and expertise.

 For example, if you can show people how to use whiteboards, how to set up an art workshop or how to organise a science project, you might have tools and resources that can help them do that. Is it software that you use? Is it a time-saving technique? Is it a new online website? Whatever you’ve come across that you loved using would make for a great review. And remember to be objective in your reviews, listing the bad points as well as the good will get you a lot of respect from your audience.

Current events

If there is something topical that is relevant to your blog then write about it. This will also help to keep your content fresh. Think about any events that you are part of, or seasonal events that might be of interest to your audience.

Series idea – taking a problem and slicing it thinly

A mistake people make online is to solve too many problems at once, or solve problems that are more advanced than our audience. A way to create compelling content is to take an issue you know your community is interested in and slice it up very thinly.

 For example… problem:

 How can I use the internet to learn English

 Sliced thinly:

·         How to assess your level of English online

·         Online resources for learning English

·         Online communities to help improve your English

·         How to use social media to improve your English

 Doing it this way means you can drip feed people advice and tips on the same problem whilst remaining on point, and more importantly, keeping your audience’s attention with bite-sized tips and techniques.#

 More information about tips to write a blog can be found in following websites

http://www.problogger.net/how-to-write-great-blog-content/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-write-a-great-blog-post-in-just-15-minutes/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-write-effective-blog-posts/

Blog for Teachers

These days people seem to be doing so many amazing things on the internet. There is no reason why teachers, even ESL teachers, cannot take advantage of such excellent resources and start using technology in their classes.

Blogs have become quite common, they can be a great way to make learning more fun! Even with just a classroom computer, you can find a creative solution which allows students to use blogs in class from time to time.

1. About Bloging

Bloging offers many different account options but if your school is not willing to pay for multiple accounts, do not worry, there are free education accounts too which gives you access to everything you need to make your own blog. Creating your blog you get the opportunity easy to customize to appeal to students of all ages, and you can even embed your own videos, images, and sounds in the blog. The site has a tutorial that you can watch and plenty of great sample glogs that you could use as is or as inspiration for your own creations. I would like to suggest several ways ESL teachers and students can use this site.

2. A Blog for Teachers

Teachers can use blogs in many ways. Firstly, you can create digital posters to print out and display in your classroom. In just a short time, you can create visually stunning posters that will impress your colleagues and your students. Classroom posters for rules, special announcements, or even classroom English phrases could be published in your blog. To make things even more interesting, you can also adapt the idea of a digital poster to suit your teaching needs. A blog can be used to structure entire classes or even homework assignments by linking or embedding all the necessary resources to one page, the glog. In the example above, students are directed to various sites to complete quizzes, view lectures, and examine other resources before being asked to complete a couple assignments. A great advantage to using glogs for lesson and homework assignments is that you can include as many resources and scaffolding as your lowest level student needs while higher level students can simply move through the assignments without reviewing the extra material. In this way, each and every student can have the individual support he or she needs to successfully complete tasks. Using a blog to structure a complex lesson also frees you up to monitor students more closely and provide more support to students who are struggling with the material. It is almost like having an extra teacher in the classroom!

3. A Blog for Students

Students can use blogs in the same way teachers can. At the end of a unit, you can ask students to create individual or group posters to display in the classroom and/or present in class as a review or for a poster competition. If your students feel very comfortable with technology already, they can create their own blogs with resources, questions and assignments for their classmates to use, again, probably as a review. These types of tasks allow students to show off their creativity while also demonstrating their mastery of course content.

Since English is a communication tool, it seems silly to have students completing only reading and writing assignments for homework.

By using a blog you can include listening tasks and, by using additional resources such as Voicethread, even speaking assignments. If you think that students should be practicing all four skills both in and out of the classroom then a blog might be a good place to start. Posting a link to the blog you want to use on your class website or even just handing out the address makes assigning homework easy and students can look forward to the exciting new material you have prepared for them. When was the last time a homework assignment looked so colorful? Think of all the paper and ink you will conserve by becoming a tech-savvy teacher! If you have not started making your first glog yet, now might be a great time to begin.

Vancuver is a fantastic place! The combination of the ocean, the mountains, the mild climate and hundreds of sites makes it extremly conviniet for young people to live and to study. Cosmopolitan population just demonstrates it.

This is a new blog

Let's learn English with CCEL in Vancuver.