Cafe

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

The Definition: The flipped classroom inverts traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of class and moving homework into the classroom. Increasingly common in the last few years and made more popular by Khan Academy, the flipped classroom concept is a perfect match for the SMRT curriculum. ESL students in particular can benefit from watching grammar lectures before school starts and having�extra class time for active learning and skill building. Want more information? Try the Teacher's Guide to Flipped Classrooms by Edudemic. �This technology education blog has compiled a comprehensive list of flipped class resources with teacher support, examples and videos.

In his blog Nik's Quickshout, Nik Peachy informs us of different ways to use these visually arresting and vocabulary rich resources in the ELT classroom. He also gives tips about finding and selecting the best infographics for students and designing appropriate tasks to accompany them. Infographics easily lend themselves to a vocabulary, writing or even a grammar lesson and are perfect for visual learners.

From the online counterpart to magazine Mental Floss comes an article about four subtle linguistic trends in the English language that have emerged over the past 50 years or so.

Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways today's print dictionary is poised for transformation. An oldie but a goodie from TED.

Jack C. Richards discusses top down and bottom up processing and how they affect listening comprehension.

Read Theory is a website offering free online reading exercises to students of all levels, from beginner to GRE, focusing on comprehension and critical thinking. The program encourages students to continue reading and moving up levels with badges and contests. It also allows teachers to sign up an entire class at once and track students' progress and activity on the site.

Storybird is a website that allows students to make and read short stories accompanied by beautiful illustrations. The site is easy to use and the great artwork stimulates students' creativity and story-telling skills. Completed stories are easy to share with peers and other classes on any device.

Here are some great new ideas and examples from Youtube on creating your own instructional videos for blended learning classrooms like ours.

In this quick two-minute interview Jim Scrivener gives his best tips on classroom management and the one thing he thinks all teachers could do to improve their classes.

Social bookmarking can help you save time by accessing your bookmarks from any computer and sharing great professional development resources with your personal learning network. This article provides an intro to social bookmarking and some links to the most useful tools out there for teachers.

"Technology is changing not only how people write, but also how they learn to write." This free ebook discusses necessary changes in pedagogy and introduces approaches and experiences of real teachers teaching writing with technology.

This post explains how and why educators should begin to form personal learning networks. It also discusses some easy ways to start the process and includes links to some great resources.

Teaching can be stressful and teacher burn out rates are higher than ever. This article from Cambridge offers some reasons for teacher stress as well as some helpful coping strategies.

Great Ted Talk for any teacher. Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like. A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

Now Smrt classes can be even more interactive with the use of an air mouse. This new technology gives way to smooth transitions between pages and activities with no need of wires for an increase of movement in the classroom.

Voice recordings have become more popular with advances in technology. Exciting new web tools lead to increased proficiency in oral language skills.

Samples of student work at different proficiency levels to assist teachers with a better understanding of the writing competencies and benchmarks.

Tiki-Toki is a web-based timeline software. Any class can have a timeline. Use these timelines for assignments, class notes or homework. They are easy to make and understand.

February 19th 2014, Lizzie Pinard will host a webinar for English language teachers. The topic is learner autonomy. It will be discussed along with suggestions on practical methods that we can use to encourage learners to be genuinely autonomous outside the classroom.

A collection of articles on EFL methodology for teachers at all levels of experience.