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I’ve eaten humble pie, many a time. It doesn’t taste as good as the real thing though.

The almighty pie is as ubi­quit­ous with New Zea­l­and and Aus­tralian culin­ary his­tory as the ham­burger is to the American’s. Pies are con­sumed by the truck­load every day in Aus­tralia and New Zea­l­and. They’re scoffed, hurled, trod­den on, frozen, gif­ted, marveled, com­pared, cham­pioned, premiered, bought, sold, chundered, ogled, eaten and finally passed. 

I don’t think a heart patient would be scoff­ing down too many pies given the fat con­tent, and cal­or­ific value (some­thing they share with their more famed Amer­ican cousin, the bur­ger), but that doesn’t seem to bother any­one else. 

So, let me intro­duce you to the ‘pie’.

In this les­son you’ll learn how to make a pie, com­pare a pie and say pie in 20 dif­fer­ent ways.

Ready? Let’s go.

This struck me as being per­tin­ent to the cur­rent eco­nomic, and global cli­mate, and…so I was moved to make a video about the subject. 

The story of The Blind Men and the Ele­phant is also strongly related to my views on edu­ca­tion and Per­son­al­ized Online Learn­ing and Teach­ing. Cer­tainly the move­ment towards online learn­ing is gain­ing momentum. In my opin­ion we will see big shifts in learn­ing and teach­ing in the com­ing years as online learn­ing, mobile learn­ing and web 2.0 tech­no­lo­gies gain popularity. 

Let’s face it teen­agers today twit­ter daily, sms by the second, and are in con­stant con­tact with friends and fam­ily through mobile tele­phony devices. It appears inev­it­able then that web 2.0 learn­ing will even­tu­ally be the learn­ing method of choice. Online learn­ing is ‘green’ and eco-friendly and that’s what the new gen­er­a­tion under­stand. At least I hope they do. Trav­el­ling to and from a learn­ing estab­lish­ment costs money and burns energy, doesn’t it? Am I wrong? So, why then jump in the car and go to uni­ver­sity, or your local lan­guage school? Learn online and save the planet. Sure, you need face to face con­tact, but that can be with peers, colleagues,and online teach­ers, can’t it? 

I’m not sug­gest­ing I have all the answers, but as far as Per­son­al­ized Online Learn­ing is con­cerned I believe its a valid altern­at­ive. Cer­tainly for informal learn­ing, such as learn­ing to speak Eng­lish. Per­haps, ESL teacher’s can take the lead then and inspire other insti­tu­tions to fol­low? What do you think? 

Part of the goal of online learn­ing should be peer col­lab­or­a­tion and involve­ment. Why? Well, in the spirit of The Blind Men and the Ele­phant it provides the oppor­tun­ity for stu­dents around the globe to get together and have a chat. Share stor­ies, and gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of each other. In my opin­ion that’s the big advant­age of online learn­ing. Cer­tainly, I’ve noticed people from Iran, Tunisia, Croa­tia, Spain, Ger­many, The United States, Uzbek­istan, Rus­sia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Slov­akia, Chile, Brazil, Mex­ico, Venezuela.…and many more coun­tries vis­it­ing my posts. So, it’s my dream to have these stu­dents learn­ing together from each other, with the sup­port of qual­i­fied online instructors. 

In a world of global con­flict and con­stant mis­un­der­stand­ing, I think online learn­ing provides the plat­form to breach the divide, and provide a bet­ter world for future gen­er­a­tions. So, as teach­ers don’t we have a respons­ib­ilty to each other and future gen­er­a­tions to instig­ate the change?

Unfor­tu­nately the older gen­er­a­tion make the decisions that bind us. Am I right? But the older gen­er­a­tion were edu­cated 30 years ago, so really they’re not ‘with it’ are they? That’s why the stu­dents need to start design­ing the cur­riculums. If we involve stu­dents in the decision mak­ing pro­cess won’t they be more motiv­ated to learn? By cre­at­ing envir­on­ments that applaud cre­ativ­ity aren’t we change lead­ers rather than change pro­cras­tin­at­ors. Ima­gine stu­dents from Iran, Rus­sia, USA, and China con­vers­ing on a daily basis, shar­ing ideas and opin­ions? How would that shape the future? It would be look­ing pretty good, wouldn’t it? 

If we delay the move to online learn­ing we are only delay­ing the inev­it­able, aren’t we? I think edu­cat­ors should take it upon them­selves to move stu­dents online now. I’m try­ing to do my part. It’s dif­fi­cult, but I think it’s the right way for­ward. What about you, what do you think? 

Who are The Blind Men? 

I invite your opin­ions. Thanks for listen­ing, I hope your enjoy the video. Oh, by the way…this video is avail­able to stu­dent sub­scribers in mp3 format, with study notes. Best, Robert 

Well, you might be won­der­ing why I entitled this post, ’ Present Per­fect Paella’. Am I right? Well, I’ve got a pen­chant for sea­food, and I love Span­ish cuisine so I decided to cre­ate a new recipe.

Paella, a clas­sic Sea­food recipe every­one should know, and prefer­ably cook mixed with Eng­lish. So, this an intro­duc­tion to a series based around cook­ing Paella, the his­tory of the dish, a recipe or two, and of course some lan­guage work, new vocab­u­lary, and read­ing and writ­ing tasks. The series is still in devel­op­ment, non­the­less I thought I’d share a taste of what’s to come.

Enjoy.…

Well, my stu­dents have been request­ing this for some time now, so I’m sure they’re pleased. This is part of a three part series based on Soccer.

Why is soc­cer vocab­u­lary use­ful to learn?

Well, it’s great for small talk. Small talk is the abil­ity to make light con­ver­sa­tion, so soc­cer is a great con­ver­sa­tion topic. Why? Because the whole loves soc­cer so it’s easy to talk about, and people are nat­ur­ally inter­ested. Well, most people. Guy’s more than girls.

So, when you’ve learnt this new vocab­u­lary, and com­pleted the series “Soc­cer Talk” you’ll be able to speak with ease about soc­cer to friends, col­leagues and most import­antly new busi­ness contacts.

‘Soc­cer Talk’ is a great tool for cre­at­ing rela­tion­ships, and form­ing ties.

The first les­son is free, and the remain­ing les­son and con­ver­sa­tion class are avail­able to sub­scribers only.  Sub­scribers also recieve a com­plete gloss­ary of soc­cer terms, expres­sions and idioms, with mp3 listen­ing and pro­nun­ci­ation files, and con­stant sup­port from our online team.

So, have a listen and if you like it. You can down­load the video file only, here.

Best,

Rob

HI,

This is a short pod­cast mp3 file for your listen­ing pleas­ure. Phrasal verbs are very com­mon in Eng­lish, so its a good idea to add them to your rep­er­toire. ‘Get’ is prob­ably the most used verb in Eng­lish, and like­wise phrasal verbs with ‘get’ are very common.

So, have a listen and if you like it you can down­load the mp3 file.

Get audio phrasal verbs">You can down­load here.