Month: December 2009

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: Printable Goodies

    Oh, it’s the seventh day, and that means I’m past the halfway point! Woohoo! Well, on New Year’s Eve, traditionally a time for confetti and streamers, we’ll be focusing on paper. Many of us have been asked recently by higher-ups to reduce our use of paper for economic reasons, and while it’s a good thing…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: ProfessionalStudiesAE.org and more

    Very serious here on the sixth day, after photo fun yesterday! Is one of your New Year’s resolutions going to involve professional development? Read on for free self-guided online courses you can do from the comfort of your own computer! I’ll mostly focus on a set of courses for adult educators, but there are more…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: Photojojo and more

    On the fifth day of Christmas we’ll be taking a break from education again, sort of. Photography is a favorite hobby of many EFL teachers and teachers in general, but relatively few of us have huge amounts of money to spend on our equipment or taking classes. So, how to upgrade our photo skills? Keep…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: The Internet TESL Journal

    On the fourth day of Christmas, I’ll be introducing to you something I’ve mentioned a couple of times, but have never fully introduced. I hope that you won’t mind if I count this as a full entry, because if you don’t already know about it, or if you’ve forgotten about it, it’s worth discovering. If…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: CRAFT and MAKE

    On the third day of Christmas…something completely different! CRAFT and its more technological sister MAKE are both the kind of things where most of their target audiences already know about them, but a lot of other people could potentially enjoy them and benefit from them. Check out the blog, projects section, and other parts of…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: Portable Apps

    Hello, and welcome to Day Two! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) I think this one of the best things I have for you; even if it’s not something you need right now, you may make a friend’s day if you know someone who needs it. PortableApps.com lets you install small, “light” versions of free programs for…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas: Google Wave Guide and Invitations

    Day One: A couple of Lifehacker editors have written a guide to Google Wave, the amazing new still-in-progress collaboration and communication service that I think could be really fantastic for teachers, writers, people working overseas, and just about anyone. You can read a version of the guide free online: The Complete Guide to Google Wave…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas

    Stay tuned… I’m going to try to do Twelve Days of Christmas here at Talk to the Clouds. That means that starting on December 25th, I’ll post a useful and/or fun free resource every day for twelve days! The Twelve Days of Christmas does traditionally start on Christmas, and isn’t the twelve days before, as…

  • Getting on the Same Page: Book Gifts for Friends and Family

    Is it just me, or do friends, family members, and random strangers sometimes make strange assumptions about us once we become English teachers? They may think we support English-only policies, are ashamed of our first languages if we are multilingual, are constantly judging them on their use of English, etc. They may resent us for…

  • Low Pay, High Qualifications

    I’m working on a post about English-related books you can give as gifts. However, I just had to post this cranky message first. I just took a look at the current issue of Ohayo Sensei (a new one should be out in a couple of days). OS is probably the best source for non-university teaching…