Blog Archives
Luke Meddings: unplugged subversion
Hi folks! It’s been an awful long time, hasn’t it? To break the “fast” is yet another familiar name on most of our list, Luke Meddings, co-author of the bible of Dogme, “Teaching Unplugged” (with Scott Thornbury) and the first offering from The Round, “52: a year of subversive activity for the ELT classroom” (with Lindsay Clandfield).
This interview’s actually been a long time coming, but not only just before IATEFL Glasgow that we managed to do it. I’ve enjoyed putting it together and I hope you all will like it, too. Stay till the end – there’s a little surprise!
Bio
Luke Meddings is a teacher, author and teacher trainer. In 2000 he co-founded the Dogme in ELT movement with Scott Thornbury, and their book Teaching Unplugged (Delta Publishing, 2009) won a British Council ELTon Award for Innovation in 2010. In 2011, together with Lindsay Clandfield, he started The Round, an e-publishing collective; their e-book 52: a year of subversive activity for the ELT classroom has just been published.
Luke’s “neglected” blog: http://lukemeddings.posterous.com/
Luke’s Twitter handle: @LukeMeddings
Teaching Unplugged can be bought here or here.
52 can be bought here or here.
For the geeks:
I used:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS62
Quicktime Pro v7.7 (1680.34)
AVS Video Editor v5.2.0.169
Audacity 2.0.0
Acer Aspire 5742
Dale Coulter: The Dogme Generation
My last video interview (not counting the snippet of Scott Thornbury) was with Vicky Loras and was posted on 23rd October, a solid two months ago! These words may ring a bell to those of you old enough…
I was around when Jesus Christ
had his moment of doubt and pain
Well, it got to be a little like that… until people such as Brad Patterson and David Dodgson nominated iAskU for the Edublog Awards, and that gave me a much-needed boost of motivation. So, to sort of compensate for the lack of output this past couple of months, I’m offering a double bill! Two for the price of none becomes the square of two for the price of none!
First one up is someone with the devil-may-care attitude of youth, but blessed with the intelligence and wisdom of someone much further down the linear age line, or as Luke Meddings expostulated in the iTDi webinar recently, the not-so-linear age line. If you haven’t heard of Dale Coulter, it’s about time you had; and if you have, I’m sure you’d agree that he’s worth 26 minutes of our time, wouldn’t you?
Dale also mentioned a few people, and I’d also recommend checking them out:
Anthony Gaughan: Interview & blog
Adam Beale: blog
Luke Meddings: blog
Bio
My name is Dale Coulter and I’m an English teacher, born in Reading, near London in the UK and now residing in Rome. For the past two and a half years I’ve been teaching English in both London and Italy and not a day has passed that I haven’t woken up in the morning looking forward to going to work.
I am a keen fan of unplugged approaches to teaching and started using Dogme soon after qualifying. I find it’s the approach which accomodates my beliefs about teaching, that it’s a process of ‘pulling out’ information rather than ‘putting it in’. Lately I’ve found myself participating more in the online ELT world, writing my blog, keeping in touch and sharing ideas on twitter and also speaking at conferences around Europe.
I am constantly committed to pushing myself to the edge of my comfort zone, for it is only here that you really develop and improve.
Dale’s twitter handle: @dalecoulter
Dale’s blog: Language Moments
For the geeks:
Dale’s end:
Macbook, internal webcam and moviemaker
Chiew’s end:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS62
Quicktime Pro v7.7 (1680.34)
AVS Video Editor v5.2.0.169
Anthony Gaughan: Dogme vs Principled Eclecticism, Round One!
We all know that teachers have many hats they’d need to wear to be able to survive this gruelling profession, but if you’ve been following these interviews, and more so if you’ve been reading the recent contributions to Dave Dogson’s Truth or Lie Blog Challenge, you’d have found other interesting “hats”, perhaps less conventional, that are being donned on, from time to time, by our very versatile group of educators. We’ve seen the scuba diver hat, the martial arts master, the marathon runner, the actress, the musician, etc.
Today, to add to that impressive list, I’d like to present to you… drum roll… in the blue corner… the swashbuckling “Errol” Anthony Gaughan!
I know it’s a bit long, but just as in Mike Harrison’s interview, I’ve split the videos into three parts. Do make a special effort in watching all three, even if not in one go, and I’m sure you’ll learn something.
If you’re interested in Principled Eclecticism, you may be like to read this page. Anthony also mentioned a few dogmetists, who’s written rather interesting articles on their dogme classes:
Adam Beale
Chia Suan Chong
Dale Coulter
Jemma Gardner
Oli Beddall
And to this list, may I be so bold as to add mine, though not as good as the others: The Dogme Diaries.
There are also many others who, from time to time, talk about not only dogme, but other ELT-related stuff. I’d suggest you checked out the blogs I read…sometimes.
Bio
Anthony Gaughan decided at the tender age of 12 that he could do a better job than his current English teacher and he therefore committed himself to a career in pedagogy. To this end, he studied English Language and Literature at Royal Holloway & Bedford New College, University of London, where he dropped out of the linguistics module after two classes as he “didn’t understand a bloody word of it”. Two and a half years later, he took an initial teacher training course in ELT to see if teaching was actually suited to him, and went to cut his teeth for a couple of years in central London. He left ELT to complete a PGCE in secondary education, but was deemed “too arrogant” and therefore he returned to adult ELT, where he has remained ever since.
After some time as a freelance teacher in Germany, Anthony begged, borrowed or stole sufficient money to fund a DELTA at IH London and is still trying to write his long-delayed MA dissertation. Anthony is a strong believer in collective development and so is a member of IATEFL, TDSIG, ELTABB and HELTA. He is enthused by teaching unplugged and working with new teachers, and he is annoyed by the fact that, as time goes by, he comes to respect his English teacher from when he was twelve more and more.
Links:
Blog: http://teachertrainingunplugged.wordpress.com
Twitter: @AnthonyGaughan
Employer: http://hamburg.school-of-english.de/pages/celta
IATEFL: www.iatefl.org
TDSIG: www.tdsig.org
ELTABB: www.eltabb.com
HELTA: www.helta.de
For the geeks:
Anthony’s end:
Macbook 4.1
iSight inbuilt camera
Logitech USB Microphone
Chiew’s end:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS62
Goldwave v5.56
Quicktime Pro 7.7 (1680.34)
MPEG Streamclip 1.2
Audacity 1.3 Beta
Appended: 5 Oct 2011
I’d forgotten to include the link to Anthony’s interview with Andi White, so here it is:
iasku 