www.teachertrainingvideos.com

By: Russell Stanard

The Product: www.teachertrainingvideos.com offers walk through videos that take teachers step by step through a whole array of ICT tools including blogs, wikis, podcasts and much more. The focus is on teachers who are unfamiliar with technology and need support at every stage. The teacher can actually see the author’s computer screen as he guides you through the technologies and points out the pitfalls. With more than a 1100 users subscribed to the newsletter and an average 10,000 unique users a month, TTV.com has grown into one of the biggest teacher training sites on the internet.  The hours of training videos are completely free and open to the public, reflecting the author’s commitment to open educational resources.

Judge's comments: ‘The author has an enthusiastic manner and seems to know how to present his ideas in a way that makes them accessible to all teachers’

The Team: Russell Stanard

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Teaching with Bear: Using puppets in the language classroom with young learners – Book, DVD, Bear Puppet

By: Oxford University Press

The Product: Teaching with Bear helps teachers introduce puppets into their lessons confidently and effectively. It shows how using a puppet as a language assistant and learner will motivate learners aged 4-11 to learn English. The accompanying DVD includes interviews with teacher trainer and author Mary Slattery, real classroom extracts of teachers using Bear, and lots of activities and ideas. Teachers find out how using a puppet can help them to stage a lesson and connect with other areas of the curriculum, and to involve a puppet in listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities in a way that includes all children.

Judge's comments: ‘A polished product, attractively designed (both book and Bear) and easy to navigate’

The Team: Mary Slattery, Catherine Kneafsey, Lucy Allen, Julia Bell

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Teaching Unplugged – Book

By: Delta Publishing

The Product: Teaching Unplugged is the first book to deal comprehensively with the materials-light, conversation-driven approach to English Language Teaching known as Dogme ELT. It challenges not only the way we view teaching, but also the way we view being a teacher.

Part A provides a detailed explanation of the core principles behind Dogme ELT and invites teachers to reflect on the best way to learn a language and, consequently, to teach it.

Part B contains a bank of activities that teachers can use right away and which help them ‘unplug their teaching’ from the start. These activities involve little or no preparation, often requiring no more than pen, paper and the people in the room.

Part C reflects on how Dogme ELT can be applied in different teaching contexts and shows how the approach works equally well for native and non-native speakers of English and how to use Dogme in a wide range of different classroom environments.

Judge's comments: ‘The approach is practical, simple, easy to understand. Focus on teaching the people, not the subject’

The Team: Scott Thornbury, Luke Meddings, Lindsay Clandfield, Mike Burghall

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Global Issues in the ELT Classroom – book

By: Spolecnost pro Fair Trade (Czech Republic)

The Product: Child soldiers, carbon footprints, slums and early marriages are tough topics. These represent some of the world’s woes that the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals aim to alleviate by 2015.

Raising their profile among learners is one of the primary goals of this ELT resource book. Another is providing them with the vocabulary and functional language they need to discuss them. Another is to motivate them to understand the role of the individual and to empower them to act.

It provides lesson material for all eight MDGs at pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate levels. It consists of thirty-two lesson plans, photocopiable worksheets, activity cards, pictures, information boxes, links to relevant websites and videos. The lessons require students to process information, act, read, write, draw, critique and co-operate in creating letters, posters, speeches and reports. In essence, they are challenged to reflect on their own attitudes, feelings and sensibilites.

Judge's comments: ‘This seems very innovative to me. I have not seen other materials based around these particular UN goals or so consistently and authentically around these types of issues’

The Team: James Thomas, Martina Pavlickova and Martina Sindelarova Skupenova

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Stuart Wiffin and Helen Gibbons (UK)

The range and scope of the entries was impressive and Stuart Wiffin and Helen Gibbons were announced the inaugural winners. Their unique idea for using the greatest lecturers to aid EAP teaching bagged them £1000 and a potential publishing contract. The scope and ultimate aim of their idea is to build up the academic skill-set of students (note-taking, essay-writing, presenting) through challenging and cutting-edge material.

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