Exercises passive voice + overview & exercises tenses
As promised before, here is a document with a bunch of exercises on the passive voice. For those really keen on tenses, here’s an overview of the tenses, as well as some exercises on them.
Let me know if you want/need anything else…
Farewell, Ning!
Several weeks ago (around half April, in fact), Ning (the social network co-founded by Marc Andreesseen – of Netscape fame) decided to axe their free, ad-based version of the site. The new CEO put it like this:
My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us.
So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service.
Yeah. Same old, same old.
In the same smooth way they swept the free service under the carpet, they also fired more than 40% of their staff.
Since then, I’ve been receiving emails from them almost begging me to switch to one of the other plans – and someone at the Ning HQ must have realized that quite a few teachers use the network with their students, too, because guess what, after a couple of weeks, Ning were proud to announce that educators and health professionals could get the mini-version for free, thanks to some generous sponsors. Of course, these freebies are only for North-American teachers, and the mini-plan includes almost nothing anyway.
Ning promised that by Friday 20/08/2010 all existing free services would be stopped, so hopefully that was going to be the end of it all for me. But guess what… Apparently,
Last week, a number of Network Creators contacted us with special billing requests. Some are people who live in areas of the world with limited electronic payment options. Some are still waiting on a transfer of ownership from a previous Network Creator. Some have asked us to accept an alternate form of payment.
To accommodate all of these special requests, we’ve decided to extend the deadline until August 30, 2010.
My suffering is still not over, and I’m expecting a couple more special reminders and extended deadlines. And all of this while I’ve already switched over to grou.ps for my social network needs…Farewell, Ning. I hope everybody took the sensible decision!
Bill Gates about the future of studying
I had only just written some comments about Blended learning at COMU when exactly one day later, TechCrunch was reporting about what was going on at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, California. (My apologies for not writing about this any sooner, but after my course at the university of Amsterdam was finished, the university’s entire computer system was down for 3 days). As it turns out, Bill Gates was there, and so was Nicholas Negroponte. I’m sure you know the first one – the second one is the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab (and as such, responsible for the One Laptop Per Child project).
Rather important people, it’s safe to say.
Negroponte said that in a few years’ time, the physical book is going to die. Perhaps not in Turkey, where not everybody has access to the E-reader technology, but I can surelt see it happening in other countries. Our phones are getting fascinatingly powerful (with large enough resolutions to display ebooks on them), and tablet PCs seem to be catching on quite well, too. Over here, my guess is that we’ll have to wait a few weeks more before we see any of those babies in the classroom. Unless you can use them to update your Facebook account, of course.
But what did Gates have to say? Something that will sound like music to the ears of many students:
“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. (…) It will be better than any single university.”
Wow. Does that sound good, or what? It does, yes, provided that you’re a motivated learner. College needs to be less “place-based,” according to Gates. And you know what? I agree! 
Blended learning at COMU
The Chronicle of Higher Education published an interesting article a few days ago. Apparently…
[a] Texas higher-education panel is recommending that students be required to complete at least 10 percent of their degrees outside the classroom, through options like online courses.
At least 10% ! Reading this article was like music to my ears. For several years I have been wondering how to improve students’ motivation for learning (and working on their futute job options at the same time), and I’ve always suggested that we move some of the subjects out of the classroom. A couple of subjects could easily be moved to online courses, enabling the students not only to get the explanations as often as they want to, but also to discuss it all together in forums, do exercises online, etc. I’m getting enthusiastic again, and at the same time I start wondering…
Tourism?
Would students at the school of Tourism be ready for this? After all, many do not bring books into the classrooms, and of those who don’t bring books, the majority even doesn’t bring any paper for taking notes, let alone a pen(cil) to write with. Perhaps it’s because they’re not sufficiently motivated by the teachers, or by the importance of the subject. Perhaps it’s because we’re doing something wrong, somehow. Perhaps they’ll be more motivated by an online learning environment. Perhaps not. Perhaps they couldn’t care less about how we try to teach them, or about what they learn. I don’t want to hold such a negative view of my students, though, and I really believe that they all want a happy future with interesting jobs, and a nice salary to boot.
At the same time, I think it’s very important to stress the level of determination required both from the students and the teachers. Teaching online courses sounds easy (hey…prepare once, ready for always!) but it’s not. It’s time consuming, because there’s a lot of follow-up to do, but the rewards are massive. I don’t know about the exact statistics, but instead of engaging 5 students in a lesson, you can engage all of them (or at least the vast majority). Students get the possibility to really engage in discussions, for which there is often no time in the class (“because we have to finish the chapter”), and to really go deeply into the subjects.
But what about the exams?
Let’s face it: organizing exams 4 times a year is not helping our students – we’re training them to be lazy. They have to study only a handful of pages, and it’s relatively easy for them to do so in just one evening. Which is exactly what they do, of course. Can someone explain to me how this is a good way of showing them what it takes to be a real manager? I thought managers had to do some real multi-tasking there…keeping all the various departments of a hotel or a travel agency in their minds, at the same time, and planning (well ahead) for all of these.
Showing future young professionals that it’s perfectly okay to “solve a problem” (the exams) using the “just-in-time” approach all the time is really not what we should be doing, if you ask me. Perhaps it’s an approach which has worked until now, and which was okay within the context of Turkey, but globalization does not stop at the borders of this country. Hotels that are not run well are taken over by foreign companies, or they simply go out of business. Or it’s just not worth running them anymore for the money they generate.
Why don’t we try to change all of that, then. Rather than working with a time-based evaluation (4 times a year), let’s go for the process-based evaluation. Students who work hard all term long are rewarded gradually for all their work. No more exam stress, no more frustration because your neighbour (with the excellent short-term memory) gets much higher marks, even though s/he never does anything productive in class…
How do I…
What we need is a model with less compartmentalisations and with more integration of the various aspects of the learning process.
The computer has or will become so widespread in our culture that all teachers and language teachers in particular are obliged to reconsider their major questions. The question ‘How do I fit the Internet into my teaching?’ should be replaced by ‘How do I change my teaching to fit the internet?’
We can’t escape the computer culture in the same way that we couldn’t escape print culture. Inevitably, also in content based teaching, teachers are wondering how they can use the computer. Language teachers are wondering how software or the internet can help them in creating bilingual teaching, how to enhance native language instruction using technology, and what content areas can be covered with computers in two languages, for instance.
Courses will have to be re-thought, because teaching in a student-centred way is completely different from teaching in a teacher-centred way, which many of us have been doing…well…for ever. Teachers (if they previously have been in a teacher training programme or not) will have to be (re)trained, so that they can use these online environments in the most efficient way possible.
This is also where I see a responsibility for the university. We cannot expect software or technology engineers to know everything about the pedagogy for all the various subject pedagogies, just as we can’t expect all of the teaching staff to magically know how to use all this technology.
Jump!
In my opinion, online learning is not the best way to improve the academic level of our students, but I do strongly believe in blended learning, combining the best of both worlds: students attend some classes on campus and complete other online work from wherever they want. Not having a computer or internet connection at home can and will not be an excuse: the university has invested a lot in the acquisition of computers (have you seen the university library recently?) and in distance education.
Let’s jump on that bandwagon now, before it’s too late and it’s a bandwa-gone!
Digital suicide…
Tired of Facebook? Want to get out, but you can’t? Go ahead, and commit true digital suicide. A guide on how to get rid of your digital self can be found at the Let’s Learn IT site.
Solutions workbook exercises Units 8-10
Students of the 2nd year who are interested in comparing their answers with the workbook exercises can now download the solutions.
Interested in being a volunteer?
Here’s a message I received from those friendly people at our International Relations Office:
I would like to inform you about European Voluntary Service application for Belgium Red Cross Institution. I thought that you shall easily let your students aware of those application at the below.
PS: For another EVS application you shall suggest this internet link as well.
So…anyone who’s interested in going to Belgium and working there as a volunteer for the Red Cross: follow the link!
URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT
To all my students:
due to the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, many flights have been cancelled in the past few days – including my flight to Amsterdam, tomorrow morning (Monday 19/4). This means that until further notice, I will not be able to go to Amsterdam, and this week, my lessons will be taught as scheduled.
Results mid-term exams
Here are the results for the mid-term exams for…
- 2nd year Accommodation Management
- 2nd year Travel Management
- 4th year Accommodation Management
- 4th year Travel Management
Please keep in mind that these exam results are not the final results, and that they only count for 40% of the final grade.
Update:
Here are the same results, but in Office 97-2003 format:
4th year Accommodation management: article for discussion
For the students in the 4th year of Accommodation Management, here’s the article we will discuss in the lesson:
Hatice Ipek (2007), “In-service Training In the Hotel Industry”, in: Proceedings Of The 2007 International Tourism Biennial (ISBN 978-975-8100-63-7), pp. 442-460.
