According to its website Didacta is “the largest trade fair for teachers from all education sectors within Europe and the most important continuing education event for the sector.”  It could be that BETT would dispute that, although BETT is purely focused on educational technology.  It probably comes down to how you define largest.

There’s no mistaking however, that Didacta is a very important show, at least in the German-speaking area of Europe.  It rotates round three venues – Hanover, Cologne and Stuttgart – and if you are involved in teaching, then you really should plan at least a day there to catch up on what’s new as a lot of publishers and manufacturers time the releases of new products to coincide with Didacta.

One thing you notice immediately about Didacta is that this is clearly the only trade fair that many teachers ever attend.  Stopping in the middle of gangways to chat with friends is not particularly nice to the 500 people that get held up by this action.  Dragging suitcases large enough for a round the world trip is also not particularly practical when 10,000 people are trying to get from stand to stand, and don’t get me started on the teachers who bring children in pushchairs!  Please, I can promise you, those kids get nothing from the experience, and I’m sure a teacher must be capable of organising child-care for 1 day a year (Especially a day when the teacher should be in school anyway – or do they take their kids to school too?) Continue reading »

(c) Michael Sarver, via Flickr

I listened to a disturbing conversation last week.  I was standing at a buffet table with two experienced teachers who I’ve known for some time were discussing the relative merits of the English curriculum in their respective states in Germany.  Quickly it broadened out into a debate as to which of the major publishers produced the most curriculum-oriented course book.  One major publisher apparently only focuses on competences, another is slavish in following the prescribed pedagogy.  Part of my job is to know what’s on the market, so the opinions on the books were interesting.  However, as the conversation went on my irritation grew and eventually I felt forced to add an opinion.  The two teachers stared at me as if I had suddenly grown another nose on my face and ignored my question completely and continued discussing which publisher taught Shakespeare better.  What had I said, that was so totally unimportant? Continue reading »

You know the old joke…  I saw a light at the end of the tunnel – but it was just some bastard with a torch, bringing me more work. I feel a bit like that when it comes to trade fairs.  You see all these wonderful new ideas, but implementing them is going to cost you time and money.  And the most important of those two is not the money, it’s the time.

Either the money is available or it’s not and mostly the question is quickly resolved, but time is often ignored.  Just think of this.  You see a DVD with interactive animations that could be useful for a subject you teach.  It doesn’t cost much so you buy it immediately.  And now the clock’s ticking.  You have to look through the contents, work out how to integrate it, and then adapt your lesson materials.  OK, maybe you will save yourself time later, or maybe it’s a simple improvement in the quality of your teaching, but all of this has taken time.  Add in the time that your colleagues use when they decide to adopt your ideas and the end result is a lot of man hours.

And then you go to a trade fair like BETT at Olympia in London and maybe you come away with a dozen ideas.  At that point you need to start serious planning about how you are going to introduce all these wonderful new things to your teaching.  That’s the guy with the torch at the end of your tunnel! Continue reading »

(c) YellowDog, via Flickr

I read a blog post yesterday challenging TEFL teachers to choose between two possible scenarios for teaching the same material.  The interesting thing is that the sequence that appealed to me most was not the one that I would use with my current English class.  A healthy discussion about the pros and cons of the two approaches has developed (and is developing as I write this).  Now Jason Renshaw, the author of the post, is a skilled teacher and published author so it’s fair to say he knows what he’s talking about, but in posting a comment on his article my thoughts went off at a tangent.

Now I’m going to take a risk and suggest you read the article and the comments before you continue reading here… (Please come back!)

OK, back with me?  Let me carry on. Continue reading »