The Budget-Friendly Starter Kit for Online ESL/EFL Teachers My entire background cost $2 USD - from my local dollar store. The other props I already had or acquired slowly as I started teaching more. You’ve passed the application process for an online ESL [...]
Podcasts for ESL Teachers The History of English by Kevin Stroud Kevin Stroud explains how English inherited words and grammar from ancient Sanskrit. Linguistically speaking, English is perplexing. Here is a language that is grammatically simple but difficult to master in areas of [...]
Spain: A Digital Nomad’s Paradise A stunning view from my cousin's house in Palma de Mallorca. I had the fortune to travel to Spain in December of 2018. I didn’t know what to expect, and I don’t like to have expectations when I [...]
FeedbackPanda Isn't Just for Feedback Minimize clutter and busywork by trading in the handwritten notes for FeedbackPanda. Before FeedbackPanda, I was teaching about 150 to 250 classes a month, using the VIPKid portal to keep track of my students and their rewards. As [...]
FeedbackPanda vs. Spreadsheets I just googled the person who created the first electronic spreadsheet. His name is Dan Bricklin, and he started the spreadsheet movement in the late 1970s. This is an incredible accomplishment; programs such as Excel and Google Sheets have completely changed [...]
Preparing Feedback for Upcoming Classes The aim of FeedbackPanda is to reduce the time spent on the pre-class and post-class busywork while maintaining or improving the quality of our teaching. One of the best time-saving tips is to enter your feedback before your classes [...]
Do Online Teachers Need Makeup? First and foremost, appearance has nothing to do with our teaching ability; how we choose to present ourselves is a personal choice. However, teaching online brings about another challenge--the camera. We are forced to think of our appearance a [...]
WeChat: What Is It, and Should I Use It? Owned by media conglomerate Tencent, WeChat is China’s answer to Facebook. It is the largest social media platform by volume of users. If your student requests your WeChat ID, they want to connect with you [...]
The Effectiveness of Songs in EFL I lived in Los Angeles for most of life. When I was a teen, an advertisement for an auto dealer was aired on the radio. It was comprised of two lines put to an annoying tune. Even though [...]
Learning (to Write) a New Language is Hard (Part 2) A few months ago, in a previous blog post, I talked about my experiences trying to learn to speak Arabic (read about it here). During my last month of living in Morocco, I decided to [...]
