Where are all the worksheets?
I have been reading Burcu Akyol’s series of Share Your Knowledge guest posts and writing my own contribution on publishing articles, and it occured to me what what I want to see more of on the TEFL blogosphere is worksheets, and lots of them- and not just so that I’m not the only one spending Sunday evening converting things to PDF…
There must be literally millions of teachers’ worksheets out there on USB sticks and hard disks, and every single one would be useful for someone (if only as raw data for their own) and would only take 5 minutes each to post if you do it the easiest possible way and have a WordPress blog. I really do wonder why more people don’t- maybe just because Blogger etc make it too difficult?? Hoping they will lead to some cash some day?? Any ideas why? Or want to prove me wrong by emailing me some Guest Worksheets?
Links to my latest lot of TEFLtastic Worksheets coming up in the next couple of days, or you could just search for them yourself in the Worksheets section above.
July 27th, 2009 at 4:57 am
Or are worksheets just terribly old fashioned things to be producing and sharing??
July 27th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Hi Alex
You’re right, it’s an interesting question. I don’t think that they are old-fashioned, people must still be making them. I think there might be a combination of
1) teachers making lots of worksheets not having time to get them into a shape they would like to share
2) being nervous about putting them in public (imagine the comments: “Yeah, thanks for that CRAP worksheet, you made a spelling mistake in exercise 3 btw”)
3) some teachers I’ve worked with hoarded all their worksheets and never shared them even with colleagues they work alongside. Can’t see this lot getting into the “share the knowledge” vibe.
Plus it’s hard to share pdfs on a blog. I couldn’t really figure out an easy way to do it when I tried – maybe I’m useless at it. Could be a future project though, or maybe the new way to go is the paperless worksheet, the kind you project or send digitally? Potential niche market there perhaps?
July 27th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Hi Alex,
We have a fair number of worksheets on our website available for download, that can either be used in conjunction with the interactive games and quizzes on our site (I’ve emailed you a couple of examples) or offline in the classroom.
I’ve also started putting some of our worksheets up on http://www.scribd.com. Scribd is a free document-sharing site that will convert word documents into other file formats (including PDF) for downloading. If you want to share them via your blog, you can either embed them into the blog page, or post a link from your blog.
I agree with Lindsay’s comments as to the reasons why there aren’t more worksheets being shared around. Fear of plagiarism is perhaps another reason. I suspect probably the biggest reason though is that the majority of TEFL teachers aren’t in the ‘web 2.0′ loop. They simply aren’t aware of the collaborative tools and possibilities for sharing that are out there and the knowledge sharing vibe will take some time to filter through.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:02 am
There are plenty of worksheets out there. But the problem is that they aren’t easily available…some sites require your own contribution (see http://www.eslprintables.com) – which seems fair in a way – but what if the teacher isn’t so talented or have enough skills in using Word, PowerPoint and so on ..? …some other sites just sell them…
…and yes, I agree..most of ESL teachers aren’t aware of online possibilities…
July 27th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Hi Lindsay
Agreed on all three of those. I’m think I’m odd in that
- If you use my worksheet with a typo on it (and there’ll probably be one), I blame you for not reading through it first!
- I always have this mania to share, for example passing on all my books because I can’t bear for some second hand bookshop owning freak to make money for them. I should point out that I’m not saying that makes me selfless (far from it), simply that thinking that someone else might be using my worksheets makes the effort I put into them seem more worthwhile
As for the technicalities, do you think a blog post on how to do it might be worthwhile?
Talking of which- Sue, do you fancy doing me a very short blog guest piece on using Scribd to do it? You can mention your site as much as you like if you do! Thanks for the email, btw, will have a look at the worksheets soon
July 27th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I sell mine, and not ashamed of the fact. There’s several years’ worth of my life there on paper, and it’s tried and true for classroom use. I also go a bit beyond ‘worksheet’ and usually do a fair amount of background work actually explaining how to use them effectively.
I do make a certain portion available for free, but the rabid sciving free-worksheet-hunting-teacher-who-always-arrives-at-work-5-mins-before-first-class-with-no-lesson-plan is not a smeagol I plan to feed nor encourage.
Still – in answer to your question, Alex, I think sharing of worksheets is comparable overall to other basic forms of collaboration and sharing between TEFL teachers: considering the number of teachers and fierce growth of the industry, it’s scarce.
~ Jason
July 28th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Interesting discussion. Worksheets are absolutely not old-fashioned. I love making worksheets. The new office suites (Word, Powerpoint, etc.) make them easier to put together and easier to make attractive and professional-looking.
It’s also immensely satisfying. I’m with Alex, if someone else can make good use of them too, all the better.
But how do you share them if you don’t have your own website?
e.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Eoin
I’ll happily put them up on here! Otherwise, I’ll try to write a post on how to do that with WordPress this weekend and get it up next week. Will take me a lot longer to write about than it will for people to do, which could be literally 10 minutes from arriving on the WordPress site to set up a blog to having your worksheet up on the blog and as attached PDF version- all for free
Jason
I don’t have anything against the five minute preparation guys- considering what most of us get paid, doing that and using the rest of your time on another job or private lessons seems a perfectly logical reaction (if one I am personally incapable of). I spend much more time than that on prep, but 5 or ten minutes looking for a worksheet is about right (plus more time occasionally looking through books or websites at your leisure picking good stuff out for possible future use and finding out where things are), so I aim to make all my worksheets so obvious that you can glance at them and know how they should be used and if they are what you are looking for. I also think that time pressure on all of us means that paying for worksheets is not a business model that will work in the long term (more than 5 years??) because Google will eventually become everybody’s worksheet searcher- even if it is sometimes to guide them to a book that is on the shelf next to them. In the meantime, it’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of and as you can say can lead to effort being put into teaching notes, appearance etc that otherwise wouldn’t happen. My worksheets on Onestopenglish (see my Full Publications in About above) are no better than my free ones on TEFLtastic and Usingenglish.com, but they sure look better and have accompanying lesson plans (something I hate the tedium of writing and could never make myself do for free). Although being able to have my worksheets useable by anyone who can find them on Google is nice (and helps me when I’m looking for my own stuff and can’t find my Onestopenglish log in details!), I’d certainly be happy to have worksheets on Onestop again and be able to put more effort in because I was getting paid for it
July 28th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Don’t you go putting words in my mouth, you! I was talking about the smeagol teachers who turn up five minutes before work and rip out 5-10 wordfinds and worksheets as their version of preparing for a day’s classes – not spending five minutes to prepare for a single class (certainly had to do that plenty of times, out of necessity – like on 11-class days – plus also the occasional 5 seconds prep, when working in curve-ball institutional contexts).
As for your championing of teachers doing minimal prep and private classes based on meagre wages, I would bite Alex if I didn’t know you better and see the hook within the bait!
(Chuckles),
~ Jason
July 28th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Re: Scribd blog guest piece – sure, I’d be happy to do it, Alex. Just drop me a line.
A couple of UK based worksheet sharing sites I forgot to mention earlier that are well worth a look at are http://www.talent.ac.uk and http://www.skillsworkshop.org/
Sue