EFL Geek
Website name	EFL Geek
Type of site	Blog
Owner	Anonymous
Created by	Anonymous

ESL being the big local fixture that it is among many expats in Korea, one can be hard pressed to find a more ambitious web personality among the teaching crowd than one guy in particular. Always seemingly to have several education-related web projects on the go the founder of EFL-Geek takes a time out to chat with us.

• GJ: Whereabouts are you from??

• EG: I'm from Winnipeg Canada - A very boring city in the middle of Canada

• GJ: What do you do here?

• EG: I'm currently teaching at Hanyang University in Seoul in the PEEC department (Freshmen English) This is my second semester and I am very satisfied with my position and the opportunities I have at Hanyang. I'm married and have one four year old daughter and a 3 month old son - so between my family, work, and internet activities I'm very busy.

• GJ: How long have you been in Korea?

• EG: At the end of May, I will have been in Korea for nine years.

• GJ: What other websites, blogs, or projects are you involved/were involved with?

• EG: I have my blogs EFL Geek, where I discuss teaching and all things language, and 한국어 연습장 (Let's Learn Korean), which is a group blog for Korean language learners to practice Korean and reflect on learning. I've also recently started a wiki at EFL Geek which is focused on teaching ELT and Linguistics. Wikis, like forums, take a long time to really take off, so I'm not expecting big things immediately, but I am hoping for large participation from readers of my site in the future. My newest big project is a Korean Podcast for learners similar to Chinesepod or Japanesepod101. This project was initiated by my desire to have more listening material designed for learners at my level (low intermediate). At this point I am the web designer, site manager, and organizer. I initially sent out emails to some of the major bloggers in Korea and they posted on theirs sites about the project. I've recieved some comments and emails regarding this and am looking forward to major announcement in mid-June regarding some exciting details to which I cannot go into at this point. I'm also in the middle of creating a moodle site for teachers in my department at Hanyang so that everyone will be able to deliver online content/homework to their students. Many of the teachers had expressed interest, but were lacking in the technical skills so I took the initiative and am looking forward to other teachers taking advantage of the site I'm preparing.

• GJ: Sounds like you are quite technical savvy. What did you do in your former life back in the West?

• EG: Nothing very technical. As soon as I graduated from university I moved to Vancouver and bummed around for a few months before getting a job coordinating shipping and supplies for a warehouse. I didn't particularly enjoy the job and quit about 18 months later to move to Korea.

• GJ: I'm assuming that you're married to a Korean. If that's the case, what's been the most challenging thing with having a cross-cultural relationship in the most homogeneous country in the world with deep-rooted traditions up the whazzoo?

• EG: Actually I don't find that we have too many cross-cultural problems. Any problems that we usually have I would place the blame on gender differences. However there are a number of topics that we have agreed not to discuss to maintain harmony; these include fan death, nationalism, and girly boy korean celebrities.

• GJ: With being plugged into net trends and developments, it'll be interesting to hear take on the outlook for internet communities. Right now, we're almost at a time when Blogging, Flickr, Wiki, Myspace, is going to collide head-on with wireless PC tablets, VoIP, and broad, cheap net access from any point on the globe. Where do you think this collision of forces is going to take us and the internet communities to, say, in the next couple of years?

• EG: To be honest this is a difficult question for me as I am very unfamiliar with wireless devices and do not us most of the services you mention. I do think that the internet has been evolving since it began, initially as a text based system then images and video and now with web 2.0 services it's more about interconnectivity at a much greater level. In the near future, I can see more people walking around with portable PCs the size of a PMP (portable media player such as the istation) or PDA with wireless broadband and phone calls as we know it obselete. Instead most people will be using these wireless devices to make phone calls check instant messages and manage their life through electronic schedulers, GPS, digital business cards, and electronic money. Basically modern life will be like a mix of Blade Runner and Star Trek - I'm not referring to conflict and action but rather all the gadgetry that is available.

• GJ: As an offshoot of the last question, what do you think is the time horizon for the ESL industry (classroom teaching) as we know it, before more and more things start happening online between teachers and students?

• EG: That timeline is now. It may seem unlikely as there are so many teachers that want to use the internet but don't know how. But every year I meet, online or offline, more teachers who are experimenting with different online approaches to learning. I do feel that in the very near future it will become necessary for all teachers to in someway be using the internet with their students in order to properly develop thier skills and career. More and more teachers are already working on using the internet with their students. The most common approach is called Blended Learning. Currently many teachers, including myself are using Moodle as mentioned above as a way to extend the classroom onto the internet. Other teachers including, Aaron Campbell, use blogs and other web2.0 services. One area that I'm getting more interested in and sending students towards is podcasting and there are a number of podcasts aimed at English learners of varying levels. In May 2005, I wrote a couple of entries about podcasting with links to several related to EFL: Podcasting Intro and ESL Podcasting. Some of the bloggers on my blogroll also use internet with thier students and regularly relfect on their success and failures: Autono Blogger, Daniel Mangrum, Teacher in Development, and Graham Stanley, who is looking into using Second Life, a virtual world, with his students. There are also some bloggers in Korea using the net with their students. Three bloggers come to mind, all of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, are The PartyPooper, Gord Sellar, and Nathan Bauman.