This is going to seem almost like a troll post, but really it's not. I have recently been asked to write an article regarding Teaching English abroad for a travel magazine. I have taught on a few continents, but obviously it's impossible to have been everywhere. I was wondering if the community out there wouldn't mind posting a few ideas regarding questions teachers should ask empolyers before accepting that wonderful sounding job abroad. I have already thought of a few:

-How much you are going to be paid, in which currency and when

-If accommodation is offered, what exactly is being offered

-How many contact hours you are going to be expected to teach

-Will you have any duties other than teaching

-Who your learners will be (age, background etc)

Any more ideas would be very welcome indeed.

Thanks in advance

Might be an idea if everyone posted their fave sites that they use when looking for material?

I recently came across Just The Word, a site for finding collocations for given words:

http://193.133.140.102/JustTheWord/index.html

We'd like to put up some material on Developing Teachers.com to help teachers with lower levels.

What kind of things do you think might be useful?

 Example: Could you pop into my office.

I am not sure if this should be classified as a transtive multi-part verb with "my office" as a direct object (type 3) or "pop in" as an intransitive verb with "to my office" as an adverbial of place (type 1).

Any thoughts?

jason 

Hello all. A brief explanation to get things going.

Blogs
A blog is a kind of diary - a place to put thoughts & ideas & questions for others to see & respond to. 

You can make these public, private or for logged on users. It's  better to make them public & put in the tags beneath - words that summarise the post you make - so that others can find you through the cloud tag - see the top right of each page. 

So say you have a problem class, you write about it & then others respond.

This is all on a personal basis. Then there are the communities where all can join & there is a communal blog for all to contirbute to. It is a good idea to join the communities you're interested in & post ideas there. 

The rss feeds are for you to keep up with what's happening on websites of interest to you. If there is an rss feed icon on the web page, click on it & you should be taken to a page with a link which you copy & paste into the box on your 'Resourcses' page. Then you can see periodically what's happening on that site by clicking on view link.   

The idea of the site is just as you say - for teachers to exchange ideas. The best way to do this is in the communities.

There is also a file upload space for you to pass on materials to each other. These are both in your personal space & in each community. There is a 10mb limit for each person & each community. It is not a storage facility.  

Hope this helps.