EduCanon is such a straightforward and effective tool for making listening practice within and outside the classroom more interactive. If I had a pound each time I hear a classmate or tutor say the words "use authentic materials", I would be pretty loaded (I'm currently taking an MA in ELT if you don't already know). Yes, I'm on board with the whole idea of using materials that are not originally designed for language learning or teaching purposes on the condition that their difficulty level is just high enough for students to comprehend (hence Krashen's comprehensible input theory) and contextually-relevant enough that students would be able to relate and respond personally to the content. But how do we go about tweaking these authentic resources for learners to process and deduce its linguistic patterns to be able to reproduce later on? EduCanon will take this heavy load of material design off your shoulders.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I thought I might share with you a fantastic online tool for Blended Learning called Blendspace. Flipping classrooms with blended learning has been quite a hot topic in the last few years, but not just because it's the hot new thing in education. It really does shake things up because with blended learning, you can balance out your guidance to reach more students, which you can't maximally do with the time and place restrictions of face-to-face interaction. Students can learn at their own pace, get greater access to knowledge and have more interaction with peers.  Of course, all these positive responses to flipped classrooms come when we design blended learning materials pedagogically and aesthetically well. Blendspace (formerly known as EdCanvas) will do just the trick.