Freelancer's equipment

You or your bosses simply have to invest something in equipment in order for you to be able to get the job done. If they're paying you a lot, you can get this kind of stuff yourself. If they're not paying you much and they're not providing you with much equipment, you'll have to ask yourself why. How can you teach without a computer or print anything out without a printer?!

  

Update: There's a newer CASIO now with voice for pronunciation.

CASIO EWS-3000

This video (mainly for students, but also for English teachers) on the CASIO EWS-3000 can give you a better idea about it.

Electronic dictionaries: the Casio EWS-3000
Casio Dictionary Check it out. It's expensive as "hlel", but it's worth every penny. Throw out your hardbacks and softbacks, or don't even buy them to begin with, and get this wonder of modern technology. I used to carry all four heavy books around with me to class and since I bought it, my lumbago's improved 100%. Corte Ingles and Hypercor have this one for about 250 euros and a smaller version without the Spanish dictionary for around 175 or 200 euros. I can't remember which. Don't be fooled by cheaper brands. Test them first. Look up "monkey" or "mono". You'll be lucky to get one definition in the others while you'll get the entire hardback listing in this e-dictionary. I've got the Oxford Advanced Hardback and their Compact Thesaurus and they're big and excellent. An alternative, I can't recall what the brand, but a student of mine showed me a Spanish-English dictionary for very expensive mobile telephones (400 euros more or less for the Nokia 6060 phone and the dictionary wasn't the Collins or Oxford). It passed the "mono" test with flying colors, but I'm not sure how statistically significant that test was.

Update: Now, that I've been using this dictionary for nearly a couple of years, I can tell you that it's clearly been worth every penny I spent on it and if it broke this morning, I'd go right out to buy another one this afternoon. (Though I might check to see if something better was out on the market first.) I don't know how English teachers can get on without one. I use it every time a word I don'tknow how to explain or translate comes up in a class. It's especially useful in one-to-one classes and quite often even leads on to further language discussion.

Video Projectors

I've have a video projector which has been a heavy-duty investment. The main reason I've gotten one is that I want to improve my repertoire in general with video-based lessons in order to attract more company classes, and in particular I'm interested in improving my services to a couple of loyal long-term company clients that need a bit of a motivational push.

Now, the first thing you'll notice when you start looking around at projectors is that there's a wide range of prices (I've seen them as cheap as 700 euros and anywhere up to 2,000) and a serious lack of information which you can reasonably be expected to understand. Also, while large electronics and home appliances stores like MediaMarket seem to have 8 or 10 different brands on display, you'll be hard-pressed to find very many offered in other big shopping centers like El Corte Inglés (though you can find more on their webpage), and this may be a problem if you'd like to finance it as I have. (It may be that they don't sell as many as they used to due to the advent of new extra-large plasma TVs.)

Then too, you might wonder about what you'd show or do with a projector in the first place. In fact, there are few commercially available DVD products available like OUP's cheap "New English File" videos that accompany their series of textbooks (which I use). (The scenes are shot on a white background with a very few props, but the English the students learn is worthwhile and they don't seem to mind.) You can check at shops like Booksellers or on the internet for more, but my feeling is that publishers don't take video products as seriously as they do public school textbooks (which sell millions of copies per year as compared to what must be a pretty small market for English learning DVDs for adults).

Here's a selection of ELT materials publishers whose products you can browse:

OUP Catalog (OUP moves their links often so google "OUP catalog" if they do so with this one. They've got plenty of VHS titles and a few DVDs so it is worthwhile. Depending on how you get onto their website, they may ask you to register giving them all sorts of required data first. By the way, OUP is number 1 in ELT publishing as far as I can figure.)

MacMillan English Catalog (Maybe you can find the videos on their site. I can't.)

Cambridge ELT Catalog (ditto)

Richmond ELT (double ditto)

Longman (They've got two or three.)

The main advantage of using products like OUP's New English File is that you have very little preparation to do. On the other hand, there are literally thousands of movie and concert videos on the market that you can exploit for your English classes. Choose your favourite or most relevant scenes and prep them for your students. The vocabulary load tends to be pretty tough, but if you prep the students right, if shouldn't matter. In fact, if they can get through it (with your help), it'll improve their motivation, but if they can't, they'll end up rejecting it. (By the way, even if you do use New English File (and any textbook series), the songs are usually not sung by the original artists. You may want to replace these with music videos wherever possible and, if not (as is possible with hard-to-find oldies), with the original singer's song on CD.

Now, if you're interested in a projector, there's not a lot of information out there about these, but the main point is that the more expensive they get, the better the features. Although I'm not by any means an expert, there are a few features you might want to consider:

Brightness in "Lumens": 2,500 lumens in any projector might be necessary for a large conference room. The projector that I got has 1,800 lumens which means that I might have to turn the lights down for my students to see the projected image very well in a large room, but I've used it with quite a bit of light in a smaller room and you can see everything just perfectly. However, I don't usually work in large rooms or with large groups and I think the quality of the sound is probably more important than that of the image as it is this which carries the linguistic content that they have to get. The quality of the sound depends on your speakers and DVD player (both can be obtained for under 100 euros) as the speakers will be connected to the DVD player and NOT to the projector.

Contrast ratio: This has to do with how well you will be able to see the image with outside or artificial background light. And from comments that I've read on the internet, 2,000:1 is enough for a conference room. Lower numbers like 1,000:1 are worse. By the way, most Epson projectors tend to have 500:1 or else I probably would have bought one. Mine has 2,000:1 and you can see it perfectly with the blinds on the window open.

"Lamp" (or bulb) life: This is an significant feature if you'd like to use your projector for a long time. An average of 3,000 hours seems like the usual thing, but there's no guarantee that the bulb will actually last that long and all of these will lose luminosity with age. I doubt I'll use the projector in more than 5 classes or hours a week for 30 weeks a year, which totals up at 150 hours per year. My projector's manufacturer ACER claims 2,000 hours. By the way, I had ordered an HP projector which claimed 4,000 hours, but it was impossible to get it. Every projector I ordered which was advertised both on their website and on El Corte Ingles' ended up being unavailable. It was a real shame because they have a pretty good show on paper. (By the way, you'll often see these projectors advertised with the number of hours it'll last if you use the lamp-saving funtion, usually twice as much. In the HP projector's case it was 8,000 hours, so be careful when you order one.)

Zoom: My projector has a 2:1 zoom, which means that at 4 meters it will project an 2 meter image. I wasn't worried about this feature because I doubt I'll ever have a real problem with having to project the image at a distance to a big audience.

Resolution: This point gets more significant depending on how big you need to project the image or on how fine the text that you want the students to read. My 17" computer screen has a resolution of 1024 X 768 while a normal stateside TV has a resolution of 544 X 372 (and European TV is a bit better). The projector that I finally got has a resolution just like the computer's. Resolution would be especially significant when it comes to the students reading text on the screen. By the way, if the product's information sheet doesn't mention its resolution in the terms above, it's probably a bit too low. A lot of the older projectors tend to have a lower resolution and I think the general tendency nowadays is that they're being taken off the market.

Weight: This isn't so important to me as I have a car to get to classes. This will be significant to you if you have to use the metro. It'll cost you more if you want to keep it to about 2.5 kilograms like mine. Then you have to add the weight of the speakers, DVD player and, of course, your teaching materials to that.

Keystone correction: You'll need one with this feature which helps to correct the skewed distortion of the images produced by projecting them at different angles. I'm sure 99% of projectors come with this feature, but double-check it anyway because this feature is absolutely necessary.

LCD vs. DLP: These abbreviations refer to the technology used in the projector. LCD is newer and probably more expensive, but DLP is workable for us poor folk. The main problem with DLP as far as I can see is that it doesn't do as good a job on the color red and as you lose luminosity or if you use the lamp saving feature (i.e. if you voluntarily lower the lumens), you lose some of this color in your image (but, your lamp can last as long as 4,000 hours if you have a projector like mine).

Finally, make sure that you can hook up everything you'll need to: DVD, TV, Computer, Playstation, etc. Also, actually have a look at your user manual. Mine pointed out that you have to let the fan cool the projector off before you unplug it. Not doing so can shorten the life of the lamp. You know ..., there's no telling what useful information you could learn from your manual.

Make your own interactive whiteboard

Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote.
It works, I have tested it. You need a few things: 1) a Wiimote, 2) a compatible Bluetooth USB dongle (List of working bluetooth devices), 3) an IR Pen (see video below) and 4) a program to bring it all together, the Smoothboard. (I suppose you also need a computer, and oh, a projector and a screen to project on would be nice as well.)




How to make the IR Pen by Matt Ledding, who also does demonstrations in schools, of Fifthbiz.com.
"Shows the basic pieces and the oh-so-simple circuit. (the TSAL 6400 or 5300 don't need a resister as they work with 1.2 to 1.7 volts). To finish, you can either solder a AAA battery container on to the ends, or electrical tape the ends on, respecting the polarity. To test, the camera on your mobile phone should show the IR LED light up when you press the button. This pen is easy to make and the purpose of the video is to show teachers that they can do this easily, and show students how to do it. . . because the WII whiteboard is all about empowerment." - Matt Ledding.

Downloading Youtube videos: (Sept. 1, 2009)
I currently (this kind of stuff changes all the time) use Firefox together with a plugin called Flash Video Resources Downloader 1.0.2 at: https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/5229 to download videos from Youtube, etc. The problem with using Youtube is that you can't quite count on it to work 100% of the time and it's bound to crash when you need it most right in the middle of the class especially if you're using a Telefonica wi-fi connection, but if you download the video first to your laptop, no problem. This Applian Flash player at: http://www.applian.com/flvplayer/ will play both the flv and mp4 files that you can get off of Youtube, for instance. I've also got the Applian Suite of software with a program called Media Catcher, but it doesn't work at the moment. There are lots of website which will help you download those videos - just search for "download youtube videos" or "how to download youtube videos" or something like that. Here's one I've used: http://www.youtubecatcher.com/ . You'll find these get blocked and stop working but you have to keep at it.

Personal DVD Players
A very cheap alternative to the Video Projector is this little device: under 100 euros in some shops. I thought about it and rejected it in favor of the video projector above because they're much better for group classes in companies.

Email: If you want to stay in contact with your clients, choose a good email service. A lot of free services have problems, for example: Problems with Hotmail (May 24), which seems to have a 30% email rejection rate according to Powweb. Yahoo seems to work right for me (and it's got 1 gigabyte of storage). Gmail is absolutely excellent as well.

I recommend Yahoo email. It comes loaded with features like a calendar, agenda and ability to incorporate RSS Feeds Plus, it's all online, which is really useful for a travelling teacher. ...

Business Cards There's a great service at VistaPrint.es with fantastic prices on business cards. You can choose from amongst 100s of nice full color backgrounds and then type in the text you want on the cards, all online. When I bought mine, they had a "free" offer where you paid the delivery charge of around only 8 euros for 250 cards. In local shops in Madrid, you can get 100 text-only cards with a white background for about 15 euros. (I blanked out the info myself.)

Update: New MP3 players such as the Creative Zen XFi2 are a must have.

Creative ZEN X-Fi2 User Interface Demo.
The advantage of the Creative Zen over say the Ipod is that you can use any speakers with it because of the type of jack that it has.

MP3 Players: I recently bought a great 5 gigabyte Samsung MP3 player (not the one on the left, but a similar one). I had tried to change previously to a cd player from the little black Sony cassette player usual in most academies here (22 dollars on Amazon), but I found myself carrying around both the cassette and cd player to classes. The special feature on my Samsung that changed all that was the "Line-in" feature which lets you record directly from either a cd player or cassette player, which effectively lets me record only the listenings I'm going to use that day. The only problems with this whole set up are that you must also buy a little set of speakers and its initial expense. The 5gb Samsung cost me 279 euros while 20gb Creatives cost around 250 euros, but without the essential Line-in feature. Another important point is that you need to have a computer to download and upload songs and other files to this system.

Update: When I got my car and started using it to get to my classes in companies, I stopped using the MP3 player. As I just have to carry my bags of materials a short way out to the car, the weight I carry is not a problem anymore.

Besides this, I've seen several teachers using a variety of electronic devices that achieve the same purpose as the MP3 player above. Some are using really hot cell phones and others are using PDAs. They're using touch screens with the little pencils that they can employ to scroll through the sound and even video files for their students. This is especially useful for long files where it can be difficult to find your place.

Printers: I have a Brother HL1430 Laser Printer
I used to have an excellent Epson inkjet printer, but I noticed the cartridges didn't last very long and I think I was paying way too much for my printing. I changed to the Brother and it's amazing how much more you can print, but only in black. I think I've got my printing costs down to about 3 cents a page or a bit more perhaps. (I have to try to get into the habit of using both sides when I can and I'm sure that'll bring the average down to about 2.5.)The main thing is that I do most of my class prep work on Sundays (which gives me a 7 day work-week, by the way) and I can't make it to the photocopy shop. I have a cheap one nearby if you do bulk work, but one-by-one I think they charge about 6 cents a page. Which is cheaper than in Madrid where they do you in for 10 cents a page nowadays. I usually try to get my clients to let me use their photocopier, but sometimes they don't even have one (I've got small companies). I only have one company with a photocopier at the moment. Take my advice and go for the laser printers. The inkjets are much cheaper starting out, but they'll stick it to you in no time.

By the way, try not to do all your own printing, especially if you work for an agency or academy. As much as possible, always pass the work on to someone else. If you have to print your own stuff, print just one copy and get the rest photocopied at a cheap photocopier.

Update: I went out and bought a black-only brother printer with scanner and fax incorporated. Again, it was a pretty big investment, but it's working out quite nicely especially since photocopy shops have gotten so strict about photocopying anything out of books, etc.

Ink re fills I've got an HP Inkjet 950 C.
You're right about lasers -- cheaper in the long run. In any case, to save money on b&w printing don't hesitate trying "refills". The HP black refills cost half the price of new cartridges and work equally well. The color refills I've tried are crap, however. I get mine at the Salazar stationers on Luchana near the Glorieta de Bilbao, but there are many other places around town. Post recovered from hacked forum.

Minidisc vs. laptop

Refridgerator Magnets