Compelling Conversations blog

Recently, Eric Roth, the author of Compelling Conversations, mentioned my book, The Creative Classroom on his blog. Here's what he had to say:

The Creative Classroom: Teaching Language Outside the Box, by Hall Houston, contains dozens of bite-sized exercises to spark authentic language and creative discourse, This slim book, published by Lynx, should especially appeal to ESL students with a background or interest in engineering, science, and the arts.

http://compellingconversations.com/blog/?p=121

Thanks for the kind words, Eric!

I've moved

As you might have noticed, I'm no longer working in Hong Kong. I'm now a full-time English instructor in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Hope to add posts more frequently now.

Scientific American Mind article on creativity

The latest issue of Scientific American Mind contains an article titled "How to Unleash Your Creativity." This article features a discussion between several experts on creative thinking, including Julia Cameron and Robert Epstein. You can read the article here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-unleash-your-creativity

Scientific American is also presenting an extended version of this discussion as an audiobook:

http://www.amazon.com/Brainstorm-Using-Science-Maximum-Creativity/dp/1427204411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213156596&sr=1-1

The audiobook also contains other Scientific American Mind articles on creativity.

Inspiring Creativity

Brian David Phillips, a professor in Taiwan, recently did a presentation on creativity at the Taipei First Girls High School. Here you can read more about the presentation and see a short clip:

http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian/2008/04/inspiring-creat.html

Sir Ken Robinson talks on creativity

Sir Ken Robinson gives an excellent talk on creativity and education:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Henry Fool

It's been about 10 years since Henry Fool, my all-time favorite film, was released. I saw it in Austin, Texas with a friend I knew from graduate school. I had seen other Hal Hartley films, but this one made the strongest impression on me. I even bought the book which contains the script and read it many times. Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DqwXyN9q84

Also, here's Sony Pictures' webpage for the film:

http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/henryfool/index.html

You might also want to know that there was a sequel:

http://www.faygrimfilm.com/

I liked it but not nearly as much as Henry Fool. See the DVD extras for more about the cult following behind Henry Fool, as well as Hartley's plans to make more sequels.

I'd personally like to see a "My Dinner with Andre" style conversation with Henry Fool and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club).

New articles on creativity

While looking at the BBC's wonderful Teaching English website, I came across these recent articles on creativity, written by Judit Fehér:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/creativity1.shtml

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/creativity2.shtml

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/creativity3.shtml

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/creativity4.shtml

An excellent introduction to the subject of creativity for language teachers. If you like these articles, you might be interested in reading the book she co-wrote with Bonnie Tsai. Here's a review of the book:

http://www.hltmag.co.uk/may06/pubs.htm

Social English Film Festival

Last week, I assigned my students to go to the dfilm.com website and create a short film using some of the phrases they learned in the Social English class. Here's a collection of some of their films:

THE WINNER!!!!!

Jenny
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62387


other excellent films in the festival


Nestor
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62437

Harvey
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62751

Eric
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62731


Lincoln
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62709

Fat
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62697

Panny
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62603

Martin Tse
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-61925

Vincent Law
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-61251

JJ
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-60717

Archer
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-60716

Henry
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-62352

Links for TD Session

For those of you on the ELC staff that attended my TD session about blogging, here are links to the blogs and webpages I showed you:

Googlism

Tutor Blogs

Tech ELT Blog

TEFLtastic with Alex Case

Jo Kent's Blog - BBC Learning English

Robert Johanson's Reading and Writing Fall Blog

Class Blogs

Bee Online

Student Blogs

Studying English Blog

Websites for creating blogs

Blogger

Diaryland

Live Journal

Typepad

Vox

Xanga

Articles on Blogging

A Blogging Good Idea

Blogging for ELT

Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes

LinguaEdge

A friend of mine in Houston has just started his own company, Linguaedge. Here's a link to their website:

http://www.linguaedge.com

They offer English courses, as well as TESOL teaching certificate courses.

New Listing on Alta Book Center website

Recently my book, The Creative Classroom, has been listed on the Alta Book Center website. If you go here --- http://www.altaesl.com/Detail.cfm?CatalogID=12848

you can read a short description of my book.

Creative Learner Centred Teaching

Just a few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Russia. The author was a teacher trainer from Yarslavl, Russia who also is a project coordinator for an organization called Creative Learner Centred Teaching. She said:

" I am really happy that I got your book The Creative Classroom: teaching languages outside the box just before the training for teachers of English of our region (start on August,20). We (team of trainers) are greatly inspired with your ideas on using creativity training activities. We are designing training materials at the moment and plan to try many activities from The Creative Classroom with our participants. "

It's great to hear from one of my readers. She sent me a report on one of her teacher training workshops, along with some copies of handouts. It sounds like they had an incredible experience . They wrote poetry, did some mind mapping, discussed creative and critical thinking, and they even played something called newspaper bingo (I'd love to know what that is!). I wish I could have been there.

If you are interested in learning more about Creative Learner Centred Teaching, I refer you to the CLCT website:

http://clct.ru/

Book review

TEFL.NET has just published a review of my book. Take a look here:

http://www.tefl.net/reviews/creative-classroom.htm

Book Review

In this month's issue of English Teaching Professional, there's a review of my book, The Creative Classroom:

http://www.etprofessional.com/content/view/989/36/

If you can find a copy of the magazine, they have also printed an article I wrote about brainstorming.

Published in English Teaching Professional

I have an article that will be published this month in...

English Teaching Professional

Follow the link and you will see a short comment on my article.

My cousin's blog

My cousin, Sean, lives in Kyoto. He's lived there for many years and runs his own language school called Choice English.

He also writes a very interesting blog covering a wide variety of topics. Just recently, he posted a blog entry that mentions me and my new book. Here's a link to his blog:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-0.r9DqoifqcoEwS6OMSJZA--?cq=1&p=745

BBC's 5 steps

The BBC's website has an interesting article called

5 steps to get creative:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/fivesteps/

It's perfect for someone working on an artistic project.

Creative Problem Solving

I've got a new article over at Humanising Language Teaching about Creative Problem Solving. If you are working on a project with your classes, or would like to help students practice both creative and critical thinking, you might want to read about CPS.

A book I'd like to read

Helbling Languages has a new book that sounds very interesting. Imagine That! Mental Imagery in the EFL Classroom by Jane Arnold, Herbert Puchta and Mario Rinvolucri is all about using students' imagination. It has 5 sections - Visualisation Training, Language in Mind, Stories Stories Tell, Images of Time and Space, and Spinning Inward. The book includes a CD-ROM with music, artwork, photos, photocopiable worksheets, and visualization scripts. There's an article about this book which includes several sample activities here. I'm looking forward to reading it and trying out some of the activities in my classes.

More articles

I have added several of my articles to my website. You can see the list here:

http://www.hallhouston.com/articles.htm