Whether we love YouTube for its endless amount of funny cat videos or hate it for its often vile and hostile comment-sections, we all use it. If you are a teacher you know that a successful lesson is based on both good planning and a certain amount of improvisation. Sometimes you prepare a video to…
Articles by André Klein
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Online Business
How To Grow Your Online (Teaching) Business Without Becoming a Self-Promoter
Leaving the Sinking Ship I’ve heard many times from my colleagues that they feel society doesn’t give enough respect to their teaching efforts and that this is reflected in their salaries and in the way schools are organized. Classes are over-filled. Budgets are cut. Staff is overworked. This is why many teachers are starting to…
Social Media
Why You Shouldn’t Base Your Business or Your Online Experience on Facebook Only
The Internet is a big place. Sometimes it feels so big that we get tired of exploring, ploughing through endless fields of data, looking for fertile ground to build our businesses and grow personal relationships. Which makes us look for that comfortable corner, a familiar place where we meet our friends. And can return to…
Online Teaching
The Top 3 Myths About Online Teaching
1. Online Teaching is impersonal In 2010 I wrote: “One of the most common responses I get when I tell people what I do (teaching & coaching online), is that they say they would miss the “real connection” to people around them. That this would not be for them, because they need a personal connection to people!”…
Online Teaching
A Book That Was ‘No Book At All’
Once upon a time, a book was published which, to some people, was “no book at all”. This is how the story goes: In 1969, the author Idries Shah retold the ancient legend of a man with a big book that contained only very little writing and people who were very upset that it contained so…
Lifestyle
Top Five Historical April Fools’ Jokes
It’s that time of the year again! While Google, Hulu, Youtube and others are playing virtual pranks on their users, let’s pause for a moment and look back into the marvelous history of April Fools’ pranks. Here is my unordered list of nominees for the top five April Fools’ hoaxes. Ever. (feel free to add…
Discover Dino lernt Deutsch: the German story series for beginners that will help you learn German in no time.
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A Brief Introduction to Language Change
The abbreviations OMG, FYI, and LOL are now officially part of the Oxford dictionary. Does that mean you should write academic papers with titles like “OMG, Hamlet was bi-polar” or start every sentence in your job application with FYI? Maybe not. But it’s important to note that people sometimes get very emotional or opinionated about those…
Online Teaching
Three Ways to Leave a Legacy in the Land of Online Learning
In my last post I talked about the fundamentals of becoming an online teacher without supporting huge investor-fueled teaching platforms or business practices you don’t agree with, don’t understand or simply don’t care about. Today I want to talk further about how you can establish your own legacy instead of indirectly fueling an impersonal brand…
Online Business
How to Become an Online Teacher Without Selling Your Soul
This is what I asked myself one and a half years ago. I had this deep gut-feeling that it must be possible. The first thing I did was research. Google presented me with a selection of socalled online teaching platforms, websites, where you can sign up as teacher or student, create profiles, courses etc. So, what…
Lifestyle
Online Education for Children via Skype
When I started teaching online, I was sceptical. I had been working many years in classrooms with blackboards, carrying books and scrawling remarks with red ink into the margins of exercise sheets. How could all that be possibly replaced by a computer? A lifeless machine? What I found is that it can’t be replaced, instead…
Online Business
The Rise and Fall of the Product Mindset: From Assembly Lines to the Service Age
In this article I want to share with you an idea that has been occupying me for a few days. Obviously, there’s much more to be said about this than can fit into one article. So we’ll have to do some serious time-jumping, here. Ready? Let’s roll! Rewind… There used to be a time, where…
