The NEW ALT Training Online Site Is LIVE!

Check out altto.net to experience the ALL NEW ALT Training Online collection of FREE courses.

The needs of ALTs have changed over the past few years. The team here at ALT Training Online has been working hard to keep pace with those changes.

After months of work and thousands of hours put into the new site, it's finally here!

We've heard your feedback and have implemented the changes you've asked for.

The old ALT Training Online website was good, but our new site is even better.

Long pages of text have been replaced by interactive, multimedia courses complete with progress tracking and certificates.

This was made possible by leveraging the power of Moodle to create a genuine MOOC (massive open online course) for language teachers in Japan to sharpen their skills and connect with each other.

As of our relaunch, we have 7 courses available with more on the way.

The blog section is now New and Updates. This is where we'll bring you our monthly guest blogs in addition to other useful information for ALTs.

Our newsletter, The Monthly Trainer, will continue to bring you the latest tips and tricks that you can use in the classroom today.

When the site's founder, Nathaniel Reed, set out to create this website years ago, his goal was to create a place for ALTs who wanted to be better teachers to get the training they so desperately needed.

The ALTTO mission is simple: Connecting and empowering language teachers across Japan.

Our new site brings us ever closer to this goal.

This site is a passion project made by ALTs, for ALTs.

Join us and be a part of the future of teaching English in Japan.

Start studying at ALT Training Online now!

-          A note from ALT training online’s David Hayter

If you have something 'ALT' to write about that hasn't been covered in these blogs, email David at alttoblog@gmail.com so we can work together and spread your story.

Don't have any ideas? We have a list of topics to write about that need a writer. Email in your interest to write and we can set you up.

Never miss another blog again! Click here to sign-up for our newsletter, "The Monthly Trainer," to stay up to date with everything ALTTO has to offer.

End Of ALT Training Online? by Nathaniel Reed

by Nathaniel Reed

Bio: Nathaniel Reed started his ALT journey in 2014. He was mid writing a dissertation for an MA in Linguistics and it struck him that there was no training for this new job. Even low-level jobs have some kind of training to help you do the job effectively, and teachers are dealing with people’s lives.

These thoughts gave birth to ALT Training Online (ALTTO). 

Quickly realising that ALT pay is the same as when the current ALT system started in 1987, he knew that this training must be free. Thankfully there are a lot of helpful souls in the world, even the leading scholars on language education in Japan, so piece by piece it started to build - this blog will take you on the journey so we'll stop there for now.

With a house and two incredible children, every day is full of surprises and happiness for Nathaniel. We are all on a journey though, growing and evolving who we are on a daily basis.

Let today guide your thoughts in some way to be thankful. Who knows, you may even feel like joining the ALTTO team and improving the quality of what we’re doing. It would be great to hear from you.

Around 6 years have passed since the birth of ALT Training Online. After writing an MA dissertation on the roles of ALTs I couldn't help but let go of the burning question: why didn't I receive any teacher training (pre- or in-service?) when I got the ALT job?

With no coding or web development skills, but an ambition to provide high-quality, free training to thousands of ALTs, my mission began.

Alas, hundreds of dollars out of pocket and many aspects of the site needing an update I face a crossroads – redesign it completely or let the thousands of weekly users down. 

It's quite a size now, there’s a lot of content, so the work would take a while….

On an ALT's salary with a mortgage and two children, the decision should be quite simple, but I'm really struggling with the choice.

I’d hate my own children to go to school and get a low-quality education because the teacher wasn’t trained.

The emails ALTTO receives from individuals in need of help and all the positive comments we get have been on my mind for over a year…...

Unfortunately though, it's adios to ALTTO and ALTopedia….

Just kidding!

I've been learning to code and the ALTTO team is growing - so the site is getting a makeover!

New features are in place and we're launching two new modules: ‘Vocabulary’ by Dr David Coulson at Ritsumeikan University and ‘Speaking’ by Richard Graham from Genki English – but this is just the start.

David Hayter is as motivated as ever to keep the wide-ranging guest blogs coming – from Vietnam.

Jake (an established coder) is excelling on the ALTopedia resources site, keeping it maintained and arduously updating resources everyday.

We've new affiliations too, and are being advertised outside of Japan with our new partners, including JET (big thanks to all of them).

The big news……(drum roll)….. is the latest member of the ALTTO team, Nick. He's been working incredibly hard to prepare 'The Monthly Trainer'; an email newsletter that’s just the right length with content covering all areas of the ALT world: what's coming up in your schools, teaching tips, teaching English in English….. one of the major changes the Course of Studies schools are sent is requesting from April 2020 - the timing of The Monthly Trainer couldn't be more perfect.

We're working hard to launch the new site sometime in April – so check our Facebook group for the new link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/alttrainingonline/

Sign up right now for The Weekly Trainer, (first edition end of March 2020): https://mailchi.mp/4150701561cf/altto

Join us and make ALT lives better.

You’re still here - great. Read on...

You may know that online courses (in general) have a completion rate of around 10% according to most studies. You may have started one or a tonne of courses online yourself (I’m working my way through 4 at the moment). The ALTTO course/website is no different, although some modules are getting 100% completion rates, interest leaves some users with completion rates of around 20%.

We’ve listened to your feedback, re-reviewed the practice of learning online and have completely changed how the free ALT training course looks - how you the user can develop skills to use in the classroom, whatever your learning style.

It’s much more interactive now. Not just long texts to read with reflection questions - modules are made up of shorter units, a range of media is used, plus interactive features and various questions styles are used to make being an ALT much more enjoyable.

We’re updating the modules too. The three previous categories: Contextual, Teaching and Professional Development are being expanded!

We’re also taking away unpopular modules that didn’t seem to fit people’s interests. We’ve listened to and taken on board suggestions, and then searched far and wide for writers.

We know that the resulting new modules, and whole new course, will deliver exactly what you want and need to make not just make you more confident and better teachers, but also dramatically enhance the potential of your students. 

How would you make ALTTO and Altopedia better? Join the team and make it happen!

-          A note from ALT training online’s David Hayter

Never miss another blog again! Click here to sign-up for our newsletter, "The Monthly Trainer," to stay up to date with everything ALTTO has to offer.

If you have something 'ALT' to write about that hasn't been covered in these blogs, email me at alttoblog@gmail.com so we can work together and spread your story.

Don't have any ideas? We have a list of topics to write about that need a writer. Email in your interest to write and we can set you up. 

For upcoming blogs see the blogs tab here:  http://www.alttrainingonline.com/blog.html

Life After ALT: 11 Skills ALTs Can Develop To Help You Land Your Next Job by David L. Hayter

by David L. Hayter

Bio: David L. Hayter worked as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Japan from 2014-2019. Although he primarily taught junior high school, he has taught all the grades from kindergarten through ninth grade. During his time as an ALT, he worked in 11 junior high schools, 2 elementary schools, dozens of kindergartens with hundreds of JTEs to teach thousands of students.

Aside from teaching classes in junior high school, his other duties included training and managing new ALTs, designing and delivering teacher training workshops, and performing other duties for his local Board of Education (BOE).

After his career as an ALT came to an end, he started working as a freelance writer and entrepreneur.

Outside of work, he actively volunteers in his community, enjoys playing video games, loves to cook, trains hard, podcasts, helps run the ALT Training Online blog and writes for his blog, Yokkaichi Connections.

For a lot of ALTs, our lives are only as good as our last contract. Although some ALTs have decided to make Japan their home, there are a lot of us who will, eventually, move on to another career in another country other than Japan.

There are too many stories of ALTs who spent years working in Japan only to struggle with finding work once their days as an ALT are numbered.

So many ALTs are caught up in the honeymoon of moving to Japan and starting to work that they often forget about what's going to come after.

When I first started blogging, it was to help new ALTs get more information. One of my first posts was what to do before coming to Japan. Last year, I wrote a blog post about 5 skills you can develop as an ALT to help with your future employment.

Since I just finished up my own stint as an ALT for 5 years, I figured it was a good time to revisit some of the skills I've learned while working as an ALT, volunteering in the community, and helping out with ALT Training Online. Maybe these are some skills that newer ALTs will want to pick up too!

Flexibility

Almost everyone knows the old ALT mantra of "ESID" (every situation is different). After teaching in a variety of schools with different teachers and students, I can say that it's very true. Each teacher has their own way of teaching. Every class has its own attitude, strengths, and weaknesses.

To be a successful ALT, you have to be adaptable and flexible. That means that you have to be able to look at the atmosphere in the class and adjust your teaching plan accordingly.

Sometimes your lessons may be too hard or too easy. You might be really excited about the content of your lesson and nobody else is. Something you thought was going to be really boring might end up being a big hit.

By watching reactions and changing things up, you'll be sure to have great lessons.

Time Management

When it comes to the daily schedule of the ALT, we sometimes can get a lot of downtime. If you're spending those free hours becoming a better teacher on alttrainingonline.com, then you're already many steps ahead of the game!

Depending on the school I was working in, I sometimes had too much free time or not enough. In either situation, the ability to manage my time effectively really helped me get a lot done.

By paying attention to what I needed to get done and how long it takes, I was able to plan out my day and make sure I handled everything I needed to without too much stress.

This skill is especially handy for anyone going into a management-related field. Let's face it, if you can't manage your own time, you definitely can't manage someone else's!

Planning Ahead

I have to admit that as a college student, I was the master of winging it. I would usually do just enough work to get what I needed to get done at the last possible moment. My work was still pretty good, but it would have been A LOT better (and less stressful for me) if I had gotten an early start and made a plan.

Similar to time management, planning ahead is an essential skill for ALTs, especially for projects and classes that will be taught in succession.

This can be tough for us though as a lot of what we teach can depend on teachers that may, or may not, know what they are doing for their next class.

Either way, if you take care of everything you're supposed to, you can't say that any problems that arise were caused by you.

Communication

This is perhaps one of the most important skills an ALT can develop. Since ALTs often work with other teachers, the ability to community clearly and in a short time are essential to getting a lot done in a short amount of time.

This can also be tough given the schedules of the JTEs and language abilities of ALTs and JTEs (this will become even more troublesome with the addition of elementary school teachers to the English teaching equation).

When it comes to having good communication as an ALT, it's important to start early, be proactive, and put the ball in the JTE's court.

If you don't communicate enough, you may seem uninterested or anti-social. If you try to talk with your JTE too much, you can come off as demanding or needy.

I would usually start with an email or a written note. If I didn't get a response, I'd just go talk to the teacher when I saw them around the school (it usually helps to start with small talk before you get to the business of lesson planning).

Whatever form of communication you use, it's important to be clear and succinct.

If you come from a place of supporting the JTE and the students, you'll really be appreciated by the school you are teaching in.

Collaboration

In ALT life, there are plenty of opportunities for collaboration. You can work with your JTEs and students in the school to complete projects that can't be done alone.

There is also a large community of ALTs out there working on all sorts of projects on-line and in professional groups

Aside from building your professional learning network, belonging to groups looks GREAT on your resume.

If you're looking for opportunities to work with some great ALTs while picking up some knowledge and skills along the way, be sure to check out these groups:

• ALT Training Online
• ALTopedia
• JALT
• Google Educator Groups
• Eigo Ganbare

That's about all I could think of off the top of my head. Do you know about other groups? Let us know what they are in our Facebook group.

Social Media Marketing

A few years ago, I came across ALT Training Online while researching ALT training for some new ALTs we were getting in August. Little did I know that volunteering to proofread new modules for the course would turn into the opportunity to run the blog for the site and help with our social media promotion.

Social media marketing is becoming a very in-demand skill for a lot of companies. There are even more opportunities to work remotely and on a part-time basis for clients.

This can become a nice full-time gig or even a side hustle to help supplement your teaching income.

Graphic Design

Along with social media marketing, the rise of internet marketing and the sheer amount of content that's pumped out online every day has created a HUGE demand for eye-catching graphics and well-designed websites.

Most schools (hopefully) have access to a computer. There are a lot of free programs you can use to produce quality graphics for your lessons and other projects.

Whether it's making yourself Batman (like I've done numerous times) or creating a version of Momotaro where he pops out of a Cup Noodle (something I've done once), the students really get a kick out of seeing what you can do with a computer.

The same work you would put into making a worksheet for your class could easily be transferred into layout design for a magazine or poster.

Remember that Google is your friend. The answer for how to do anything you want on almost any program is only a search away!

Writing

Although most teachers want ALTs to focus on speaking and listening skills in our classes, a good writing class can really help your students increase their English ability.

By writing samples for your class, you have a chance to hone your writing abilities.

Don't get me wrong, the English you'll probably write for your students will be simple, but then that's the challenge!

Writing for companies that produce non-academic content can be very lucrative. You can also take a chance and try to get creative with some of your writing for class. If the students and teachers see what you can come up with, it might inspire them to go a little bit more out of the box than usual.

As an ALT, you can also get some experience blogging. I run this blog in addition to my other blog, Yokkaichi Connections.

Aside from building skills, the things your write online can help serve as a portfolio of your work and get you noticed by potential employers.

Translation/Interpretation

If you've got the Japanese skills, you can make a decent living doing translations for a variety of clients. When I was an ALT, my BOE would often have some documents from City Hall that needed to be translated. Those of us who would read Japanese would help translate forms and letters from Japanese to English and vice versa.

If you want to volunteer, there are also opportunities to work community groups that serve as local tour guides, help people who don't speak Japanese, and promote local attractions.

If you can build a reputation as a reliable translator/interpreter, you'll be able to open up doors that otherwise wouldn't be available to you.

Presentation

When you think about it, teaching something is pretty much giving a presentation (although it's hopefully a little more interactive and interesting than your usual college PowerPoint).

The way you speak, your volume, diction, vocabulary choice, pace, questions, and timing all really add up to either making a great experience or one that's lackluster.

If you can reflect on your performance and how you can improve, you'll become really good at presentations and super comfortable talking in front of crowds.

Web Design

This is another skill that people are willing to pay big bucks for. If you can make a slick website for a person or a company, you can find a lot of work.

Even if you plan on being a teacher, your ability to help out with the school's website may be the difference between your getting hired or someone else.

The days of having to be a coder to make a website are over (although it does help). Almost anyone can do it, but it takes practice to do it well.

If your school has a computer club, this is something else you can do together. You could even use making a website as a group project for your students if you have access to computers.

-          A note from ALT training online’s David Hayter

If you have something 'ALT' to write about that hasn't been covered in these blogs, email me at alttoblog@gmail.com so we can work together and spread your story.

Don't have any ideas? We have a list of topics to write about that need a writer. Email in your interest to write and we can set you up. 

For upcoming blogs see the blogs tab here:  http://www.alttrainingonline.com/blog.html

Introducing ALTopedia by Jake Whiton

by Jake Whiton

Bio: Jake is an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) working in Nagano prefecture. He has taught junior high school for 6 years as well as some high school classes.

He's from Washington state in the US. In his free time, he learns about web design, tries to get some exercise, and eats tonkatsu.

If there’s one thing an ALT needs, it’s ideas. ALTs are expected to bring fun, relevant, and accessible activities into their classes. Coming up with new games and activities on top of all of the day-to-day tasks of teaching can be a challenge - fortunately ALTopedia is here to help!

ALTopedia is a new site designed to help English teachers find activities tailored to their unique circumstances. I've worked hard to develop it in my spare time. There have been thousands of ALTs working in countless Japanese schools over several decades, and we think it would be to everyone’s benefit to have a place to gather their accumulated wisdom and ideas.

Whether it’s a warm-up game that requires very little explanation but energizes the class, or an in-depth speaking and writing activity to make a tricky grammar point relatable and interesting - we’re hoping ALTopedia will be the best place to find the ideas that have worked well for other teachers in the past.

You might be familiar with another site called Englipedia which was set up for the same purpose, and indeed, ALTopedia is its successor.

How is ALTopedia any different from its predecessor or several other sites which do something similar? I’ll start out by giving a brief history of Englipedia and how the new site has come about.

Englipedia was originally started in 2007 and grew to house over a thousand activities for elementary, junior high, and high school classes. I first came across the site when I was starting out in 2012.

It was recommended to me as the best source to find activities for class.

I remember that it was really helpful to be able to look up which page I was on in our school’s textbook and finding activities based on what that part of the textbook I was covering.

But I also remember that the site was a little creaky even back then. I would suddenly stumble across another corner of the site with a couple dozen activities that would have been really useful to me if I’d found them a month or two earlier.

I noticed that textbook listings or activities sometimes referred to previous versions of the textbook. I remember trying to contribute my own activities, but the submission form was broken. I noticed that no new warm-ups ever made their way into the listings, and new activities only trickled in in bursts.

It seemed like whoever was running the Englipedia site wasn’t keeping up with it by the time I’d found it.

A couple years later I met Al, another ALT here in Nagano. I was surprised to hear that he was the person running Englipedia. He wasn’t the original creator, but he was managing the site and looking for volunteers to help modernize it.

To hear him tell it, the site was originally built using some particular web software called Sharepoint. As the site grew larger and larger, it only became more difficult to manage.

If a user submitted a new activity, Al said it took him about 30 minutes to add it to the site. He had to copy and paste all of the information, upload files, and then go through the site and manually add links to it on any page that might be relevant. To make matters worse, the platform that the site was running on was being shut down, so there was no choice but to seriously rebuild and redesign it.

My understanding is that Al and the site’s original owner had different ideas about where to take the site in the future. Al decided it would be better to make a new site using the lessons he’d learned from managing Englipedia. I got in touch with him about a year ago to start outlining ideas for what would become ALTopedia, and we launched it in the spring of 2018.

The big advancement of ALTopedia is that it’s a modern web application designed to do its job right from the site’s code.

Englipedia, and other sites that function on a wiki-style model, can suffer from one big weakness as they grow larger - they were designed to be static web pages where users manually create links between them.

On a small site where one administrator can keep track of everything, this can be manageable, but a site the size of Englipedia ran into problems with discoverability.

Should this board game be linked under “Junior High School - General”? It uses mostly past tense questions, but also “can” - should it be linked under both grammar points? Maybe a teacher has discovered that the game works well for a small class of elementary-aged students, but there may not be any effective way to communicate this alongside dozens of other small tasks the site’s administrator needs to perform. And how much time is it going to take to rebuild textbook listings when they get revised?

ALTopedia addresses these issues of categorization and discoverability using tags.

You’ve probably seen them on sites like blogs. They’re similar to hashtags from different social media services. An activity has a big list of tags on it - things like its grammar point, the appropriate school level, which parts of learning it uses, and even if it applies to a particular textbook.

If you want to find more activities using that grammar point, you can click on the tag and go to a listing of all activities that use it. The listing will always be up to date, and since the site’s database was designed with them in mind, they’re updated automatically.

Submitting an activity is as simple as signing up and filling in a standard web form. There’s a list of grammar points and other information, which will become tags that help users find the activity.

We have a moderator check activities really quick to make sure that they aren’t spam, but all they have to do is click a button and it’s up on the site.

If you realized you forgot to add something or want to edit it, it’s no problem - you can revise your activities as many times as you want.

If you really like an activity (including your own) you can give it a thumbs up, which will make it show up higher in search results.

I’ve tried to design the site so it can be an effective vault for a huge number of activities, while still being easy to search and use.

The design is lightweight and works with mobile devices and tablets, so even if you’re stuck using your school’s ancient computer (or your smartphone), you can still use the site. I’m still coding and adding features to the site, so you can always drop a line and I’ll see what I can do.

Having operated the site for a little while, I’ve developed an appreciation for the large community that developed in Englipedia’s early days.

A lot of people went to considerable effort to share their activities and games with other teachers. In its last few years the community seemed to shrink a lot, but we’re hoping we can build something even better.

I’ve uploaded a lot of my activities that I’ve come up with over the years, but the site won’t be a great resource until it has contributions from a wide variety of people.

We’d be happy to see yours!

-          A note from ALT training online’s David Hayter

If you have something 'ALT' to write about that hasn't been covered in these blogs, email me at alttoblog@gmail.com so we can work together and spread your story.

Don't have any ideas? We have a list of topics to write about that need a writer. Email in your interest to write and we can set you up. 

For upcoming blogs see the blogs tab here:  http://www.alttrainingonline.com/blog.html