To give you a short overview: I started as a classic teacher and taught languages to teenagers, group and 1o1. After I moved to France I specialized on adults again teaching groups and 1o1. All this was classic offline f2f. All in all I am teaching for about 8 years now.

In late 2007 early 2008 I started to teach more and more online and today over 90% of my clients are online across the globe. Their levels reach from total beginner to advanced.

In 2010 I will launch some new projects, outsourcing content from this blog into new ones. And a big part of 2010 will be dedicated to the shift and how we can adjust our teaching to it.

So I hope I will be able to answer those questions soon. Thanks for stopping by!

Where digital tools really show their merit however is when students leave the classroom and study on their own. MP3s let students listen to native speakers anywhere, Spaced Repetition Programs (SRS) help aid and support memories making supercharged memories possible, DVDs let us watch the natives in the wild, and the Internet lets us read news in the language our choice. We can do ALL OF THIS away from the teacher. We are no longer need be tethered to a teacher under a baobao tree and we are no longer be limited by the speed the other 199 students are moving through the material with us under the shade of that tree.

Digital tools create autonomy and teachers who understand that and leverage that will succeed in teaching students far faster than what is possible under your tree. As teachers we need to understand– these tools are to make teaching easier they are to make learning better.

I think the great thing is that you can actually teach 10 children under the Baobab tree in the future. I agree that people need somekind of leadership, someone you can turn to with specific questions, e.g. someone who still knows more than you do but I don't think that you need to be a sage on the stage for it, more the wise man on the mountain.

The thing is that the shift will actually help educators to concentrate more on their core competences and to specialize themselves more than they can do now. Also if the students are already well prepared when they join your teaching you can skip all the boring stuff you need to “waste time” on in the class today and go staright forward to the creative part.

That of course will mean that educators / tutors / teachers / guides, whatever you want to call them, need totally different skill sets than today. Being open minded, multi interested and accessible are only three factors that already sort out a lot of today's educators, right?

About the 80% drop out, yes, that is a problem today but there might be various reasons for this. I don't think that this will last when students get more used to the fact that a big part of their life, studies and later on work will be online.

We are just at the beginning but try to explain someone who joined the internet this year how it “used to be” in 2008 without everyone being on Twitter or Facebook. What did we do “back then”?

And about children studying online. Take a look at http://www.mingoville.com the problem they might have lies in the other direction, how to get them off the internet and stop learning English .

The old days are gone, never to return.