About 2 years ago, I thought I was going to change the world by cataloging most of the worksheets and lesson plans on the web.  It seemed like a simple idea and one that could potentially pay off.  I've had a lot of trouble trying to find a good worksheet from time to time.  It's hard to sift through the search results and get that one worksheet you want.

I began work cataloging massive amounts of worksheets and lesson plans.  However, after doing about 100 or so, I quickly realized that the task was simply too immense of an undertaking.  I resorted to listing the key places to find worksheets and lesson plans around the web in our material directory under weblinks.  This was all right for awhile, but I discovered people were coming to my blog and still looking for that particular worksheet or lesson plan and I wasn't really addressing their needs.

I am always trying to create new tools for English teachers to make use of. There has been an enormous community of ELT bloggers that have sprung up of late. I personally find this to be very welcoming and encouraging to see so many people contributing new and fresh ideas to the community.

English teachers are an unusual group of professionals. We are spread out all through the world and deal with different cultures and teaching styles. We ourselves often come from a diverse background from native speakers in North America to those in the United Kingdom and Australia to bilingual teachers from practically every country. We quite literally herald from the four corners of the map.

During the month of June, I and a few other teachers (@kalinagoenglish, @Marisa_C, @tamaslorincz, @Blythe_Musteric) started a chain story (using the hashtag #cs1).  It went well for a few weeks, but sadly it began to die off.  It was an experiment to see how a chain story could actually work on Twitter.  I learned a few things from the experience:

1. Twitter doesn't let you search for a hashtag that is older than a few weeks. - Twitter will only show the last couple of weeks of a particular hashtag.  This means that if you want to save a particular tweet you must make it your favorite or it will get lost in the Twitterverse.  This can make tracking a chain story a little difficult.
2. It's hard to keep track of the characters. - After the story progressed for a bit, I had to scroll back down and check who was who.  This was made difficult by the disappearing tweets.
3. It was difficult to pass information to the other contributers without interrupting the story. - What I mean is, if you used the same hashtag as the story hashtag it got all mixed up.

We are excited to announce a new feature here at EnglishSpark called Kala.  Kala is our new points system.  You can earn Kala in a variety of different ways by posting an article, commenting on an article, posting a review, creating a listing, or by reading the latest article.  In the future, you will be able to redeem Kala for special features, raffles or drawings.

We created this system to encourage greater participation at our website.  We know we have a lot of users that can contribute a lot of great stuff to the site.  If you'd like to add to a Teacher Stumpers article or a Finding Students 101 article, please feel free to add and help each other out.  You can also add worksheets or websites to the material directory.  We'd like to build a community that can benefit everyone.

We will giving out prizes and awards to top earners.  So don't get left out.  Be sure to contribute and help our community grow.

Here's a complete list of the rules:

1) Registering on EnglishSpark.com - 10 points to any new user for signing up on our website.

2) Logging in (1/day) - 1 point

3) Inviting users to join EnglishSpark - 30 points for every person you invite, and 100 points for every person you invite that signs up.  We hope that you enjoy our blog and other free resources and hope you will invite others to join us.  We would like to reward you for that.  To invite people to 1) Login in 2) Click on My EnglishSpark 3) Click on invite.  You can import emails from yahoo, gmail, American Online, Plaxo, or Outlook.

4) Referral points - you receive 1% of all points earned by the person you invited, so the more people you invite that sign up, the more points you earn.

5) Reading an article (while logged in) - 2 points

6) Post a comment - 10 points for every accepted comment. Be sure to login in so you can get your points.

7) Submitting a listing (private teacher, worksheet, lesson plan, or website) - 50 points for every accepted listing. For a private teacher listing, while logged in click 'create a listing' under the teachers tab.  For worksheets and lesson plans please click 'a material' under the teachers tab.  For websites please click 'a link' under the teachers tab.

8) Review an item - 20 points for every review submitted about a worksheet, lesson plan, private teacher, or website.  You can sort through and find hundreds of resources in our material directory.

We will also be rewarding points for any great ideas you might have about what to do for the site.  We really want to create a website for teachers by teachers.  Help us make that happen.

Neal and Jason

And now for some legalese: