Pip Key
I am a London based artist and business English teacher, I teach in the corporate sector and in a language school. I tried online teaching and I don't like it! And I won't be considering it
Location London, UK
Activity
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Pip Key made a comment
I can't use padlet they won't accept my email, can't we upload them on futurelearn
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Pip Key made a comment
Round the world on a wheel is my favourite travel book about 3 English men who cycle around the world in the last century. And Dervla Murphy's books on her amazing journey in the Andes.
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Pip Key made a comment
I think it depends if you grew up in the city or the country. Some children here in London who grew up in very deprived neighbourhoods, living in high rise buildings, didn't see the ground until they were about 9 years of age! They had never been into the country or seen farm animals.....and were taken on a walk into a farm, they were terrified of the...
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Pip Key made a comment
I agree with many people here - about 10 years old. I think I read the story when I was about that age.
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Pip Key made a comment
The American settlers talked about gentryfing the 'wilderness' .. the miles and miles of plains and trees and renaming the lands inhabited by and sacred to the indiginous peoples.... Edward Hopper the painter depicts a housing developent on the edge of a forest - the taming of the wild unhabited lands..... Just my thoughts!
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Pip Key made a comment
My most vivid and strange visits to a forest was in Bavaria, I went for a walk into this dense space, it was late afternoon/early evening. The stars in that part of the world are very visible in their millions, a magic place. I was looking at the trees when all at once the whole vista in front of me became like mosaic, shattered into a million pieces, it...
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Pip Key made a comment
This is another version by Nadja Ellinger
https://thesouthwestcollective.co.uk/portfolio/nadja-ellinger-path-of-pins-odyssey/
Nadja Ellinger – Path of Pins
Path of Pins is a visual re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, revolving around adolescence and the awakening of the primordial and archaic feminine. As an oral tradition, the fairy tale is constantly... -
Pip Key made a comment
https://pigiron.org/productions/the-path-of-pins
This links to a performance of the Path of Pins and Needles I just found online!
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Pip Key made a comment
I am going to have a go at reading the original French story if I can find it.
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Pip Key made a comment
A happy little girl is asked by her mother to take some food to her grandmother who lives deep in the forest. RRH agrees and goes into the wood, on the way she notices the flowers and birds and dallies for a while. A wolf sees her and asks her where she is going, she tells him; he decides to get to the grandmother's cottage ahead of RRH.... RRH eventually...
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Where does that story come from? I've never heard of it.
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Pip Key replied to Ana Carvalho
My partner remembers a very gruesome version of Hansel and Gretel which I don't; where the gingerbread house is made of dead children! and the witch invites the two children into her house and cooks them in her ovens. Very gruesome for a child...
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Pip Key made a comment
Did you read the stories on your own? or did your parents or grandparents read them to you? I don't remember being read stories so my adventure into fairy stories would I think have been done on my own.
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I don't remember ever being read fairy tales, rather I read them on my own.
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Pip Key made a comment
As an artist I have a very vivid imagination so when I think of fairy tales I see vivid images of the wood, the castle, the witch, the wolves.... Fairy tales link for me into what some people would call shamanism, where you can journey through a wood with your animal guide to an underground world and meet your power animal or fpirit guide. My power animal is...
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Pip Key made a comment
Ive done quite a few online courses. I am a course junkie! I like Futurelearn it's the most user friendly for academic subjects. I also like udemy for piano and art courses, and Domestika.
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Pip Key made a comment
How very interesting to see people from all over the world doing this course with their own memories and interpretations of the stories!
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Pip Key replied to Vanessa Skotnitsky
I too am an artist in London and yes, what an interesting aspect to our art. I recently did an etching for my poem, the Tree That Wanted to Fly, which is my own fairy tale! Hopefully I can get inspired by this course to do more imaginative imagery.
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Pip Key made a comment
I had to re register so I am starting this course again. I was an english teacher in London and I have always been interested in mythology and fairy tales and their significance. For me the one I remember most is Red Riding Hood.
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Pip Key made a comment
I too lost my face to face contracts in the corporate sector in London. I now have a few online students who are based in London and Europe. I can't say I enjoy teaching online but it is an adequate alternative. I also don't have to commute long distance any more which is about the only bonus!
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Pip Key made a comment
This plan has no topics. I would have a topic for each week. I would also introduce some word games and more open and closed exercises. More listening and definitely more role play and pair / group work.
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Because European students aren't coming to London any more. Many language schools have closed already this past 2 years.
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Pip Key made a comment
I used to like games with my General English students, but I can't do games with my business executives, they are not interested!
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Pip Key made a comment
Although I live in London our connection speed is not enough to teach online, companies here require 10meg download speed, I need to get fibre which is expensive, at £60 a month, we only get 2.5 megs
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Pip Key made a comment
I am in the unfortunate situation to be an English Language Teacher in a country that is leaving the EU, our language schools are closing, teachers are leaving the profession. I feel like one of the last teachers in the UK! It is a very sad time here for English language, EFL, ESOL teachers.
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Pip Key made a comment
That ritual may have continued to play a role in the life of the people who lived during those times: 'ritual acts of deposition into the waters of Lake Flixton'. Also interesting is the reporting of the possible ritual aspect of the antler 'headdresses' which conjures up an amazing image.
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Pip Key replied to Mike Efstathiou
How interesting and what an amazing chance you have with that course
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Pip Key made a comment
I once did a short course at the City Lit in London on archaeology and I went on a dig, which was painful! I don't have the knees for it. As an artist I am interested in all aspects of history, mythology, magic, psycho-geography, the city, Roman Britain, Medieval London. we are lucky here in the Uk to have the tv programme The Time Team. A flatmate of ours...
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Yes the technolog is not ready yet we need better speeds, better webcams and easier software
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Pip Key made a comment
I must add that you need a good external webcam don't use the one on your laptop and it has to be set up right. With a slow connection you get a lag between the video and the words which is very frustrating, also good sound quality is really important
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Pip Key made a comment
I did my second session it was a disaster as my net connection is too slow even here in London, I would not consider online teaching as a career, my client has one virtual lesson a week, the other is at her office. To me it's like dry skiing - all the effort with no pleasure.
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Pip Key made a comment
I am completely confused as to what software is being used and how it gets to be moved around the screen. Could you explain what the software is please
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Pip Key made a comment
Oh dear the sound is terrible! I can hardly hear what anyone is saying.
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Where are you based Mary? I am similar to you, and although semi retired I want to continue teaching and this will be a new venture for me. I am in London, UK, I teach in the corporate sector and for a Japanese language school not far from my home
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Pip Key made a comment
Very similar to Jade and Corinne's reasons. I want to keep up with technology and use it to complement my teaching schedule. I have been putting it off for a year or so as I was daunted by the amount of technology now available. Also our internet connection is not always very fast, even here in London. I now have been offered some work with a student from...
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Pip Key made a comment
I've just been offered some teaching work from Wisconsin USA, I live in London. I've been meaning to get into teaching online so now I have to! My student is based here in London and we will meet face to face and online once or twice a week. I'm looking forward to doing something new and different. I've been teaching English for about 16 years.
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Pip Key made a comment
For me the proof of great lessons comes later when the student actually uses the language learned a few lessons previously - then you know that you taught it in a way that the language is being used.
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Pip Key made a comment
Nostalgia, childhood, relatives, language, buildings
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Pip Key replied to Eleni Agapitou
I lived in Crete for a few years and we always roasted a lamb at easter, happy days....
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Pip Key replied to Yolanda Gonzalo
I would be very interested to visit! But not alone, so mythology is certainly part of cultural heritage
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Pip Key made a comment
We have our famous Open House weekend coming soon where you can visit places in greater London usually closed to the public. We are going to visit a Victorian steam engine, markfield beam engine in Tottenham. For me one of many tangible aspects of my heritage.
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Pip Key made a comment
I live in North London, UK. I am researching my local area to make prints and my specific area is the Holloway road, with its history of music halls, theatres and amazing shops. As well as the arrival of the railway. Dick Whittington came through here and his cat sits at the top, people rub the cat's head for luck
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Pip Key made a comment
I started learning piano a few years ago and I am currently learning the flute, which is a welcome break from all those chords, so I'm looking forward to writing some songs, I like improvising.
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Pip Key made a comment
Hi I'm a business English tutor in London
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Pip Key made a comment
That's a very good suggestion I'm going to try it this week
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Pip Key made a comment
I teach both one to one and in a class, I find class based speaking assessment really difficult and still struggle with it after many years teaching
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Pip Key made a comment
I teach business English so this course will be very helpful
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Pip Key made a comment
Because mi piace means it pleases me, and mi piaccono means they please me, it's a different form
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Pip Key made a comment
La domenica vado in piscina, e il martedi vado in palestra.
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Pip Key made a comment
Mio marito e abbastanza basso e un po grasso ma va in palestra ogni mercoledi e venerdi. Ha gli occhi verdi è molto humoroso e simpatico, è musicista
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Si che bella citta!
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Maybe it's a bit like in English when we say I can't really come then, the word really is not grammatically necessary
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Pip Key replied to Sabrina Maffei
Oh! Cafe e Cornetto per la colazione? Mama Mia!
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Pip Key made a comment
What does he mean by 'non posso proprio venire'
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Anche Tu?
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Pip Key made a comment
è to make e with a grave accent, switch on Numerical Lock, hold down the ALT key and type 0232
Here is the link to other types of accented letters
https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/#accent -
Pip Key made a comment
Per cercare Anna, Mike deve andare sempre dritto, poi deve prendere la strada a destra, e quando arrivi a l'incrocio, deve prendere la strade a sinistra. Poi deve andare sempre dritto, attraversi la strade e poi prendere la strade a sinistra. E Anna è là .
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Pip Key made a comment
In English we say What does he/she look like? For characteristics and What is he/she like? For personality, not just one phrase as in Italian
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Pip Key made a comment
Spiritosa - that's funny
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Pip Key made a comment
Anche Io sono insegnante, qui a londra, studio italiano
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Pip Key made a comment
Sono inglese di Huddersfield ma abito a londra. Io studio Italiana a londra
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Pip Key made a comment
I think they have another verb, stare, as in sto bene, I am fine!
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Pip Key made a comment
Me too! Pasta, Pecorino, ciabatta......
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Pip Key made a comment
Io mi chiamo pip, sono inglese, sono di londra, buon lavoro a tutti!
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Pip Key made a comment
A bit much for a first session! I can understand it since I'm in week 5 of my Italian course here in London, good practice in listening though
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Pip Key made a comment
Pears' Centenary Edition of Charles Dickens' Christmas Books:The Cricket On The Hearth published 1912. Originally written in 1845. Cover is green book cloth with gilt lettering and a photograph of the Pears boy from the advert. Illustrations by L Rossi.
A very odd but very spooky Victorian children's story about a cricket and a host of typical Dickens... -
Pip Key made a comment
I've abandoned bright colours this week!! And taking Sue Timney's advice I've gone minimal working with black and burnt umber only, I like the results
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Pip Key made a comment
I'm going to do the exercise Sue recommends practising with first one colour then just one more
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Pip Key made a comment
I am making covers for my bookbinding class, so this will inspire me to use colour in other ways
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Thank you for sharing your story Catherine
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Pip Key made a comment
The interior life; that of being able to imagine, comes out of introspection, and an ability to be alone with one's thoughts; maybe as a result of being left alone a great deal as a child, maybe as a result of being abused or abandoned as a child. I speak from experience. I wrote many poems as a child and also started to become the artist that I am today.
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I am not sure if fairy tales as such, reading them in books, are relevant to children today. Maybe movies have now replaced the book story and deal with more contemporary kinds of fears and complex issues: ET - the stranger in our midst, crossing boundaries into another's world; Star Wars - more of the same; a future vision of human interaction with robots...
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Fairy stories deal with difficult issues; issues that carry on and may not be resolved into adulthood: One of the theories about Little Red Riding Hood is that this story is essentially about sexual violence; there are stories about abandonment, abuse, the people who live on the outer limits of society, cruelty, unrequited love.
They deal with the...
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Fairy tales seem to have taken over from myths: a more contemporary version of stories that belong to all cultures. I am also doing the course on Greek Mythology with Coursera and we have just read The Odyssey - fascinating and very much like a fairy story with its monsters, supernatural events, narrative structure....
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Pip Key made a comment
My most memorable encounter with a fairy story was Little Red Riding Hood. I fretted for this poor little girl who had to make her way through the wood on her own, and then to be met by the wolf posing as her grandmother - too awful for words! Then there was Hansel and Gretel left to fend for themselves in yet another wood - how did we survive such...
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Pip Key made a comment
Yes, thank you all so much for a very interesting course that led me in all sorts of new directions.
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Pip Key made a comment
Windows 10 Toshiba laptop, Microsoft Windows phone (Lumia 640)
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Pip Key made a comment
I am English and speak fairly good French and Greek and a little Italian. Recently I was complaining to our local Greek food factory (who by the way are good neighbours on the whole) about the nasty food smells which we suffered albeit only temporarily - I spoke to the manager in Greek and said something along the lines of 'aren't you ashamed of what you are...
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A round of applause to Dr Shilton for squeezing so much information about so many topics from this rather sad performance. I don't immediately reach for the word celebratory when a woman sticks her midriff in my face. Video used to be subversive now it is more like a YouTube clip made in someone's bedroom
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Pip Key made a comment
My favourite memorial is the one I have already mentioned in a previous posting which is dedicated to the fallen in the First World War. The link is to one of the figures I like most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Artillery_Memorial#/media/File:Artillery_Memorial_Driver.jpgIt is as if this soldier is resting briefly during battle, only to return...
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'stealing their culture' is the right phrase - no different from the Nazis stealing the Roman eagle for their parades, a symbol that gives authenticity to a charade.
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Pip Key made a comment
Whatever happened to 'France’s passion and attraction to the exotic, the Other'? This has now in recent years turned into the complete opposite, a total rejection of the Other.
Further, Orientalism is a made up word that seems to mean anywhere just outside 'our' borders; a strange place; a place we do not understand or have any ideas about; a place for...
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Pip Key made a comment
It's a total mystery to me how an Egyptian artefact can be taken from its home site, an ancient home site too, and is transported many miles over two years to be placed in a huge space that bears no relationship to Egypt or north Africa.
It's no different from taking wild and exotic creatures from their habitat and placing them in a completely different...
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Pip Key made a comment
Both the Obelisk and Cleopatra's Needle for me are part of the purloining of other countries' artefacts, as are the Elgin Marbles etc etc. They belong to an era of colonialisation, power politics, and have little meaning today. As if a tall stone structure could in any way mark the break from an ancien regime. The French nation had to find new symbols for its...
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Yes, it's a pity the US doesn't latch on to the idea of erecting something when they leave a country rather than blowing up a whole city.
As for an obelisk in the Place de la Concorde - Egyptian architecture is therefore symbolic of something ( I am not clear what) and welcomed by the French - just don't expect to be welcomed in the same way if you are of...
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Pip Key made a comment
One memorial in London that I always take notice of when passing on the bus, is the one for the fallen during WW1 at Hyde Park Corner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Artillery_Memorial#/media/File:Artillery_Memorial_Driver.jpg
It always makes me stop and think - it is situated in the middle of a really busy traffic area. The figures are realistic,...
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Pip Key made a comment
Yes, the Wellcome Trust is excellent. I am going to see States of Mind exhibition this week.
It depends on what you are into but I really liked the Betty Woodman at the ICA as I am doing ceramics. She is someone who breaks boundaries.Also visited the V&A to see their ceramics collection but what most people are going to see is Sandro Bottecelli,...
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Pip Key made a comment
My friend and I went to a special needs school to teach printmaking one afternoon a week while we were doing our degrees in printmaking. The project was sponsored by our university and was a real pleasure.
Some of the children had physical difficulties, some had memory difficulties, printmaking can be made simple enough though to follow and we made some...
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Pip Key made a comment
I am an English teacher in London, UK and an artist currently training in Healing. This sounds like a very interesting course
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Pip Key replied to Kharnita Mohamed
Me too I am doing Culture and Modern Languages with Futurelearn and here I am enrolling in yet another course! Learning addiction here we come....
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Pip Key made a comment
Isn't the Divine Comedy an attempt by Dante to show how the mindset which predominated during the Middle Ages has changed. That human salvation is not only gained by knowledge as believed to be by the Greeks, but that we need to delve into the depths of the mind; we cannot gain salvation by our will alone.
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Pip Key made a comment
Mr Kopfrkingl has a strange relationship with his work - in his speech to a room of people who all seem to be listening to his every word he states that: 'We live in a humanitarian state which provides crematoria to give people the chance to turn quietly into dust after the tribulations of life'. A statement that is a prediction surely of the imminent use of...
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Pip Key made a comment
If you replace the word Workers with the word People then, yes, it is very relevant - Marx and Engels would have loved social media, with it people united across the arabic peninsula and the arab spring was born into action across countries.
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Pip Key made a comment
Yes a very interesting week, thank you all.
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Pip Key made a comment
My experience of the Occupy Movement was very negative unfortunately - on my way to work in the city of London I would pass each day the camp at Finsbury Circus - scruffy tents, drunks sitting on the grass, rubbish everywhere, the smell of burning rubber..... there was a tent supposed to be 'educating' passers by as to the movement, but I never saw anyone...
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Pip Key made a comment
I teach foreign professionals here in London so I meet many cultures in my week. This course looks very interesting.
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Pip Key made a comment
Oh dear criticism! I would have preferred to see him in the water actually swimming with the landscape somewhat less important. Did he really get into the water on that dark morning? Or was this taken mid morning and photoshopped? I live near a place where people swim in outdoor lakes all year round with no gear like this!
It's a serious, hard edge,...
