I like to think that, as well as making one more small simplification to our course, we also perhaps established a positive and appreciative attitude towards collaboration and giving credit where it is due!

Thanks, too, for provding the pre-text for this whole discussion on ownership, which has generated postings that have plumbed depths our funny little activity could never have anticipated!

In that column, there are many other ideas that I know are not mine originally but damned if I know where they came from or even when and where I first heard about them (eg, drinking session in a Prague pub, informal chat with a colleague over a cup of tea, peer observation, long lost article) – just plain old classic tefl-y teaching ideas that have spun around so much they just need to keep spinning. That said, there’s nothing I get more pleasure out of when writing my column than having a chat with one of my colleagues in the staffroom and hearing about one of their ideas and then asking them if I can include their idea in a column and naming them by thanking them for the idea or even giving them a shared column authorship role. And let’s not forget training sessions, ie, mentioning in sessions where an idea came from such as ‘this is a coaching tip I got from a session I saw Adrian Underhill give.’ I think it’s extremely important for trainers to acknowledge where their ideas are coming from. In fact, one of my favourite training sessions to give is one I like to call ‘Stolen Ideas from Observations’ where I’ll check with the teachers who I’ve observed that I can present some of their ideas in a staff training session giving credit where credit is due with the goal of sharing as many good ideas as possible. ‘So, when I was watching Wilf’s lesson, he had this speaking activity I’d like to show you – the kids loved it!’

Curiously, does anyone know who came up with the idea of having students work in pairs? Who owns that one? He or she was a genius!

The point I’m trying to make here is that teaching shares a lot of common elements with other forms of art or creative processes. Can we say that it as all already been invented, said and done? I’ve heard this before, but honestly I think it’s our ability to give a different spin to old ideas, dig them and adapt them to new contexts what makes creative work fresh and pertinent, even if not 100% original.

Or wait. Could it be that the only original idea is the one that successfully incorporates previous ones? If that’s the case and you all agree -I want credit.

I found the idea about ideas interesting. It is extremely difficult to claim ideas of our own. For example I use “battleships” in the classroom to practice minimal pairs. I didn’t get this idea from any book or teacher, but I came up with it on my own. Maybe, somebody else uses it. How did they come about it? Can two ideas not be born independently yet at a similar time?

Rupert Sheldrake, biologist and author, describes a morphic field or collective consciousness for all living things. So, for example, lab rats can be taught how to solve a puzzle and other lab rats that have not come into contact with the “educated rats” can solve the puzzle without being taught. Surely, then there is a Teacher morphic field that we tap into.

Some ideas need to be protected, such as in the pharmaceutical industry because of the vast sums of money that is involved. I think in our profession you need more than an idea to use battleships to become rich. Or maybe not Pron Battleships is born.

Yes, ‘organic teaching’ or what Jim (Mr Scrivener to you) calls ‘jungle path’ lessons, have been around much longer than I or you have. Re-branding this kind of teaching as dogme has driven some people almost crazy. (And some crazy people even crazier). I think in fact Jim feels that way about his ARC model – having named and described it, he has ever since been button-holed by folk at conferences and in the supermarket saying “Hey I thought of that!”.

As I’ve always said, there’s nothing really original about dogme, but the simple act of naming it gave it a legitimacy that a lot of teachers clearly welcomed.

I’m not sure if the issue with Teaching Unplugged is the name and who invented it or the idea and where it began . As has been pointed out, ‘ unplugged ‘ was coined by MTV decades ago but, more importantly, surely this is what we were doing back in the seventies when all we had was Kernel Lessons , some tippex and a lot of creativity. As you may remember from one of your early ‘Teaching Unplugged’ talks , Scott, I had used the term ‘ Organic Teaching ‘ to describe spontaneous, learner- driven lessons years earlier and even did a talk at IATEFL 1998 on the same theme. But then – as you pointed out – the term was already in circulation with reference to primary school teaching in NZ I believe , even if I had come up with the title in conversation with Jim Scrivener and not a dream! I still think MY name for it has more meaning than ‘unplugged’ or dogme – though it lacks the rock n’roll sexiness of the former. Anyway, I’m not claiming ownership to either name or concept but , as has been said already, it’s hard to be truly original these days in ELT.

I checked out Grammar Games this week and , as I thought, Mario and Paul actually credit the source of the teaching ideas they describe … so there!

Finally, as a wandering CELTA trainer, I often come across my handouts which have crossed from Hastings to Budapest to Zurich and beyond but with no accreditation. I guess it IS a form of flattery but it would be nice to get some recognition for being the originator of the material. These days I stick a copyright on them but that’s pretty meaningless. Maybe I should change my name. How does Scrivener sound?