Recently - in May and June 2008 - I had the great pleasure of visiting various countries in South America: Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Peru. In Venezuela I was a speaker at the VenTESOL conference, and in the other countries we offered various seminars and presentations in various cities (Guayacil, Quito, Bogota, Baranquilla, Santiago and Lima.

Many of the seminars involved participants watching various DVD clips from How to Teach English and The Practice of English Language Teaching. Everyone who was there got a chance to actually see other teachers at work and comment on what they saw. The whole experience was incredibly persuasive in the sense that whenever people watch film of others teaching they always - but always - see something which is worth discussing. As I write this, I am thinking of a teacher, yesterday, in Singapore who noticed something on one of the films (a gesture made by one of the teachers) that no one else has ever commented on).

The whole experience in South America convinced me of the power of classroom observation (and the way in which film can make it happen, even where physical peer observation, for example, is impossible). One school owner in Caracas impressed me enormously by describing how she takes a digicam into her teachers' lessons, films them, and then just gives them the recording to do with as they see fit. I find that incredibly enlightened; those teachers will watch and watch themselves teaching and whether they like it or not they will learn a tremendous amount about themselves.

Other presentations and events in South America included a talk called 'When were candles obsolete' about, amongst other things, the arrival of technology and how teachers should react to it (and to other new ideas). It's a talk I've been doing for some time now, and keep thinking I should 'put it to bed'. But the questions it attempts to raise seem to be ones that teachers still want to discuss in some detail. I am already down to repeat it in Barcelona in January 2009!

I have watched the films we made for the our two methodology books again and again and again; it fascinates me that each time they yield new insights, new issues and new opportunities for discussion. I hope the teachers who took part at the Wimbledon School of English and Embassy CES schools have some idea of the benefits their decision to allow themselves to be filmed has bestowed on all the people who have been watching them!