ELT and the future of the internet
We analyse some of the main themes in the recent internet trends report compiled by venture capitalist, Mary Meeker, and take a look at how we can apply them to the ELT industry.
2Ts in a Pod: InnovateELT podcast
2Ts in a Pod is a podcast for English learners and teachers alike with each episode focusing on a different theme. The podcast is hosted by Tim Warre and Katy Wright. Tim and Katy joined us at the InnovateELT conference in Barcelona last month and spoke to a selection of speakers and delegates, including Scott Thornbury and our very own Jo Sayers. Check out the interviews here.
All we need is fun? A review of InnovateELT 2018
When I saw the word “fun” in the title of this year’s Innovate conference, I’ll admit I was skeptical. It reminded me of an article I’d read a few months previously entitled, ‘Millennials Don’t Want Fun; They Want You To Lead Better’, which got me thinking: if we replaced ‘millennials’ with ‘students’ and ‘lead’ with ‘teach’, would that be a fair reflection of the needs of our students today? Moreover, could we extend this viewpoint to incorporate teachers, namely that they also don’t want fun at conferences, and instead want their practices to be challenged?
Learning, design and sustainable development
“For an activity to be engaging, it needs to be meaningful; for that meaning to endure, it needs to be memorable.”
Zahra Davidson and her work with Enrol Yourself is challenging our vision of lifelong learning. This award-winning social enterprise has been exploring the potential of peer groups to maximise individual and collective progress. Zahra shared her thoughts on the future of learning and assessment at the IATEFL event ELTjam co-organised with Cambridge Assessment English.
Big data, trust and the future of language assessment
“Educators and examiners perform an array of functions that, as far as I’m concerned, make them irreplaceable.”
During the recent IATEFL conference in Brighton, ELTjam and Cambridge Assessment English hosted a series of talks exploring the future of learning and assessment. Below is the transcript of the talk given by Pamela Baxter, the Director of Cambridge Exams Publishing.
Do students really want fun in the classroom?
“By ELT emphasising fun I think it undermines our professionalism and distorts the image of what language learning and teaching should look like.”
This is the transcript of my plenary ‘Do students really want fun in the ELT classroom?’, that I gave on Saturday 12th May 2018 at InnovateELT.