Ever heard anyone say that? The last time I did was from one of the most powerful voices in movie history: Morgan Freeman’s. If he had been born in the UK, I’m sure he would’ve been knighted by now and joined the select group that includes Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, and Dame Helen Mirren. Mr. Freeman played the role of Professor Samuel Norman, brain expert who has studied, among other things, the evolution of this incredible organ in Lucy, a movie co-starring Scarlet Johansson. In one of the scenes, Professor Norman is lecturing to a... Read More

Seasoned online content creator & CELTA teacher trainer, Billie Haase will be joined by professional video producers from multi-award winning London based global media organisation, ITN to workshop, ‘How to create and publish your own teaching videos’. The experts will be sharing insights, practical tips and success criteria for creating video to be used as both teaching aids and in some cases, additional income. They’ll be exploring what works and more importantly what doesn’t when creating video for language learning with real examples and professional ‘behind the scenes’ advice on making the most out of simple camera or camera phone... Read More

A whole generation is entering the world of education, yet not many seem to be talking about it. Introducing Gen Z. Born 1996-2010. Usually, people’s first reaction is, “Wait! Aren’t they Millennials?”. No, they are not. In fact, they are quite different. I’m a Millennial and there is not a day that goes by where you don’t hear about us. The most analysed generation in history. We talk about Millennials so much that we can’t even imagine a whole new generation showing up at school. Gen Z. The oldest ones are already in their early twenties. They love Snapchat and... Read More

The InnovateELT 2018 conference theme was: Fun?! Delight and Struggle in ELT. In this post I will reflect on some key points which emerged for me, inspired by the talks I attended and conversations I took part in. In the pub quiz conference ice-breaker activity, I quoted this from the Demand High website (Scrivener and Underhill). In the quiz this was a gap fill task incidentally, but here I quote in full: “We launched the Demand High meme at IATEFL in March 2012. We argued that communicative language teaching had painted itself into a corner, encouraging a lot of “fun”... Read More

This is the transcript of my plenary ‘Do students really want fun in the ELT classroom?’, which I gave on Saturday 12 May 2018 at InnovateELT. It was just a microphone and me in the Oxford TEFL school garden so there are no slides or graphics to accompany it. A special thanks to all those who tweeted and chatted with me afterwards about it. If you’re short of time then the TL;DR version is in the final paragraph. Feel free to leave your thoughts or questions in the comment box at the end. Enjoy!   FUN. It’s made up of... Read More

Bindi Clements is Instructional Design and Efficacy Manager at Wall Street English, and will be exploring some interesting discrepancies between what teachers and students think is ‘fun’. Join her talk at 17.40 in Room 10 to find out why these differences might matter for how we design learning experiences. At around the time that the iELT18 conference theme of ‘Fun?! Delight and struggle in ELT’ was published last year, I’d recently joined Wall Street English. I’d obviously checked out our website when I was applying for the job, and had noticed that the idea of ‘fun’ featured strongly in how... Read More

From my earliest foray into Teacher Observation on one side of the desk when I was a budding ELT teacher to my more recent experiences of observing teachers, creating safer spaces for ELT CPD has always been at the forefront of my mind (and heart). I had come from a therapy background prior to be a teacher and so reflective practice ran through me like the eponymous Brighton rock! This led me into choosing this fascinating area for one of the research areas for my Diploma in TESOL. How can we continue to make Teacher Observation both central to ELT... Read More

Elena Deleyto is a scriptwriter and producer at Digital Learning Associates and will be talking about how video can add to the fun at iELT18. Join her talk at 17:40 at Room 7. See you there! If you’re interested in video, Digital Learning Associates are hiring an ELT writer. More info here.