Ahead of his talk at iELT16, Geoff Stead of Platinum sponsor Cambridge English Language Assessment gives us this thoughts on technology in education…    Where does technology fit in your classroom? Is it a collection of tools in your teaching toolbox . . .  or is it trying to BE the entire toolbox? Does it let you take learning outside or does it try to keep it in the classroom? I’ve had the privilege of spending the past ten or so years developing mobile learning apps often targeting learners who, for many diverse reasons, are not well served by traditional... Read More

In this post, Emma Louise Pratt of ELT Campus shares her thoughts on building a community…   I was so excited. I’d put my heart and soul into the project. A group of teachers at a local college were going to meet with me on a weekly basis to improve their confidence with English but also explore together methods and ideas for teaching subjects through English. Being the tech head that I am, I promptly introduced the group to Edmodo with the idea that we could have this shared space for messaging, commenting and gathering information and learning for our new... Read More

We welcome Linda Ruas to the iELT blog to share her thoughts on the power that we have as teachers to fight injustice…   The other day, I did a lesson about sport with my multilingual pre-intermediate ESOL group in London, but with a twist. The texts were about two organisations: ‘Coaching for Hope’, teaching football (and literacy) to young child miners in Burkina Faso; and ‘Human Rights Watch’, fighting for women in Iran to be allowed to publicly watch volleyball matches. It was real, contentious, current and the learners were so interested that the lesson ran itself and remembered all... Read More

There has been an undoubtable leveling of the playing field in eLearning over the last ten years, with eLearning tools and delivery platforms becoming more widely accessible in terms of cost and choice. This trend has been matched by an equally impressive growth in the number of teachers dipping their toes into course and content development – a trend that is particularly evident in the language field. So what’s a budding course developer’s best option for sharing his or her creations with the world and building an online business? The obvious answer is to use an LMS (Learning Management System).... Read More

With the iELT conference just a month away (Barcelona May 6th and 7th) find out what the Innovate ELT Team think of teacher power and take our Jedi Power Quiz to find out if the force is really with you. What teacher wouldn’t want some more power? But what do we mean by power and what forms can it take? The title of this year’s Innovate ELT conference has created some controversy. The themes we listed in the original announcement (intended as examples, not an exhaustive list) included gender equality, the “non-native” teacher question, workers’ rights and entrepreneurship. Duncan Foord... Read More