We haven’t had any ELT Entrepreneurs on the blog for a while, but people setting up on their own from an ELT background is something we’re always interested in.
Over the summer, we spoke to Arthur Rubin, half of the husband and wife team behind AUTHORS & EDITORS, about their socially conscious publishing company.
John Pettigrew has gone from working for publishers to bring his expertise to his own company, Futureproofs, a web-based platform that helps teams of authors, editors and designers to make sure that the books they work on are correct before they’re published.
Founded by Karen Spiller, Karen White and best-selling ELT author Sue Kay (Inside Out, Reward Resource Packs, Focus) to help connect writers with publishers. It also publishes training ebooks.
Next in our series on people who’ve made the break into ELT Entrepreneurship is the three man team behind StudyBundles, an English language teaching and learning digital product provider specialising in preparatory pre-arrival courses for learners who want to study in English medium Higher Education.
The latest in our series looking at ELT-ers who’ve ventured out into business alone looks at the recent winners of the David Riley Award, Simple English Videos run by husband and wife team Vicki Hollett and Jay Silber. And, in keeping with their business, they offered to do their interview in video format.
In the latest in our series spotlighting entrepreneurs from within the ELT community, we talk to Robert Hanley about English Bubble and his journey from teacher to businessman.
For the second post in our ELT Entrepreneurs series we take a look at Paul Emmerson’s recently launched site BehereBethere. It’s a free and fun eLearning website for Business English where students can watch videos and learn about business from business professionals while improving their English. The site caters to three different levels and works on vocabulary and pronunciation.
We’ve been watching Marcos Benevides and his team at Atama-ii Books for over a year as their series of Choose Your Own Adventure Graded Readers went from an idea to a crowdfunding success to an actual out-now-and-buyable books. This is the first in what we hope to be a series of posts looking at what happens behind the scenes to ELT Entrepreneurs during their journey.
CASE STUDIES British Council Updating an existing training course for digital freelancers by researching and adapting it for a new market The British Council has been working in Iraq since 1940 and every year they connect with thousands of Iraqi students, teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, academics, and policymakers. The focus of their work is on providing … Read more
EtonX Developing an online entrepreneurship syllabus for young adults
Being a distributed team here at LearnJam, we’re used to collaborating together and running remote workshops fully online. So, over the last month, we’ve loved seeing online communities grow and have been showing our virtual faces at as many online learning events as possible. Here are some of the Zooms and Hangouts we’ve been in … Read more
Berlin is perhaps best known for its blend of creativity, culture and art. It’s this innovative outlook that’s made it one of Europe’s most dynamic business scenes. In fact, a new startup is founded every 20 minutes, according to the German Times. And if you work in education, you’ll soon find yourself amongst a growing … Read more
We’ve always believed that a digital product is never finished – it should always be evolving and improving in response to user needs and changing technology. But a project we’re currently working on in Brazil has challenged that assumption, and taught us valuable lessons about how working within strict limitations can improve everything you do.
In her previous post, Jenny Dance told us how she came up with the idea for a pronunciation app and got it published by OUP. Now, she tells us about the main challenges in bringing the app to market, how she overcame them and what she learned as a result. Inspiring reading for anyone thinking of taking the plunge and developing their own ELT product.
ELTjam mostly writes about the intersection between tech and education, which means we’ve got plenty of posts of interest for teachers. Here’s a collection.
In an update of a post from @muranava’s excellent EFLNotes blog, Mike Boyle, ELT author and editor, talks about why learning to code and taking on technology projects to help language learners is a career boost for EFL teachers and materials writers.
Social learning is a term that is increasingly being used by ELT practitioners. But what is it, and what’s all the fuss about? In this post, Shaun Crowley explains the concept and the mechanics behind it in ELT and non-ELT apps – arguing that social learning has the potential to enhance EFL blended learning.
The ELTons are just under one month away, and this year’s nominees feature an exciting range of resources. Here we take a look at a selection of some of the digital-linked nominated products. Winners will be announced at the spangly ceremony on 4th June. Good luck to everyone! ARM cubes Paul Driver’s ARM (Augmented Reality Media) Cubes are a new way for … Read more
In 2013, we ran two posts where Lindsay Rattray explained the opportunity he saw in bringing together the pedagogy of ELT and the power of inter-connected mobile technology. His startup, ClassWired, was a way to do student-centred ELT activities in class. It was web-based to work on any device. It gave you information about your class, like how fast your students are working, and what they are finding difficult. In fact, Lindsay was an early ELT Entrepreneur, asking questions and looking for answers from an ELT teaching and EdTech perspective. Picking up his story almost two years on, it’s interesting to see how the questions have changed, fundamentally.
We’ve been featuring ELT Entrepreneurs and EdTech start-ups for a few months now and we have tended to focus on those who are quite far down the line in terms of their business and product. But what do they look like at the beginning of the journey? Last May, ELTjam co-organised an EdTech Start Up Weekend with the Judge Business School. At the time we commented on how few educators there were in the room and it was no surprise that it took educational insight more than tech to come up with the idea that won: Bright Stream.
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