ELTjam at IATEFL 2019

We are delighted to announce that we have three sessions at IATEFL 2019. We’ll also be taking part in a panel discussion. Come and find out more in our latest blog post!

InnovateEdTech sessions: Harriet Ballantyne & Doug Belshaw

Here’s another look at some of the excellent talks from last year’s Innovate EdTech conference. First, we hear from Harriet Ballantyne, who talks about how to manage and develop online communities through learning apps, as well as the importance of gathering feedback from learners and acting on it. Then, Doug Belshaw gives us some great insight into developing digital literacies and shows how we can demonstrate achievement online with Open Badges.

speech recognition

Apple’s electric car and the death of language teaching as we know it

When I was four, going on five, a TV show called Knight Rider premiered in the UK. I loved it and remained a fan for most of my childhood (OK, I admit it; I’m still a fan). There was The Hoff, of course  –  all leather jackets, open shirt buttons and swagger  –  but the real star of the show was K.I.T.T  – Knight Industries Two Thousand  –  the ‘advanced, artificially intelligent, self-aware and nearly indestructible car’. Over thirty years later Apple and Google are in a head-to-head race to bring K.I.T.T’s spiritual successor  –  the driverless car  –  to market. And, as a little-known and hard-to-spot side effect, the ramifications for the teaching of languages, especially English, could be huge.

Product Review – Macmillan IELTS Skills App

IELTS Skills is the award winning app from Macmillan, helping learners with skills and techniques necessary for achieving high scores in all four papers of the academic IELTS exam. The app goes into detail about what to expect in the exam, helps improve necessary skills and gives tips and guidance to help learners on the day they … Read more

Product Review: Lexicum

Lexicum  is an app designed to help “the 1.5 billion learners around the world with mastering foreign language vocabulary”. It sets itself apart from repeating a word (“boring and ineffective”), personal vocabulary books (restrictive in terms of the order in which the words can be reviewed) and other flashcard apps (they don’t help you learn … Read more

Our Journey to the App Store

At ELTjam, we’re always interested to hear from people who are developing ELT products outside of the traditional publishing framework. For this post, we’re delighted to welcome Curt Ford to the blog to discuss his app American Voices. Over to Curt …

Developing our own MVP – Flovoco

On my first day at ELTjam, I was pitched at. Tim, Laurie and Nick (the ELTjam founders) sat me down and tried to sell me their product ideas. This week, we take the first step towards testing whether one of these ideas can become a viable ELT product. Today sees the launch of the flovo.co landing page, our own MVP, a little litmus test. But how did we get to this point and why have we made a webpage before the app is ready?

The Future of ELT

It was interesting to be at IATEFL this year, the annual land grab for attention larger than ever, and a conference dominated by discussions, presentations and a plenary about the future of ELT, which – it is suggested – will be completely mediated by technologies (more of this fallacy later). With Sugata Mitra selling his … Read more

Are Digital Classrooms the New Paperless Offices?

The office of the 90s

My first job in marketing was back in the late 90s, when I was working for what was then the University of North London (now London Metropolitan). Whilst the 1990s really aren’t that long ago, the office environment back then was a world away from the kind of offices you’ll find in the UK in 2013. It was a time when people could get away with having a cheeky ciga

Categories ELT

ELT dips its toe into the crowdfunding pool

Back in June, Laurie wrote a piece on crowdfunding in ELT, which lamented the fact that nothing much ELT-related was happening on crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter. Well, there’s one recently launched project that’s definitely worth a look. Atama-ii Books is the brainchild of, amongst others, Marcos Benevides, a Japan-based teacher, publisher and author. Marcos is well … Read more

Rosetta Stone Buys Up Lexia Learning

It’s appears truer then ever that a rolling stone gathers no moss as Rosetta Stone follows its recent acquisition of Livemocha by taking on the services and systems of Lexia Learning. The $22.5 million deal represents Rosetta Stone’s leading edge strategy of moving towards being an education solutions provider in U.S. schools as opposed to exclusively … Read more