Using Typeform in ELT

Can disruptive technology bring an edge to your ELT academy marketing? Can you bring a service aimed at startups into your classroom and make things even more engaging for your students?

Let’s explore how language schools, publishers and teachers can improve their services, classes and get better feedback with Typeform.

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.

Machine Learning Summer School – Day 3

This week ELTjam are at the ALTA Machine Learning Summer School in Crete and you can read regular updates of what’s happening here on the blog. Today, Day 3, we had an insight into the human element to the Write & Improve product, both in terms of the annotation done to the the text by human annotators, and the insights that teachers can get into their learners’ progress. This post is a summary of the day and a list of questions it would be great if we could collectively answer!

EdTech (‘TICE’) in the French school system

This is the first in a series presenting practices of EdTech around the world. We’re kicking off with a post from Caroline Haurie about the situation in the school system in France, where EdTech is called TICE (technologies de l’information et de la communication à l’école). What’s happening inside French classrooms and what can we learn form another country’s practice?

china edtech

What makes China’s EdTech market tick?

For the past three years or so, ELTjam has been working with CollegePre, a Beijing-based EdTech company whose digital content delivery platform is the muscle behind Cambridge ClassServer – a classroom technology solution developed with Cambridge English Language Assessment and Cambridge University Press. We managed to get some time with founder and CEO, Walter Wang, to get his unique perspective on EdTech in China.

velawoods english

Velawoods English

Velawoods English is an immersive, self-study English course that, according to its website, “offers the next best thing to living in an English speaking country”. We spoke to the Managing Director of Velawoods Learning, Hani Malouf, and Cambridge University Press’s Publisher for Consumer, Keith Sands, to hear more about the vision behind the product and their experience of putting it together.

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.

5 tools for teaching online

Independent tutor and digital learning pioneer Lana Friesen explains how she is using the best programs and apps to help her students meet their learning objectives.

With such a new industry, online teachers are developing tools and combining programs and apps to facilitate the learning experience of students. In doing so, teachers are pre-empting apps yet to be created to meet the demands of this growing industry. Including all components of communication can be tricky in classrooms, especially online ones. This medley of tools demonstrates how, with a degree of ingenuity, teachers can plan a full-spectrum curriculum for their students, regardless of the setting. We are, in a sense, the MacGyvers of online teaching. We are pioneers and must embrace this reality with open arms and open minds.

Grassroots language technology

Grassroots language technology

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.

Designing learning spaces for a mobile era

Designing learning spaces for a mobile era

The shift from the immobility of PCs to the mobility of tablets and smartphones allows digital space to interact with material space, both in and out of the classroom, in entirely new ways. At British Study Centres in Oxford, where Paul Driver works, this was an important consideration in their decision to integrate mobile technology into the everyday practice of language teaching. Here’s how they transformed their learning spaces.

ELTjam at IATEFL 2015: How ELT might handle the ‘EdTech revolution’

At IATEFL 2014, ELTjam argued that the ELT community needed to engage more with the world of educational technology (EdTech) in order to continue to thrive. One year on, we looked at what that engagement might actually look like, examining how teachers, institutions, publishers and materials writers can best position themselves in the new ELT landscape.