Why mental health matters

Another post sparked by an Innovate ELT talk, this time given by  Fiona Oates and Andrew Dodd, about their Mental Health Friendly initiative, the result of conversations between the two Barcelona-based English teachers. Fiona tell us how they got started and more about the project.

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

The EdTech Boogie

It is educational publishers, in partnership with the educators and the learners who are their customers, who are best placed to show the world how this great deluge of information can best be mediated because that  is their business and always has been.

More news for Knewton

More interesting news from adaptive learning technology provider Knewton today, as they announced their latest publisher partnership, this time with Cambridge University Press, and the opening of a new office in London. The partnership will see the Knewton API integrated with the Cambridge LMS platform, which currently serves over 250,000 students and teachers globally. The move … Read more

Have ELT brands become more important than ELT authors?

In case you missed it, last week the UK publishing industry was jolted out of its early-summer slumber when the news broke that Charlie Redmayne was to replace Victoria Barnsley as CEO of Harper Collins UK. In a piece last Friday for The Guardian, entitled Bad week for women in publishing as two giants step down, which also covered the news that Gail Rebuck would be replaced as chief executive of Random House UK (now Penguin Random House, of course) by Penguin’s Tom Weldon, the following caught my eye (my emphasis):

Though both Barnsley, who is 59, and Rebuck, 61, could be as tough as anyone when required, they have been author-centred. “What they’ve done is to enable editors. It’s not that they necessarily are those editors. Authors feel the most enormous respect for them and faith in them,” said the source.

Macmillan signs up with Knewton for adaptive learning in ELT

Knewton

Adaptive learning powerhouse Knewton has announced that it has signed up with its second major publisher – Macmillan Education. Knewton, founded in 2008 by a former Kaplan executive, is already working with Pearson, and a number of US-focussed educational publishers. Macmillan will now be looking to integrate Knewton’s adaptive learning technology into online ELT courses, with the first products promised in 2015.

Read more