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Showing posts from April, 2011

Teaching Large Classes - Can technology help?

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One of the great things about attending international conferences like IATEFL is that you can come across educators with experience and views so far removed from your own experience that your own deeply held views can be called into question. I didn't get to attend the session on Investigating Large Classes - Are we making progess? , but it was one of the first sessions I decided to watch thanks to the wonderful recordings provided by the British Council's IATEFL Online site . I've been interested in this ever subject since reading David Graddol's English Next (PDF) , and have made it part of a talk I've done on Innovations in Language Learning Spaces , which I'm updating for the keynotes I've been invited to give in the Autumn, at the IATEFL Poland and IATEFL Hungary conferences. I didn't get very far into the session before my curiosity was aroused. Nigussie Negash from Ethiopia mentioned ' plasma teaching ' in his overview of the situ

The IATEFL afterglow

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There is only one IATEFL conference, and this year's event, held in Brighton was a highly enjoyable if exhausting experience. The best thing about the IATEFL conference experience, and one thing that makes it so special, though, has got to be that although it's now over, you can catch up on what you missed out on in so many different ways. This IATEFL afterglow seems to last so much longer than it does with other events. There are several reasons for this. Petra Pointer  ,  Nik Peachey  &  Andi White One of the most important reasons is the amazing work done by the British Council with IATEFL Online - now in its fifth year, the team have streamlined the experience and have developed a formula that works wonderfully. Alongside the live channel , which pipes out the plenaries as they are being delivered, and a succession of interviews with some of the presenters ( the photo shows Petra Pointer being interviewed by Nik Peachey and Andi White ) and then there are the s