Nik Peachey

In this posting I would like to argue that in order for technology to really enhance learning and for learners to achieve their full potential, we need to fundamentally rethink the relationship between learning and the classroom and to rethink the role of the teacher.

As mobile phone use becomes ubiquitous around the world and texting becomes a new genre of communication, it seems increasingly important that we as language teachers engage with these devices and help students to deal with the impact they are having on the English language.

As with most languages, spelling is pretty important in English. It's also something that gives many native speakers problems too, so don't be too worried if you find English spelling difficult and confusing. In this activity you'll be able to practice spelling and your vocabulary in an enjoyable way.

One of the most common criticisms leveled at teachers who do attempt to integrate technology into their classroom environment, is that this often results in a lot of ‘faffing around’ or time wasted while struggling to get the technology to work properly. To some extent I feel that this criticism is fair, but I don’t think it’s a criticism that should be leveled at teachers, but would be better directed at the people who control the way technology is layered onto the classroom environment, so lets look at that.

The 'Web 2.0' age has brought us more than a bunch of social networking apps and free web tools, it has also brought about a fundamental shift in the way many web based companies do business. I started to wonder if that change could be mirrored in the physical market place by moving towards a new approach to the language school and the way technology is used in it and how it fits into the face to face business model.

This is something that caught my eye last week. I just couldn't resist adding a feature about it here, though I think this does come with some warnings and reservations. Pictogame.com is a website which enables you to create your own games very easily with just a few easy steps. All you need to do is:

For me twitter is pretty limiting in terms of sharing any real depth of information, but it’s a great way to share sources of deeper information such as links to site, blog or articles.

This lesson includes a challenging audio file with what for many students is an unusual accent. This challenge has been dealt with by keeping the listening tasks simple and developing vocabulary around the topic first. The speaker talks about his life in a part of the UK called Norfolk. The plan includes a vocabulary activity to develop students' ability to use descriptive adjectives and links to visuals to help them get a better picture of this beautiful part of the UK.

Technology was a huge feature of this years’ IATEFL conference and it’s very easy to be blinded or pulled along by the technology, but in the work of these six women there is for me some sign of the beginnings of a state of normalisation of technology in language teaching. A state when we can move past talking about technology and get back to talking about teaching of which technology is just a normal part and an enabler in that process of learning.

In this interview with Ana Cristina Pratas we discuss flipped learning, the digital divide, changes in teacher training and autonomous teacher development and the benefits of being part of a global ELT community.

The 'Web 2.0' age has brought us more than a bunch of social networking apps and free web tools, it has also brought about a fundamental shift in the way many web based companies do business. I started to wonder if that change could be mirrored in the physical market place by moving towards a new approach to the language school and the way technology is used in it and how it fits into the face to face business model.

I love the power of images and their adaptability for teaching, so I can't say that I'm upset to be almost overwhelmed with really great tools for exploiting Flickr at the moment. The latest of these is Flickriver, an incredibly simple Flickr search tool that creates an endless webpage (just keep scrolling and the page keeps getting longer!) of Flickr images based around either a search term or whatever it finds interesting on the particular day you visit the site.

This is a speaking task that encourages students to empathise with other people and try to understand them better. The activity uses a number of visuals of migrants and the students have to imagine they are the person in the picture. The activity is based on themes from the British Council OPENCities project www.opencities.eu

Twitter could not possibly be further away from the concept of a computer game or a three dimensional visually rich virtual world. Suddenly instead of learning to fly and exchanging our money for Linden bucks (the currency of Linden Labs’ Second Life) we were exchanging grammatically correct sentences for status updates of less than 140 characters! Who could have seen it coming? Perhaps Gartner, who also predicted that “90 Per Cent of Corporate Virtual World Projects Fail Within 18 Months”.