20 years of reflections on teaching and
learning by @grahamstanley
IATEFL Glasgow
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Last week saw the end of the 46th IATEFL conference in Glasgow, with 500 presentations, 2300 delegates attending and more than 50,000 people attending online through Glasgow Online, organised by the British Council to allow people not at the conference to watch the plenaries live and view recordings of other sessions and interviews with some of the presenters. It's a fabulous way of giving people who are unable to come a flavour of what IATEFL is all about, and I think it goes from strength to strength. This year, one of the new initiatives is encouraging bloggers who are writing about the conference to register. This means that there's an official list of all of the people who are writing about Glasgow Online, and it makes it easier to find what the blogosphere is saying about the conference.
Anyone can apply to do this, even now that the conference is over - it's worthwhile doing as there's still so much content from sessions that were recorded that can be blogged about. I'm certainly going to revisit some of the sessions I attended, and catch up on some of those I wasn't able to be at too.
I'll start here though, with the final plenary and interview with Derek Dick, otherwise known as Fish (ex-Marillion), which was an unusual choice for IATEFL but a fabulous way of finishing the event. The final plenary of a conference such as this is typically under-attended because people head off at the end of a long week of sessions, catching trains and planes back home. That's why it's become typical to end on a light note, with someone who can entertain. In the past, there have been performances by poets, or storytellers. But I don't recall any like this. And it was well attended too.
Fish had quite a few fans in the audience is, and I know at least one person who changed his flight so he could stay on to the end to see it. Fish talked about song-writing, shared anecdotes, and was accompanied by his guitarist and keyboard player, performing a number of his songs. There's also a hilarious moment of heckling by Hugh Dellar, who was bet 50 pounds by a friend of his from home to shout for one of Fish's early songs (Grendel, a 17-minute-long song). Unfortunately for Hugh, he must have told too many people about this, so word got back to Fish, who turned the tables on him in a hilarious moment for anyone in the know - watch out for it in the session (below).
Certainly was an amazing way to end the conference, and it was great to hear the man himself talk about his lyric writing process. From where I was sitting, the place looked packed, and I wouldn't doubt if the man gained a few new fans. If I have one little gripe, it's that he didn't showcase any of his early Marillion lyrics - which demonstrate his incredible lyrical/poetic sensibilities. Oh, well. Long live the Jester!
Donald Clark has published a very interesting blog post about how 'Learning Designers will have to adapt or die' and suggests 10 ways for them to upskill to AI. Just how AI will affect the job market has been a hot topic for discussion recently. The Economist's message is that the West suffers from too little automation, not too much, and we shouldn't worry . Anecdotally, I have heard of two very different sides to how generative AI is affecting work right now. A partner's colleague who works in educational publishing has reported that this publisher has stopped working with the three freelance graphic designers they regulalrly contracted work to, and instead have hired a ' prompt engineer ' for their illustration needs. On the other hand, Mexican friend who works for a PR agency told me her boss has embraced the changes and is giving the team (copywriters and illustrators, etc) weekly training sessions on how to get the best out of AI tools, and is encou
I was asked today by Barbara Sawhill to briefly take part in a presentation she's giving with Barbara Ganley on ' Using Skype, Podcasting and Blogging in Foreign Language Teaching ' Sitting here waiting for their Skype call, I decided to prepare myself a little bit and refresh my memory about their work. As soon as I start looking I'm struck by what I've been missing out on by not blogging much, or taking much notice of the 'edublogosphere' recently. I can't let this happen again, no matter how busy I get. First, I found a description of the workshop they are giving today: "Recently, new technologies have distinguished themselves as credible tools that increase students' production and competence in a target language. With this change, a new conversation has begun about the structure of a language class, thinking about moving from a traditional teacher-and-text-centered classroom to a student-centered and possibly even a totally un-centered, t
People are talking about DSL (Digital as a Second Language) nowadays and Gavin's talk was about the importance of being digitally fluent if you're a 21st century teacher. So important in fact, that Gavin has written a book about it, with co-authors Nicky Hockley and Mark Pegrum (Digital Literacies, Pearson, 2013) There are many different digital literacies relevant to language : (texting, print, gaming, mobile, multimedia, code); others with a focus on information (information, search, tagging); those that relate to connections (personal, participatory, network, and (inter)cultural) and remix. The last of these Gavin illustrated by showing a video of Tony Blair and George Bush's love song. In the current age, we need to take all of these into consideration because they are part of the skill set that people need and in some ways, as Gavin mentioned, educators are now preparing people for jobs that currently don't exist. Mobility is now one of the key factors
Apparently, he himself told Fish the night before over a couple of beers. It was a great moment, though.
ReplyDeleteAha! I thought Eric or somebody else leaked it - it was an inspired reaction from the big man!
ReplyDeleteCertainly was an amazing way to end the conference, and it was great to hear the man himself talk about his lyric writing process. From where I was sitting, the place looked packed, and I wouldn't doubt if the man gained a few new fans. If I have one little gripe, it's that he didn't showcase any of his early Marillion lyrics - which demonstrate his incredible lyrical/poetic sensibilities. Oh, well. Long live the Jester!
ReplyDelete