Billie Jago interviewed me for theDigital Series of her ELTcpd podcast. In this episode, we speak to EdTech professional and VR expert Nergiz Kern about using Virtual Reality in both the online and face-to-face classroom. We’ll be discussing the three…
Hybrid learning has become a popular teaching model–including at language schools–as a response to the COVID-19 restrictions in education. In this article, I will look at what it is and what the challenges are. Then I will suggest a new…
When things are going well, institutions are slow to change. Student numbers on EAP (English for Academic Purposes) pre-sessional courses in the UK have been increasing steadily over the past decade that I have been teaching EAP. So there was…
If you have not already, you can read part one of this article here. Learning through interaction in virtual reality requires careful pedagogical planning, not magic. Nergiz Kern In the previous blog post, we looked at why adding interaction to a…
Interaction of all sorts is pervasive in the physical world (Cai, Tay and Ngo, 2013), perhaps even central to our existence. We interact with other people, with other living beings, with objects, with information – we can even say that…
Introduction If you are anything like me, you consider multiple elements as you plan out your lessons. You consider what you are going to teach, what materials you will use, what activities you will engage students in, how you will…
I like to take off time from work after the intensive summer pre-sessional teaching. In fact, this year, I wanted to take a kind of ‘sabbatical’ if that’s possible for a freelancer, and reflect on what direction I wanted to…
As the landscape for technology use in the classroom changes, many teachers are preparing for online supported teaching and learning long term. While challenging, it’s clear that the future of learning incorporates much more technology. The impacts on teachers are…
I was surprised to find a chapter on ‘Increasing Your Happiness Quotient’ in a book on Professionalizing Your English Language Teaching. Transitioning from a challenging year for many to a new one with lots of uncertainty, I felt this was…
Is creativity a talent we’re born with or a skill we can learn? A quick search on the internet will show that it’s probably both. We are all born creative, but are educated out of it, and then have to…