
Join us for a whistle-stop tour of IATEFL 2024! We popped down to Brighton on Thursday to grab some of the speakers and delegates for a quick chat and get their insights into the top topics trending the conference this year. Catch up on the buzz about AI integration, personalised learning, diversity, climate crisis and more.
A big thank you to our speakers, whom you can contact by clicking on their names below:
In summary
We start off by speaking to Mark Heffernan, co-author of "Texploitation" published by Delta Publishing. He and his writing partner David Byrne are exploring ideas for a new book that they hope to have ready for next year's conference.
Next up, we caught up with Neil Harris from CELT about a panel he participated in on LGBTQ+ representation in ELT. He emphasised the importance of meaningful equality, diversity and inclusivity in the industry.
Dr Rhian Webb from the University of South Wales gave us a lovely summary about her presentation on post-lockdown teacher development through complexity theory. She conducted research analysing how teachers felt about their teaching after the pandemic.
It was great to see some old colleagues from International House London. Will Morrow told me about their new online Teacher Portal which provides development courses, webinars and more for teachers. He noticed "AI" was a big buzzword at the conference this year; and Danny Norrington-Davies spoke about his upcoming talk on task repetition and his book "Working with Emergent Language." Danny is involved in the great Hands Up Project and you can support Abd and his family in Palestine by clicking here.
Then, we hear from passionate climate advocate Harry Waters of Renewable English fame, who gave a talk on youth empowerment and global communication. He trains teachers on integrating climate issues across the curriculum.
Finally, it was brilliant to catch up with fellow online teacher Helen Louise from LinkELT. She found the debates around AI and the emphasis on empathy very thought-provoking.
That's just a small taste of the diversity of people and ideas at this engaging ELT conference. We'll be following up with some of these fascinating speakers for future podcasts, so stay tuned!

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