Brighton (recap conference day 1)


Yesterday was the first day of the conference. Some first impressions: it's a lot, we should be more bold and get more freebies, we should not choose talks about subjects that are already covered in our education, our English is excellent (even compared to some of the speakers) and we should try to mingle more today. 

After a good breakfast at the hotel, we went to the conference. We'd decided to skip the first plenary and start with the first timers meet-up. There were a lot of first timers! They helped us loosen up a bit and make our first connections (I've joined up with someone on LinkedIn because of it by the way, go me!). The first session we went to sounded really interesting, but after a few minutes, we realized we've covered the subject more in depth at school, so we skipped the rest of that session. We used the rest of the time of that session to cool down a bit in the calmness area. The first timers introduction and the rush to find that first conference room had left us hot & flustered, so we enjoyed the cooling down immensely. 

The second session, a talk from TeachingEnglish, was pretty closely related to things we covered at school as well, but it still gave us some nice insights. We've saved the online handout to have another look at it when we get back. There were some things in there we could also use for some of our portfolios. The third session was about AI and teacher development. I felt like we were missing something because we didn't know what he meant by action research. Now I now the meaning is "Action research is a collaborative, cyclical research method aimed at solving immediate, practical problems and improving practices within a specific context, such as classrooms, organizations, or communities. Itcombines reflection, theory, and action, empowering practitioners to investigate their own work to generate change and deeper understanding". I still think what the presenter was doing was a waste of how to use AI, in my opinion you do not have to go through that whole process with the help of AI, it would be better to use AI for the bits you need help with, that would we a more environmentally friendly use of that resource. 

Session 4 was about things you need to think about to turn beginners into confident speakers. The presenter was a very energetic man from Brasil. The session was highly entertaining, although we did not learn many new things. By this time we're starting to realize that our education at Windesheim is a whole lot more comprehensive and up to date than we realized. Because of this, we decide to revise our choices and mostly choose things that haven't been on our curriculum yet. This is also why we are skipping session 5. Instead we just enjoy the sun and fresh air on the beach for a bit. 

Session 6 seemed interesting on paper. It turned out that the speaker was from Greece and even though she'd been an English teacher for like 15 years, it was a challenge to understand what she was saying. Another thing that baffled us, what that she did her dissertation on a case study of just 7 students (total!). There is no way you can draw proper conclusions from such a small case study (4 students were taught using 'the new method', 3 students were the control group). The only upside was that we now now of a tool/website were students can make comics. It would be a nice way to get them to write stories, without the use of AI. 

Session 7 was about conditionals and how coursebooks should be changed. Thank you for the insights Mr. Michael Hughes! I wholeheartedly agree (and now I know why I find the coursebooks confusing, because they only cover part of the options that are used in everyday life and quite often, in normal speech people don't use the exact formats that are used in the coursebooks). 

The last session I should have skipped. It was about mental health and I thought it might be helpful, but all it did was annoy me. The lady meant well, but I'm not there to hear about your troubles and do some exercises, I was there to get so real pointers, something concrete. Breathing exercises are so basic, please give me something more, thank you very much. So I suppose that session wasn't that good for my mental health hahaha. The pint of cider and dinner we had at the end of our day was a way better thing for my mental health. 

The main things I've learned today:
- Sophie & I needn't worry about our use of English ever again
- we may also feel more confident of where we stand as teachers in training, we are most definitively not lesser than a lot of the other attendants when it comes to teaching techniques or our knowledge about the language
- we know our way around the conference center (soooo confusing at first!)
- we should be very selective about what sessions we choose
- most non-natives do not speak English amongst themselves and are surprised that we do

Our spoils of the day:


https://view.genially.com/69d73f8849baaac6ab9d3052

https://view.genially.com/68a9edac8751519745130acb

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/publications/resource-books/ai-activities-and-resources-english-language-teachers

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/professional-development-pathways/pathways-ai-language-teaching

https://view.genially.com/69d640d907ee5ae12d4f6b99

StoryJumper: #1 rated site for creating story books https://www.storyjumper.com/

Reacties

Een reactie posten

Populaire posts van deze blog

2025: 2 week UK road trip

Afbeelding
This year we have gone to the UK again. And yes, with the train again. I blogged as we went, but because I hadn't managed to get this blog up-to-date before we left, I blogged on Polarsteps. So I'll copy/paste my contributions here (ps: underneath the photos there's a scroll bar, you can't see it properly, but it is there, so you can scroll to see more photos!). Brussels Edit Belgium July 13, 2025 26° Okay, we're technically not in Brussels anymore, but I had to put in a location and it won't accept "train to London". We were supposed to be nearly there, and we were supposed to travel directly from Amsterdam. An electrical problem in a railroad tunnel in Rotterdam changed all that. All earlier trains to London had been cancelled, but our train was not cancelled. That was, until we had just arrived in Amsterdam. Then we got the message that our train was cancelled as well. No way! So we went to the service desk to ask "now what?". If we ran, w...
Meer lezen

London (part 1)

Afbeelding
Friday night we arrived in London. The ride with the Eurostar was a story of 30 minutes delay, no delay, maybe a delay, maybe not a delay and in the end 15 minutes delay. Oh well, we had proper seats, eventually we were served a light meal and we were in a pretty quiet wagon, so it could have been a whole lot worse. We had fun and we've also had a look at the things on offer during the conference that starts on Tuesday, so our conference schedule is set.  Saturday we started pretty early, since we'd booked a Baja Biketour . With our guide Patrick, we've explored London by bike. I have to say that that's quite an adventure! I don't think I've ever broken this many rules while biking in one day, hahaha. The guide set a pretty easy pace and told us lots of interesting things, both historical facts and information about every day life in London nowadays. Like for instance how few people actually live in the area 'City of London' nowadays. The area is an inde...
Meer lezen

3-6-2022: York (part 2)

Afbeelding
Finally a no-travel-day! We started our day with breakfast at the hotel. Instead of a buffet or standard full English breakfast, you get a menu, you may order what you'd like and they serve you at your table. Fancy!  After breakfast we returned to the old town. Especially for Gaia we revisited The Shambles and boy was it busy there! There were a gazillion tour groups and you couldn't really walk around or really see anything, so we hightailed it out of there to go visit the York Minster. I'd pre-booked tickets (yes, that's me, I like to be prepared), so we could just walk in.  The Minster is very impressive. We could have climbed the tower (a little over 400 steps). Our heads said yes, our bodies were about to cry, so we decided not to climb the tower, but we did explore the crypts and the whole of the cathedral.  After the cathedral, we visited the Minster Gate Bookshop. After Judd's, our favorite 2nd hand bookstore. Like Judd's it had a lot of old books, but a...
Meer lezen