Building an ELT ‘Bot’
As the sun set over Hackney on Friday, the week was winding down as usual for the ELTjam London team. In-boxes were being zeroed; our weekly newsletter was being compiled; tasks were being moved to ‘done’ on the company Kanban board.
The team often ends the week with a bottle of craft ale or two, but the box of 24 beers from Hackney Wick’s Crate Brewery and a 3-litre box of wine suggested that this was to be a different kind of Friday night. At 6pm, we turned off our computers and gathered around the table for the start of our first ever hackathon. It would be the start of a process that, in less than 24 hours, would lead us to create Amé, an ELT ‘bot’.
read more
The ELTjam Rebrand Story: PT. 1
At ELTjam we take our brand seriously. Extremely seriously, in fact. We take it so seriously that whenever a conversation opens up pertaining to our brand, all those present are required to sit cross-legged on the floor until the discussion has ended, and eye contact is discouraged out of respect. Thus, showing how truly serious we are about our brand.
That embedded seriousness doesn’t discourage us from wanting to evolve and extend the brand’s appeal, however. In several of our cross-legged brand meditations, talk has turned to the need to stay true to our founding principles, whilst also being able to play with the core values as we want them to be perceived by our customers. In short, we felt it was time to uncross our legs and bring on a full rebrand.
read more
SOLE – does it work with adult language learners?
When Sugatra Mitra introduced the ELT world to his concept of the SOLE (self-organised learning environment) at IATEFL 2014, half of the audience stood up and walked out while the other half were still in the auditorium giving him a standing ovation. It was an engaging and thought-provoking talk which was followed by many blog posts and tweets accusing Mitra of having a neo-liberal agenda, of being an idealist and not an educator and anti-teacher. Intrigued, Varinder Unlu, Director of Studies at International House London, decided to actually try it out with adult learners and see what the results were.
read moreMore ELTjam posts
Hundreds more posts exploring the future of ELT.