Cafe

Here is an article (and a video that doesn't seem to be working) on cheating and online courses from the BBC. Imagine taking a university exam in your own home, under the watchful eye of a webcam or with software profiling your keystrokes or your syntax to see whether it really is you answering the questions. Online university courses have become the Next Big Thing for higher education, particularly in the United States, where millions of students have signed up for courses from some of the most upmarket universities.

Educational researcher Sugata Mitra won the 2013 TED Prize. His wish is to build a school in the cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another using on-line resources and collaboration. Dr. Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall experiments have shown that children are able to teach themselves and each other without formal teaching, if they're motivated by curiosity and peer interest.

We're not always teaching Generation Y, but learners think and behave differently than those from previous generations. These students were born into a world of information technology; they regularly multitask and they trust the ideas of peers and web videos more than their teachers.Generation Y is significant: it constitutes 20 percent of the world's population. As Gen-Y occupies the young end of the population demographic, we can assume many second language learners belong to this group; it demands our attention and understanding.

The four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking have dominated the EAP classroom for many years; however in the last decade academic word lists has given much greater prominence to vocabulary teaching. This talk will give an overview of some of the main studies into creating Academic Word Lists and look at the impact of vocabulary knowledge of skills such as reading.

Check out these excellent apps for your mobile device of choice!

One problem with integrating most technology is that schools and teachers rely too much on Internet access. We forget that even without the Internet, laptops and mobile devices are very powerful learning tools. Here are a few ideas of the many, I do with students that do not require a class Internet connection.

Steven Pinker talks about Language Pragmatics and how language is learned through context.

Bringing multimedia into the classroom is a great way to engage students in learning. Supplementing lessons, opening up new interests, and offering inspiration, online videos make for an incredible teaching tool. Check out the very best sources for educational videos on the web.

This webinar will explore different aspects of learner-centred teaching. What does it mean to be 'learner-centred'? Why is it important? We will examine some of the practical issues. What problems might arise? Is learner-centred teaching possible in all contexts? We will consider these and other questions, and also introduce some ideas which can help teachers to become more learner-centred.

Scott Thornbury's history of second language acquisition (SLA) in a nutshell. A lot of great ideas.

This talk was given by David Crystal for The English-Speaking Union annual lecture, in partnership with the British Council. There is a widely held view that one of the consequences of the rise of English as a world language is global intelligibility. However, at the level of everyday communication, cultural differences between the countries that use English often present a barrier to understanding. The talk illustrates some of the conversational cross-purposes that have taken place, and discusses the kind of cultural awareness all English speakers need to have when they interact with others on a global scale.

Dr. Krashen is perhaps best know for the general theory of second language acquisition.

Lauren Scharff discusses the Scaffolding approach to teaching.

In this video, Jack discusses professional development for ELT/ESL professionals.

Leslie Hendra reveals her secret teaching tip and the importance of the lexical approach to teaching English. Recorded at IATEFL 2012 in Glasgow. Leslie is one of the co-authors of "English Unlimited" (Cambridge University Press)

Andi White from the BESIG online team interviews Vicki Hollett about ELF and BELF.

Whether you are a teacher, a teacher trainer or an ELT manager, this session is relevant to your work. Coaching and mentoring skills are techniques used to help people achieve their goals, whether those are language learning goals, or professional development objectives, or career ambitions.

In this talk on English language teaching (ELT), Scott Thornbury, associate professor in the New School MA TESOL program, briefly reviews the work of six educationists whose ideas have helped shape his own practical theory of ELT. Professor Thornbury suggests that situating ELT within a broader educational context has important implications and benefits.

Cambridge has a great website with a teacher zone that has free lesson plans.

Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.