May 15

InnovateELT

I had a truly amazing time at the InnovateELT conference this weekend. I’ve wanted to go since it first started four years ago and am so happy that I finally got my act together, submitted a proposal and went.

As a huge fan of professional development, and especially conferences, I generally have a good time whenever I’m off TEFLing – meeting other ELT professionals, sharing ideas, confirming and questioning beliefs – I get a real buzz out of it. But Innovate felt especially special…

Firstly, it was incredible to finally meet lots of people who I follow and admire on social media, namely Twitter – Amy Blanchard, Sarah Priestly, Zhenya Polosatova, Melody Philip and more – and professional contacts who I’ve only conversed with via email – Dan Shepherd, Karen Spiller, Nicola Meldrum, Fran Austin and others.

Secondly, I got the sensation that everyone who was there was genuinely engaged and involved. So often attending conferences can feel like a teacher’s CPD obligation for the year but it was clear from the levels of enthusiasm for ELT that this isn’t the case with InnovateELT attendees.

I’ll admit the promise of craft beer was also a decisive factor in my applying for InnovateELT and the social atmosphere surrounding the conference didn’t disappoint. With the beautiful backdrop of the OxfordTEFL garden, the Espiga flowed, as did the conversation.

Congratulations to the InnovateELT team, eltjam and OxfordTEFL for such an incredible conference and thank you as well to everyone who came to my session on Guided Visualisations – I’ll post up all the ideas from the session over the next few days.

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Posted May 15, 2018 by Teresa Bestwick in category Professional Development

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