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Keynote speakers
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Mark Pegrum
Mark is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Western Australia, Perth. His research interests include m-learning (mobile learning) and e-learning.
His teaching has been recognised through Faculty and University Excellence in Teaching Awards, as well as a 2010 national Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) Excellence in Teaching Award. His current research focuses on mobile technologies and digital literacies.
Mark is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, a member of the Editorial Board of Language Learning & Technology, the Editorial Board of System, the Advisory Board of Advances in Language and Literacy Studies, and the Review Panel of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning.
"Using mobile devices to teach language in the developed and developing world"
This presentation will present a theoretical overview of mobile learning, before showing how the theory is put into practice in a variety of settings in the developed and developing world.
Firstly, we will consider three main types of mobile learning in order of increasing sophistication: where the devices are mobile but the learners and the learning experience are not; where the devices and the learners are mobile, but the learning experience is not; and where the devices, the learners and the learning experience are all mobile. Secondly, we will consider three main agendas for promoting mobile learning, namely: the transformation of teaching and learning; the development of 21st century skills, including today's all-important digital literacies; and the promotion of social justice. It will be shown that, whether we are talking about mobile learning types or agendas, there is always a fundamental tension between the affordability and affordances of mobile devices and mobile learning.
To conclude, we'll examine a number of case studies of mobile language learning projects from different parts of the globe. We'll see how the mobile learning types and agendas work when they are put into practice, and we'll consider the importance of balancing up affordability and affordances in order to create the best mobile language learning experiences possible for any given group of learners.
Radislav Millrood
Doctor in Pedagogy, Master of Education (University of Manchester, 2004), Professor of the Department of International Professional and Scientific Communication, Tambov State Technical University, Tambov, Russia.
Professor Millrood is the author of very successful English language coursebook "Starlight" published by Prosveschenie and Express Publishing and has published over 300 academic books and articles in Russia, USA, UK, Israel, Macedonia, etc.
"Innovative Tendencies in English Language Teaching"
It is considered that innovative trends in teaching English consist in using high-tech devices in the classroom. In reality, the current update in the language pedagogy is a compound of the two trends - introducing ICT technologies with the educational purposes and social networking of trainees. As a result at the crosssection of these trends a "bifurcation point" emerges in full accord with the chaotic developments, followed by new phenomena branching out such as "individual educational trajectory in the virtual environment" , "learning communities online", "distance education", "mobile learning" and others. The report addresses these trends in detail.
Trisevgeni Liontou
ESL Researcher & Test Designer of the Greek Ministry of Education. Dr. Liontou holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics with specialization in Language Testing from the Faculty of English Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has worked as an expert item consultant for AvantAssessment, USA, a research assistant at the Research Centre for Language Teaching, Testing and Assessment (RCeL) and as a freelance item writer, oral examiner and script rater for various EFL examination boards. She has made presentations in national and international conferences and has published papers in the aforementioned fields. Her current research interests include theoretical and practical issues of EFL instruction, on-line teaching practices, computational linguistics and classroom-based language assessment.
"Integrating Computational linguistics and English Language Instruction: Automatic Text Classification"
By combining Computational linguistics with English Language Instruction and Assessment the main outcome of the present research is a new Text Classification Index. The new algorithm can prove useful to EFL teachers, material developers and test designers interested in automatic text classification and should be best viewed as a springboard for more theoretically sound and practically useful Natural Language Processing and Intelligent Information Retrieval tools to be developed in association with English language teaching, learning and assessment.
Talia Pecherskikh
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Modern Philology and Translation of Karaganda State University, Kazakhstan. Over more than 27 years of experience in teaching English and German, Talia has authored numerous academic articles, language textbooks and two books on foreign language teaching.
Tatiana Pastushenko
Master in Pedagogy, Senior Lecturer in English at the Department of Modern Languages of Karaganda State University, Kazakhstan. Research interests - development of creative thinking in foreign language teaching.
"Web Technologies in English Language Teaching"
Steve Lever
Senior ELT consultant, Express Publishing, UK
"Teaching English for Professional Purposes with Career Paths coursebooks".
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