11/2007 - Milan, Italy

Learning Technologies: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Pedagogy

British Council, Milan, November 26 - 28, 2007

This was a joint British Council Milan and LTSIG event and brought together language teachers, teacher trainers and learning technologists from Italy and around the world. It had been timed to be linked with a meeting of British Council IT coordinators so this was a good opportunity to get a good overview of a range of British Council leaning technology projects. It also gave the opportunity for Italian teachers to mix and exchange ideas with those from around the world. There was a good representation form both local and international publishers both as a part of the exhibition and amongst the presentations.

The pre-conference brochure is available here.

The following pictures taken both by Helen Gasking of the British Council, Milan and Gary Motteram of the LTSIG, show a small flavour of the conference.

Members of the IATEFL LTSIG can log in to listen to mp3s of the keynotes and to download notes and ppts of many of the presentations.

If you are already logged in, click on Milan 2007 in the User Menu

The opening plenary which was held at Cineteatro del Collegio San Carlo:

Paul Docherty of the British Council in Rome introduces the event	Audience at the Cineteatro Del Collegio San Carlo
Our four plenaries: Pete Sharma, Berndt Rüshoff, Gavin Dudeney and Gisella Langé, setting the scene for the remainder of the Conference.

Gisella Langé talked about the increasing role that both languages and ICT play in education and reminded us that languages were now to be seen as lifelong learning competences not as add ons to the curriculum. Pete Sharma provided us with a broad overview of the technologies that are increasingly being blended in a variety of classrooms around the world. Bernd Rüshoff made the case for a broader view of learning technologies and education and reminded us of the contribution that SLA research has made over the years and which can be readily applied to the uses of technology in the classroom. Gavin Dudeney gave us a view of the 'future of the internet' by showing us around 2nd Life and pointing its increasing popularity for learning languages with those with the technology to access it.

Over the three days of the The British Council teaching centre on via Manzoni played host to reminder of the conference:

The calm before the storm
A busy exhibition space	People relaxing between sessions

The presentations were many and varied and we saw up to six parallel sessions running from Monday lunchtime until Wednesday afternoon. Here is but a small sample:

An introduction to Teen 2nd Life	An introduction to mobile learning
Mobile materials	Re-thinking teacher roles
Using wikipedia for webquests	Past tenses