JCL Online Conference 2023- Summary and Talks

This year, we ran our annual conference on May 20th, hosting 5 speakers who presented to teachers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.

The conference was opened by David Crystal who spoke about Language and the Internet.

Talks presented by our Senior Teachers and trainers Danielle Kindle, Tanner LeTourneau and Tereza Kovaříková all related to this year’s motto, Work Smarter, Not Harder. The speakers shared their views on working smarter in all aspects of our teaching lives - the admin and organization, during lesson preparation, and in the lessons with our students. Tanner’s and Tereza K’s talks focused on using AI as a language teaching tool.

The conference was closed by a panel discussion led by our host of the conference, Kara Magalhaes. It brought questions in relation to the speakers’ experience with AI and student engagement in the lessons.

We really appreciate everyone who took the time to attend the conference and listen to what our speakers had to say, and we hope that everyone found it an enjoyable event. If you have any suggestions or comments you’d like to share with us, please let us know in this feedback form.

You can watch the introduction to the conference and David Crystal’s talk here. In his talk, David focuses on language development in relation to the Internet and on how (and if) the Internet impacts our language usage.

Thank you for your talk. So many interesting insights!

Danielle Kindle talked about life hacks that help her stay sane while leading a very demanding life as a language teacher. You can watch Danielle’s talk here. If you’re interested in her presentation, click here.

Important points. Thank you!

*A side note: Danielle leads a webinar on the same topic. Having seen her talk should not stop you from attending it though. In the webinar, she goes into a lot more detail and shares many tips focused on lesson planning in a very hands-on approach.

In her short intro to AI, Tereza explained what artificial intelligence is and mainly how it learns. If we understand this, we know what we can(not) expect and use it to its fullest potential. You can watch Tereza’s talk here. If you’re interested in her presentation, click here.

Thank you very much. Very informative :)

*A side note: Using AI for both lesson planning and in the classroom with our students will be the topic of EDUA’s new workshop. We’ll be starting in the summer, so look out for more information!

Tanner LeTourneau talked about the ways we can use AI (mainly, but not only, ChatGPT) for lesson planning. He brought specific examples and based on them, highlighted all its advantages as well as warned against its limitations. You can watch Tanner’s talk here. If you’re interested in his presentation, click here.

Thanks for a lot of inspiration!

In her talk, Tereza Kovaříková introduced us to activities we can do with our students directly in the lessons, with ChatGPT. You can watch TerezaK’s talk here. If you’re interested in her presentation, click here.

Thank you for the very practical presentation!

In the panel discussion, on working smarter in the lessons, Kara Magalhaes asked questions that linked all the conference talks together. The panelists were asked about the role of teachers in language learning, student engagement in their lessons, and lowering TTT by getting the students to do the work for us. You can watch the panel discussion here.

Feedback from conference attendees:

Thank you very much! :)

Thank you for a great conference

Thank you so much, everyone! It was inspiring.

Yes, lots to think (and ask all of you) about.

The conference was a great contribution. Thank you.

Thank you for your valuable insight

Thank you for the AI update!

Thank you all very much for great experience

Thank for the conference. Take care!

Thank you for the instructive conference :)

THANK YOU!