Here - EnglishAgenda - British Council

Louise Ingham has taught English to Speakers of Other Languages since 2004 inthe further education sector in the UK. Courses have included all levels of CambridgeSkills for Life and Cambridge main suite exams. Additionally, she has designed anddelivered ESOL courses without traditional exams to meet specific local needs. Herinterest in blended learning came about through participation in a TESOL MA at theUniversity of Manchester. She was using existing free web-based resources in herteaching and had some experience of Moodle. However, the Manchester TESOL MAinvolved experiential learning using Blackboard, wiki and Moodle, and introduced herto ELT literature and the possibilities of educational technologies from the perspectiveof learners and teachers. The ‘Blended Learning Course Design’ and ‘Teaching andLearning Online’ modules were particularly influential.Andy Keedwell has been working as an English language teacher, trainer, trainertrainerand manager since 1986, and has worked in a variety of locations includingEast Africa, the South Caucasus, the Middle East and South East Asia. He has beeninvolved specifically with blended and online learning in Sudan, Armenia andEthiopia. He is currently Head of Training at the British Council in Afghanistan andis particularly interested in facilitating skills sharing amongst teachers, enablingteachers to train others and English for the world of work.Nergiz Kern is a teacher with a Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults.She has taught academic, general, business and technical English in differentcountries for 13 years. Nergiz also has considerable experience in teaching andteacher education in online 3D virtual worlds. Currently, she is in the final stagesof an MA in Educational Technology and TESOL at the University of Manchesterand teaches academic English in Turkey and the UK. Her interests are integratingtechnology meaningfully in language and teacher education, developing andteaching English for specific purposes (ESP) courses, creating multimedia materials,blended learning, teacher education, and learner and teacher autonomy.Astrid Krake has been involved in aspects of English Language Teaching for 20years. After working as an editor for a publishing company she was the Head ofEnglish at the Munich Volkshochschule (2002 –11). In 2004 she also became Headof Languages at the same institution. She recently accepted the position of Headof the Language Centre at the University of Bamberg/Germany. In addition to hercontracted positions Astrid has been a teacher of English as a Foreign Languageat a number of adult education institutions. She is interested in finding opportunitiesto enhance the language-learning experience by means of technology.Keith O’Hare has a CELTA and Trinity TESOL diploma and has been working in theworld of ELT as trainer and consultant for over 15 years. He presently works in theBritish Council in China as head of English Teacher Training programmes and isresponsible for setting up partnerships with provincial governments with a viewto designing and delivering teacher training projects in China. He is one of theleaders on the quality control of the Communicative Assessment project.250 | Contributors