#ElliiCon2023

The Publishing team kicks off ElliiCon2023 with an informal chat about our first impressions of generative AI, including our feelings (and fears) about the future of language learning and publishing. Get an insider's look at the Pub team's AI sandbox to see how Ellii is exploring generative AI in a playful way during this historic time in ELT history. Join the chat about #technologyhype and #futurethinking. What are you embracing and where are you putting on the brakes?

Join CEO Ben Buckwold for brief opening remarks to kick off this year's conference and introduce the theme. After the welcoming address, Ben will hand it over to Ellii publishing pioneers Tara Benwell and Tanya Trusler as they discuss the behind-the-scenes process of video production and ways that teachers can incorporate a wide variety of videos into their teaching. Learn what to expect from the Publishing team in the upcoming school year and how you can help drive the future of content at Ellii by staying engaged with the team.

ChatGPT and similar AI-powered tools seem to be turning the world of education upside down. Let’s take advantage of this new technology and see how we can use it for flipped learning. In this session, I'll introduce several techniques that can help students develop their autonomous learning skills so that they can work more effectively in pairs and small groups. I’ll also be sharing a range of prompts that students can submit to ChatGPT in order to turn it into an English-speaking friend, a Socratic teacher, and even a time machine that can drop them into a scene from Star Wars or a classroom at Hogwarts. Finally, I'll show you how to construct your own prompts in an effective way that enhances your students' learning experience.

Human beings are creatures of narrative. Stories define us. We use stories to strengthen relationships, stories to persuade, stories to sell, stories to succeed in job interviews, stories to understand each other, and stories to understand the world. Storytelling is the quintessential 21st-century skill. In the classroom, stories are always there. They're in the materials. They're in the language. They're in the people. And in this practical talk, I would like to build a case for bringing storytelling to the front of the class. You will take away practical story ideas to engage your students and get them thinking, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and learning the language.

Join Ben Buckwold, Ellii's founder and CEO, for a comprehensive overview of the Ellii platform. Learn how to easily find relevant materials, build a custom curriculum, create engaging assignments, and give meaningful feedback to all your English language learners.

The New General Service List Project (https://www.newgeneralservicelist.com) is an open-source collection of seven corpus-based lists of essential words for learners of English, each of which offers the highest coverage of any word list in its genre, as well as a large and growing range of free online tools for learning, teaching, and creating graded learning materials that utilize these lists. This presentation will give a brief overview of the NGSL Project and then move on to introduce several of our many learning tools, including a gamified flashcard app, our new Wordle tool, and our video concordancing tool, which is based on the principle of data-driven learning.

Join us as we reflect on everything we’ve learned during today's ElliiCon sessions. Let's discuss how we can maintain human connections while utilizing AI.

Instructional Designer Diego Boada and Ellii staff are teaming up once again for a follow-up chat about trends in ELT. In addition to discussing the fastest-moving technology in ELT history, they'll talk about other topics and trends that are emerging in the field. What changes can we expect for the upcoming school year?

Join Ellii's founder and CEO, Ben Buckwold, along with Ellii's chief technology officer, Eduardo Prauze, for a discussion on how Ellii incorporates AI into traditional teaching methods. Learn the reasoning behind which new tools and features we build, and gain insight into how we plan on using AI in the future.

There has been a proliferation of AI content in 2023 and much of it is relevant to the profession of language teaching. What does this mean for language teachers? How can we use these technologies both as teachers and students? What are the dangers and the limitations? In this highly practical talk, Russell Stannard will focus on some of the experiments and tests he has been running with groups of teachers and students. This is a talk packed with creative ideas around a few key AI tools that Russell stands behind.

The use of technology and AI in language teaching and learning has the potential to revolutionize language education and provide students with more opportunities for personalized and interactive learning experiences. However, I argue that it is essential to approach them from a humanistic perspective and ensure that the development of these tools is guided by pedagogical principles and a commitment to fostering compassionate educators. Therefore, this presentation focuses on practical strategies for empowering language learning with humanistic approaches to technology and AI. In addition, I highlight the importance of educators prioritizing compassion and empathy in their technology-integrated teaching to improve students' learning outcomes. This presentation provides teachers with practical instructions on how to integrate easy-to-use technology into their teaching.

Join Jen Artan, Ellii's CLB materials writer, as she walks you through some of Ellii's latest lessons, sections, and collections that focus on life skills for newcomers. Jen will also share some creative ideas and practical tips for real-life assessments.

Even as we make the most of new tools and technologies, we must remember to treasure our humanity. The ability to make connections with others is still a critical skill to cultivate. The purpose of this session is to provide educators with specific techniques and resources to teach our students how to have meaningful conversations. By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to describe seven strategies to help their learners get a conversation started with confidence; keep the conversation going through substantive content, active listening cues, and analytical questions; and bring the conversation to an end using pre-closing signals and graceful concluding remarks. This session is appropriate for educators whose intermediate/advanced ELLs regularly engage in academic discourse and professional networking and/or for those who simply wish to build a deeper relationship with those around them.

Join us as we reflect on everything we've learned at #ElliiCon2023. Let's discuss the ways teachers can lean on AI and other #EdTech tools to free up time and energy to focus on the real job at hand: engaging with our ELLs and supporting them in their individual language learning journeys.