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As part of our countdown to the International House Conference in Barcelona, which takes place on 8/9 February, this is the fourth of five posts which focus on the speakers on the LTSIG strand. The IATEFL Business English SIG and IATEFL Leadership and Management SIG will also be there.
Next up is Pete Sharma
Session Title: Virtual Reality in English Language Teaching
There is much hype surrounding the area of VR – Virtual Reality, and a great deal of excitement about its role in language teaching and learning. VR experiences come at three levels: low, mid and high-end. Experiences can be exhilarating or frustrating; motivating or de-motivating. This session aims to de-mystify the area for language teachers. Based on the Chapter on VR for the LT SIG publication ‘Digital Innovations in Language Learning’, the session draws on research, and updates teachers on the promise of VR in areas such as ESP (English for Special Purposes). The session includes a number of practical teaching ideas for using VR in the language teaching classroom. It will take place without headsets, and involves no avatars or voice-recognition software – just you and the presenter IRL (in real life)!
Pete Sharma is a training manager, consultant and ELT author. In summer, he works as a pre-sessional lecturer in EAP (English for Academic purposes) at Warwick University, UK. Pete is a well-known conference presenter. He was the Newsletter Editor of the IATEFL CALL Review (2008-2009) and has a Masters in Educational Technology and ELT from Manchester University.
Twitter: @petesharma
Blended Learning on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blendedlearninginlanguageteaching/
Webpage: https://petesharma.com/
Books / material published:
CD-ROM: A Teacher’s Handbook (Summertown) 1998
The Internet and Business English (co-author) (Summertown) 2002
Blended Learning: using technology in and beyond the language classroom (co-author) Macmillan (2007)
400 Ideas for Interactive Whiteboards (co-author with Barney Barrett / Francis Jones) Macmillan (2011)
Apptivities for Business English (co-author) E-book The Round (2013)
How to….write for Digital media (co-author) E-book Teacher2writer (2014)
Best Practices for Blended Learning (co-author) Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd (2018)
A useful pre-reading task if the area of Virtual Reality itself is new is the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality
A useful focus on the link between VR and language teaching can be found on the LT SIG website: https://ltsig.iatefl.org/highlights-of-ltsig-pce-2018/
The official programme for this event, showing all the speakers, is shown below. This can also be found on the official IH Barcelona site. You can enrol here and there are 10% discounts for IATEFL members and 15% discount for LTSIG members. To get this discount please use the discount code sent out to members in an email on 11 January.
IH_BCN_programme_2019
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