Between October 2021 - March 2022, the British Council Indonesia organised a 10-part Saturday Tech-Talk webinar series. The aim of this series was to support English teachers across East Asia in better utilising technology in their teaching – both in the classroom and through remote teaching. This series was being co-developed and delivered by Joe Dale, a UK independent languages consultant who has spoken at many international ELT conferences and run training courses worldwide and iTELL, Indonesian collective experts on technology for language teaching.
This biweekly webinar series consisted of 10 webinars with each session featuring one international / UK presenter and one Indonesian presenter. The series aimed to facilitate discussion around effective classroom practice in a remote, hybrid and face to face teaching contexts with experienced teachers sharing what had worked for them and suggesting how others could replicate the same practice.
The concept was not to give step by step guides to individual tools, but to mention some tools which are considered effective in the presenters’ teaching context, share reflections and provide attendees with tips and new techniques they can try out straightaway. At the end of each webinar, participants received some key takeaways from the presenters to be applicable in their own classroom practices.
By the end of the 10th webinar, over 3,400 teachers from across East Asia had attended live. In addition, the recordings of the webinars have received more than 20,000 views on the British Council Indonesia’s YouTube channel.
To monitor and evaluate the impact of this initiative, an online survey is carried out at the end of each webinar, and the series as a whole, giving teachers an opportunity to provide instant feedback as well as share details how the webinar series has supported their professional development and led to changes / improvement their teaching practise using technology.
“Most useful from this webinar is we learn to explore how different Google tools can promote collaboration, independent learning, creativity and intercultural understanding. And I have the opportunity to see how Google Art and Culture and Google Earth can take students on a virtual journey visiting places around the world and practising their language skills. We will also explore other websites for encouraging critical thinking and problem solving using virtual reality.” Ms. Lintang Sri Rizki (an English lecturer at Universitas Widyatama, Bandung) talking about Saturday Tech-Talk with Joe Dale and iTELL #1: Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence in ELT.
Furthermore, this series is an effort to bring UK and Indonesian ELT experts to collaborate and share their knowledge and experience with English teachers in Indonesia and across East Asia. At the end of the series Joe Dale remarked “working on this series has been one of the highlights of my whole professional career so thank you so much for the opportunity.”
You can rewatch all 10 Saturday Tech-Talk webinars here.
This capacity building projects form a key part of the British Council English for Education Systems (EES) work in Indonesia. Working closely with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, our work aims to improve the quality of English language teaching, learning and assessment in Indonesian schools and higher education institutions.
If you would like to more about our EES work in Indonesia please visit our country website, our YouTube channel, or write to ees.indonesia@britishcouncil.or.id.