Written By: Tanja Delgorge-Engelhardt

How are you teaching nowadays? Face-to-face? Online? Or perhaps both at the same time (that is, in a hybrid class)? It hasn’t been easy to move classes suddenly from a room in a building to a room in the cloud. The “downtime” since March has brought challenges to us all, but also an opportunity to learn new things and to increase our network. At least that’s the way it has been for me, especially when I discovered and joined ELTAS in April, thanks to Sabrina Lucidi’s wonderfully informative courses on how to teach online. Because I love learning about technology, I also used the “downtime” to broaden my knowledge of conference tools, learning apps, and the vhs.cloud. And in September I could actually begin putting all this knowledge into practice.

Since I couldn’t hide my passion for technology, I was soon asked whether I would like to start a group in which we could all learn from each other on how to use tools to teach online, and so in May the ELTAS Tech Group was born. Charmaine Rückert – another passionate techie – joined me in organizing the Tech Group sessions every Wednesday fortnight, providing a platform where ELTAS teachers can exchange their experiences and tips on different technical topics.

Depending on our areas of expertise, we took turns in showing each other how to work with different tools and apps to support us in teaching online. We started with well-known conferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and continued with not-so-well-known conferencing tools such as alfaview®, Jitsi™ Meet, and meetzi. In addition, we learnt how to manage sound and video in online conferences (sound issues are particularly challenging!).

We then went on to look at several websites, The Teacher’s Corner, onestopenglish, linguahouse.com, to name a few. We also discovered how to create video-based lessons using TED-Ed, and how to work with educational e-books. To spice up our online lessons, we explored useful apps such as Padlet, Quizlet, Mentimeter, Wordwall, and a couple of crossword generators. Gamification – adding game elements to a non-game activity – is a fun way to learn languages, and it’s an effective way to add variety to your lessons, both online and in the classroom.

Due to popular demand, and to accommodate those teachers who couldn’t come on Wednesdays, we also held a Saturday workshop in November. This event was really well received, and we’ve been encouraged to hold it again early next year.

We’re enjoying this additional time together and sharing our experiences. Not only do we pool our resources and learn about technology from each other, we also get the opportunity to practise our presenting skills. And of course it’s hard to ignore the didactic side of teaching – technology is only a means to an end, after all.

To sum up: the Tech Group is a great place to meet, helping to bring good teachers together to make them even better!

Having moved from country to country as a child, Tanja grew up bilingually – Dutch and English. She’s added German to the list since she moved to Germany many years ago. Tanja did secretarial and admin work on management level before becoming a technical writer and trainer at a software company. She has also taught various levels of English at school, the Volkshochschule, and companies. As of March this year she is teaching English in hybrid classes and technology to trainers. Tanja holds a B.A. in German and Japanese from the University of Sydney, and an M.Sc. in Information Systems from Brighton Polytechnic, now the University of Brighton, U.K. She loves learning and teaching languages and technology.