BBELT 2013 - Bios

‘21st Century Skills’

Charles Fadel is founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign; visiting scholar at Harvard, MIT, and Wharton/UPenn; senior fellow, human capital at The Conference Board; co-author of best-selling book 21st Century Skills. He has worked with education systems and institutions in more than thirty countries. He was formerly Global Education Lead at Cisco Systems. He holds a BSEE, an MBA, and five patents.

‘Creative teaching, creative learning’ Carol Read has over 30 years’ experience in English language teaching as a teacher, teacher trainer, academic manager and materials writer. She has taught students of all ages and levels, from very young children to adults. Carol’s main specialisation is in primary language teaching and she has run numerous teacher education courses and worked as an educational consultant in many different countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Carol has published extensively in the field of teaching English to young learners, including course books, supplementary materials, online storytelling and CLIL projects, as well as many articles on primary ELT methodology. Carol’s award-winning titles include Is it a Butterfly? which won an Extensive Reading Foundation Award in 2005, Bugs (with three co-authors), which won a British Council Innovation Award in 2006, and 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom which was Highly Commended in the ESU Duke of Edinburgh awards in 2007 (all published by Macmillan Education). Her most recent publication, Footprints, is a highly successful, fully-digital, primary coursebook series. Carol is currently Vice-president of IATEFL.

‘Videotelling – Using video in the ELT classroom’ Jamie Keddie is a Scottish teacher, teacher trainer, writer and presenter. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Aberdeen but found his true passion in life as an English teacher in Barcelona. Jamie is the founder of LessonStream.org, a site dedicated to the use of video clips and other visual materials in the language classroom. The site was formerly known as TEFLclips and won a British Council ELTons award in 2008. His publications include Images in the Resource Books for Teachers series by Oxford University Press, and his selfpublished ebook Videotelling. Jamie is an associate trainer at Norwich Institute for Language Education in the United Kingdom.

Although he has shared his ideas with teachers all over the world, this will be Jamie's first ever visit to Mexico. His is very much looking forward to the trip!

‘The English Language Crystal Ball’ Paul Woods is the British Council's English Language Adviser for the "southern cone" of the Americas. He has taught English, trained teachers and managed projects in ELT in over 40 countries. He is currently the Programme Manager for the Ceibal en Inglés Project in Uurugay. Amongst other large scale projects, he managed the British Council's Peacekeeping English Project in 27 countries from 2001 to 2005 and the Secondary and Technical English Project in Mozambique from 1996 to 2001.

‘Promoting diversity through children’s literature’ Gail Ellis has over 30 years’ experience in English language teaching and has taught children, teenagers and adults and trained teachers in many different countries including England, China, Mexico, Brazil and Turkey. She is Adviser Young Learners and Quality for the British Council and is based in Paris, France. She has published widely in the field of English language teaching, and was winner of the first Frank Bell prize in 1991 for Learning to Learn English published by Cambridge University Press. She has also published Tell it Again! The New Storytelling Handbook for Primary Teachers and The Primary English Teacher’s Guide New Edition, published by Penguin Longman. She is currently working on a book, Learning to learn English for young learners for Delta publications. She was awarded an MBE for her services to the teaching of English to young learners in the Queen’s Birthday Honours Awards in 2004.

‘Mentors, Myths, and Memories: The Dream Lives of Teachers’ JJ Wilson has taught in Egypt, Lesotho, Colombia, the U.K., Italy and the U.S., where he is currently the Writer-in-residence at Western New Mexico University. He has coauthored several ELT courses, including Language to Go, Worldview, and Total English, and was Series Editor on the second edition of Postcards (all Pearson Education). His methodology book, How to Teach Listening, won an English Speaking Union prize for the Best Book for Teachers of 2008. His short fiction has been anthologised by Penguin and Pulp Faction, among others. JJ’s most recent ELT course is Speakout, Pearson Education’s new series for adults, which won the Duke of Edinburgh English Speaking Union prize for the Best Book of 2011.

John Knagg

‘Great Teaching, Great Learning: Let’s Make It Happen!’

John Knagg OBE is Head Research and Consultancy for English at The British Council UK. John is a qualified teacher who has worked in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia as well as almost a decade in Latin America. He is responsible for British Council publications in English and conceived and commissioned the Directory of UK ELT Research, the British Council ELT Research Partnership Awards.

John is the chief judge of the BC awards for Innovation in ELT (the ELTons), and is a member of the editorial panel of the English Language Teaching Journal. He has travelled widely to advise on policy matters in the area of English language education.