YELL: 10 years of research studies and applications
YELL (Young English Language Learners) is a virtual environment open to language teachers, student teachers, university lecturers, teacher trainers and all those who care for and are interested in second/foreign language learning of children, teen-agers and university students. YELL promotes collaboration across educational contexts: it is a virtual meeting place where users can exchange ideas, resources and information about English as a second or foreign language. YELL is supported by the LearnWeb platform developed by the L3S Research Center - Leibniz University, Hannover (Germany).
YELL was born in 2012 from the ideas of lecturers, teachers and university students (now teachers in schools) of the Education section of the (then) Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Udine (Italy), and thanks to the support of the computing developers and technology educators of the L3S Research Center - Leibniz University, Hannover (Germany) who designed and maintain the LearnWeb platform.
In 10 years YELL has become a vibrant, rich and diverse community encompassing a variety of areas in language teaching and learning, and promoting language teacher education through teacher networking and teacher-generated resources, ideas and connections.
5th April 2022
Meeting for teachers, university students and educators
We want to celebrate 10 years of common educational research and use of YELL in a meeting open to university students and school teachers. Participation is free.
Registration is required. To attend the event send an email to:
Please, specify if you need a certificate of attendance.
Programme
9.30-10 - Welcome session
Fabiana Fusco (Head of Department of Languages, Literatures, Communication, Education and Social Studies, University of Udine, Italy)
Wolfgang Nejdl (Director of L3S Research Center, Leibniz University, Hannover)
Antonella Riem (Former Head of Department of Languages, Literatures, Communication, Education and Social Studies, University of Udine, Italy)
10 - Morning session
10-10.30 - Maria Bortoluzzi and Ivana Marenzi: YELL as digital environment for professional networking and sharing for language teachers
10.30-11 - Ivana Marenzi and Oleh Astappiev: The LearnWeb platform customised for learning-by-design
11-11.30 - Break
11.30-12 - Francesca Bianchi: LabInt for Teaching and Learning
12-12.30 - Elisa Bertoldi: YELL for storytelling: multimodal resources for language teachers
12.30-2 pm - Lunch break
2-3 pm - Stefania Ballotto: YELL for sustainability: global skills for language teachers
3-4 pm - Keynote presentation
Sandie Mourão: Picturebooks and eTwinning as vehicles for Intercultural Citizenship Education in early language learning
16-16.30 Closing session
Keynote speaker: Sandie Mourão
Sandie Mourão (PhD) is a research fellow at Nova University Lisbon, with over 30 years of experience in ELT as a teacher, teacher educator and educational consultant. Her main research interests focus on early years language learning, picturebooks in language learning, intercultural awareness, assessment practices and classroom-based research. Her recent publications include Teaching English to Pre-primary Children (DELTA Publishing, 2020)and Early Years Second Language Education: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2015). She is the coordinator of the Erasmus + project ICEPELL [https://icepell.eu/]
Speakers
Oleh Astappiev received his Master in Computer Science at the University of Hannover; his focus was on Internet Technologies and Information Systems. He joined the LearnWeb team while attending the Master and later he became the main developer of the LearnWeb platform. Besides being an experienced developer, Oleh has now a position as a research fellow at the Department of Knowledge-Based Systems of the Leibniz University of Hannover where he takes care of web services and computing infrastructure.
Stefania Ballotto is a Pilgrims Teacher Trainer, Trainers of Trainers. She is a Lecturer at the University of Udine, Italy, and she trains pre-service and in-service teachers. Stefania has trained teachers in over 15 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. She has presented at conferences all over the world and has been a Pilgrims teacher trainer for almost two decades. She trains in the Pilgrims Summer programme as well as special projects in Autumn and Spring, in Canterbury. At Pilgrims she leads courses on Creative Methodology, CLIL for Primary and Secondary, Teaching English Through Multiple Intelligence, Methodology and Language for Primary, and How to be a Teacher Trainer. Her main interest of study is Applied Linguistics, applied in our times. She has a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge and a Degree in English language studies from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Elisa Bertoldi is a PhD candidate at the University of Udine (Italy); from 2017 to 2020, she was a full-time research assistant in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Communication, Education and Social Studies. She is a teacher of English as a foreign/second language in Italian primary schools, a teacher educator for preservice and in-service courses, and teaching resource developer. She has published articles on technologies applied to language teaching. Her recent research work and publications deal with storytelling in English as a foreign/second language for language education.
Francesca Bianchi (PhD) is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy), where she teaches interpreting and audiovisual-translation. She has long been involved in the creation of pedagogical units using multimedia authoring systems and in the development of computerized interactive teaching environments. She has over 50 publications focusing on the use of technologies in either language learning or linguistic research, and has organized several international conferences on linguistics and/or translation. She is local coordinator of the Unisalento unit within the National research project (PRIN) on The informalisation of English language learning through the media: language input, learning outcomes and sociolinguistic attitudes from an Italian perspective.
Maria Bortoluzzi (PhD, Edinburgh) is Associate Professor of English language in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Communication, Education and Society of the University of Udine (Italy). Her research interests include critical discourse studies, multimodal and multiliteracy awareness for language teacher education (English as foreign/second language). She has published extensively in these fields. Her latest publications deal with the language analysis of online communities, ecolinguistics and multimodal resources for language teacher education.
Ivana Marenzi PhD (F) is senior researcher at the L3S Research Center of the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany. Throughout her career she has specialised in the relationship between technology and communication; her main area of research in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) includes the support of collaborative and lifelong learning. As educational technologist her main interest is dealing with issues related to the adoption of new technologies in education (Marenzi, 2014. Multiliteracies and e-learning2.0. Peter Lang, Frankfurt). She works as a referee for international conferences and journals and collaborates in international European projects such as TERENCE, LinkedUP, EU-MADE4LL, Cleopatra (current).
Convenors
Maria Bortoluzzi (maria.bortoluzzi(at)uniud.it)
Ivana Marenzi (marenzi(at)l3s.de)
Elisa Bertoldi (elisa.bertoldi(at)uniud.it)
