iTILT had the pleasure of presenting our project in public for the first time in Spain at the 34th annual TESOL-Spain convention in Madrid on 13th March, 2011.

There were just short of one hundred people in the audience for the talk, which was also promoted on the British Council Spain's new Teacher Training wiki.

Abstract

The IWB (interactive whiteboard) can be used in a way that is compatible with communicative language teaching, motivates the learner and enhances their capacity for language learning. Participants will learn about, and also how to become involved in, iTiLT (Interactive Technologies in Language Teaching), a new European Union funded project promoting effective use of the IWB in language teaching.

In the first part of the talk, there was a short presentation about the iTILT project and partners, which included what we believe will be the impact of ITiLT on the community of language teachers using interactive whiteboards.

This was followed by considerations for teachers beginning to use the IWB, and some thoughts about the design of materials, which was a summary of work-in-progress which will eventually become a handbook for teachers using the IWB (one of the project's deliverables).

This presentation was followed by a demonstration of a selection of materials using a SMART board (although what was shown could have been produced for any IWB), including ideas for creating materials that best use images, text, and games in the language classroom.

The audience was lively and there were lots of questions during the talk. There was also a lot of interest in the project, with many of those present signing up to receive more information.

More information about this talk, including the SMART board files that were used can be found here: http://iwb-efl.wikispaces.com/Madrid13-3-2011.