1. Thanks to Robin Skipsey for this one in response to the piece in last Thursday’s message comparing newly qualified teachers with their more experienced colleagues. Teacher quality: What it is, why it matters, and how to get more of it is a piece that Dylan Wiliam from UCL wrote recently for Impact https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/teacher-quality-what-it-is-why-it-matters-and-how-to-get-more-of-it/

Wiliam is adamant that we can neither identify good teachers by observing them nor identify good teachers from changes in test scores; he suggests how teaching quality might, nonetheless, be enhanced.

2. Despite President Macron’s willingness to speak English in public, it’s maybe not so very surprising that this French government publication, Le poids des langues dans le monde, has only been published in French https://tinyurl.com/52r5pnuj Lots of links to interesting websites in the article, many of them English-language ones.

PDFs below of the article discussing the barometer and the Excel spreadsheet of the data underpinning the barometer.

Also below a PDF of Google Translate’s excellent translation of the article, done in less than thirty seconds – which left me well and truly abasourdi! (French for dumbfounded, says Google.)

3. I found the link to that last one in the new issue of the ECML’s European Language Gazette https://www.ecml.at/News3/TabId/643/ArtMID/2666/ArticleID/2821/European-Language-Gazette-63-enjoy-the-latest-issue.aspx

which is where I also found this newly updated Inventory of ICT tools and open educational resources https://www.ecml.at/Resources/InventoryofICTtools/tabid/1906/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

4. Currently trending on TED talks three years on, Bright Simons’s talk, To help solve global problems, look to developing countries https://www.ted.com/talks/bright_simons_to_help_solve_global_problems_look_to_developing_countries

5. And, finally, “a compelling and thought-provoking story about a community’s response to an escaped lion in a city (Tallinn)”, The Lion, the winner of the Best European Drama Award at the 2022 Audio Drama Awards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kx9b