1. The next Green ELT event, at 16:00 UK time this Friday, 27^th September, is Intersectionality, ELT and climate change – piecing it all together with Rose Aylett & Zarina Subhan. More info here https://green-action-elt.uk/events/ and registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-GoqDMvGtd7jH6QOKJU92xip3EjokbI#/registration

The causes and the negative impact of the climate crisis are interconnected with a large number of socio-economic, political and cultural issues both local and global. This discussion will explore these connections and their impact and suggest some implications for EFL teachers seeking to integrate climate change topics into their lessons.

(Both Rose and Zarina gave very well-received plenaries at this year’s IATEFL conference: here’s Zarina’s, Because you’re all worth it! https://www.youtube.com/live/kVjTqsAm9Js and here’s Rose’s, Disrupting the commonplace: embedding critical literacy within language education https://youtu.be/Hor2Iyx80is)

2. Here’s Alexandra Mihai’s latest post on her blog, The Educationalist, Watch & learn: Reflections on peer observation in teaching https://educationalist.substack.com/p/watch-and-learn-reflections-on-peer

Peer observation in teaching is a well-researched topic (as you can see in the selection of resources at the end of this post), and still, it is not as widespread a practice as one would expect. I (Alexandra) will dive into the “why’s”, as usual, the “how’s”, suggest some tips on what to be mindful of and, more importantly, I put together a list of resources – both academic and more practical – for those of you who want to dive even deeper into the topic.

3. I’m becoming ever more of a fan of Katja Hoyer’s Zeitgeist blog. Here’s two recent pieces:

her Berliner’s perspective on Belfast, No peace beyond the wall – Belfast isn’t Berlin https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/doing-things-the-norway https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/no-peace-beyond-the-wall-belfast

and her take on Norway, Doing things the Norway – Notes from a rich country https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/doing-things-the-norway

4. Two from Ethan Mollick:

one from his own blog, One Useful Thing, Scaling: The State of Play in AI https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/scaling-the-state-of-play-in-ai

Now feels like a good time to lay out where we are with AI, and what might come next. I want to focus purely on the capabilities of AI models, and specifically the Large Language Models that power chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. These models keep getting “smarter” over time, and it seems worthwhile to consider why, as that will help us understand what comes next. Doing so requires diving into how models are trained. I am going to try to do this in a non-technical way, which means that I will ignore a lot of important nuances that I hope my more technical readers forgive me for. Fine by this less technical reader!

and one he’s shared, GPT-4 is judged more human than humans in displaced and inverted Turing tests by Ishika Rathi, Sydney Taylor, Benjamin K. Bergen & Cameron R. Jones from the Department of Cognitive Science at University of California San Diego https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.08853

Accessibly written and includes a good explanation of what exactly a Turing test is. PDF below.

5. And, finally, there are five women and one man on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, only one of whom I’ve heard of – which has to be a good thing! https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/six-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-booker-prize-2024-shortlist