Happy, happy!
Our digest is below. So much stellar, insightful stuff - don’t know where to begin. So, I’ll just begin.
This week, my tip is to watch the Talking ELT podcast about using technology as a teacher. Strong points about backward design and cautions about “tech tool creep” and trade-offs. However, I really would push back on much of the conversation and insist on teachers using ed-tech mostly as a way to present content, to access language content (authentic or not) and not as ad-hoc forms of edutainment, gaming, quizzing etc … Get the content (language) and then teach person to person. Much else is busy work. Tech doesn’t make learning happen. Additionally, I always thought the best tech is that tech that isn’t noticed, it’s just there and used silently, saliently.
Best,
David - ELT-Buzzer-In-Chief
Beyond the ghosts: navigating identity, precarity, and haunting in freelance ELT
A research article applying ideas of hauntology and liminality to freelance English teachers, exploring how they navigate precarious, unstable work while being treated as both essential and invisible. Read More
I Could Not Get AI to Edit One Page
A first-person account of trying, and failing, to get an AI tool to properly edit a single page of writing, raising doubts about how far AI editing assistance can really go. Read More
What the panic over Gen Z’s reading habits gets wrong
Researchers behind a new study on Gen Z’s book habits argue that concerns about declining youth reading rely on measures that miss how young people actually read today, across print, audiobooks, and platforms. Read More
A personal essay reflecting on what’s lost when AI is used to write things that once required a human touch, prompted by a live concert and a busy family season. The author makes the case for keeping live, human creativity and connection at the center of work and art. Read More
How to Teach a Good First Day of Class
James M. Lang lays out core principles for making a strong first impression in class, arguing instructors should spark students’ curiosity about the course content before handing out the syllabus. Read More
To Catch AI Cheating, Turnitin Wants to Monitor Students’ Keystrokes
Turnitin’s new tool, Clarity, tracks students’ typing patterns, revisions, copy-paste use, and time spent writing in an effort to detect AI-generated work. Read More
The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I.
Jay Caspian Kang gathers reflections from a dozen college and high-school instructors on how generative AI has reshaped their teaching, with reactions ranging from cautious optimism to genuine grief. Read More
CLIL and EMI: The Curate’s Egg
ELT researcher Geoff Jordan takes a critical look at Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English Medium Instruction (EMI), weighing their claimed benefits against the evidence for how well they actually work. Read More
AI Is a ‘Wicked Problem.’ That’s the University’s Specialty.
Drawing on research into how generative AI has upended assessment, this piece argues universities should stop chasing a single fix and instead treat AI as a wicked problem, one with no correct answer, only better or worse trade-offs. Read More
College Students Are Testing at the Level of 10-Year-Olds
A new OECD survey of roughly 160,000 adults finds that 8% of college students across member countries read at a ten-year-old’s level, with the U.S., Poland, and Israel among the weakest performers. Researchers point to pandemic-era learning gaps, loosened admissions standards, and heavy classroom technology use as likely contributing factors. Read More
AI Can’t Fix the Student-Motivation Problem
Despite years of hype around AI tutors like Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, actual student uptake has stalled even as access has soared, exposing the limits of what a chatbot can do. Read More
Teaching and the $1.98 Porsche
Peter Greene argues that framing teacher recruitment struggles as a shortage misdiagnoses the real problem, much like concluding there’s a Porsche shortage just because you can’t buy one for $1.98. Read More
Drawing on child-development research, the piece warns that AI tools built for kids too often prioritize speed over safety, producing error-filled content that can misinform young users before regulation catches up. Read More
David Deubelbeiss returns to ELT Buzz’s regular teaching content as the new school year begins, signaling a shift back to the newsletter’s usual mix of lesson ideas and teacher-development tips after the summer lull. Read More
The Real Problem Behind Grade Inflation
Beth McMurtrie reports on how professors, under pressure to keep students and administrators satisfied, are quietly lowering the bar even as they privately admit students aren’t doing the work. Read More
Dawn Nafus reflects on anthropology’s uncertain place in an industry that once found it useful to appear interested in academic insight but increasingly no longer sees the need to keep up the pretense. Read More
What Is Digital Pedagogy? A Practical Guide For Teachers (Talking ELT S16 EP1)
The season-16 opener of the Talking ELT podcast features Graham Stanley and Sophia Mavridi unpacking what digital pedagogy actually means in practice, moving beyond buzzwords to concrete classroom guidance. Read More
The Cybertraps newsletter, which tracks legal and ethical risks tied to classroom technology, examines a case where an AI teacher bot led to complications for the educators involved. Read More
Audrey Watters connects a viral essay about retailers locking up everyday goods over exaggerated theft fears to how schools get sold on unproven technologies, both driven by instinct rather than evidence. Read More
Personalization for Young Learners (with Matt Courtois) — TEFL Training Institute
In this TEFL Training Institute podcast episode, host Ross Thorburn talks with Matt Courtois about practical ways to personalize lessons for young learners, tailoring activities and content to individual interests and needs. Read More
Stop investigating, start teaching
B. Jean Mandernach argues that trying to catch students using AI is a losing battle that turns teachers into ill-equipped investigators chasing ambiguous evidence. Read More
The author of the Wormhole Method newsletter claims vindication after a UK government report and a Times article appeared to validate language-teaching ideas they’ve championed for decades. The piece argues this shift could have significant implications for how language learning is approached going forward. Read More
Schools are rethinking whether every student needs a laptop
As pandemic-era one-to-one device programs mature, districts like Los Angeles Unified and Marietta City Schools are pulling back, limiting screen time and making laptops available only when they add clear instructional value. Read More
In her ongoing PhD-journey newsletter, Vicky Loras shares a personal, reflective post from her doctoral studies, part of the running series where she chronicles the ups and downs of academic research and writing. Read More
3 trends that will shape ed tech in 2026
K-12 tech experts predict school districts will apply a much more critical lens to ed-tech purchases in 2026, especially AI-powered tools, as vendors face growing accountability pressure over student data privacy. Read More