These are some of the ongoing visual arts projects coordinated by some of the Visual Arts Circle members.

ARM Cubes

ARM Cubes are designed by Paul Driver and provide learners with a new way to interact with language and digital media that is tangible and fundamentally collaborative. They are hybrid digital/physical objects that enable learners to organise, manipulate and even edit audio and video simply by reconfiguring the cubes in (real) 3D space.

Watch this video to find out more about ARM Cubes

All at C

All at C is a resource site which provides lesson plans inspired by short YouTube videos co-curated by Steve Muir. The idea behind the site is to provide lesson plans to go for teachers of advanced learners ( C1 and C2 ). The lessons focus on helping learners to improve their listening and speaking skills, and that these resources are stimulating, fun, and effective. All the lessons on the site have been tried, tested and tweaked in the classroom.

Art Least

Art Least is a teacher resource site, created by Chrysa Papalazarou. It explores ways of using art in English language teaching and learning. The site contains lesson proposals on various topics. It also gives reports on interesting classroom moments and projects. In the site there are separate sections on thinking routines and Visible Thinking, a framework for integrating art in language teaching. Chrysa has extensively experimented with this approach in her classes.

The Easier English Wiki

The Easier English Wiki provides the same texts and photos that New Internationalist magazine offers, but with easier vocabulary and grammar, set up and maintained by Linda Ruas. This content covers the issues many English language students are living with or experiencing, or issues that are vital to understand in today’s world. Learners can learn English, reading the simplified article and then the original, develop critical thinking and visual literacy skills, and break down barriers at the same time. The wiki page has become a platform, short-listed by the British Council ELTons Awards in June 2015, for its innovation as a learning resource, providing ‘ideal materials for developing learners’ awareness of global justice, and, at the same time, helping them to develop their reading, vocabulary and sentence structure’.

ELE Videos

ELE Videos is a blog where Marc Garcia Fusté shares lesson plans designed around short videos for teachers and students of Spanish as a foreign language.The lessons focus on helping learners to improve their listening and speaking skills. All the lessons on the site have been tried, tested and tweaked by Marc in the classroom.

ELTpics

ELTpics is a popular collection of thousands of photographs taken by people who work in the field of teaching – primarily ELT, co-curated by Julie Raikou and Fiona Mauchline. These photos are, in turn, available free from copyright for non-commercial use by teachers.The collaborative project was founded in October 2010 after Victoria Boobyer, Carol Goodey  and Vicky Loras. This innovative project was nominated for a British Council ELTons Award for Innnovation in Teacher resources in 2013.

ELT Sparks

ELT Sparks is a fresh, imaginative and highly visual blog set up by husband and wife team Andy Webster and Susan Webster which uses images and videos critically and  creatively to inspire fellow English language teachers.

Film English

Film English is a resource website for teachers and students which promotes the innovative and creative use of film in English language teaching and learning set up by Kieran Donaghy. Film English has become a very popular resource English Teaching bank and is visited by over 100,000 teachers every month and receives over 3 million page views a year. It has received a British Council ELTons award for Innovation in Teacher Resources and won the MEDEA Award for User-Generated Educational Media in 2013. Film English also won English Speaking Union President’s Award Runner-up prize in 2014.

You can find out more by watching this video in which Kieran talk about Film English.

FILTA

The Film in Language Teaching Association (FILTA) is an association of language teachers, film educators and researchers set up by Carmen Herrero. The purpose of the association is to provide a forum for the exchange of information related to the use of film in language teaching. It is also concerned with issues dealing with education, instruction and training in multimodal literacy and its application to language learning.

FILTA promotes the teaching and learning of foreign languages through film by:

• Providing information and publications.
• Creating a flexible online-learning environment that incorporates an expanding collection of materials.
• Organising professional development activities.

 FLAME (Film, Language and Media in Educaction) Reseach Group

Carmen Herrero is the director of Film, Languages and Media in Education (FLAME), a pioneering research group at Manchester Metropolitan University established in 2013 and dedicated to the development of research and knowledge exchange activity in the areas of Pedagogy, Languages, Film and Media.

Watch this video about the FLAME International Conference 25 – 26 June 2015.

Helbling Readers Blog

Nora Nagy is the author of the highly visual Helbling Readers Blog where she writes about picture books, illustrated readers, and graphic novels, as well as interviewing well-known picturebook writers and illustrators.

The Listening Post

The Listening Post is a growing, free collection of multimedia posters created by Paul Driver that fuse graphic design, augmented reality, kinetic typography and 3D sound to create truly multimodal, interactive materials for language teachers and learners.

Watch this video to find out more about The Listening Post

The NO Project

The NO Project is an award-winning global educational campaign coordinated by Judy Boyle that specifically targets youth awareness of human trafficking through music, art, dance, film, animation, sport, creative writing and social media.

Watch this video to find out more about the NO Project.

Simple English Videos

Simple English Videos is a project set up by Vicki Hollett whereby students learn to communicate confidently in English through simple custom made videos which show how English is used in everyday situations.

Watch this video in which Vicki and her husband Jay explain what Simple English Videos is about.

Urban Chronicles

Paul Driver created Urban Chronicles in order to use site-specific community storytelling to create deeply personal, meaningful engagement with the language through engagement with the learners’ local context.The language learned in the classroom, gains power when it is connected to the learner’s social and emotional relationships and values.

Watch this video to find out more about Urban Chronicles and see some of the images captured by Paul’s students in Vila Real, Portugal.

Video For All

Visual Teaching and Learning

Visual Teaching and Learning is a resource blog on visual literacy and the use of images and videos in the classroom set up by Magdalena Wasilewska. It supplies practical activities inspired by images and videos to help students develop their visual literacy and language skills.