Edtech & ELT Newsletter April 2025
Welcome to the April 2025 edition of the Edtech & ELT Newsletter.
Hi
I hope you’ve all had a good month. Lots more new things to share this month. Some great map related apps and lots of articles about AI. Plus you can attend a free webinar that I’ll be delivering.
Anyway, here are the links. I hope you enjoy them.
Many thanks to EIGO.AI for sponsoring this newsletter. Please find out more about Eigo below.
AI Powered Vocabulary Building and Reading Support in English
Eigo.AI makes expanding your students’ English vocabulary easier than ever. Each English reading lesson includes contextual word definitions in multiple languages, helping learners quickly understand and acquire new vocabulary. With comprehension quizzes and personalized feedback, Eigo.AI supports learners’ English reading and vocabulary development while exploring fascinating topics across science, culture, and more.
Digital Tools
Here are some of the latest Digital Tools and Resources.
Get in touch if you would like to get your app or resource featured here.
MockReady
I’ve just been checking out MockReady - It looks like an interesting tool for developing speaking skills with AI feedback - You can also partner with real people and give each other feedback. This is how it describes itself - “MockReady is an AI-powered language platform that helps users improve their English speaking skills with instant feedback. It simulates real conversations and proficiency exams like IELTS and TOEFL, analyzing pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and fluency to provide personalized recommendations.”
TV Garden
This is a useful site that helps you find live streamed TV from around the world. It's very simple to use and cuts out all the surrounding distractions of going to YouTube. Great to give students some random viewing practice and also great for teaching a range of languages and accents.
CineMapper
CineMapper is an interactive map that shows you where iconic movie and TV scenes were filmed. From blockbusters to cult classics, you can explore real-world locations tied to the stories. Students can research the places or plan a fictional trip and decide where they would visit. Lots of harry Potter locations listed.
Microscopya
Microscopya is a science video game exploring the inside of the cell! Featuring hand-drawn illustrations and puzzles based on real scientific concepts, the game aims to highlight the depth, complexity, and beauty of what makes life possible. The game can be downloaded onto a range of mobile devices. The illustrations are really beautiful, so this could be an engaging ways to improve knowledge and English.
TasteAtlas
This is a wonderful interactive map of dishes from around the world. Just click on the various dishes and find more information about each of them. This could make for a great lesson on food around the world. It has a good food quiz too.
Diagramr
A great search engine for finding various types of diagram - You can get 20 searches a day for free.
This Song Meant
This is a nice site that has links to songs and people explaining why the song is important for them. It would be great to get students sharing a song and saying why it’s important to them. Some of the explanations are quite personal.
The Manual of AI-Mediated Autonomous Teacher Development
The Manual of AI-Mediated Autonomous Teacher Development is your ultimate guide to using AI as a collaborative partner in your teaching journey. Written by Nik Peachey, an award-winning educator and expert in educational technology, this book takes you beyond generic AI-generated materials. Instead, it introduces collaborative prompting - a groundbreaking approach to professional growth through collaborative prompting - a method that transforms AI from a simple tool into an active mentor, guide, and thinking partner.
Get 40% off this book when you use the coupon code: EDTECHNEWS before paying.
Edtech News and Views
Here are some of the most interesting articles from around the web. Drop me a line if you think there’s an article other teachers would be interested in.
Transforming teacher education with AI: Lessons from a global Community of Practice
If AI is going to have a positive impact on teaching then we need to ensure that we have AI literate teacher educators. This is a publication that I edited for the British Council that has a collection of case studies from a teacher educator community of practice that looks at how AI can be integrated into teaching and training teachers.
Dimensions of AI Literacies
This is a really interesting project that looks to identify and categorise specific AI literacies and catalogue examples of them in practice (You can submit an example). The categorisations is based on a remix of Doug Belshaw’s Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. Well worth checking out.
The Neurodiversity Smorgasbord: An Alternative Framework for Understanding Differences Outside of Diagnostic Labels
At last, something that isn't about AI! "The Neurodiversity Smorgasbord is an attempt to offer an alternative to diagnostic categories as well as an opportunity to understand neurodiversity outside of the pathology paradigm. It’s about acknowledging these differences and experiences as a part of being human instead of being a mentally ill or disordered human." Very insightful.
Do AI avatars teach as well as humans? The results might surprise you!
This article looks at a comparative study of AI avatars vs teachers. Who do you think comes out on top??
Being Human in 2035: Experts predict significant change in the ways humans think, feel, act and relate to one another in the Age of AI
This isn't directly related to teaching, but it does look at the kinds of ways AI will impact on our students' lives over the next 10 years, so I certainly think it's work reading.
Okay - We’re nearly to the end!
Free Webinar - TeacherMatic Language Teaching Takeoff Webinars
Next week I’ll be starting a series of webinars that looks at how teachers can use the TeacherMatic AI generator platform. AI generators are tools that do work for you and don’t require any prompting skills - The generators have been preprtogrammed. In the first session I’ll be looking at the lesson planner generator and how it can:
✅ 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗘𝗙𝗥-𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘀 quickly and efficiently with step-by-step skill selection and sub-scaling options
✅ 𝗦𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 without compromising a structured and consistent approach to planning
✅ 𝗘𝗻𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 while staying aligned with recognised best practices
Well that’s it for April!
If you’ve enjoyed all the tools and articles here, consider downloading my Digital Toolbox app. It has all the links to 100s of apps and articles from all of my previous newsletters and curation work. It’s $9.99 and that money will go a long way to help me continue to create and share more free content. Thanks
Nik Peachey - Pedagogical Director - PeacheyPublications