Conference Report – Teaching and Learning with the Help of Technology

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 International Conference

Teaching and Learning with the Help of Technology

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 13-14 September 2019

– Conference presentation –

The INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE entitled “TEACHING & LEARNING LANGUAGES WITH THE HELP OF TECHNOLOGY” was held on 13-14 September 2019, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and it was co-organised by Bridge Language Study House Association and QUEST – The Romanian Association for Quality Language Services in Romania (Eaquals Associate Member) within the framework of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership entitled “ICT based methods to teach less widely used languages”.

Our event was dedicated to the European Day of Languages 2019, and it was included in the ECML/Council of Europe EDL database.

The main strand that the conference focused on was an educational topic of current importance, namely how to enhance and innovate the learning processes by applying technological tools, applications, ICT based educational solutions as well as social media. Our main aim was to introduce and demonstrate a wide selection of such innovative technological tools within the event that could be implemented within the educational contexts the participants.

A very important contribution to the conference was made by Eaquals – Evaluation and Accreditation of Quality Language Services, having helped us to have Timothy Black with us, who is an adept of using digital technology in education. His presentation demonstrated that teachers have to change from within in order to embrace the continuous growth of technology and continuously have to keep up-to-date with the innovations in order to provide relevant teaching contexts to the new generation of learners.

Bridge Language Study House Association also made a significant contribution to the event, by inviting its team of trainers actively involved within the project, to deliver enticing plenary and workshop sessions in order to present and share innovative teaching tools using technology.

Another guest speaker of the conference was Ioana-Silvia Sonea on behalf Alpha Centre of Modern Languages of Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca who shared her expertise on innovative and interactive methods of teaching Romanian as a foreign language.

The conference closed with parallel workshops, within which participants could practice working on the platforms and were able to share best practices and ideas with each other. As the main outcome of the conference we concluded, that “the secret of change is to focus our energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new” (Socrate).

Gyongyver Pillich-Wright
President
Bridge Language Study House Association
Cluj-Napoca, Romania