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Juanita Pardo-González (BA Hons in Modern Languages, Universidad de los
Andes) is an Assistant Professor in the Departamento de Lenguajes y Estudios
Socioculturales at Universidad de los Andes. She has undertaken research studies
at Lancaster University on Corpus Linguistics. She is a Hornby Scholar and has an
MA in ELT and Multimedia from Warwick University (2005). Her current research
interests are related to pronunciation, conscious language learning, and technology
in teaching. She is interested in incorporating language and technology into her
teaching. She is designing a blended course for instructors to help them incorporate
blended learning into the teaching of other foreign languages in her Department.
Colin Paton has been working in the e-learning field since 1998. He started his career
as an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in the early 1990s and spent 15 years working
in Latin America. In 1998 he founded one of the first online language schools (Cultura
Inglesa Online) and subsequently developed a number of online and blended teacher
training courses for teachers in Latin America. Since returning to the UK in 2005, Colin
worked at the Social Care Institute for Excellence designing and leading national fully
online and blended programmes for nurses and social care professionals. He also
helped found the first online television channel for social care professionals. Since
April 2011 he has been Head of eLearning at International House London, responsible
for all online and blended programmes including the CELTA Online.
Nik Peachey is a leading technology consultant writer and trainer. He is also
associate trainer for Bell and Visiting Lecturer – Media and Technology – at the
University of Westminster. He has been involved in ELT for more than 20 years and
over the past ten has specialised in the use of technology for teacher development.
He has worked on a wide range of projects for educational organisations including
the British Council in the UK, Morocco and Venezuela, the Open University, Cambridge
ESOL, Oxford House TEFL and IATEFL. He publishes a number of free blogs including
Nik’s Learning technology blog http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ and has published
a free e-book Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers. www.scribd.com/doc/19576895/Web-20-
Tools-for-Teachers which has been accessed more than 100,000 times.
George Pickering is an educational coach, trainer and consultant, who has
delivered talks and consultancies in over 60 different countries. He is a tutor on
the International Diploma in Language Teaching Management and is the academic
director of the English UK Diploma in English Language Teaching Management.
George has coached senior managers in a range of international and educational
contexts. He is an inspector of language schools for the British Council in the UK
(Accreditation UK). George is a trustee of IATEFL.
Edward Russell (MA TESOL and Teacher Education) is now a teacher trainer working
for the British Council Teacher Development Centre in Singapore. Originally from
England, he has been working for ten years in the field of TESOL and has been
overseas in a variety of places for most of the last eight. He is interested in giving
feedback, skilled helping, psychology and applications of technology in language
education. For his MA dissertation he studied his period of transition from teacher
to teacher trainer, while in Palestine. He hopes to work as an educator, of sorts,
on all continents in his lifetime.
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