Marisa+Constantinides

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 * Marisa Constantinides** runs [|CELT Athens], a Teacher Development centre based in the capital of Greece, and is Course Supervisor for all courses, including the [|Cambridge CELTA], the [|Cambridge DELTA] (face-to-face and blended options, the Institute of Linguists Diploma in Translation and off-site seminars and workshops on a variety of topics for which she is responsible. She maintains a number of blogs, [|TEFL Matters], [|Teaching & Learning Foreign Languages], Discourse Matters, as well as the very popular [|#ELTchat blog]for which she and her co-moderators were shortlisted in the nominations for the [|ELTons Awards in 2012.]

Marisa is very active in Social Networks and especially on Twitter where she co-moderates #ELTchat, a weekly hashtagged discussion which is joined by many teachers from around the world interested in CPD (Continuous Professional Development).

She has written materials (Basic Grammar Workbooks 1, 2, & 3 published by English Schoolbook Publications), activity books for Cambridge Exams set texts, and numerous articles on Language, Foreign Language Teaching and Education.

You can read more about her [|here].

= Creative Teaching and Learning - Digitally = ==== Creative thinking potential is present in all learners but not all classroom activities promote it. Digital tools combined with standard classroom practices provide multiple opportunities for making creative thinking skills training an integral part of our lesson and materials design to enhance language acquisition and production. ====

=**Talk Outline**=

Creative thinking is at the very top of the hierarchy in Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational objectives (in any field) and yet much of what happens in foreign language classroom tends to cater for lower order of thinking skills.

It has been suggested that creativity (or, as it is also termed, divergent production) is not a single unifying ability but is viewed as a composite of intellectual abilities. The four main facets I will be looking at are:

**Fluency** - Ability to produce large numbers of ideas **Flexibility** - Ability to produce diverse ideas (not the same kind) **Elaboration -** Ability to add on to and embellish an already existing idea **Originality** - Ability to produce uncommon, 'clever' ideas

Creative thinking, or divergent production, facilitates problem solving, and in a problem solving approach oriented classroom, enhancing creative thinking potential can facilitate discovery learning as well as enhance language production.

This talk will outline the thinking and relationship of divergent versus convergent production relating them to specific language activities encouraging one or the other kind.

I will be suggesting a range of activities which can develop aspects of creative thinking singly or in combination through the use of a variety of Web 2.0 or digital tools freely available to all foreign language teachers, such as:

Voice tools Animation apps Word Clouds Blogs Collaboration tools

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