ELTons webinars: Winner of the Innovations in Teacher Resources award
We are proud to bring you a series of webinars showcasing ideas from the 2014 ELTons winning innovations. Here we present the winners of the ELTon for Innovations in Teacher Resources. Katie Quartano and Paul Shaw's practical talk shows how Disabled Access Friendly’s resources can help teachers explore mobility disability issues, develop students’ social conscience, make lessons meaningful, and encourage critical thinking.
About the webinar
Disabled Access Friendly provides English language teachers with a large bank of free, downloadable, autonomous lessons, covering all learner levels and ages in a variety of forms. These resources are unique because besides their linguistic aims, thematically, they focus exclusively on mobility disability.
This practical talk shows teachers how to use the lessons and be true educators, who provide both insight and information and thus build pathways for caring and action. This innovative approach of embracing social improvement through ELT addresses a difficult reality and develops learners’ critical thinking while stimulating exploration of their own and others’ attitudes towards disability.
About the speakers
Katie Quartano qualified in Business Studies in the UK and has also lived in Canada, France, the USA and Switzerland. Now permanently based in Thessaloniki, Greece, she worked for 13 years for Swissair and Austrian Airlines and is currently employed by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in an administrative capacity. She is also on the university’s Committee for Social Policy and Health. In parallel she is a qualified EFL teacher and works as an oral examiner. She is a founding member of the Disabled Access Friendly campaign. In her free time she enjoys ballet, reading and music.
Paul Shaw has been involved in the field of ELT for over 20 years. Based in Thessaloniki, Greece, he has worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, academic advisor and examiner. He has also been a project manager and editor for International ELT publishers. He was Chair of TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece for two terms. Shaw is a founder member of the Disabled Access Friendly campaign, where his personal experience as a wheelchair user has added an invaluable dimension to the initiative. In his free time he enjoys reading and listening to classical music.