On Saturday, 10 November and Sunday, 11 November from 5.00 - 5.50pm GMT panel discussions were held with a number of leaders in their respective fields. The discussion titles and panellists were as follows (for more information on the panellists please click on their names or scroll down):

Saturday, 10 November 2001: The Evolution of ELT Materials

Confirmed panellists: Vicki Hollett; Pete Sharma; Scott Thornbury

Sunday, 11 November 2001: The Internet & English Language Teaching

Confirmed panellists: Gavin Dudeney; Pete MacKichan; Gary Motteram; Hamish Norbrook; Vance Stevens

The discussions were moderated by a member of the NetLearn Solutions team.

Vicki Hollett is a teacher and freelance author. She's written a number of Oxford University Press ELT books and videos, including the prize winning Business Objectives, and Business Opportunities courses and In at the Deep End. Her latest title is Quick Work, which ironically took a while to write. Vicki has taught English in Algeria, Japan, and the UK and run workshops for teachers in many countries in Europe, South America and Asia. She trained teachers for the LLCI's Diploma in English for Business and has been actively involved in syllabus development for UCLES Diploma in Teaching Business and Professional English. As well as business English, Vicki's special interests are pragmatics, cross cultural issues and e-learning. British by birth, she's currently based in the USA where she's writing more courses, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania and learning to speak American.

Pete Sharma
Pete is the Teacher training and Development manager for Linguarama International, a language training organisation running courses for Business English students primarily in Europe.
Pete has been with the company since 1980, has taught mainly in Spain and Finland, and is currently based in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. He runs teacher training courses in-house and has been a trainer on the LCCI Dip (TEB) and UCLES Dip BPE.
Pete is an ex-oficio BESIG (Business English Special Interest Group) Committee member and has edited a number of BESIG Newsletters, for which he regularly contributes the CD-ROM / Internet page. He contributes articles and reviews to EFL magazines such as IATEFL Issues.
Since 1994, Pete has reviewed CD-ROM discs and given a great many presentations on CD-ROM, notably at BESIG, IATEFL and TESOL conferences. He is due to speak at JALT this November. He is the author of CD-ROM: A Teacher's Handbook, (Summertown 1998) which will soon be part of a new Internet site designed to help teachers in the area of CD-ROM.
Pete is currently studying on a distance-learning M.ED course in Technology and ELT at Manchester University. He is particularly interested in E-learning and ways in which technology can support learning.

Scott Thornbury works at International House, Barcelona, both as a teacher trainer and materials writer. His previous experience includes teaching and training in Egypt, UK, and in his native New Zealand. He has an MA (TEFL) from the University of Reading and has been actively involved in the RSA/UCLES CILTS schemes: he is currently Chief Examiner for the Diploma (DELTA) scheme. His writing credits include a task-based course for Spanish secondary schools, numerous articles for ELT Journal, TESOL Quarterly and others, and About Language: Tasks for Teachers of English (CUP), and How to Teach Grammar (Longman). His latest book is Uncovering Grammar (MacMillan Heinemann). For the last three years he has co-ordinated the writing of the Santillana Netlanguages project - a web-based language learning package. He also moderates an internet discussion group: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/dogme

Gavin Dudeney has been involved in ELT since 1989 when he started teaching in Barcelona, Spain. Since then he has moved through a variety of jobs from classroom teaching to director of a media lab and finally on to his current positions as Head of CALL for the International House Eastern Spain group of schools and Lead Web Developer for the online language school Net Languages (www.netlanguages.com).
His particular fields of interest are the combining of ELT and IT into a meaningful language delivery platform and teacher training in new technologies. Author of the Cambridge University Press publication The Internet and The Language Classroom, he has travelled extensively as a consultant in the field of ELT and IT.

Pete MacKichan I have been teaching English since 1987 in an assortment of situations and roles, and am now permanently based in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. For the last six years I have been mainly working in EAP but have become increasingly involved in Computer Assisted Language Learning. I am particularly interested in how technology can be used to deepen and increase learning rather than just provide new forms of delivery. I am also concerned about how CALL is introduced and the demands that this can make on teachers. I have recently completed some work on designing a hybrid course for IELTS preparation which is available at http://www.ieltscourse.f2s.com/index.html and am currently working on a self-access CDROM for preparation and practice of an advanced level EFL exam. I hold an M.Ed. in Educational Technology and ELT from the University of Manchester.

Gary Motteram Gary has worked for the Faculty of Education at the University of Manchester since 1984, when he joined it to work on courses for Saudi Arabian teacher trainees. Since then he has set up the two Masters degree programmes concerned with Educational Technology and ELT, one which is taught on-site at Manchester and the other which is available by distance.

His research interests are in the areas of computers in language classrooms and online teacher education. He supervises research students and manages projects in both of these areas. His website, www.man.ac.uk/langlit/centre/GM.html, provide links to various on-line references and will also eventually act as a store for articles that are not available on-line.

Hamish Norbrook taught English and French/German before joining the BBC, where has been involved in the BBC's English language teaching department in various capacities, from writing and producing radio programmes explaining the English of pop songs to running seminars on using video in the class and dictionary work. He has also edited the IATEFL Video SIG magazine and was on the editorial board of Modern English Teacher magazine. In April 1996 he helped launch the first World Service English teaching site: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish. He's currently working on a British Council project supporting language assistants via book, website and email group: www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant. His son's mobile phone bill is prompting him to investigate m-learning.

Vance Stevens holds an MA in ESL from the University of Hawaii. He has conducted research, co-edited books, and published widely in the field of CALL (computer-assisted language learning). He was founding member and first officially appointed chair of the CALL Interest Section in TESOL and has served on the advisory boards of the TESOL and CALICO Journals. He taught ESL for 20 years, mostly in the Middle East, before becoming Director of ESL Courseware Design at Courseware Publishing International in California where he worked for two years with Authorware and speech recognition, among other computer-based development tools. Since then he has been consultant and coordinator for Computer-Assisted Language Learning at the Military Language Institute in Abu Dhabi, UAE. An inveterate teacher, Vance has been teaching online for the past several years. His online ESL course Writing for Webheads now involves ESL students and colleagues worldwide and has resulted in several recent face-to-face and online conference appearances focusing on the free online and multimedia synchronous communications tools that make the course possible.