By Stephen Mullan, English Content Editor for the British Council

Jo Budden is the content manager for the British Council’s LearnEnglish websites, which provide free, self-access material for learners. We spoke to Jo ahead of her talk on 'Guiding our young learners through the digital jungle', to be delivered at our English teachers' conference in Bilbao on Saturday 22 September 2018. 

1. Many of us know you as the author of Teen World, co-author of the Interactive series, and as the editor of our LearnEnglish Teens website, but could you tell us a little more about your background and experience?

Sure! It’s nice to hear you mention Teen World and Interactive, as those books seems like such a long time ago now, but I’ve got really fond memories of writing them! 

I started working for the British Council in 1999, but before that I was a language assistant in Brazil. I’ve taught mainly in Spain, but also with summer schools in Hong Kong and Egypt. In 2011, I became the website manager for the then-new LearnEnglish Teens site, and until November last year that’s what I’d been doing – working with some brilliant writers and co-ordinators to create the content on the Teens site. It was an amazing challenge to start a website from scratch – we literally had a blank piece of paper to draw the site map in the first meetings – and to nurture the site to what it is today: a site that receives over 12 million visitors a year! 

Last November, I got the job of content manager for the three LearnEnglish websites, so I’m now facing new challenges looking after the material on the three sites. It’s a bit of a juggling act, but we have a lot of new content in the pipeline for LearnEnglish Kids and LearnEnglish, so keep an eye on the sites to see what’s new over the coming year. 

2. How has the landscape of secondary education changed since you started teaching? And have all the changes been positive?

That’s a huge question, and one I’m not really in the best position to answer as I’ve been out of the classroom for a few years now, since I started working on LearnEnglish Teens. I’m lucky though that at conferences and workshops I talk to lots of secondary school teachers – so I’m aware of the many challenges they face. 

One issue I’ve discussed with lots of teachers is mobile phone usage in schools, and I’ve heard all sorts of stories related to misuse of phones in schools. I think the job of secondary school teachers was already really challenging, and I think mobile phones, in schools where their usage isn’t managed well, is causing additional stress and problems to many. I’ll be taking more about phone usage in my talk …

3. Your talk is going to be on ‘digital well-being’ in the ‘digital jungle’. Could you tell us what you mean by those terms?

Yes. First of all, I have to say that I’m really not ‘anti-technology’ at all. I love technology; I love the opportunities it offers for learning and communication. After all, I work for a website and spend a lot of my time online – even my free time! But there are issues and problems that arise with technology, and I think we all need to be aware of them. 

I’ll start the talk by having a look at the digital jungle, and by that I mean ‘what’s out there’. We’ll look at a few of the popular apps and platforms teenagers are spending their time on, and I’ll explain why I’m calling it a jungle: jungles are amazing places full of wonderful plants and animals, but if you don’t know what the dangers are you are more likely to be bitten or stung (!) and that’s what we want to avoid. And what we want our young learners to avoid. 

Digital well-being refers to staying healthy and well in our digital lives. In the news you can read about how tech addiction and dependence on mobile devices is increasing at an alarming rate, especially among young people. We’ll take a look at some facts and statistics on this, and also at some tips for anyone who would like to try and have a digital detox!

4. So, should teachers perhaps be warier of the dangers posed by new technologies? 

The talk isn’t meant to scare anyone at all, but teachers who have heard me give similar talks in the past have commented that they’ve had a bit of a wake-up call with a few of the things I mention. 

I don’t have all the answers at all, but I do think that, as educators, we need to be aware of issues to do with online safety and digital well-being, in order to provide our students with the support and information they need to become good digital citizens. 

Things change really quickly, and I think any opportunity for teachers to talk about this topic is positive, even if we’re all finding our way in the dark to some extent! There are a lot of great researchers whose work I refer to in my talk, like danah boyd [sic] and Sherry Turkle, and from their work we can reflect on what’s happening around us today. I won’t say more than that at the moment!   

5. There has been much talk recently about the difference between ‘digital natives’ (i.e. those who have never known a world without the internet) and ‘digital immigrants’ (those who grew up without it). Do you buy in to this dichotomy? And, if so, do the ‘immigrants’ have anything to fear from the ‘natives’? Or vice versa?

The idea of ‘digital natives’ has really been discredited in recent years, and the researcher, danah boyd, whose work we’ll be looking at during the talk, believes it’s dangerous to think of young people as ‘digital natives’. She says ‘… a focus on today’s youth as digital natives presumes that all we as a society need to do is to be patient and wait for a generation of these digital wunderkinds to grow up.’ 

I very much agree with that – as if we assume that young people who’ve grown up with technology already know it all then we feel we don’t have to help them and support them in learning how to use it well. 

6. Demographic and market changes mean more and more English teachers are finding themselves teaching teenage classes for the first time. What tips would you give to someone taking the plunge, or considering the plunge, into secondary teaching?

OK … that’s a good question. The first thing I’d say is to listen to your learners and get to know them. I always used to try and make the most of the ‘natural information-gap’ that there is between your knowledge and interests and theirs. Find out about what they’re into and what they do in their free time, and use those topics in the classroom. That doesn’t mean always doing their favourite songs or using their favourite YouTubers all the time: I think we also have a duty to introduce our students to topics and issues that they may not know about already, and in that way we can broaden their horizons, and get them thinking about things that aren’t already on their radar.

My second piece of advice would be to check out the LearnEnglish Teens website! There’s a lot of material there now that’s been tried and tested globally by our audience, so have a look at the website, and tell your students about it. It’s all designed for self-access, so your keener students can use it at home on their own, and you may find some useful supplementary material for your classes there too.

Many thanks, Jo. 

I’m looking forward to meeting some of you in Bilbao on 22 September. Thanks for reading! 

You can catch Jo's talk on the digital jungle at our teachers' conference at Colegio La Salle in Bilbao on Saturday 22 September. And, as we gear up for the academic year ahead, be sure to click here for more on our teachers' conferences being held across Spain in September. 
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