Speaker
Description
At a time when classrooms across the region are consumed by conversations about artificial intelligence, a more foundational question is being quietly overlooked: do young learners and the teachers who guide them have the computational thinking and English communication skills that make any technology meaningful in the first place? This workshop argues that block-based coding, long before AI, is the missing foundation that both students and teachers genuinely need and invites participants to discover this firsthand. Drawing on classroom experience teaching primary school learners with no prior exposure to coding and parallel work training teachers in coding-integrated English instruction, the facilitator introduces Scratch not as a technology subject but as a language learning environment where children animate characters, script dialogues, and build interactive stories entirely in English. In the hands-on segment, participants use simple Scratch commands to build a short English conversation between two characters, experiencing directly how block-based coding develops logical thinking and communicative competence simultaneously. No prior coding experience is required. By the end of the session, participants will have produced a working interactive story in English and leave with practical strategies for embedding Scratch-based storytelling into their own English classrooms. This workshop makes a case grounded in practice that the most powerful shift an ELT educator can make today is not adopting the most advanced tool, but building the foundation that makes every tool worth using.
Biography
Vanthon Chan is a Cambodian educator and teacher trainer with over fifteen years of experience working across community schools, international NGOs, and teacher development organisations in Cambodia. His work sits at the intersection of two questions that the shift from EFL to ESL makes increasingly urgent “how do young learners build the communicative and computational foundations they need to use English purposefully?”, and “how do the teachers guiding that shift sustain themselves professionally and emotionally while doing so?” His career has taken him through roles as an English teacher, instructional coach, coordinator, and curriculum developer, each role reinforcing his belief that repositioning English in the classroom begins not with policy, but with prepared, supported teachers and learners who have been given the right foundations. He currently trains teachers in English language teaching methodology and block-based coding, developing approaches that integrate coding with English language practice and coaching frameworks that address both the instructional and emotional dimensions of teaching in demanding contexts. An active participant in regional ELT professional development, he is committed to one core belief that “the most sustainable change in any classroom begins not with the most advanced tool, but with the person holding it.”
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