Digital Updatable Tests

Standardized tests are useful for ranking, but not for learning.
— Sir Ken Robinson

Problems

This is a problem I noticed while working in English Colleges in Australia: schools rely heavily on photocopied tests, creating unnecessary administration costs and waste; classrooms are tied to outdated textbooks that feel disconnected from real life in Australia; students, used to digital environments, find paper-based tests tedious and demotivating; and compliance-driven assessment practices often reduce testing to a box-ticking exercise rather than a meaningful measure of progress.

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Research

Over the course of a year, this assessment format was tested across multiple ESL classes in several Sydney language schools. Student feedback was consistent and highlighted several clear advantages.

Higher engagement on phones
Students overwhelmingly preferred the mobile version over paper.
Preferred hybrid mode
Most liked questions on phones but answers on paper.
Low levels of cheating
Cheating was rare; timers prevent AI-lookup.
Improved memory and recall
Students said the format helped prompt their memory.
Voluntary revision outside class
Many reviewed their feedback on public transport.

Solution

Design the assessment system around simple, modular templates that teachers can adapt instantly, without technical friction or platform lock-in.

1. Flexible Delivery Modes
- Mobile Q&A with automatic scoring
- Phone questions + paper answer sheet
- Projected test + phone responses
2. Easy Teacher Editing and Localisation
- Update questions to match what was taught
- Personalise to city, students, or current events
- Edit via Word → paste into template
3. Consistency With Textbook Pedagogy
- It is the same test but with updates
4. High-Stakes Exam Alignment
- Write-from-dictation style tasks
- Summaries, reorderings, gap-fills
5. Time + Cost Savings
- Templates ready to go each week
- No photocopying or subscription frees

Adaptive Lessons

Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers can be transformational.
— George Couros

Problems

Most languages have 5 vowel sounds written and spoken, English has 5 written and around 25 spoken: as a result English as a second language students are confused about how to pronounce words and it will drag their score down in tests like Pearsons PTE

Pedagogy

Here is a sample of how this could be done at an intermediate level, but it could be graded down with the last activities dropped, or graded up with the first activity dropped.

1. Listen and Watch
- Listen and watch the sounds being made with examples
- Can be done as a class or individually on students’ phones
2. Play the Game
- Listen to the words and sort them into four sounds on individual phones
- Teacher may check in with students individually or drill the words as a class at any point
3. Extension Activities
- Write-from-dictation tasks
- Gap-fill activities
4. Group Competition
- Divide the class into groups and project the game on the board
- Teams score points and lose points for correct and incorrect answers

Observations in the Classroom

Short, integrated tasks allowed students to work at their own pace, with faster students completing extension challenges that supported mixed-level classes.
These shorter tasks encouraged self-reflection and helped students take ownership of their learning rather than moving passively through activities.
Students maintained strong focus for approximately 15 minutes; early finishers discussed their learning individually before transitioning into group work once all students completed the task.
Clear, specific activities prompted genuine curiosity among students.
Students often forget concepts from one day to the next; keeping a record on their phones provided a reliable reference for later review.
Videos and PowerPoints without teacher interaction or embedded tasks have limited value. Like social media, students tend to watch passively and retain very little. For media to be effective, it must require active engagement.

Class Soundtrack

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
— Benjamin Franklin

Creative Classroom

A Class Soundtrack, a soundtrack to learning - This is an adaptive, easy-to-use template designed for active language production rather than passive practice.

A Case Study

This is an activity I did in an intermediate class last year.

Students wrote their own sentences and selected genres, then their ideas were transformed into full songs using Suno, another audio creating platform or if they have talent, play and record.
Grammar and pronunciation targets were uploaded into the system, which students found amusing but surprisingly effective for reinforcing accuracy.
The process encouraged collaboration — students compared lyrics, shared ideas, and refined each other’s language.
The students leave your class with a memory and an achievement, which can only be good for the teachers and schools word-of-moth.

Teachers! Let me teach you how to build this app. and begin to build other lessons.

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Learning Through Music

For most of human history, music functioned as a memory technology. Long before writing existed, ancient civilisations used rhythm, melody, and repetition to preserve knowledge across generations. In Ancient Greece, epic poems such as The Iliad and The Odyssey were sung rather than read, because melody made thousands of lines easier to recall. In West Africa, griots carried genealogies, laws, and histories through musical storytelling. And in Australia, Indigenous cultures maintained vast networks of knowledge through songlines—musical maps encoding geography, law, spirituality, and survival skills. A songline wasn’t just a song; it was a living archive.

Even classical philosophers recognised the cognitive power of music. In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates warns that the new technology of writing would weaken human memory. He believed that once people relied on written text, they would stop exercising the mental discipline supported by rhythm, recitation, and song. Whether or not he was right, the anxiety reveals how deeply music was tied to memory and learning.

Modern research continues to show why music is so effective for learning. Writing lyrics, shaping rhythm, and choosing melody require deeper processing of vocabulary, structure, stress, and pronunciation. When students turn language into a song, they encode it across multiple neural pathways. The result is stronger recall, clearer pronunciation, and higher engagement than traditional drills.

Challenge Students

What we learn to do, we learn by doing .
— Aristotle

Problems

Many students plateau at around intermediate level of their language acquisition: held back by small grammar errors (often partly caused by boredom and a lack of attention), low confidence, and a cycle of repetition without retention. Teachers sometimes keep them on material that is unchallenging and uninteresting, I've seen teachers use materials made for native children on international adults. All this only reinforces the plateau, the feeling that they will never be fluent, instead of helping them move forward.

Assumed Knowledge

The students have seen all the past and present verb tenses but have not yet mastered them.

Mixed Language Points

Listening, Writing annd Speaking
Grammar: revision of all past and present verb forms
Guidance on how and when to use these verbs in biography writing
Optional extension activity to review verb structure if needed
Listening task based on an interview
Writing a biography or speaking about a well-known person
Technology and business vocabulary

Krashen’s Input Hypothesis is a key theory in second language acquisition. It proposes that learners make the most progress when they are exposed to language that is understandable but slightly beyond their current level. This balance between familiarity and challenge creates ideal conditions for natural language growth and has strongly influenced modern approaches to reading, listening, and curriculum design.

It emphasises that learners acquire language through comprehensible input, not by memorising grammar rules in isolation.
It states that progress occurs when input is just above the learner’s current level (i+1), creating productive challenge.
It focuses on meaningful communication, where learners understand the message even if some language is new.
It supports using authentic materials, as long as they are scaffolded enough to remain understandable.
It highlights the power of extensive reading and listening for long-term language development.
It underlines that low anxiety and high motivation help learners engage with slightly challenging input more effectively.

Reading in the Age of TikTok brain

None of us are as smart as all of us.
— Japanese Proverb

Problems

TikTok brain, social media fatigue, and shrinking attention spans mean many people no longer read more than a few lines at a time. I’ve noticed this especially with students taking long reading tests like IELTS. Younger generations’ brains have been wired differently, and many struggle to sit and read a single article for even five minutes — yet the IELTS requires thirty minutes of sustained focus.

Intro: Short-form platforms like TikTok, X, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts deliver rapid, high-stimulation content. Research shows that heavy use of these apps reduces sustained attention and makes long-form reading significantly harder.

Short-form platforms train the brain to expect constant stimulation
Fast, high-novelty videos condition users to seek instant reward rather than slow, effortful processing.
Continuous micro-distractions weaken focus
Rapid switching between short clips reduces the ability to stay on a single task.
Reading stamina declines with heavy short-form video use
Long texts feel mentally “heavy” compared to rapid-fire content, making tasks like IELTS reading more challenging.

Solution

Guided reading: reading aloud keeps students focused. Read a paragraph aloud, pause and give them time to reread and discuss questions before you move on. Move around the class and the teacher can take a turn too.

Shared digital palette
Teachers can upload the reading lesson and project it on the whiteboard or share it with a QR code. *** If you are viewing this on a computer you will see teacher access, the full palette of tools for marking and manipulating. If you are on a phone you will get the basic view and the PDF.
Paper-like interaction
The palette behaves like real paper and pen, allowing free-hand drawing and annotation.
Flexible text control
Teachers can pinch and pull the text to focus attention on specific paragraphs on the white board. Students can do the same on their phone.
Multi-format support
PDFs, Word documents, and images can be uploaded, manipulated in real time, and annotated.
Teacher Imput and Personalisation
The teacher writes the questions (before or during the class). The teacher can also you the tool bar to highlight, circle and draw on the text and images.

Feedback

Overall student response was extremely positive, with high levels of participation and sustained focus throughout the lesson.

High engagement
Students enjoyed reading aloud and receiving immediate feedback and correction from a native-speaking teacher. Participation was enthusiastic across the whole class.
Stronger vocabulary retention
Vocabulary was remembered more effectively because new words were discussed at the moment they appeared in the text.
Contextual grammar reinforcement
Grammar points previously studied were naturally highlighted and reinforced within a meaningful reading context.
Reduced reliance on translation
Pausing after each paragraph encouraged students to ask questions directly rather than turning to their phones for translations.
Communicative classroom dynamic
Group reading transformed what could have been a solitary task into a collaborative activity that naturally led to discussion.

Digital Updatable Tests

Problems

Research

Adaptive Lessons

Problems

Class Soundtrack

Challenge Students

Problems

Reading in the Age of TikTok brain

Problems

Solution

Feedback

Modern English Australia