How we got from English to Ed Tech. With Andrea Flores and Ben Naismith

All of us started our careers somewhere, and today I'm talking to two old friends and former colleagues about how our years teaching English as a foreign language shaped our view of education and the world. We talk about the resilience and adaptability that those early classroom days taught us, the overwrought lesson plans, learning humility from failure, and how these experiences inform our work now in higher education management, instructional design and ed-tech. 

We go on to discuss the direction of education, the resurgence of interest in humanities subjects in the face of AI, staying up to date with knowledge and skills in an ever-changing jobs market, and the general chaos of those unique times in our lives.

Guest Bios

Ben Naismith, PhD is a Staff Assessment Scientist at Duolingo where he works on research and development of the Duolingo English Test. Prior to joining Duolingo, Ben worked extensively in the field of English language teaching in numerous contexts as a teacher, teacher trainer, materials developer, assessment specialist, and researcher. His current work and research into the assessment of L2 English proficiency focuses on vocabulary assessment and automated scoring of speaking and writing. His work has been published in journals including Language Testing, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Teaching Research, Language Learning, and Assessing Writing, amongst others. He is the lead editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Digital Language Assessment: Innovations and Insights from the Duolingo English Test.

Andrea Flores is Senior Instructional Designer at MIT Sloan School of Management and Founding member of the Boston AI2030 Chapter. She’s an AI lead and human-centered design practitioner with a diverse background in education, public health, workforce development, and technology. She has worked across non-profits, higher education, and global health, and focuses on human impact and sustainable solutions.