As teachers, we are facing generations with the fast, browsing mind and attention span shorter than ever. What are the advantages and what are the challenges? How do we make the most of EdTech to improve teaching methods and at the same time preserve the most influential element - human connection?
Bring out the best in your students and help them grow through creative learning. A well-thought out combination of EdTech and communication skills educates individuals who are future leaders.
Technology has brought us unprecedented possibilities to make a global change. Let's teach our children the value of quality communication, too. Show them how to not only connect but share ideas, develop projects and make a difference in their immediate community and worldwide. School is not just a building any more.
Vlatka Butkovic
Vlatka holds a Masters Degree in Art History and in English Language and Literature from the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
She has been working for over 20 years in Language School Butković, founded by her mom 26 years ago. Vlatka works as an English teacher, the principal, a curriculum designer, trainer and mentor. She also assists Social Services in helping children from troubled families to open up and connect with their peers.
Her fields of study in the recent years have been Classroom Communication and Instructional Technology. Those are key points of the Butković method™ that is tailored to the needs of modern students, being it adults or children of the generation Alpha. Having recognized the need for personalizing education, she developed highly adoptable elements of teaching that can be used and adapted in any classroom regardless of the Subject.
In 2015, she founded the Centre of Innovative Education with the goal to provide a platform for teachers and educators in Croatia and internationally, to exchange knowledge, teaching resources and ideas. Vlatka holds workshops for public school teachers with the aim of introducing personalizing learning and adaptive team work; implementing effective solutions in every-day classrooms and curriculum.
The Centre has grown immensly in just a year. Since September 2016 it offers over 40 creative workshops for educators and students and as well as Support Service for parents and kids. It also provides custom made coaching for groups or individuals in the fields of business and education, with or without foreign language training included. There are also various online courses, mainly in languages.
In 2016 the Centre published a series of interactive textbooks for ESL learners, FAIL FORWARD IN READING 1-4 and FAIL FORWARD IN GRAMMAR 1-4, authored by Butković and her colleague and dear friend, Anita Poljak.
Vlatka also sings jazz and blues, knits and designs web-sites in her free time. Her goal for this year is to illustrate and publish story books she’d written inspired by her kids.