What are colleagues working on and thinking about when it comes to AI and language education? Phil and I went to CALICO 2026 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in July. CALICO is the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. This professional organization was founded in 1983. At its annual conference this year, there were lots of presentations, panels, and workshops on things AI. Phil and I contributed a pre-conference workshop on Sustained Integrated Professional Development (SIPD) for GenAI and participated in the panel discussion of CALICO’s special interest group in AI. Of course, we had the chance to be in conversation with lots of colleagues, which helps our own SIPD … For this episode, we recorded four conversations live: Robert Godwin-Jones, Jeffrey Maloney, Mingjun Tang, Kimberly Vinall, and Emily Hellmich about AI for language learning, teacher education, digital literacies, pragmatics, and professional development. The guests discuss both the opportunities and the limitations of AI, sharing practical insights for language educators, grounded in their current research.
What is interesting – I find – is the many different perspectives that research at the intersection of GenAI and language education takes. There is so much new to learn, and there is so much in established practice that we need to rethink and reevaluate in light of these powerful and disruptive technologies. And exactly that is happening more and more at these conference. At times the sheer number of papers can feel overwhelming, but imagine — where would we be without them.
