ELAM is bringing back its annual summit for a second year. This should be on your calendar if you teach languages or know someone who does.
What is ELAM Connect?
ELAM Connect is a virtual summit organized by ELAM.ca, a Montreal-based corporate language school that has taught languages to business professionals since 1993. This year’s edition will be held online on August 24, 2026, under a unique and resourceful theme and will be open to language professionals worldwide for a fee of $150 CDN.
The theme is “The AI‑Equipped Language Teacher: Rethinking Lesson Planning.” AI has already made it into the classroom whether students asked for it or not. This summit is about AI being used effectively but not losing the human element that makes a person learn a language.
Who will you discover?
Nik Peachey (English keynote) has been in classrooms all over the world and has helped teachers to make sense of technology in education for decades. You can expect real insight from someone who has seen this shift happen from the inside.
Carla Wyburn, Language Coach AI, will explain step by step how AI-powered speaking practice can help reinforce what students learn in class, anywhere and everywhere, and how teachers can monitor engagement and progress on a simple dashboard.
Jérémie Séror (French keynote) is a full professor at the University of Ottawa’s Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute and holds the Research Chair in Technology-Mediated Language Learning and Artificial Intelligence. His talk, “AI in Teams: Better Text Analysis for Better Language Teaching,” is about how AI agents can help find teaching opportunities hidden in the text.
The Genially Ambassador Laia Dietz will put a hands-on approach to how to turn static content into engaging, interactive learning experiences. Real examples, new ideas, and tools to use the same day.
What our own teachers told us
Nearly nine in ten of our teachers use AI in their teaching. Twelve use it every week to plan lessons, while ten use it occasionally for tasks such as drafting emails, brainstorming activities, or creating a first version of classroom materials. Only three of the twenty-five teachers surveyed said they avoid AI completely.
That’s in line with what is happening in the world. The British Council surveyed 1,348 English language teachers across 118 countries in 2024 and found 75% already use AI tools, most often for creating learning materials (57%), helping learners practice (53%), and building lesson plans (43%). Our teachers aren’t outliers, they’re right in line with where the profession is going, if not slightly ahead of it.
That’s not exactly what people think of language teachers and AI. The stereotype is a classroom stuck in 2015, chalk and worksheets, suspicious of anything with an algorithm behind it. Our team doesn’t look like that. If anything, they’re ahead of the curve, slightly frustrated that the curve hasn’t come along to help them.
What is really slowing them down? Not ethics. Not pedagogy. Not fear of technology itself. There are those concerns, yes, but they are minor; four teachers flagged data privacy concerns and three said they didn’t know how to teach with AI well. And the real bottleneck is more straightforward and less flattering to fix with a webinar: sixteen teachers said there are too many tools and no way to know which of them are worth it. Thirteen said they just don’t have the hours to sit down and learn a new platform, even a good one.
In other words, our teachers don’t need convincing. They need curation. That’s exactly what ELAM Connect is designed to do.
We are very proud of one data point: teachers who received their AI Certified Trainer badge at ELAM Connect 2025 rated it highly valuable, on average 4.1 out of 5, and ten out of fourteen said it was a perfect rating. It’s not a badge we gave out to check a box. It’s one our own teachers said was worth the time.
Why does ELAM run this AI Summit?
ELAM has never taught only vocabulary and grammar. We’ve always been tech-smart and savvy! It’s about giving people the communication skills they need for real meetings, real emails, real presentations. And that same thinking applies to teachers too. Give trainers better tools, better strategies, and a community in which they talk to each other, and learners feel it, whether that’s one person prepping for a job interview or an entire corporate team leveling up together.
ELAM Connect is that idea in action. ELAM opens the door to language professionals everywhere so teachers can compare notes and keep up with a field that isn’t slowing down.
Why a second year in a row?
The first summit shook the teachers up and got them excited about AI possibilities. Teachers are already experimenting with AI in their classrooms and trying to figure out, in real time, how far to take it without losing what makes teaching work in the first place. That turnout and feedback from last year made one thing clear: this wasn’t a one-off. It’s now an annual thing.
What will you get out of it?
Finish the whole summit and you will walk away with an AI Certified Trainer digital credential that you can put on LinkedIn, your CV, or your email signature. For active ELAM trainers, it is free; for everyone else, it’s $150 CAD. If you’re in Montreal, come to a cocktail launch the night before, on August 23, 2026. We’re here to meet you and share ideas and experiences!