The people below still sit at the intersection of AI, ELT, teacher development, and the future of teaching, and they are worth following because they share practice, not just slogans. Engagement on individual posts varies; the better move is to reply to a specific claim with a classroom detail.
1. Joe Dale — @joedale
Languages + tech consultant; AI project lead. Regularly writes up webinars and classroom workflows.
Recent themes: co-creating one idea with AI into a lesson, song, dialogue, and worksheet while keeping the teacher in control; ThingLink + AI for interactive language tasks; pedagogy before tools / student agency.
How to join in: Reply with one activity you adapted and where the AI draft failed (level, register, cultural fit). Ask how he would constrain the prompt for your exam class or low-tech room.
2. Larry Ferlazzo — @Larryferlazzo
Long-time high-school ELL teacher and Education Week columnist. Still posts daily teaching resources.
Recent themes: AI literacy units and classroom videos; “post-shame” AI writing and what that means for student work; practical ELL/content resources tied to current events.
How to join in: Don’t praise the link dump. Pick one resource and say how you’d scaffold it for newcomers vs. long-term ELLs, or what you’d cut.
3. Dan Fitzpatrick — @theaieducatorx
Runs The AI Educator; school-facing AI policy, tools, and summits.
Recent themes: whether schools can trust vendor AI; safety/privacy standards with unions and Microsoft; back-to-school AI updates that put students in charge of their learning.
How to join in: Ask what a language department should demand that a generic school AI policy usually misses (L2 output quality, accent bias, translation dependence).
4. Ethan Mollick — @emollick
Wharton professor; the highest-signal “AI at work and school” account. Not ELT-specific, but educators constantly cite him.
Recent themes: experiments with models as tutors/coworkers; what assignments still make humans think; evidence vs. hype.
How to join in: Translate one of his workplace findings into an ELT problem: “If AI drafts the essay, what should the speaking or revision task become?”
5. Jo Gakonga — @JGakonga
Teacher educator (Warwick / ELT-Training). Built a practical “AI-powered language teaching” course for CELTA-type teachers.
Recent themes (work + older X posts): planning with AI without losing aims; level-appropriate texts and speaking tasks; using AI for teacher reflection, not just materials.
How to join in: Share a prompt that produced something too fluent for A2 and ask how she would force CEFR control. Trainee-teacher questions land well with her.
6. Achilleas Kostoulas — @AchilleasK
Applied linguist / teacher educator; writes on AI in ELT and works on Council of Europe AI-in-language-education work.
Recent themes: two possible futures for AI in ELT; teachers using AI for materials far more than for assessment; pedagogically grounded principles vs. tool chasing.
How to join in: Bring a local policy example (“our school banned / mandated ChatGPT”) and ask which of his “futures” it actually points toward.
7. Sophia Mavridi — @SophiaMav
Senior lecturer in edtech and TESOL; digital literacies and AI. Less frequent on X now, still a core name in this niche.
Recent themes: digital literacies rather than gadget demos; skepticism of overnight AI “experts”; conference plenaries on edtech in ELT.
How to join in: Ask how she would teach students to critique AI English (tone, hedging, invented citations) instead of only teaching teachers to generate worksheets.
8. Sandy Millin — @sandymillin
ELT consultant, trainer, materials writer (Delta courses, Playbooks). Strong practitioner voice.
Typical themes: sustainable teacher development; materials that teachers can actually finish; mentoring and Delta-style reflection.
How to join in: Describe one overloaded teacher-development idea and ask how she’d shrink it to a 20-minute staffroom experiment.
9. Daniel Xerri — @danielxerri
Associate professor in TESOL; researches teacher development and creativity; ELT Malta / IATEFL-facing work.
Recent themes: human–AI collaboration in research; sustainability in ELT; conference community-building and teacher creativity.
How to join in: Ask what “creativity” looks like when students can generate a poem in ten seconds — what human move is left to teach?
10. Hugh Dellar — @hughdellar
Teacher, trainer, lexical-approach writer. On X he often talks politics; his professional work is still central to “what should we still teach?”
Professional themes: lexical chunks vs. generative fluency; what textbooks and teachers still do that models flatten; teacher identity.
How to join in: Stay on language, not politics. Ask whether AI-generated “natural English” is actually the English his lexical work would want students to notice.
11. Russell Stannard — @russell1955
Teacher-training videos; tech tips for language teachers. Quieter lately, still relevant.
Recent themes: TTS tools such as ElevenLabs for listening texts; quiz generators around video; AI in blended/online teacher-training courses.
How to join in: Report what happened when you used generated audio with real learners (too fast, too clean, no hesitation). That’s the conversation he cares about.
12. Mohamed Ramadan — @eltguide
Egyptian ELT supervisor; posts practical classroom posts and has written explicitly on AI vs. Business English teachers.
Recent themes: grammar methodology; assessment of / for / as learning; AI for planning without replacing the teacher.
How to join in: Offer a counter-example from your context: a grammar point AI explains fluently but students still can’t use. Ask how he’d check transfer.
13. Thomas Jerome Baker — @profesortbaker
Long-running ELT blogger; posts on AI in ELT and the future of the field.
Recent themes: preparing ELT for AI; linking published reports to classroom practice; teacher professionalism in a tool-saturated market.
How to join in: Quote one claim from a post and ask what it would change on Monday morning in a 40-student class.
14. Svetlana Kandybovich — @ELT_CATION
Teacher trainer and materials writer; experiments with making authentic texts accessible and with model settings for language tasks.
Recent themes: elaborated input for authentic texts/video; temperature/settings for language tasks; games and tasks with ChatGPT.
How to join in: Share a before/after of a text you simplified with AI and what linguistic features disappeared (cohesion, stance, idiom).
15. Tyson Seburn — @seburnt
EAP / teacher-education voice. Bio currently says he’s “done here indefinitely,” but his archive and network still shape EAP-AI talk.
Typical themes: academic reading/writing, teacher identity, critical pedagogy in ELT.
How to join in: If he is quiet, engage people quoting him on EAP integrity: “What does process writing look like when the first draft is free?”
16. Shelly Sanchez Terrell — @ShellTerrell
Edtech trainer, edchat founder, global classroom collaboration.
Typical themes: teacher community, webinars, practical tech for language and literacy classrooms.
How to join in: Ask how global collaboration projects change when students can use AI as an always-on interlocutor — who is the audience now?
17. Alice Keeler — @alicekeeler
High-volume classroom-tech practitioner (Google Classroom, workflows). Points people to Bluesky, but still a major EduTwitter reference.
Typical themes: reducing teacher busywork; assignment design; classroom systems.
How to join in: Ask how she’d redesign a language assignment so the Google Doc / Classroom flow captures process, not only a final AI-polishable product.
18. Mike Llerena — @ELT_GlobeTeach
Languages Pedagogy Podcast; posts almost daily on AI, teacher identity, and the future of ELT.
Recent themes: AI won’t end great teaching but may expose teachers who stopped learning; guardrails and critical thinking with student AI use; leadership, burnout, and school culture.
How to join in: Answer the question he actually asks in the post (“Have we gone too far?”) with one classroom incident, then ask a guest-style follow-up he can use on air.
19. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching — @InnovationLLT
Journal account pushing current research, including AI-IDLE speaking practice and GenAI materials development.
Recent themes: sustained AI-mediated informal speaking practice; teacher-support frameworks; GenAI for ELT materials.
How to join in: Ask the authors (via the journal post) what “teacher support” looked like in minutes per week — researchers notice practitioners who talk implementation cost.
20. American TESOL Institute — @tesol
Certification / teacher-education account; repeatedly frames the teacher’s role once information is free.
Recent themes: teacher as facilitator of autonomy; TESOL identity when students have AI in their pocket.
How to join in: Challenge the slogan gently: “Facilitator of autonomy — what does that look like in week 2 of a beginner class?”
21. Holly Clark — @HollyClarkEdu
EduTwitter staple; tech-infused pedagogy and teacher learning communities.
Typical themes: classroom tech that changes student thinking; PD sessions; communities of practice.
How to join in: Ask which student thinking move she would refuse to outsource to AI in an English/language classroom.
22. Nik Peachey — @NikPeachey
Director of Pedagogy at PeacheyPublications; co-author of British Council AI activities and resources for English language teachers. More active on LinkedIn than X, but still a primary name.
Themes: AI for teachers’ own CPD; classroom activities mapped to professional practices; risks and ethics, not only prompts.
How to join in: Take one British Council activity and report the snag in your setting (devices, age, exam pressure). That is more useful to him than “great resource.”
23. ELT ACTION — @action_elt
Aggregator of ELT infographics, values, wellbeing, and future-facing talks (AI, climate, power).
Recent themes: values in teaching; teacher wellbeing/time; preparing students for an AI-and-climate future.
How to join in: Add a classroom vignette to the infographic (“this value collided with our AI-writing policy when…”).
24. Dr Abdullah Al Ghurbani — @DrAbdullah14820
Posts concise TESOL/AI framing that other teachers reply to.
Recent themes: AI-mediated learning, noticing, interaction, feedback, and reflection — not just AI-generated content.
How to join in: Ask him to unpack noticing: how do you get learners to notice form if the chatbot already supplies the polished form?
25. Yusuf Emre Yeşilyurt — @yusufemrepro
Applied linguist; books on AI and language teaching / qualitative research. Has used eltchat to invite teacher stories.
Themes: AI stronger for reading/writing than speaking/listening; supplement vs. replace; privacy and human touch.
How to join in: Give him the speaking/listening example he asked for — what AI couldn’t do in a live conversation class.
How to contribute without sounding promotional
Use the same move every time:
- Quote one concrete line, not the whole post.
- Add your constraint (A2 teens, 45 minutes, no phones, high-stakes exam, multilingual staffroom).
- Report what you tried, including the failure.
- Ask one question they can answer in two sentences.
- Leave your course, newsletter, or tool out of the first two replies.
Example:
“I tried the ‘one idea → dialogue + worksheet’ workflow with B1 adults. The dialogue was fluent but used would have been in a unit that only needed past simple. How do you lock CEFR in the first prompt without killing naturalness?”
That reads like a colleague, not a launch.
Where the live conversation actually is
On X, also watch the tags #ELT, #ELTchat, #TESOL, #AIinELT, #edchat. Several of the strongest ELT-AI practitioners (Peachey, Mavridi, Gakonga, Dale) now think in public more on LinkedIn. If your goal is discussion rather than broadcasting, follow the same 25 there and reply to the post that already has two teachers arguing about a classroom problem.