Hey! I'm Andrea
Teacher, Digital Learning Designer & Kajabi Expert on a mission to help you with the building blocks to create consistent, accessible and engaging digital learning experiences ( Just like creating your Lego masterpiece! ) so that you can make a difference in the learning journeys of your students (by getting them to engage and get the results they want to...) while having the tools to move from tech overwhelm to confidence, reach more learners, ditch the zero hour contract, move your teaching to the next level and create more freedom in your life.
I love the design and building processes of creating digital learning spaces because they can change the way learners engage with course materials ... for the better of course!
I have spent an embarrassing amount of time playing around with different possibilities over the past few years...
Some of my Projects & Academic Interests
How I got here
Well....in all honesty, I never thought of becoming a teacher when I was back in Brazil studying to get into Law at Uni! But I guess my heart wasn't really set on this type of court as I decided to take a gap year and travel to the UK - at which point I became obsessed with English Grammar (I know, very odd at 18). Ended up writing not 1, but 2 dissertations on grammar! It's moments like this I realise I'm a little unconventional... but happy this led me to the wonderful world of English Language Teaching.
Fast forward a bit.... and after over 15 years in the classroom as a full-time ELT Professional, Teacher Trainer and Head of Subject, plus the scars of the pandemic, I decided life was too short not to have enough time for my family, to be spent planning a million different lessons, marking copious amounts of essays and stressing about the inconsistency of the online provision my students and teachers had to fight with. And as much as I loved teaching, I was so burnout and frustrated that I could not see the fun in getting my EAP students to write complex sentences anymore. Something had to change.
With the added plan to move abroad (again!), I knew I had to change my work model. And that's when I decided to pack my knowledge and experience of 16 years in the ELT world, 7 years as a small business owner of a language school in Brazil, my Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics degrees and Digital Learning Design qualification into a business model where I could continue to make a difference in the learning journeys of students and teachers while finding a more mentally sound and attractive way to have more freedom. And even though this venture is at its early stages, with my proven CPD strategies to help teachers engage students in the blended and online classroom and my academic background, I know a thing or two about how people learn.
But here is the most important part...
When the pandemic hit and we were suddenly thrown online, my number one struggle was student engagement. I remember those black screens on zoom, hours of planning fun lessons, Kahoot sessions, quizzes, project work..... My international students were also taking other subjects as part of their preparation for university programme. And being international, they all came from different academic environments which meant very different expectations (not to mention timezones!). I researched and implemented a million different tech tools in my lessons, helped my team of teachers do the same, and even though engagement increased, it didn't seem to be very consistent.
But this changed once we nailed that the lack of consistency and structure in the online provision was the real reason driving disengagement. It felt like navigating a maze blindfolded... this was a heavy enough cognitive load, by the time students actually got to do their work, they were exhausted! And then...guess what? Yes.... no engagement!
And that was when I became obsessed with structuring, building and designing learning experiences that were consistent, simple, structured which THEN led to higher engagement.
And this is why I'm here - to help you structure, build and design blended, hybrid and fully asynchronous learning experiences that address specific learning gaps in an engaging format using simple and fun tech tools together with instructional design systems so you can:
✨ learn about different tech tools to boost engagement in your digital classroom
📝 develop lessons and courses that are grounded on instructional design fundamentals and universal design for learning principles
👩🏼🏫 create engaging digital learning experiences from scratch
💥 restructure an exiting course programme to boost engagement
so you can level up your teaching, course creation experience, freedom and income.
And ultimately, make complex sentences fun again in your classroom!
Ohh... let's not forget the projection of eLearning soaring up to $1 trillion by 2028 (Global Market Insights 2021)
WORK WITH MEWe keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
~ Walt Disney
Get in touch!
My favourite doses of superpower
My everything!
These two keep me alive & kicking...and are THE reason I ditched the full-time classroom.
It's about commitment...
After years of totally hopeless skiing (like, embarrassing level 😳), I found my winter passion!
Totally...."Life & Soul"
My everyday brain, life & soul 'big helper'. A new level of Omega-3..."no fishy burps"!
The "feel good" factor
Life inspiring read...This book pushed me to do exactly what it says on its cover!