Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:

Exploring the potential of Gabcast

Simon Brown, one of the mainstays of our weekly OZ/NZ Flashmeetings has been trying out Gabcast this week as a way of moblogging audio files from a phone call. Simon describes his experiments in detail including comprehensive instructions on how to add Gabcast recordings straight to your blog.

I personally still favour the Gabcast + Podcast Pickle option, but this is a great run through and thanks Simon for taking the time to write this all down in easy to digest bite-size chunks. Food for thought for sure.

Moblogging School Trips

Gail Haythorne has set up a WetPaint wiki for all those interested in sharing views on moblogging school trips. Already included is her Blog Permission Form for seeking parental consent prior to a trip taking place. A useful resource for potential mobloggers.

Brittany 2008

Having slept for most of Friday, edited audio on Saturday and caught up with my emails and RSS feeds today, I'm now ready to blog about last week's educational visit to Brittany which by all accounts was a great success.

For those of you who follow my TwitterStream, you'll know what we got up to already. For those that don't, you can watch this slideshow or find out from the pupils themselves by listening to the recordings we made on the coach every morning reflecting on the previous day's adventures.

Download Day1.mp3

Download Day2.mp3

Download Day3.mp3

Download Day4.mp3

Download Day5.mp3

Unfortunately, my Gabcast experiment didn't work as all the numbers I tried when in France, wouldn't let me connect despite helpful texts from Chris Fuller back in England. I do know it is possible though as Gail Haythorne has proven with her pupils in Montpellier last week.

Next year, I may try Twitterfone as an alternative, if I can't work out what the problem is or bring along a mini notebook instead of relying on my mobile phone.

As for costs, the 30 odd tweets plus a five minute call to my head every evening came to about £30 in total although if I had been able to Gabcast successfully this probably would have been significantly more.

On the way to The American Cemetery, my colleague Richard Peace gave a moving talk to pupils about the Normandy Landings and the personal experiences of his grandfather who fought in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War which you can listen to here.

Download War_and_Peace.mp3

Hope you enjoy finding out more about our trip and thanks to those of you who tweeted while we were away. It's much appreciated.

Moblogging in Brittany

At 6.00 a.m. tomorrow morning, our Year 8 educational visit to Brittany officially starts. I'll be Gabcasting and twittering throughout the trip, so all of you can have regular updates of how we are getting on.

I will be interested to see how much my mobile phone bill will be, hopefully not too much and I will not be taking my laptop. So fingers crossed the technology works and everything goes to plan.

The Isle of Wight Conference 2008

As reported by John Bald in The Guardian in January, The Isle of Wight Conference 2008 takes place this year on 25th-26th October at Nodehill Middle School in Newport and will cost £100 to attend. As in previous years, the event will feature a host of practical sessions delivered by inspirational speakers from around the UK on topics such as:

• Mobile Phones
• Wikis
• Primary Languages
• Ning networking
• Songs
• Virtual Learning Environments
• Digital Storytelling
• Games based learning
• Gender differences
• Videoconferencing
• eTwinning
• Digital Voice Recorders
• One Stop Animation
• PowerPoint
• Interactive Whiteboards and Voting Systems
• Blogging and Podcasting
• Assessment for Learning
• New KS3 curriculum
• Web 2.0 tools
• vodcasting
• eCreativity

or as Wordle would say:

Speakers include:

• Sharon Tonner - ICT specialist, High School of Dundee
• Jo Rhys-Jones - AST in MFL, Kingswear Primary School
• Lisa Stevens - Spanish Teacher and eTwinning ambassador, Whitehouse Common Primary School,
• Carole Nicoll - Language Factory
• Drew Buddie - ICT coordinator, Royal Masonic School for Girls and eTwinning ambassador
• Nick Mair - HoD in MFL, Dulwich College
• John Warwick - Deputy Head, St Luke's School and eTwinning ambassador
• Kathleen Holton - HoD in MFL, Argoed High School
• Mark Pentleton - Radio Lingua Network
• Lesley Welsh – AST in MFL, English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College and SSAT languages lead practitioner coordinator
• Chris Fuller - Spanish teacher, Edgehill College and SSAT languages lead practitioner 
• Sharon Balch - French teacher, Swanmore Middle School
• Doug Dickinson - Independent ICT consultant
• Kathy Wicksteed - Languages advisor for new KS3 curriculum
• Adam Sutcliffe - MFL teacher, The Gordon Schools and Glow Champion
• Lesley Haggar-Vaughan, Shireland CLC manager
• Julie Adoch, HoD in MFL, Heathfield Foundation Technology College and her students

There will also be promotional sessions run by our sponsors Podium, Televic, Sanako, ConnectED and Babelzone and other publishers such as Heinemann, Oxford University Press and Espresso will have stands in the exhibition.

A free MFL Show and Tell session will take place in The Function Room of The Bargeman's Rest on Saturday 25th October and like last year, delegates will be able to sign up on the conference wiki if they would like to speak or just watch.

In the next month or so, I will publish a delegate pack including details of how to book, session titles, biographies, travel arrangements, where to stay etc on my blog which will give you plenty of time to persuade your school to let you come to this exciting opportunity for continuing professional development!

Here are some pictures and quotes from 2007 to whet your appetite:

Taken sooo much away from today. Thanks a million! Lisette Begue – Sneyd Community School)

Excellent. Well done to everyone who took part and looking forward to next year (John Bald – Education Guardian)

Thank you for running this inspirational event (Annalise Adam – Gregg School)

Excellent. Well done and a big thank you to the speakers. Really inspiring (Virginie Rayner – Wheatley Park School)

You surpassed last year. Fantastic! (Volker Green – The City Academy)

A great conference that has given me some great practical ideas to use in my teaching. Thank you. (Tamsin Cobden – Solent Middle School)

So see you in October and spread the word.

Language@Standish CHS

Mr Verney from the MFL department at Standish Community High School in Wigan has set up a blog Language@Standish CHS to publish pupils' work and showcase MFL events and trips.

Although in its infancy, the blog is already looking good and includes a range of interesting posts. I look forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

Check out Mr Verney's other blog too Ideas for IT in Teaching.

It's a blogger's life

Newly appointed SSAT Languages Lead Practitioner, Chris Fuller has published his presentation from a recent training session for PGCE students at The University of Exeter called a It's a blogger's life. Well done Chris for this great overview.

Asus Eee 900 - great moblogging tool?

In this clip from The Gadget Inspectors, Claudine and Harry describe the main features of the Asus Eee 900 and suggest how the little device could be a powerful tool for use on the move. See what you think.

Chris Holbrook on learning to moblog

Inspired by the work of Alex Blagona and Chris Fuller, Language teacher Chris Holbrook from Drayton Manor High School in Ealing contacted me this week about some amazing moblogging he has been doing on a school skiing trip to the States over Easter.

I was delighted when he agree to do an interview and share his experiences and successes with others, particularly as this is the first moblogging, Chris has ever done.

Listening to our discussion, it is clear that the experiment has paid off incredibly well and the reaction from parents, relatives and the senior managment team from his school has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, Chris is already thinking about how he can build on what he has achieved so far by moblogging future school trips and doing more podcasting and vodcasting while away.

Along with Alex's excellent video blogging from St Etienne recently, this is another great example of how moblogging can truly enhance a school trip abroad for all concerned.

Hope you find the advice useful and that you feel encouraged to try out some of these moblogging ideas for yourself. No doubt, you'd get the same reaction.

Download Chris_Holbrook_on_moblogging.mp3

Summary

• being inspired by the moblogging experiences of other MFL colleagues from my talk at BETT 08
• wanting to moblog school ski trip to the States
• seeking permission from parents and setting some blog rules
• choosing a blogging platform and setting up the moblog prior to leaving to give parents and pupils access to information about the trip
• using a mobile phone and laptop to moblog with
• moblogging upon arrival at the airport in San Francisco and to reassure parents
• the power of the moblog to link with parents and share the experience of being on a trip
• using the mobile phone to write posts and the laptop to upload photos, video and audio produced by colleagues and pupils
• finding the time to moblog on a trip and dealing with a slow connection
• seeing a very positive reaction to the moblog from the parents, school and local community
• receiving 3500 hits in just over a week
• enjoying the power of podcasting and vodcasting on a school trip
• choosing the right equipment for the right job
• ideas for moblogging on French exchange to La Rochelle
• mobile phone v laptop for easy moblogging
• using free moblogging services such as ShoZu and GabCast
• deciding who pays for the blog subscription and mobile phone bill
• encouraging pupils to moblog
• explaining the term Wally of the Day
• scripted v non-scripted podcasts
• a few final thoughts

Show Notes

Alex Blagona's guide to moblogging with a Sony Ericsson

Moblogging across Europe

Interview with Chris Fuller on wikispaces, moblogging and mobile phones

BETT 2008 - Blogs and Podcasts: ICT in your Pocket

Setting your moblogging preferences in Typepad

A quick note about the Olympic Torch in San Francisco

GarageBand

OneTrueMedia

My French Exchange Kit Bag

Technology, designed to make life easier!

ShoZu

GabCast

Celebrating the New Year with GabCast

Adding a Podcast Pickle player to your blog

Video email with EyeJot

TechnoLOTE interview with Jess McCulloch

This morning I had the pleasure of having an informal Skype conversation with Jess McCulloch, a Chinese teacher from Victoria in Australia for Episode Three of her TechnoLOTE podcast. As Jess and I share a passion for using technology in the languages classroom and have been reading each other's blogs for quite a while now, we had plenty to talk about and our hour discussion seemed to fly by.

It was particularly interesting to discover that despite working in completely different contexts, our experiences were actually in many ways very similar and we were dealing with the same sorts of issues connected with language learning.

Not wanting to repeat the same ground as was covered recently in Quentin Young's interview, Jess made sure she asked me some different types of questions some of which certainly made me think on my feet! Likewise, I learnt a great deal more about her background, the education system in Victoria and the attitudes of many Australians towards learning languages at school.

Hope you enjoy listening to the interview as much as I did doing it and thanks again to Jess for your devotion to the cause. You are so awesome!

Download TechnoLOTE_interview_with_Jess_McCulloch.mp3

Summary

• introductions
• getting started with ICT in MFL and the importance of researching
• unpicking PowerPoints from MFLresources
• using PowerPoint in interesting ways
• video tutorials v hands-on support
• finding the time to integrate ICT into your lessons and still sleep
• on the threshold of achieving 100,000 hits
• being motivated by writing for a real audience
• supporting MFL teachers in light of the ICT recommendations in the Dearing Review
• seeing more MFL teachers blogging
• the place of languages in the curriculum
• how blogs can raise the status of languages in your school
• describing which languages are typically taught in Australia
• the profile of Chinese in Australia and England
• describing English and Australian school systems
• numbers of Australian pupils dropping languages
• how technology lends itself to language learning
• encouraging reluctant colleagues to see the benefits of using ICT
• using technology to connect and communicate with others
• bringing authentic voices into the classroom via the internet
• the motivational impact of publishing to a real audience
• podcasting as a way of enabling 'pupil voice'
• video voxpops at Language World
• getting to know other bloggers through the blogosphere
• encouraging MFL colleagues to become podcasters
• dealing with the Quick-Fire question round!
• discussing how technology can motivate students to continue their language learning
• making connections with other language teachers across the globe
• embracing your inner 'geek' v being an enthusiast
• how comments can motivate bloggers
• sharing expertise with colleagues and pushing the boundaries
• editing podcasts and writing show notes
• interviewing teachers about their innovative practice
• running a Nintendo DS MFL lunchtime club
• Jess' background in language learning
• describing government funded six week trip to China for twenty students
• dealing with culture shock, moblogging and podcasting
• being creative and dealing with the danger of sites being blocked
• deciding what to blog about
• tweeting your network
• a few final thoughts

Show notes

Interview with Quentin Young

Linguascope

Spellmaster

MFLresources

Blog posts on PowerPoint

TES ICT blog

Camtasia

Dearing Language Review

Friday VoxPop on picking up rubbish

Video VoxPops at Language World 2008

Primary MFL Ning

EdTechRoundup

Interview with Kath Holton

Interview with Vincent Everett

Playing Nintendo DSs on way to France

moblogging posts

Flickr

SoundTransit

CrazyTalk and tweeting your network