Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:

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.

Podcast your Flashmeetings

If you would like to capture the audio of a Flashmeeting so you can podcast it, I suggest you use the tools Total Recorder and The Levelator to do so. The former can capture anything which goes through your soundcard and the latter automatically balances the audio levels of the different speakers so you get a consistent sound. This is what I did for the recent EdTechRoundup on VLEs and Glow and it worked like a treat.

Follow these simple steps if you'd like to do the same:

1. Set up the parameters of Total Recorder to record as a wav file (PCM - 44100Hz, 16 bit Stereo)
2. Record the Flashmeeting, save the resulting 'output' file and drop it on to The Levelator
3. Import the new file into Audacity to edit out any mistakes and export as mp3
4. Upload on to Podomatic

Easy. Admittedly you have to pay for Total Recorder, but it is totally worth it.

Live Blogging with Cover It Live

In this morning's OZ/NZ Educators Flashmeeting, Jess McCulloch introduced us to new live blogging tool Cover IT Live a type of moderated chatroom which could be used across classrooms anywhere in the world as any new message can be approved by the teacher before going live.

The chat window can be embedded on a blog and once the session has finished it can be replayed too. There is also a cool voting tool too.

During the chat, the teacher can add images, audio or video files and can give permission for certain pupils to contribute without moderation. See Jess describing Cover IT Live below and check out the links above to find out more about how we got on.

Have a listen too to this longer explanation from Jess who I skyped after the meeting. Thanks Jess for sharing.

Download Jess_McCulloch_on_Cover_It_Live.mp3

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.

Using Puppets for Primary MFL

One of Lisa Stevens' Top Tips for Primary Language Learning is to use puppets to promote speaking skills and foster motivation.

In this clip, recorded with Camtasia from a Flashmeeting session and uploaded to TeacherTube, Lisa introduces her friendly classroom aids and tells us about the special roles they play in her classroom.

e.g.

buy your puppets from places such as Ikea, Tesco or charity shops

name your puppets in the target language

use them to introduce new language and to take part in role plays

make sure they only speak in the target language

give them their own personalities and voice (as part of a family?)

encourage shy pupils to speak as they assume the character of the puppet and lose inhibitions about using their own voice

use puppets which make a noise (squeak) to grab pupils' attention

give each pupil an individual sock puppet which they can customise and use for pair work or for presentations

create a reward system where pupils add body parts to their sock puppets (eyes, antenna etc) for good examples of speaking and good behaviour

buy masks or create your own with lollipop sticks

have fun and use your imagination with purposeful speaking tasks

use finger puppets while singing songs to be pro-active and indicate the appearance of different characters or phrases

and here is the audio only version too:

Download Lisa_Stevens_on_Puppets.mp3

Bucharest eTwinning Conference 2008

This weekend, I was in Bucharest for the Annual European eTwinning Conference and had a busy time networking, attending great sessions, blogging and twittering.

Highlights for me included learning about the award winning Planète@Dos project organised by Ria De Wilde and Marina Marino, attending the great eTwinning and Tools session given by John Warwick, Christian Komonen and Thomas Maier and chatting with Irish MFL teacher Eileen Brennan-Freeman and Languages Advisor Ann McQuiston.

It was an interesting experience to visit an eastern European country for the first time and compare it with other parts of Europe. The trip also gave me plenty of ideas for Chris Fuller's Euro 2008 project as coincidentally we've drawn Romania which is handy.

Thanks to the British Council for giving me another opportunity to attend an event of this kind and I would encourage anyone reading this blog to get involved in eTwinning themselves. It could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Have a look at this example of traditional Romanian dancing which I filmed with my digital camera at the gala dinner which should give you a flavour.

TES ICT Blog: EdTechRoundup

ICT in the classroom: EdTechRoundup

MFL teacher Joe Dale explains the value of EdTechRoundup, a podcast explaining how technology can improve learning in the classroom.

30 January 2008 at 00.00

EdTechRoundup is a new podcast produced by a growing group of UK-based teachers who are keen to share their ideas on how new technologies can be used in the classroom to enhance learning. Very much a collaborative project, contributors who include colleagues from both primary and secondary backgrounds have been using weekly Flashmeetings, the ETR wiki and Twitter to decide on and organise the look and feel of the show.

The launch of EdTechRoundup was officially announced by Doug Belshaw, a history teacher at Ridgewood School in Doncaster, at BETT recently during TeachMeet 08 organised by Ewan McIntosh. You can see the moment itself by watching this Flashmeeting and fast forwarding to 2:43:55 when Doug appears on stage.

Episode 1 of the ETR podcast is now available for download from the ETR blog. You can also subscribe to it via this RSS feed in a reader such as Google Reader or iTunes by clicking on this link.

ETR 1 features two Scottish presenters: David Noble a chartered teacher from Hillside School in Fife and Sinclair Mackenzie, a physics teacher from Thurso High School who explain the intended format of the podcast and the intention of having a rolling programme of presenters for each show.

In this inaugural podcast, David and Sinclair first describe some of the ways they are using ICT in their own schools with blogs and Flashmeetings. They then go on to discuss a common frustration faced by many teachers around the UK who are not able to use certain tools such as Voki or YouTube in the classroom because they are blocked by their local authority through fear of misuse.

David mentions the excellent ScotEduBlogs which brings together posts from bloggers around Scotland as well as further afield and is a great place to catch up on the thoughts and experiences of educationalists using blogs to reflect on their own practice.

In the 'ICT buffet section' of the podcast, Sinclair tells listeners about Classtools.net which he has chosen as his 'educational tool of the week'. Classtools.net is a site which allows you to create a range of Flash exercises which you can use on an interactive whiteboard, save as a webpage or embed on a blog or site. Sinclair says how he used the Fishbone template to teach his pupils about balanced and unbalanced forces and how the History department in his school are using the Post-it template for annotating images with colour-coded notes.

Next is the 'guest interview' where I am asked to suggest five ways in which blogs can be used in class or school. Here are my top tips for educational blogging:

• use a blog as a way of publishing your pupils' spoken or written work to a real audience
• encourage others to leave comments for assessment for learning purposes
• moblog a trip abroad with a mobile phone or USB modem
• create a radio or tv station
• encourage creative writing with individual learner blogs

I finish by suggesting that teachers could set up a mother blog to tie sets of individual blogs together which share a common theme.

To round up the podcast, David recommends Edublogs as a suitable blogging platform to be used in education because it is free and doesn't have a Next Blog button like Blogger which can take you to a site containing inappropriate content.

The show notes for the podcast can be found on this ETR1 Del.icio.us page.

If you are are a UK educator and would like to get involved with the EdTechRoundup project, why not add your name to the ETR wiki or join one of the Sunday night Flashmeetings from 8.00-9.00? You'd be more than welcome.

Hosts for ETR2 will be Tom Barrett from Priestsic Primary and Nursery School in Nottingham and John Johnston from Sandaig Primary School in Glasgow.

Moblogger on tour

On tour again around the country, my new USB modem is proving a very handy way of getting online anytime anywhere.

Today, for example, I checked my emails on the train on the way to Bristol while listening to both of Chris Fuller's unedited sessions at The Isle of Wight Conference on my iRiver.

Tonight I watched Ewan's ULearn keynote on Google Video before going out to dinner and last night, I took part in Paul Harrington's latest Transglobal Flashmeeting with a 7.2 mbps connection.

Although admittedly it does seem to fluctuate while on the train, the 3G connectivity in Oxford, Brighton and Bristol so far has been solid and reliable. Having the modem also means that I don't have to pay inflated prices to get online while staying in a hotel and I can surf for as long as I like.

I expect to find the same moblogging outcomes in Sheffield tomorrow evening, but now time for bed!

Nice to give you a different background to look at too away from my study for a change.

Flashmeeting in Education

In the latest issue of Computers in Classrooms edited by Terry Freedman is an article by Welsh blogger Paul Harrington called Flashmeeting in Education which describes how to get started with the free and easy to use videoconferencing tool. The article explains:

• how a basic Flashmeeting is organised
• how it can be used in education
• what a Flashmeeting screen looks like
• how to set up a Flashmeeting
• practical issues of organising a Flashmeeting
• how Flashmeeting compares with other videoconferencing tools

If you'd like to join Paul and others for a Flashmeeting this Saturday, he has booked another two hour Transglobal Edubloggers session for 10.00 pm (UK time) for a maximum of twenty participants. All are welcome.

To download the article as a pdf file, click on the following link You will need to sign up first though by clicking here.

Flashmeeting at MFL Show and Tell

During the MFL Show and Tell tomorrow evening, I've booked a 30 minute Flashmeeting for those who can't make it to the Isle of Wight this weekend, but still want to be able to join in the fun. If you would like to take part in the recorded session as a guest, just click on this link and give permission for your webcam or microphone to be accessed. Easy. See you at 9.30 UK time.