TES ICT Blog: Using freeware to spice up your language lessons

20 April 2006 at 10.15

Using freeware to spice up your language lessons

MFL teacher Joe Dale returns with the fifth in his series of blogs devoted to using ICT in language lessons. This time he's using freeware to make language lessons interactive What a buzz! I’ve just come back from Language World 2006 in Manchester and seen a wealth of inspiring sessions on the use of ICT in MFL. Check out some pictures here taken by Helen Myers from the Ashcombe School on behalf of the Association for Language Learning. Unfortunately, I missed Helen’s session Working together to share best practice and resources...today and in the future!, but got ‘caught’ in a murder scene by Mark Pentleton, Project Coordinator, of the Partners in Excellence project. in his session Using photo-stories to develop writing skills. He was showing how  easy it is to use the software Comic Life to make up a story on the spot. The result was a comic case of attempted homicide entitled Love Triangle photo-story.  At my session Free games, time-saving utilities and fun with MS Word: integrating ICT into the MFL classroom, my intentions were far less malevolent. In fact, I will freely admit, my only misdemeanour was to aim to show delegates how easy it can be to make interactive activities with just a data projector, laptop and readily available software. Hardly a capital offence. ATnotes was one such example. This software lets you create virtual Post-It notes for your Windows desktop. Using ATnotes you can carry out tasks including: drag ‘n’ drop create games, such as noughts and crosses create reminders of grammar points, build visual prompts for gender and adjectival agreement erase on screen annotations in PowerPoint The notes can be formatted and saved (font, size, background colour) then revealed on screen in a few clicks. They can be dragged and resized anywhere on the desktop and hidden until manually activated. As well as a helpful aide-mémoire, ATnotes can also be used in a variety of ways for the purpose of whole class teaching with a data projector and/or interactive whiteboard in MFL classes. For example, to support word, sentence and text level work, notes can be dragged and dropped into the correct order. This works particularly well when a PowerPoint slide with a simple background colour is running simultaneously behind the notes (see tips below). If you use PowerPoint to make a noughts and crosses grid containing images or text signifying new language, you can create notes with large O’s and X’s positioned on them at the bottom of the screen. Pupils can then simply drag the notes into position having answered a question correctly. You can also format the notes to have different coloured backgrounds to denote whether nouns written upon them are masculine, feminine or plural. I personally use the convention that words or images which have a blue background are masculine nouns, pink for feminine nouns and green for plural nouns. As I’ve said in previous posts, I apply this ‘code’ throughout my teaching (ATnotes, PowerPoint presentations, digital worksheets, grammar wallcharts etc) and I find it is very effective as a visual reminder of which nouns are which gender. For example, to remind pupils of the gender of certain classroom objects, you can launch your different coloured notes so that the ‘un’, ‘une’ and ‘des’ notes, coloured blue, pink and green respectively are at the top of the screen in a row with the other notes containing nouns such as stylo, gomme, cahier, règle, crayon, trousse etc appear in a mixed order at the bottom of the screen. Next to test if pupils can remember the genders, you can change the background of the notes to a different (not pink, blue or green) colour. The aim is then for pupils to drag the nouns into their corresponding group according to whether they are masculine, feminine or plural. Simple! In addition, the notes can serve as grammar prompts to digital worksheets. You can create a note with a grammar reminder on it eg. “Remember to use du in front of a masculine noun, de la in front of a feminine noun, de l’ in front of a noun starting with a vowel or h and des in front of a plural noun...”. By positioning the cursor on the edge of a note it will become a double headed arrow. You can then simply drag an edge and ‘roll up’ a note, so that pupils can no longer see it. If it is needed it can simply be unrolled again. This can useful for differentiating tasks for pupils with different abilities. More Practical Tips It’s a good idea to run a single coloured PowerPoint slide behind your notes to focus your pupils’ concentration on the activity in hand. To change background colour, click on the Format menu in PowerPoint and select Background. Click on the dropdown menu in the Background dialogue box and then More Colors… You should now see a honeycomb of different colours. Choose the one you want, click OK and then Apply. As contrast is important, it is probably better to go for a light background, so the notes stand out more. I tend to go for yellow myself. A little trick to stop pupils from accidentally ending the Slide Show by touching the screen instead of an Atnote is to set up the slide so it no longer advances with the mouse. Click on the Slide Show menu and select Slide Transition. A pane should appear on the right of your screen. Underneath where it says Advance slide, remove the tick in the box next to On mouse click by clicking on it. Now when you run the Slide Show you can click on the slide without resulting in the infamous black screen declaring End of slide show, click to exit. To save lesson time, you can set up your PowerPoint file to automatically open in Slide Show Mode. Having changed your slide’s background colour and removed the tick from the Advance slide on mouse click box, save it as a PowerPoint show. In the File menu, click on Save as… Then in the Save as dialogue box, select the Save as type dropdown menu and scroll down to PowerPoint Show. Select it and click Save. The presentation will be saved by default in My Documents. When you go to My Documents, you’ll see the file looks different to a standard PowerPoint file. That is because you’ve created a pps as opposed to a ppt file. The only difference is that the former opens in Slide Show Mode when doubled clicked. If you want to edit a pps file, just open it from within PowerPoint and then save it again as a PowerPoint Show. In the latest version of PowerPoint (PowerPoint 2003), the pen pointer tool has been updated to include many more options eg Ballpoint Pen, Felt Tip Pen, Highlighter and Eraser. This is good news for teachers who like a bit of variety when circling, underlining, drawing arrows, or making other annotations during a presentation. However, for those with PowerPoint 2002, or earlier, screen annotations made with the pen pointer tool in PowerPoint can still be individually ‘rubbed out’ by dragging across them with an ATnote. To be able to annotate in Slide Show Mode, change the arrow pointer to the pen pointer by pressing CTRL + P. To erase any on-screen annotations, press E and to change the pen pointer back to the arrow pointer, press Ctrl + A. You can download ATnotes from the ATnotes site. Language World 2007 will be at the University of Oxford 30th-31st March.

Comments (7)

I missed Language World in Manchester - I'm just recovering from major surgery. I would have liked to be there. ATNotes is a useful tool. I have had a link to in in my Favourites for some time: http://atnotes.fr.st/ but I now get a "discontinued" message when I access this site. Where is ATNotes now? Regarding the creation of post-it notes and annotations, this is also useful in Word documents in electronic format - which can be done using the standard Word tools. We deal with this in the following ICT for Language Teachers modules: Module 1.3 (Using text tools in the Modern Foreign Languages classroom), Section 8.1 - where we show a downloadable Word document enhanced with an audio file and post-it annotations relating to items of vocab. Module 4.1 (Computer Aided Assessment and language learning, Section 3.1 - where we show how post-it notes can be used in marking students' work submitted in electronic format. See http://www.ict4lt.org

Posted by: Graham Davies on 21 April 2006 at 10.29

Found it! http://atnotes.free.fr/download.html The free program has moved. The problem with a lot of free stuff on the Web is that either it's here today and gone tomorrow or it begins by being offered for free and then the next time that you access the site you find there is a charge. It's called "casting bait", I believe.

Posted by: Graham Davies on 21 April 2006 at 16.29

Thank you for your comments as always Graham. To make it clearer exactly what to do to make notes. I've written some more advice here on what to do. Once you've downloaded ATnotes from http://atnotes.free.fr/download.html and installed it by following the on-screen instructions, a little post-it note icon should then show in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. If you double click on this, a note should appear with a flashing cursor in it. Type in your text as normal and you should find you’ve just made your first note! To format your notes, right click the note and select settings. The dialogue box ATnotes Settings should then come up. This will allow you to change formatting such as font, text colour, background colour and even transparency. In the preview window, you can get an idea of what the note will look like. You can save these settings from here and give them each a name. The text needs to be fairly big to be readable from a distance so I’d recommend formatting such as Arial, Regular, 24 pt with black text on a yellow background for regular notes as an example. If you want to practice gender, it’s simple just to change the background colour (blue, pink and green) and then save the new formatting each time with the names masculine, feminine and plural. It’s also easy to change the formatting of multiple notes all in one go. Hold down the CTRL key and click on each note in turn. Little dots should appear around their borders. Right click one note and select settings. Click on the dropdown menu underneath the preview pane where your customised formatting should appear and select one. The preview pane will then change to show your saved formatting. Click OK and hey presto all the selected notes will have changed. To save a set of notes, right click the main ATnotes icon again and select Note List. Hold down the CTRL key and select all the notes you want to save together. Their backgrounds should turn blue when selected. Click on the Export icon in the top left of your screen. Give your set of notes a name such as classroom objects and click Save. Now you can delete the notes you’ve made, but still retrieve them later by clicking on the Import icon in the Note Lists dialogue box. Hope that helps. Best wishes Joe P.S It does say that ATnotes have been discontinued on the site, but it seems what that means is that it is still available to download, but that the software will not be developed in the future.

Posted by: Joe Dale on 21 April 2006 at 20.58

Joe writes: "It does say that ATnotes have been discontinued on the site, but it seems what that means is that it is still available to download, but that the software will not be developed in the future." I've seen this happen many, many times with downloadable freeware. Freeware is often developed by enthusiasts who just run out of steam or who get fed up with being bombarded by technical enquiries that they cannot cope with. Another problem with freeware or shareware - and I write from personal experience - is that it may be packaged with adware or spyware that attempts to keep a watch on your Web browsing habits and then you get hit with unwanted adverts or spam. This is how a lot of freeware and shareware is financed. Whenever I download a program of any sort from the Web - free or paid for - I scan my computer thoroughly to check that it has not been infected with adware of spyware. It's surprising what one finds lurking on one's hard disk! My computer is set to run Window Washer on boot up, which gets rid of most of the rubbish left over from previous Web browsing sessions. I also run SpyBot Search and Destroy to locate and destroy adware and spyware. Spy Sweeper and Norton AV can also trap adware and spyware.

Posted by: Graham Davies on 22 April 2006 at 10.35

Dear Graham, Thank you for your advice on how to be aware of the potential threat of spyware and adware with freeware and shareware. However, as far as I am aware, we don't need to be too wary of this particularly freeware as I believe it is free from such 'malware', to be fair.

Posted by: Joe Dale on 22 April 2006 at 23.34

To get back to the practicalities of using the software for a moment, you may have found that you've been able to create a note, but then it suddenly and inexplicably 'disappears' from the screen. To avoid frustration and stop notes from ‘disappearing’, right click the icon in the bottom right of the screen and select Always on Top. You can always find any note you’ve made by looking in the Note List by right clicking the ATnotes icon again and selecting Note List. Notes which you’ve created, but haven’t saved will be there.

Posted by: Joe Dale on 22 April 2006 at 23.36

Just an addendum to what I wrote earlier and to Joe's reply: It is probably worth issuing a cautionary message when you recommend freeware or shareware, i.e. indicate that users should always check for adware or spyware after downloading it. This should keep you in the clear, just in case someone decides to sue you for giving bad advice. As I operate as a free-lance trainer/adviser, I have an insurance policy that includes protection against this sort of thing, i.e. under the heading "professional indemnity". I have created a "cautionary tale" page at my website: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/bugs.htm

Posted by: Graham Davies on 23 April 2006 at 11.27