Following their appearance at SETT 06, pupils from Woodhill Primary School in Bishopsbriggs, East Dunbartonshire have been in the news again for their innovative use of blogs and podcasts for language learning and forging links with schools across the UK and Europe. Last Friday, the Woodhill bloggers were recognised for their trail-blazing achievements by winning the International Schools award and being runners up for the BT Scotland ICT Learning award at The Scottish Education Awards 2007, in the City Halls, Glasgow.
Two days prior to the ceremony, when Catriona Forrest from the BBC visited the school, she found that pupils were happy to talk about how blogs and podcasts were helping them learn French and have fun at the same time. One of the pupils, Christopher blogged:
"I really enjoy French because it will help me when I go to secondary school. It will also help me in Primary 7 when I move up after the summer holidays. The things it helps me with are pronunciation, vocabulary which sometimes is very difficult and it means we can talk a second language."
In her article, Pupils lead the way with blogging, Catriona explains how:
"Recordings of their voices can be heard on MP3 files, speaking French with accents which have astounded experts across all educational sectors. The children can download the audio files at home and listen again to their work. They also download worksheets at home and use these to write out answers as homework. Their writing in French is confident and structured, and the pupils are easily able to explain their work to visiting adults. This is a long way from the days of rote learning."
She also describes the Woodhill approach as being "at the forefront of a new digital learning phenomenon" and that "both teachers and parents say they have seen a huge improvement in their vocabulary, confidence in speaking and their accents since they started the blogs in January."
Watch this video uploaded to Blip.tv and see what an amazing day the Woodhill bloggers had on Friday. Well done Woodhill for promoting language learning and 'international citizenship' in such an inspirational way. Keep up the excellent work.
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