Like many others, I was delighted when the long-awaited article Flash Forward finally appeared in the TES magazine last month after weeks of speculation on Twitter of its potential content, direction and style! A refreshing and positive read from start to finish, the four page spread celebrates the experiences of a growing grassroots network of language teachers from the UK who are passionate about the potential of using Web 2.0 tools and sharing their ideas with others.
Included are many individual quotes from leading practitioners enthusing about the power of blogs, podcasts, Twitter and MFL Flashmeetings for developing their own professional development and giving them practical ideas for use in the classroom. These were taken from comprehensive telephone interviews with author Yojana Sharma who I understand was given the brief to concentrate on new technologies in MFL and arguably provide a response to the earlier TES article Social networking shunned as aid to language teaching based on a recent EU report.
As host of the MFL forum, I was asked to suggest some top tools for enhancing language learning in the classroom by TES Magazine editor Jo Faragher. So I crowdsourced my Twitter network for their opinions on Audacity, wikis, VoiceThread, Wallwisher and Xtranormal and then condensed their responses into a couple of hundred words. No easy feat!
I also said the following on this thread on the TES MFL forum once the article was published:
"It was great to see such an encouraging story about the great work of a group of enthusiastic language teachers working so well together, collaborating and inspiring each other with resources and helpful links in an informal supportive environment."
and did a Wordle to see what the most common themes were. Interesting!
So if you feel like shunning the detractors, bucking the trend and joining the MFL Twitterati in the grassroots, you know where to find us. Just get in touch and we'll give you all the support you'll need!
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