Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:

Introducing the aPLaNet project!

Autonomous personal learning networks for language teachers (aPLaNet) is a two year EU project funded by the Life Long Learning Programme designed to encourage language teachers who don't normally use social media in their professional life to see the value of nurturing a personal learning network (PLN) and the benefits of doing so for their own classroom practice.

The core idea for the project came from a Skype conversation between Joel Josephson from the University of West Scotland  and e-learning consultant Shelly Terrell following the 2009 Virtual Round Table conference where Shelly showed Joel how to maximise his use of Twitter to connect with like-minded educators from around the world. Inspired by the effectiveness of this form of online mentoring, Joel decided to put together a bid to the Life Long Learning Programme along with seven partner institutions from across Europe and was fortunate enough to receive around 280,000 euros!

Here are two short recordings taken from the Virtual Round Table webinar referred to below where Joel introduces the project and talks about the value of having a PLN.

Download Joel_Josephson_introduces_aPLaNet_at_VRT

Download Joel_Josephson_on_the_value_of_a_PLN_at_VRT

With the funding in place, each team was assigned different responsibilities or work packages and began creating resources to support their different roles. Calls for associate partners were made in January 2010, and a year later the aPLaNet project website officially launched, followed by a Facebook page, Twitter account and Ning shortly afterwards. Using social media to build a community of like-minded educators around the project has resulted in over 140 institutions (associate partners) from 33 countries getting involved already!

It seems the aPLaNet team are using these drivers in the following way:

• Facebook - a directory of related news, events and blog posts
• Ning – a place to meet make connections, join sub-groups and access downloadable resources
• Twitter – a vehicle for sharing conversations and crowd-sourcing information from the community.

There is a Google+ site too and this duplicates some of the Facebook content.

Colleagues from the seven partner institutions have met up face to face three times so far in Barcelona, Athens and Brno and each time they have fedback progress to the associate partners via video-conference. To access these webinars, click on the following links. Please note you will need to sign up for a Wiziq account.

• Barcelona
• Athens
• Brno

In March 2011, the aPLaNet team comprising Shelly Terrell, Ann Forman, Joel Josephson, Marisa Constantinides, Graham Stanley and Cornelia Kreis-Meyer (Moderator) took part in an online panel discussion during Heike Philp‘s Virtual Round Table Conference and gave associate partners and other interested parties the opportunity to find out more about the project.

You can access the recording from here and here is Marisa Constantinides' prezi about PLNs.

In July 2011, the team carried out an online survey regarding the use of social networks amongst language teachers in the EU. The feedback collected using a Google Form was used to improve and extend the resources and methodologies being prepared and give an insight on how educators are currently using social networks.

One of the project's objectives is to make it easier for teachers to identify useful ICT tools for language teaching and to help teachers in this area, there will be guides, video tutorials and face to face training opportunities for them to get involved especially with respect to a PLN. Joel Josephson and his team are also going to create a Twitter tool called Language Resource Filter Application (LRFA) which will collect tweets containing the hashtag #lrfa.This could be a useful way of pooling resources although as Graham Davies points out curating the content may be time-consuming.

Another core objective is to facilitate a mentoring system via the Ning subgroups whereby volunteers choose to either mentor newbies or be mentees themselves. If they prefer, it is possible for mentees to go through the materials on their own as a self-access pilot and have a series of tasks to complete with a final evaluation. Please note due to the nature of the EU funding for the project, mentees have to come from Europe, but mentors can be from anywhere in the world.

To become a mentor or mentee, you need to sign up to the Ning, fill in your profile and join the mentor or mentee group. There are three ways in which mentors and mentees can find each other

1. Look for someone who is listed as wanting help in the mentees group. Contact them and offer to be their mentor
2. Be approached by a prospective mentee looking for someone to mentor them.
3. Be recommended by an aPLaNet partner to connect with a mentee or mentor

As a mentee, you will be expected to fill in a questionnaire so your mentor can analyse the areas where you need support. The job of the mentor is then to use SMART criteria to set objectives and provide the appropriate support so mentees don’t feel overwhelmed and can manage their time effectively. This could involve for example learning how to use tools like Twitter, Facebook and Ning so mentees can make connections with other like-minded teachers and in time become autonomous. Ultimately, the idea is to have an on-going cycle of mentees who become mentors themselves once they’ve been through the process.

Guides for being a mentor or mentee will be made available on the Ning very soon.

Different levels of blog badges from bronze to platinum will be awarded to mentors according to the number of mentees they have. Mentors can have as many mentees as they feel they have time for.

aPLaNet Mentoring workshop

The British Council in Barcelona is responsible for the mentoring side of the project and the first orientation meeting took place on 23rd November 2011. It was delivered by Graham Stanley from the Brno meet up and the webinar can be accessed here.

At the end of the session, we had the opportunity to make comments and I suggested it would be a good idea to encourage mentors and mentees to record their exchanges so they could refer back to useful conversations and possibly share the highlights with the community.

Download Joe_Dale_in_aPLaNet_mentoring_session

In this clip, Graham talks about the project at the 2011 IATEFL Besig Summer Symposium in Preston.

The mentoring pilot begins January 2012 and resources will be available in Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Spanish, English, Romanian, Turkish, German, French and Italian.

aPLaNet presentation

Here is an example mentor presentation from one of the partner institutions and this clip filmed in Brno gives a nice overview of the project to date.

Undoubtedly, one of the challenges to the success of aPLaNet will be encouraging enough mentees to sign up. Joel Josephson recently wrote a guest post on Shelly Terrell’s blog concerning this very issue. He feels the two main reasons why teachers don’t use social media to connect with other educators around the world is time and privacy. Trying to reach people who don’t know about the power of PLNs or who feel they don’t have the time to engage with social media may be problematic. I hope not, as I think the premise of the project is fantastic. Time will tell though.

Joel describes a PLN as being:

"like a language teachers staff room and a supportive educational authority in one. It is a global community of language educators, just like you, that have come together to support and help each other improve and update their language teaching by using and sharing the resources that are constantly being developed on the Internet." (Joel Josephson 2010 - taken from the Associate Partner form from Graham Stanley’s post)

In the article, Social Networking - How it is shaping my professional development, Marisa Constantinides is equally enthusiastic about the value of a personal learning network:

"I am now involved in many exciting new collaborative projects, simply by being part of this global conversation. For example, by engaging with my peers on Twitter, it has become possible for me to work on aPLaNet, a major EU funded project which aims to help teachers in their autonomous professional development through the use of such social networks as Facebook, Twitter and Nings." (Marisa Constantinides Autumn 2011)

Anne Foreman, another of the official partners described PLNs as "Do-IT-Yourself Professional Development" in her presentation REAL TICE | Making sense of chaos | Madrid which I love! I also liked the text chat comment from RaquelEFL in the Virtual Round Table session where she quoted Alexander Graham Bell and described the following as a PLN Mantra!

"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds."

In conclusion, I encourage you to listen to this 50 minute podcast interview I recorded over Skype with Graham Stanley from the British Council in Barcelona (No 2 in the picture above!) as it gives a comprehensive overview of the aPLaNet project and fills in any gaps I may have missed in this post!

Download Graham_Stanley_on_aPLaNet

Summary

• introducing the aPLaNet project and explaining what the acronym stands for
• explaining the reasons for launching the project as a way of bridging the gap between those language teachers who use social media and those who don't
• promoting the concept of using a PLN and particularly Twitter as a professional development tool and showing the benefits of doing so
• piloting a mentoring and self-access approach
• explaining what is a personal learning network, the origin of the concept and the value of having a PLN
• maintaining contacts and support through a PLN instead of being tied to a PLE, VLE via an institution
• ways in which PLNs can help professional development
• the target audience for aPLaNet - language teachers who are experienced and inexperiend users of social media
• the challenge of finding mentees
• involving colleagues through face to face workshops as well as online mentoring
• becoming a mentor or mentee by joining the aPLaNet Ning and going on to the next step
• explaining the self-access option and carrying out a webquest
• translating the resources into a variety of languages and encouraging MFL teachers as well English teachers to get involved
• making the Ning the hub of the project
• where the idea for the aPLaNet project came from
• bringing together seven partner institutions for the eu bid
• asking for associate partners in January 2010 and seeing a great reponse
• the benefits of the partner institutions meeting up face to face and agreeing on the first steps
• preparing for the life of aPLaNet after the end of the project in order to make it sustainable for years to come
• explaining the resources in more detail: (Mentor and Mentee support guides, feedback questionnaires, teacher diary template which can be completed online or on paper, 150 page teacher reference guide, series of online workshops which will be recorded, webquests, video tutorials)
• explaining the differences between the mentor and mentee questionnaire and the importance of collecting data about the use of social media by language teachers to update resources and improve the effectiveness of the project
• explaining what are the markers of success?
• creating a cycle of mentees who become autonomous mentors themselves
• presenting the results of the project at an aPLaNet themed conference in Istanbul in September 2012 and feeding back on what has been achieved
• following the progress of the project and involving associate partners via webinars to maintain interest
• the importance of creating a community spirit around the project and drawing on members' PLNs
• sharing Twitter lists of UK language teachers and world language teachers in the first mentoring workshop webinar
• creating a report on the use of social networks amongst language teachers based on the feedback from the July 2011 survey which fed into the section on social networking in the teacher guide
• crowdsourcing colleagues for recommend resources and links before creating the mentor guide and seeing a great response
• drawing upon the "generosity and volunteer spirit of all of these wonderful language teachers all over the world"
• clarifying that during the life of the project, mentees are expected to be from the European Union due to the nature of the funding, but mentors can be from anywhere in the world
• rewarding mentors with different blog badges (bronze, silver, gold and platinum) which denote the number of mentees each mentor is supporting
• giving a t-shirt prize to the first mentor who mentors eleven mentees and achieves platinumn status!
• presenting aPLaNet at the Virtual Round Table conference 2011 and trying to connect with as many language teachers as possible and keep their interest
• explaining how the Language Resource Filter is designed to work as a way of crowdsourcing useful language specific resources and making them available on the Ning
• finishing off with some thoughts on quotes from Joel and Marisa about the value of PLNs
• seeing a PLN as a virtual staffroom full of connected, helpful and sharing language teachers
• giving a heads up to the MFL Twitterati!
• find a world of opportunities arising by simply posting on Twitter
• getting involved in the iTILT project about helping language teachers make the most of interactive whiteboards
• being asked to speak at a conference through Facebook
• using Twitter can open up a whole new world to language teachers and broaden their horizons exponentially - they can find answers to pressing questions 24/7, help another colleague in return, gauge opinion and discover a neverending stream of useful information from their online community
• concluding remarks

I hope you've enjoyed learning about the aPLaNet project and hearing testimonies of others on the value of personal learning networks.

Here are a couple of presentations which may just do the trick if you're not convinced already!

Building a Personal Learning Network

View more presentations from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

I encourage you to get involved with the aPLaNet project. It could be a wonderful opportunity for you. Developments in the new year are sure to be out of this world! Follow that pilot!

If you can't wait until then though, check out this Scoop.it! magazine I've curated which focuses on PLNs and Twitter as professional development tools. Enjoy!

Dr Lid King on Lingu@net Worldwide

Download Dr_Lid_King_on_Lingu@net_Worldwide

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr Lid King Director of The Languages Company and National Director for Languages in England from 2003 to 2011 about the Lingu@net Worldwide project which launched in May of this year.

Aimed at adult language learners and teachers looking for useful resources and advice, the new version of the website is an evolution of the Lingu@net Europa initiative which began in 2001 and is now available in an impressive 32 languages!

As Lid explains in our short discussion, the multilingual site is divided into four sections.

• What's your level?
• Ways to learn
• Meeting point
• Search

In the first section, users have the opportunity to assess their language level to help them to evaluate which resources will be the most appropriate for their needs. The second section allows them to explore information about learning styles and read about the experiences of other language learners. The third section suggests how learners can keep in contact with each other and the final section lets them search through nearly five thousand free online resources which have been quality assessed by the Lingu@net Worldwide team.

The highlights section on the right-hand side of the main interface features links to the latest resources and underneath are the Twitter and Facebook accounts associated with the site. Lid admits that they are still experimenting with the use of social media, but ultimately would like to nurture a community of like-minded learners and teachers who wish to comment on resources and add their own.

If you'd like to get involved, the team would welcome your feedback and suggestions on how the site can further develop.

Thank you to Lid for sparing the time to raise our awareness of this exciting free resource and for giving us the opportunity to participate in its growth. Comments are welcome as always.

Going Live on Radio Edutalk!

I have been a fan of the audio experiments of John Johnston and David Noble since I first got into podcasting five years ago. They were inspirations to me then and they still are now. So when last week, David invited me to take part in the first official broadcast of their new project Edutalk Radio, I jumped at the chance!

The idea of Edutalk Radio is twofold, first to live stream random selections of the existing bank of audio collected on the Edutalk site and secondly to offer educators the opportunity to call or Skype into a live phone in and chat about topics of their choice.

The topic of discussion last Thursday was educational podcasting and Stephen Reid from A Higher Place kicked off proceedings brilliantly by calling in on his smartphone live from his train carriage using a 3G connection while David and John endeavoured to patch the audio through into the live stream!

As you will hear, it did work and Stephen was able to share his expertise with the hosts and of course the listeners. He talked about the key messages he likes to convey to teachers when training them on the power of podcasting and how he tries to dispell their misconceptions through practical examples. I loved the way he added how pupils just go for it in his experience and don't seem to share the same concerns.

My section was recorded through Skype too and you can hear the difference in audio quality between the iPhone's microphone and my Samson CO3U below.

Download Stephen_Reid_on_Edutalk_radio

Download Joe_Dale_on_Edutalk_radio

Show notes for the episode can be found here.

Check out too John's reflections on trialling the tech and his pre-launch demo with Ian Hallahan where they discuss the evolution of the TeachMeet movement in Scotland and further a field.

Pioneers of educational podcasting in Scotland, John and David have been experimenting with the power of audio in and out of the classroom for the past six years with projects such as Radio Sandaig and Booruch. In 2009, they came up with the idea of encouraging delegates attending the Scottish Learning Festival to reflect on the event by using their mobile devices to send audio feedback to a Posterous blog. SLFtalk was born.

Download John_Johnston_on_SLF_Talk

As John explains in this short interview I recorded with him at the time, he was pleased with this first attempt of gathering the voices of educators together in the same place and the seamless way Posterous coped with the task. Using social media platforms like Twitter certainly helped to spread the word as well as specially-produced SLFtalk cards with detailed instructions we gave out over the two days.

Buoyed by this initial success and Edublog award nomination, David and John launched Edutalk, an extension of the SLFtalk idea and a further opportunity for teachers, pupils and educational professionals to capture their thoughts on a mobile device and share them with a wider audience 24/7.

To help build up a bank of user generated content, the duo challenged people to post a new recording everyday and this certainly got the ball rolling.

Not content to sit on their laurels, David and John then decided to start up Edutalkr, an online panel discussion featuring specialists in their fields such as Professor Stephen Heppell and other learning enthusiasts wishing to debate the educational issues of the day from their mobile phones, landlines or SkypeOut.

In August 2010, the TESS published the article Audio explorers right on track which catalogued the progress of the project to date and acknowledged its impact in its first year.

A month later, the team presented their findings at the Scottish Learning Festival in the session Edutalk - Mobile audio publishing by educators. I was lucky enough to be there in person and to record proceedings including the iPadio + Skype conference call test involving willing volunteers scattered around the exhibition hall!

Download Edutalk_mobile_audio_publishing_by_educators

For this year's SLF, Education Scotland joined in the fun by encouraging folk to use the Edutalk tag and to publish their thoughts through different channels. A resounding endorsement of the Edutalk project and now with the launch of Radio Edutalk, things are continuing to go from strength to strength!

ducation Scotland is encouraging the use of Edutalk tagging through different channels

ililc 2012: Quality CPD on a budget

Languages South East are delighted to announce details of speakers and workshops for this year’s ICT and Languages conference. Taking place at Southampton University on 25th-26th February, ililc 2012 is THE must attend event of the year. A smorgasbord of exciting seminars and hands-on workshops await the lucky delegates and the opportunities to network with like-minded colleagues will be immense.

Book by the end of this month for the amazing early bird rate and start sorting your transport and accommodation now!

Come along too to the free MFL Show and Tell event on the Saturday night at The Highfield House Hotel where everyone is welcome to speak, sing a song or play the ukulele, if you fancy (at no additional cost)!

For those arriving on the Friday, we will be having a get together at Ceno restaurant as well. Would be great to see you there!

Check out this Google Map for more details and contact Zena Hilton on [email protected] or call 023 8059 9135 if you have any queries. Follow #ililc2 on Twitter too to find out about the latest developments!

View ICT and Languages Conference #ililc 2012 in a larger map

Laurence Georgin has kindly made some ililc blog badges for speakers and delegates which we would encourage you to use on your own sites.

You are also free to use this QR code which links to a WebDoc I created to help promote ililc 2012. Enjoy!

Making history with the biggest language learning competition there has ever been!

This is the week we’ve all been waiting for! The Language Perfect World Championships have started. The biggest language learning competition there has ever been in history! Do you and your pupils want to be part of history? Oh yeah!

Countries competing against countries, schools competing against schools, pupils competing against pupils all with the same aim: to appear as high as possible on the championship scoreboard. 2.5 million questions have already been answered in the first day of the competition. With 6 days to go who knows what the final total will be?

This now is our challenge to compete with the rest of the world. We mustn’t slip behind as we’ll never catch up. Don’t forget in last year’s European Language Olympics, the UK topped the scoreboard, but now we are against the world people! Time to step up!

I am personally in charge of coordinating the UK attempt on the crown! (No pressure there then) and with your participation, I’m sure we can do a sterling job!

If you haven’t done so already, you can use the code (JDALE) when registering to receive 50 places for FREE and if you are a member of the Association of Language Learning, an official partner of Language Perfect, you can additionally use the code (ALL) for an extra 50 FREE places. Anyone can use my code not just schools from the UK so what have you got to lose?

To see just how much learners are loving the competition to date, check out the Language Perfect Facebook page which is awash with positivity!

Check out too the news page on the main site where CEO Craig Smith, myself and other members of the Language Perfect World Championships committee will be posting regular updates throughout the week.

To celebrate your school's achievements further, you can also send an email to [email protected] and attach images such as your position on the scoreboard, audio or video clips and some accompanying text about how you are finding the competition. Contributions will appear on this Posterous blog embedded automatically and accessible to all.

The country which accumulates the most points wins the Trevor and Rose Trophy, named after Craig's Mum and Dad!

What a great way to enthuse your students at the start of the school year. 

My first time at Eurocall 2011

New tools new opportunities personal learning network

Download New_tools_new_opps_PLN_at_Eurocall.mp3

Speaking at Eurocall for the first time was a great experience and opportunity to meet educators from around the world interested in technology and language learning. I've been aware of the conference for years now and have followed from a distance thanks to the virtual strand but attending in person was a first.

Show notes

• Bloom's Digital Taxonomy
• Getting personal at Language World 2011
• The networked teacher
• Coming to terms with Twitter
• What does the MFL Twitterati mean to you?
• MFL Twitterers
• WL Twitterers
• TweetDeck
• Live tweeting and polling in PowerPoint
• MFL Flashmeeting
• Flash Forward
• MFL Times
• MFL Show and Tell
• ICT Links into Languages Conference Buzz!
• The educational value of podcasting
• ICT for the non-specialist - podcasting
• 7JD can animate
• Catherine Elliott on stop motion animation
• MFL edapps
• MFL Digital Stories
• MFL Storybirds
• One in three overwhelmed by technology

Like Helen Myers in 2010, I thoroughly enjoyed the event and found it fascinating to hear many engaging presentations delivered by university colleagues and PhD students based on their academic research as well as their classroom practice. It was also interesting to see a designated ten minute slot included for questions at the end of each session for a very techno savvy audience to discuss the concepts conveyed by the speaker more deeply and offer feedback.

I was glad to have had the chance to have experienced this format first hand for a day before speaking myself so I could streamline my presentation accordingly, cut out the fluff and concentrate on the key messages due to the imposed time restrictions (like a TeachMeet on steroids!).

Championing the MFL Twitterati was a no brainer and as in previous live tweetouts I was delighted with everyone's response as it proved yet again of the power of having a personal learning network which you can draw on 24/7.

Other highlights included a whole day workshop on OER (Open Educational Resources) from the MFL department at The Open University where we looked at searching for Creative Commons images on Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, Filta, LORO and Clic Images 2.0. Check out the fab links!

I also really enjoyed Nicolas Guichon's session where he fedback a plethora of interesting data culled from high school students from all over France on their use and perceptions of digital technologies. It would be great to do a similar study in this country ;-)

There was a wonderful session on podcasting and learning Indonesian from Ms Indrianti where she described how she had integrated podcasting into her practice and what were her students' reactions to it.

I enjoyed all the keynotes, particularly Gillian McLaughlin's who gave a stirring and amusing talk on the lifelong learning programme, the history of EU funding for language activities and her adventures in organising tech-based conferences in the early nineties!

The final session I attended before heading home was about the European funded project SpeakApps which is examining the potential of audio and video feedback from students from a range of countries using a special WordPress plugin. It was great to hear that this plugin will eventually be made freely available as Open Source for anyone to install. You could always explore the potential of a Posterous Group to achieve a similar outcome if you can't wait though!

It was lovely to see some familiar faces such as Graham Davies and Andrew Grenfell at Eurocall as well as meet colleagues face to face who I have only ever communicated with online before namely Ton Koenraad and Billy Brick. Andrew filled me in on the latest developments of the Linguacast project, Universed, The Angry Family and Teachers Toolkit and I'd encourage others to check out these links too.

Here is a slideshow of all the pics I took. I am now looking forward to hearing more of the parallel sessions which were recorded and will be published online in the future.

Havin' a LARC with Social Media

One of the highlights of my summer holiday this year was taking part in the 2011 LARC Social Media Workshop a week long programme of online presentations and hands-on workshops delivered through Elluminate on the use of ICT in language learning. Organised by Director of Instructional Technology and Design at the Language Acquisition Resource Center, Evan Rubin and his co-facilitator Kyle Murley from San Diego University, the totally free event was a great success and drew in participants from all round the world.

Toni Theisen kicked off proceedings with a great keynote followed by Michelle Olah and Catalina Bohorquez, Glenn Cake, Claire Bartlett, Dr. Trevor Shanklin, Dr. Sarah Eaton, Dr. Felix Kronenberg and Shelly Terrell. Sessions covered such tools and topics as Posterous, Google Forms, Weebly, Voicethread, Storybird, digital storytelling, and Personal Learning Networks. Archives of all the sessions can be found here and are well worth checking out. Recordings and resources from 2010 and 2009 are also available for your learning pleasure.

It was an intensive week and required a lot of commitment from organisers, presenters and delegates alike, but resulted in everyone having a rich and meaningful experience. The most memorable moment for me was learning how to use Google Forms properly thanks to Dr Sarah Eaton and thinking how they could work well on an iPod Touch when combined with a QR code and Flubaroo.

Glenn Cake opened my eyes to breakout rooms in Elluminate. Claire Bartlett taught me about Tandem Learning and Dr Felix Kronenberg introduced me to the wonderful site Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon for finding authentic images which promote intercultural understanding. It was also lovely to see a familiar face in Catherine Ousselin who generously shared some of her ideas and resources with other delegates.

I thought Ewan's idea of the Monday showdown where a couple of us had to light-heartedly pitch our preferred tool for delegates to use to present their outcomes at the end of the week was also a cracker.

Here is what they came up with:

• Edward's Posterous blog
• Tricia's Posterous blog
• Amanda Kennedy's wiki
• Mo's Weebly
• Gareth's Weebly and Posterous blog
• Tilla's Weebly
• Janis' Storybird

I very much enjoyed presenting my three hour workshop on easy classroom blogging with Posterous and it was interesting to compare the dynamics of a hands-on session delivered virtually as opposed to face to face. This was one of the topics Evan and I discussed  in our post workshop chat over Skype which I've published here.

Download Interview_with_Evan_Rubin

Thanks again to Evan for organising such a fab, fun and free learning experience and for my attendance certificate too of course! Much appreciated and see you again next year.

Getting personal at Language World 2011

In light of the current economic downturn and the difficulty teachers have of getting out of school to attend courses, I felt it was apposite at this year's Language World to promote the myriad ways colleagues can improve their own continuing professional development by taking advantage of powerful online tools such as Twitter to nurture a personal learning network.

In an ideal world, it would be great to receive training during the school day in a centre or hotel paid for by your school, but in the current climate, these opportunities are simply becoming less and less viable. Finding alternative sources of CPD is becoming increasingly important and teachers need to be more pro-active if they want to keep up with the latest developments in their field.

Enter the MFL Twitterati. Now I understand that Twitter may not be for everybody and there are  concerns about it from some quarters, but more and more teachers are realising the power it can have to make connections with other like-minded colleagues all over the world. According to a crowdsourcing experiment I did earlier this year, language teachers particularly value the support Twitter offers them, as well as the ideas and inspiration they receive.

Twitter certainly presents a golden opportunity for networking and finding authentic materials that can impact on the classroom. Language teachers Caleb Bloodworth, Catherine Ritz and Val McIntyre have all blogged about their own experiences and plans in this area recently. Worth checking out too is this post Twitter tips for language teachers which includes a podcast of a Skype presentation I gave to a group of language teachers in Australia. Thanks again to @mrsangell for the opportunity I heard about on ... Twitter!

Have a look too at this comprehensive Livebinder curated by Steven W. Anderson and below is a great guide by Brian Sharland A Teacher's Introduction to Twitter.

Here is a slidecast of my presentation as well as a summary of all the links I refer to.

Continuing professional development this time its personal!

Download CPD_this_time_its_personal.mp3

Show Notes

• Continuing professional development is hard to access
• Language Trends survey 2010
• Links CPD survey: teachers go online but still need face-to-face contact
• The networked teacher
• The rise and rise of the MFL Twitterati
• Coming to terms with Twitter
• Piggybacking on Twitter
• MFL Twitterers list
• WL Twitterers list
• Tweetdeck
• Twhirl
• Seesmic Desktop
• How to bookmark Twitter Links
• Packrati.us
• Del.icio.us
• Friend or Follow
• Manage Flitter
• What does the MFL Twitterati mean to you?
• The MFL Times
• Ukedtech list
• Ukedchat wiki
• Ukedchat blog
• Ukedchat daily paper
• Twitterfall
• Using TwitterFall to get the most out of Twitter Chats
• MFL Flashmeeting
• How to videoconference with Flashmeeting
• Flash Forward
• MFL Show and Tell
• You and Yours: the follow up
• MFLresources
• TESConnect with RSS
• Linguanet Forum
• Ning networking
• Talkabout Primary MFL Ning
• 70 tools in 70 minutes
• A – Z Internet Resources for Education
• MFLEdapps
• edapp Twitter Search
• langchat Twitter Search
• CILT 14-19 Training Zone
• O2 Learn
• Add a dimension to your teaching: an introduction to language learning in Virtual Worlds
• ALL London Webinar June 2011 Report!
• SLIC conference webinar
• LARC Social Media Workshop 2011
• Primary languages podcasting, Lancashire Children's Services Authority
• MFL Sunderland podcasts
• ICT Links into Languages Conference Buzz!
• Technology in schools: Is the clock being turned back?
• The mother of invention
• ICT - Make Do and Mend
• One in three ‘overwhelmed by technology’

To finish off, I'd like to quote primary deputy headteacher Julian S Wood from Sheffield who in May delivered a thought-provoking TeachMeet presentation about PLNs in which he concluded that

"We is most definitely better than me".

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment and in these difficult economic times I think it is essential that we all explore the potential of online collaboration as a way of improving our own CPD and receive the support we all need as a profession.

New opportunities in Montreal at AATF11

Last month, I had the fantastic opportunity of delivering a talk at The American Association of Teachers of French convention in Montreal and championing the trailblazing efforts of MFL colleagues from the UK about their use of new technologies to enhance language learning and improve continuing professional development. I firmly believe we are leading the way in this area and it was a pleasure to convey this message to like-minded colleagues across the pond.

New Tools, New Opportunities, Personal Learning Networks

Download_new_tools_new_opportunities_plns.mp3

As you can see, I chose to video my presentation as well as slidecast and podcast it this time. I hope I have catered to your preferred learning style and you find the information useful! All the links I refer to are included below as well as on this Posterous blog I set up so delegates could access the resources and download the PowerPoint immediately following the presentation if they wanted to.

Show notes

• Joe Dale
• Prince William and Kate Middleton's Tour of Canada - Duke delivers speech in French
• Bloom's Digital Taxonomy
• The networked teacher
• Coming to terms with Twitter
• What does the MFL Twitterati mean to you?
• MFL Twitterers
• WL Twitterers
• TweetDeck
• Live tweeting and polling in PowerPoint
• MFL Flashmeeting
• Flash Forward
• MFL Times
• MFL Show and Tell
• ICT Links into Languages Conference Buzz!
• The educational value of podcasting
• ICT for the non-specialist - podcasting
• Around the world with 80 schools
• 7JD can animate
• Catherine Elliott on stop motion animation
• Les fables de la Fontaine en PowerPoint
• Le Mur Parlant
• 40 ways to use QR codes in the classroom
• 4D Books - Linking analogue to digital
• MFL edapps
• No Stress with DS
• My French Coach blog posts
• Modern Foreign Languages – A Games-based Learning Approach
• MFL Digital Stories
• MFL Storybirds
• One in three overwhelmed by technology

I was delighted with the audience’s response both during and after the talk and I was made to feel very welcome. One kind soul left this comment which made the whole transatlantic trip worthwhile in itself!

“Your workshop alone was worth the whole conference! I received so many ideas, not just for my classroom, but also for my AATF chapter. Now if I could only invent a way to make more time......” (Robin Jacobi July 2011)

Here is the formal written feedback I received later too, once back in Blighty which in the main is equally positive. (Go fullscreen to read properly).

Feedback from AATF talk: New Tools, New Opportunities, Personal Learning Networks

Another highlight of the convention was to meet twitter buddy Cristy Vogel face to face!

Cristy was the person who originally suggested I put in a proposal to speak at the convention and seeing her in person was awesome!

It was also wonderful to meet Catherine Ousselin, world languages consultant and teacher at Mount Vernon High who presented a wonderful 3 hour workshop on using web tools and apps in the languages classroom. Catherine can be seen introducing me at the start of the video and checking delegates knew where the Isle of Wight is!

Other technology based sessions I attended included one by Adam Steg on e-safety and the iPad, Germain Choffart on creating a fan page in Facebook and Jean-Pierre Berwald’s presentation on PowerPoint which I ‘sort of nicely hijacked’ with a quick explanation of triggers!

Before the conference started, I took the opportunity to go on a visit to the Eastern Townships or ‘Les cantons de l’est’ with other delegates from the conference. We visited the vineyard L’Orpailleur, tasted some of the wine and had a lovely lunch. Santé!

We also had a look in some of the antique shops in Dunham in the afternoon and stopped off for another food break before making our way back to the hotel.

On the evening of the first day of the conference, a group of us visited Château Ramezay, one of the only remaining 18th century buildings left in Old Montreal. As part of the entertainment, our two québécois guides re-enacted three different court scenes from the period and asked for ‘volunteers’ from the audience to take part.

Being one of the only males in the room, I was lucky enough to be ‘volunteered’ to play the role of bailiff l’huissier (a word I will never forget!) and to read from a script at designated moments. For comic effect however, the guides were deliberately speaking very quickly and using antiquated French on occasion making it difficult to follow the thread, leading to great confusion and hilarity! A very memorable moment! (Unfortunately no photo graphic evidence exists of said event).

Earlier in the week, I went to Quebec City too and reminisced about my first visit to la belle province in the early nineties when I was a language assistant, thanks to the British Council programme (long may it continue). Here is a short film I made of that blistering hot day including a québécois speciality Poutine! Hope you like it.

Check out too this tripline presentation which chronicles my every movement in a visually appealing way!

My pool partner is my former flatmate Stéphane who I’ve kept in contact with for all these years through Skype, Facebook and emails. We’ve also met up face to face a couple of times when I’ve had the chance to return to Montreal and St Jean sur Richelieu where he lives.

Attending a foreign language convention in another country was a fascinating experience in many ways. For example, I was surprised to hear many of the delegates speaking in French with each other around the hotel and during the excursions despite English being their mother tongue in the main. It was clear that this was one of the convention’s convention and although it took a little getting used to I found it really refreshing once I’d become accustomed to the idea!

Talking to some of the delegates, it seems in the US, that it is more common for language departments to be smaller compared to the UK and schools may only have one teacher offering a particular language in their faculty. Therefore, I presume for many, meeting other French teachers in this way was a great opportunity to practise. Please let me know if I’m talking rubbish!

Thank you to the AATF for accepting my proposal to speak and for welcoming me to their convention. I hope this is just the beginning of a beautiful friendship, starting with Facebook!

Grasping the potential of new technology

For the last couple of months, I’ve been producing a toolkit of step by step guides designed to encourage language tutors in the Adult Community Learning sector to explore the potential of new technologies to enhance their existing courses.

The idea of the project funded by The Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) and coordinated by ACL Curriculum Manager for Languages Nola Marshall is to offer students a blended approach of distance learning and face to face contact so they can extend their learning outside of the classroom at a time that suits them.

In addition to creating the comprehensive guides, I delivered 3 consecutive days of training to participating tutors at Witham Adult Community Learning Centre with the help of Nola, Maria the Curriculum Manager for ICT and e-learning and two lovely technicians Bob and Paul.

We looked at different ways of creating, publishing and subscribing to content concentrating on the tools and technologies I had covered in the toolkit. These included:

• Posterous as an easy way of blogging content via email in an open, moderated or password-protected environment
• Audacity for recording and editing podcasts
• Accessing creative commons licensed images through Flickr and different search tools such as Behold, Compfight and Xpert
• Creating and editing video clips using digital video cameras and Movie Maker
• Subscribing to blogs, podcasts and wikis via RSS for distance learning with Google Reader
• Flashmeeting for videoconferencing and recording meetings
• SlideShare and publishing PowerPoints or creating Slidecasts with embedded audio
• Collaborative writing and publishing resources with Wikispaces
• Creating interactive exercises with Hot Potatoes
• Creating word clouds with Wordle (not covered during the training due to time constraints)
• Using Text to Speech software Speakonia to support listening and reading skills (not covered during the training due to time constraints)

We also touched upon using Twitter as microblogging service and a way of developing a personal learning network and I suggested tutors follow colleagues from the MFL Twitterati. I was delighted minius666 and ElinorMcN rose to the challenge there and then!

Everyone set up their own Posterous blog to publish their outcomes on to. Here is the one I created for this purpose and here is the one I set up prior to the training to show examples of my outcomes for each tutorial. Maria created a wonderful example called Moodle Magic.

We covered three tutorials a day which some found quite intensive, but with the comprehensive notes I gave out I'm sure tutors will have all the support they need as well as time to reflect over the summer. I've also told tutors they can contact me if they get stuck which I hope they will.

Hats off to Rick, ACL IT technician in Harlow for agreeing to take part in our Flashmeeting on the last day of the training, the full recording of which can be found here. He did brilliantly fielding questions from the tutors and all while keeping a smile on his face too!

To assess the success of the training and the impact on practice, I asked tutors to record their thoughts at the end of each day and you can listen to their feedback here.

Download ACL_MFL_Toolkit_Feedback_Day_1

Download ACL_MFL_Toolkit_Feedback_Day_2

Download ACL_MFL_Toolkit_Feedback_Day_3

At the beginning of day three, I also recorded a few thoughts from Nola herself about the project and how it was funded.

Download Nola_Marshall_explains_toolkit_background

During the course of the training we did come across a few technical issues, namely:

• We couldn't create more than 10 gmail accounts from the same IP address and so I realise now we should have asked delegates to create theirs before the start of the course.
• We had difficulty in setting up SlideShare accounts simultaneously. Again, it would have been better to have asked tutors to do this beforehand.
• Movie Maker continually crashed due to to only having 1.5 GB of RAM per machine. To get around this I asked delegates to import CC Flickr images instead and add a soundtrack, transitions and effects, music for the end credits and a title page which worked fine.

Admittedly, the gliches did put some people off as it knocked their confidence, but with a bit of encouragement we were able to work through this OK.

Complying to the terms of the funding, the toolkit will be made available for free to ACL tutors in the autumn term via the Excellence Gateway portal. We will be recommending however that centres hire me in to provide hands-on training for some or all of the tutorials as well to ensure staff are fully equipped to embed the techniques covered. We are also looking at offering a revised version for schools and again will be strongly suggesting that they also buy in hands-on training to support them in offering students these new and exciting distance learning opportunities. Watch this space!