Yesterday I had the prestigious honour of delivering a webinar for the award winning US site Classroom 2.0 LIVE on the use of iPads to enhance teaching and learning. A summation of months of research and enquiry, it was wonderful to have such an incredible opportunity to share my findings, top tips and app suggestions with a worldwide audience. I was delighted with the positive response from the chat and on Twitter.
Here are some of my favourite accompanying tweets:
For those who would like to download the PowerPoint direct, click here or scan this QR code linking to my public Dropbox adapted with the PhotoString app as recommended by Tim Bedley.
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.
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.
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
Look for someone who is listed as wanting help in the mentees group. Contact them and offer to be their mentor
Be approached by a prospective mentee looking for someone to mentor them.
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.
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.
The mentoring pilot begins January 2012 and resources will be available in Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Spanish, English, Romanian, Turkish, German, French and Italian.
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)
"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!
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
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
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!
In my keynote speech I tried to set the mood for the conference by describing the roots of the Twitterati and the people power they represent. You can decide for yourself how successful I was in fulfilling these two objectives by watching the video replay or slidecast here.
One of the key messages conveyed in these tweets was the way in which colleagues like the support they receive from each other to help them cope personally and professionally in their jobs.
This of course is a universal theme valued in all walks of life, but arguably more so in teaching where it is easy to feel isolated and overwhelmed by the demands of the job at times.
I asked language teachers Fiona Rose from Australia and Melinda Sears from the U.S to answer the question too. Their responses can be heard here.
A moving example of the power of Twitter was brilliantly exemplified by Annalise Adam at the memorableMFL Show and Tell which took place at the end of day one of the conference. Thwartedmum as she is known on Twitter gave a heartfelt presentation on how the MFL Twitterati has supported her during some difficult times recently and the difference this has had on her pupils’ learning as well as her own well-being.
Chris Harte kindly set up a Cover it Live session on the first day of the conference to pull together all ililc tagged tweets, images and clips being published in real time.
A huge thank you to Zena Hilton, the Links into Languages team, Jo Rhys-Jones, Rachel Hawkes, the speakers and all the delegates for making the vision of ILILC a reality. It was an unforgettable weekend which was only made possible because of the power of the communityand the combined efforts of everyone involved. Southampton University has confirmed they would like to run the event again next year so watch this space for further news on this in the future.
Subsequently reading the Twitter backchannel following my talk was a sobering experience to say the least. Reaction was mixed. Some had tweeted very positively and enjoyed the practical nature of the presentation which they felt would be an ideal introduction to a Twitter newbie.
Others were less encouraging and said I was preaching to the converted and some complained of my choice of PowerPoint formating, colour scheme and musical accompaniment.
After a day to reflect, Chris Grant summarised his impressions of the negativity clearly felt by a faction of the audience in his blog post FOTE10 and what I learned from Joe Dale reminding colleagues to not forget about the needs of everyday staff and learners when it comes to using technology effectively to enhance learning and that I was a brave man to present in the way I did! I've reflected a lot too on what happened and I'm more than happy to admit that I perhaps underestimated how techno-savvy the 300 odd people present in the room were.
However, to be honest having taken part in numerous backchannels in the past, I was surprised by some of the less supportive, nay flippant, nay downright rude tweets coming from certain individuals who felt the need to express themselves in this way. Obviously delegates are entitled to their own opinions, but I agree with Microsoft's Ray Fleming's comment on this Paul Smith post Looking back on FOTE10 where he says:
Over the weekend somebody (on Twitter) said that they wouldn’t be brave enough to present at an Education conference with a Twitter backchannel, because their “skin isn’t thick enough”.
I think that’s a real issue – if the back channel instantly critcises people who say things which are controversial, or (as happened twice on Friday) before they have even said anything – then it could lead to presenters striving for blandness, to avoid irritating anybody in the audience?
If you would like to watch an enhanced version of my talk complete with the Twitter backchannel as it appeared in real time, feel free to click on this link which Martin Hawskey from JISC has kindly created using the iTitle tool.
Finally, thanks to Tim Bush and Frank Steiner for organising FOTE10 and for taking the trouble to produce embeddable video clips of all the presentations so they can be easily shared online.
Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the cleverly designed device has a sturdy clip which can be attached to the top of your laptop or twisted around to act as a desktop stand. The slider on the side allows you to record uni-directionally and omni-directionally making it great for recording podcasts or GCSE speaking assessments with Audacity and the headphone socket lets you monitor your audio too. The light indicator on the front of the device goes green to show it is connected and flashes red if you speak too loudly.
Clipping the mike under my chin seemed to produce the best results although I had to be careful not to move the USB or headphone leads while speaking as this picked up unwanted handling noise on the recording. A bit of practice ironed out this shortcoming though and allowed me to create a consistently good sound which was very pleasing.
Here is a demo recording I made today using Audacity to show you what the Go Mic can do.
At the end of March, Twitter chum and MFL Flashmeeting mate, Drew McAllister asked me to give a Skype presentation to a group of world languages teachers from Missouri about different types of technology I would recommend for use in the classroom for enhancing language learning and engaging pupils. A subject close to my heart, I was delighted to take part and share my experiences from across the pond, particularly as we’d agreed to record the conversation and podcast the outcome to the world!
As my virtual delegates had laptops in front of them, they were able to check out each link as it came up and explore the tools for themselves first hand. I think this was an effective use of their time and made them feel more actively involved in the session which was great to see.
To finish, I tried to field their various questions as best I could and be as helpful as possible in my answers.
I captured the Skype call with Pretty May, recording my end and Drew’s end as separate tracks which I then edited in Audacity. Following advice from the latest Podcaster’s Emporium, before starting I clicked on Tools/Options and Audio Settings in Skype and disabled the feature which automatically adjusts the speaker settings. I also exported my track as a wav file (Export Selection As WAV) and levelated it before starting to edit as an experiment as I’ve found in the past that the volume of the person who receives the call tends to be quieter than the person who makes it.
In my interview with Katie Titler I levelated both tracks separately, importing them back into Audacity and editing them from there. This seemed to produce the best results although my breathing was amplified on my track and so I highlighted the sections when I wasn't talking, clicked Generate and then Silence to remove the issue. Sometimes I started this process just after Katie began to talk as I found it could produce quite an abrupt effect if placed immediately after I finished speaking. To remove the occasional unwanted noise on Katie's track, I copied a given section where she wasn't talking and then pasted it over the equivalent interval so it sounded seamless.
Editing Drew’s end was quite time–consuming as there were gaps between phrases which had to be deleted to avoid a staccato effect. This happened in my VoIP conversation with Dr John Strange’s class in the autumn term too and is due to how Skype sends information from one user to another in packets and the bandwidth that that can demand. If the connection speed is variable, it can produce this effect which can be rectified with careful editing, but this is a laborious task and not for the faint-hearted! Having audio only conversations requires less bandwidth and will produce better results, but is no doubt a less satisfying experience for both users.
I hope you find both the quality of the audio and our conversation acceptable and that it gives you food for thought for ways in which you can use technology in the classroom for enhancing pupil outcomes too. That’s the idea!
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