Technology In Modern Foreign Languages A Practitioners Perspective

Technology in Modern Foreign LanguagesA practitionerrsquos perspective

Edited by Joseacute Picardo

Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

2

Contents Acknowledgements 3 Foreword 4I Using Images in the MFL classroom 5 Alice Ayel

II Videoconferencing in the classroom 7 Suzi Bewell III Collaborate facilitate Educate 9

Alex Blagona IV Tools to get pupils talking 11 Helena Butterfield V German OFF the curriculum but ON the VLE 14 Mary Cooch VI The power of RSS for 21st century educators 16 Joe Dale VII A word or two about Wordle 19 Saira Ghani VIII Resources keeping them real and keeping them together 20 Andrea Henderson IX Google Maps in the MFL classroom 23 Simon Howells X Supporting assessment for learning 25 Isabelle Jones XI Simple but effective 26 Samantha Lunn XII Mobile phones in the MFL classroom 2913 Dominic McGladdery13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 XIII13 Mrs Perkinsrsquos journey into the WWW13 13 13 13 13 13 31 Marie-France Perkins XIV Microblogging making the case for social networking in education 3213 Joseacute Picardo1313 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 XV13 Looking back and moving forward1313 13 13 13 13 13 36 Amanda Salt XVI Really understanding culture 38 Clare Seccombe XVII Enhancing learning in the MFL Classroom 40 Lisa Stevens Contributors 43


3

Acknowledgments

My most sincere thanks go to each of the contributors to this collection of articles who have selflessly taken time out from their busy teaching jobs to collaborate in this project and share

their experiences in using technology in the modern foreign languages classroom

All photographs are either our own or have been used under a Creative Commons licence in which case they have been attributed accordingly The cover photo is courtesy of Erica Marshall of muddybootsorg


4

Foreword

Originally published as a series of blog posts titled Technology in Modern Foreign Languages this collection of articles explores how teachers are successfully incorporating the use of new

technologies into their classroom practice with a focus on enhancing teaching and learning

Technologies such as blogging microblogging web 20 wikis sound recording and videoconferencing have all found their way into our classrooms and harnessing them effectively is at the heart of 21st century pedagogy

The original articles can be read at Boxoftricksnet


5

MFL teachers have always used images to teach their students new items of vocabulary However it can be very time consuming when planning a lesson to find the right picture matching the word we want to teach Nowadays the internet is there to help us save time

Flickr

I was introduced to Flickr in January 2009 by attending a free online course on exploring images in the 21st Century Classroom organized by EVO Flickr is a website where you can store sort search and share your photos online It is free to up to 2 videos and 100MB worth of photos each calendar month You can edit your photos and make them look nicer add comments and captions using Picnik You can also search pictures taken by other members of Flickr by entering keywordsIn addition you can join different groups where people share similar interests I joined two groups Images4Education and Great Quotes about Learning and Change and then it occurred to me to create a group for language teachers called Images to Teach Languages to share or use photos or videos to teach either a word a conversation or a grammar pointInstead of looking in the entire web all the pictures are in one one place tagged (ie catalogued using key words) according to topics ndash animals places in town shops etc Teachers can then copy and paste the pictures into their presentations or download them

pr int them or use them as flashcardsAlready 52 members have joined this group and you can find pictures from different countries such as shops in France Spain or Germany so that pupils can actually see what shops are like in different countries To make the search even easier and quicker teachers looking for a specific topic can add a post in Discussion with what they are looking for and other group members will help them in their search

Big Huge Labs

Big Huge Labs is a free website where you can create posters puzzles albums covers games and more using photos from your computer or photos from your Flickr or Facebook account For example the aim of a Year 8 French lesson was to introduce di fferent food from different countries and to create a nice menu which would include the words students had learnt during the lesson First I looked for pictures of different types of restaurants and then of different types of food and I favourited them on my Flickr account Then I created two mosaics with the two sets of photos using Mosaic Maker on Big Huge Labs In less than 15 minutes I ended up with on one hand 8 photos of 8 different restaurants and on the other hand a set of 16 different types of foodMy students were teamed up into groups of 3 or 4 and were tasked with looking at the mosaics in

Using images in the MFL classroomby Alice Ayel


6

order to decide the type of restaurant (French Chinese M e x i c a n hellip ) a n d t h e n t h e nationality of each type of food and whether it was a starter main course or dessert In teams they then created their own menus The photos were ldquorealrdquo they were not clip-arts and this helped to engage the students in useful discussions about the topic at hand

PHRASR

PHRASR is an interactive web-based application that uses Flickr images to illustrate the phrases that users submit It is part ofPimpampum a website with other applications which make the most of Flickr PHRASR allows you to create a slideshow from words or sentences although unfortunately currently only in EnglishYou type a word or a sentence in a box PHRASR then browses through the pictures on Flickr and finds a set of pictures matching the word or sentence you typed You then just choose the best picture I still managed to make relevant use of this fantastic web tool when I introduced European countries to my year 8 class I entered the names of European countries in Eng l i sh Aus t r i a Ge rmany Irelandhellip and I had a slideshow with amazing pictures from Flickr made in a matter of minutes I showed the slideshow to my class and asked them to translate the countries into FrenchIt was the starting point of a discussion about each country where it was on the map what the official language was what you could visit and since we had learnt previously about food we also

talked about the food specialities in each country Students had a grid to fill in and then had to create a ID card about a country of their choiceS ince I cou ldnrsquot pause the sl ideshow to focus on each picture I favourited each picture on my Flickr account so we could have a closer look at them Students were engaged they especially liked talking about the countries they visited like Spain or where they had family like Ireland It helped me show the rest of Europe to my students in a different perhaps more positive light

BOOKR

BOOKR is another web-based application from Pimpampum and it allows you to create photo books using Flickr images It is very straightforward to use because students donrsquot have to sign in or register so they can start straight away There are no fancy designs backgrounds sounds you just add pictures and captions Some might argue it could become boring but I found students didnrsquot get too distracted by those effects and could really focus on the task which was to create a photo book in another languageIn order to find and add pictures students enter keywords or tags in the tag box at the bottom of the screen they can then choose a picture from Flickr Finally when students finished their photo books they published it by sending me an email I then got a link in my mailbox to their photo books and I could either copy and paste the code to the school

website for example or save their url links I used this fantastic tool with a mixed ability group in year 9 and obtained fantastic resultsThey had to create a photo book about their last holidays First I showed them a photo book I created and explained to them how it worked Then students went into the ICT room and created their photo books At the end of the lesson I asked them to send their work to my email address At the end of the day my mai lbox was ful l of BOOKR messagesI then embedded the best photo books on the schoo l b log Students were on task throughout the lesson very busy creating their photo album and at the end they were very pleased with themselves because they had some ICT work to view and show off All of these tools were big time savers for me a n d h e l p e d m e d e l i v e r e d successful lessons where students were engagedOf course I came across all those fantastic tools thanks to my Personal Learning Network thanks to whom I have become a better teacher as well as learner

Photo creditshttpwwwflickrcomphotosaliceayel3360407169httpwwwflickrcomphotoslisibo

2941451176httpwwwflickrcomphotosaliceayel3363137854httpwwwflickrcomphotoslisibo2628760814

httpwwwflickrcomphotoslisibo3016286128


7

Cambrai in Northern France and over the next few weeks we spent a lot of time on MSN and email getting to know more about each other and more importantly sorting out the finer details of our ldquoprojet visioconfeacuterencerdquo Within a few days we had both installed Skype and discussed ideas for what we might explore in class (with a focus on speaking) and were all ready for our first ldquoessairdquo We were both keen to have a try in class as soon as possibleIn early February I bought a webcam ready for the big day and the following day we set about trying to connect from my home in York to Sophie at school in France We were both very nervous and extremely excited as you will hear if you have a listen to the short audio clip

The next week I set about downloading Skype onto the Primary schoolrsquos laptop and despite warnings about firewalls and LEA internet security Sophie and I managed to connect classroom to classroom which was even more exciting and meant that a plan was coming togetherOur first lesson was planned for Friday 13th March ndash pupils would spend the lesson introducing each other and using their knowledge of numbers and the alphabet in French and English to fill out persona l deta i ls Sad ly for technical reasons beyond our control Skype failed to work and a l l c o n c e r n e d w e r e v e r y disappointed and frustratedhellip but not deterred in the slightest Sophie and I were determined to try again the very next week

Friday the 20th March 2009 was a most memorable day because we managed to connect with our French friends and I experienced the best French lesson of my career to date A light bulb moment when learning takes place for a real purpose in front of a real audience and where pupils are fully engaged and excited about the lesson quite unaware that learning is actually taking place because they are having so much fun ndash and real French kids are clapping at them and implying that their French is actually not bad AwesomeA few weeks later still extremely excited by the first successful live hook up we took the topic of clothes and colours as our focus The French pupils had posted us cardboard cut outs of Pierre and Marie along with clothes in a variety of colours

Video conferencing in the classroomBack in early January 2009 I was contacted by Sophie Herblot a young French headmistress who had stumbled upon my French teaching and learning blog She got the feeling that I was quite technically aware (not quite true back then) and wanted to know if there was the possibility of starting up a partnership with a special focus on video conferencing The French government are currently ploughing quite a lot of money into technology and web conferencing in particular Sophie is lucky enough to t each i n one o f t he 3 p i l o t organisations in her regionMadame Herblot teaches in a Primary school in Bantouzelle near

by Suzi Bewell


8

We h a d t o l i s t e n t o t h e i r descriptions in French and show our understanding by dressing the dolls appropriately Much fun was had by allWe were then treated to a rendition of ldquoHello itrsquos merdquo an English version of a song they had viewed on our blog called ldquoBonjour crsquoest moirdquo (all about parts of the body) Much to our surprise they had translated it into English and performed it to us ldquoen liverdquo and with actions My pupils were full of praise and also amazed at how great the pupilsrsquo English was Again there was lots of cheering and clapping ndash what better motivator for learning a foreign language This is what Sophie had to sayOnce more it was wonderful today Pupils were very happy

and proud Our English teaching adviser was here and filmed it all He said it was a very good example of preparat ion and organisation and he congratulated both of us for our work WaouhThe summer term was quite hectic and sadly we didnrsquot get chance to connect again so in June we decided to write letters to keep the contact going and to focus on reading some basic English FrenchIn September the Year 6 class had moved onto secondary school and I took over teaching a Year 5 class at the same school On December 4th they had their first taste of web conferencing and absolutely loved it We sang the alphabet in French to the tune of ten green bottles and spent most of the lesson focusing on cogna tes and phone t i c

awareness The grand finale to the lesson was a bilingual Christmas medley of ldquoVive le ventrdquo and ldquoJingle Bellsrdquo This is what Sophie had to sayldquoJe suis super contente de ce qursquoon a fait vendredi Les enfants sont emballeacutes Ils ont a-do-reacuterdquoAt a recent MFL Show and Tell event in London I stated that I would encourage anyone to try out web conferencing as it is by far the best thing that has happened to my teaching in the last 11 years

Photo CreditCourtesy of Sophie Herblot


9

Whether we care to accept it or not a great part of our job as teachers is the performance in the classroom Irsquom not talking about lsquoperformancersquo in the sense of performance management but more the performance in an almost show-business sense of the word The students are our audience and schools now have to be ever more responsive to their viewsEducat ion and learning can actually be entertaining and teachers are under increasing pressure to deliver lessons that engage students as well bringing a smile to their faces Lessons that are fun and that tap into the interests of students are more

successful and certainly more memorableMy main use of ICT in the last couple of years has involved the use of wikis to allow students to collaborate with each other and to make them clearer on learning targets and to make them feel active participants in their learning We are without doubt working and l iv ing in an age where technology is king and where virtually all our students have created an online presence for themselvesSocial networks are now de rigeur for the 21st century youngster and teachers have had to become rapidly aware of how to harness

the advantages that this form of interaction now presents Students who spend seemingly endless amounts of time online are going to be attracted by learning that matches up with their interests that they see as accessible that they can relate to and which can also be funTo that end I set up a wiki using wikispacescom ndash there are other wiki providers out there ndash firstly for A Level students to help them with creative writing essay preparation and speaking test practice and also for my GCSE students to prepare them for their oral exams and to enable them to monitor their own progress towards the exam

Collaborate facilitate educateby Alex Blagona


10

Like all things that are considered lsquodifferentrsquo I was confident in how it worked and benefited the learners and had support from pupils and many of my teaching colleagues In May of last year however we got the dreaded call from Ofsted tell ing us that we would be inspected not as a whole school but just our department with a special focus on our use of ICT in teaching languages This was the litmus test for what we had been doing and to see if our methods and innovations matched the thinking of the inspectorsWhen the inspection report came back we were vindicated

How well is ICT used by teachers and students to improve language learning

This is outstandinghellipthe wiki system enables students to store their work online and staff to check and mark it It also e n a b l e s s t u d e n t s t o communicate rapidly with staff about language learningOfsted Report May 2009

I set up a couple of lessons for the inspector to observe both using the technology of wikis to have an impact on the learning of the students The first was an A Level French lesson with Year 13 who were in the middle of preparing for their speaking tests

Using stimulus cards which were freely available online we worked in a carousel where one student answered the st imulus card quest ions another wrote a selection of follow up questions another student prepared and recorded spoken answers using Audacity and another student reviewed the performance of the spoken answer Although the logistics scared me it all worked to plan and every student ended up completing each task with all results on the wiki so that each student could see what every other student had doneThe second lesson involved Year 10 who were having a go at telling the story of a dream holiday We had worked on a writing frame in the previous lesson and they had just completed their introductions on their individual pages I was able to provide individual targeted feedback on each studentrsquos work and also ensure that pupils set themselves three achievable t a r g e t s f o r t h e m s e l v e s t o complete I gave each pupil a wiki-buddy another member of the class of a similar ability who would compare targets and would review outcomes at the end of the lesson This helped the pupils to spot common errors in their work to avoid setting unreachable targets and to remain challenged by the task at hand

Wikis have really engaged the students with whom we have used them They have been allowed to personalise their pages and after two years of using them they have become accustomed to leaving comments on each otherrsquos pages and it has served to create an a t m o s p h e r e o f t r u s t a n d confidence amongst the class The sites have been impeccably self-policed and because the nature of the wiki means that I can check who has done what and at what time the participants have not been tempted to vandalise anyone elsersquos workOur school as a Special ist Language Co l l ege i s a l so responsible for managing the Gifted and Talented Linguistsrsquo project for the county of Suffolk Bringing together fifty Year 11 students in what is a very rural county is a tough task and creating a wiki for the project has enabled the participants to share ideas and language and to be imaginative irrespective of their geographical location

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotosirievibrations3675852330


11

I a m a k e e n u s e r o f n e w technologies in my teaching in particular of giving my pupils the opportunity to create with new tools as I find it a truly motivating experience for them and me Them because they can see their high-quality work immediately and me because I am always amazed at what they can produce in such a short space of time and how easily they manage using what I consider to be such advanced technologyThe skill that I am particularly keen on developing with my pupils is speaking Such an essential skill when learning a language but one that pupils really seem to struggle with in terms of having the opportunity to do it and having the

confidence to go ahead and give it a tryWith this in mind I find that new technologies provide an ideal opportunity for pupils to practice speaking the language they are learning without the feeling that they are doing it in front of the whole class whilst also giving them the chance to reflect on what they hear and think about how they can improve and move onto the next levelIn addition having recordings of themselves speaking means that they can then put themselves onto their iPods Mp3 Players or mobiles and truly have a mobile learning experience ndash obviously whilst pretending to listen to cool

music with nobody knowing whatrsquos really going onWith this in mind Irsquod like to write a b o u t m y To p To o l s f o r encouraging pupils to talk I did a short presentation on this topic at TeachMeetNE09-02 a couple of weeks ago and this post gives me the opportunity to talk in more detail about some of the tools and how I use them I wil l give examples of how I have used them with my classes ndash not all wonderful examples ndash but I think they give a flavour of what you could do and hopeful you will see ways in which you could do betterFirstly and most importantly you need to know what you need in order to record your pupils There

Tools to get pupils talkingby Helena Butterfield


12

are several things you could use When I record my c lasses chanting practising in a group I use a USB microphone connected to my computer and record using the free Audacity program If I want small groups to record one another I use an EasiSpeak microphone which is really easy to use (even I can use it) and records straight away into mp3 format Irsquove also recently been given a digital voice recorder which can do the same thingIn addition still in my classroom if Irsquod l ike individuals to record themselves Irsquove asked them to use the voice recorders on their mobiles This can prove particularly useful to develop listening skills as we recorded ourselves and then gave the recording to a partner for them to listen to and note the main pointsIf Irsquom lucky enough to be in the ICT su i te I use the t rad i t iona l headphones with microphones attached and ask pupils to record themselves using Audacity which is straight forward (although you might need to give them a quick lesson in how to do this)So what are my top tools to get pupils talking

Voki

Voki ndash This is a lovely site where pupils can create talking avatars Itrsquos really easy to use and pupils can add their own voices either by re c o rd i n g i n A u d a c i t y a n d uploading the sound file can record directly from the site or even phone and leave a recording

Having learnt from experience I would advise that pupils record themselves first and only then let them play on the Voki websitehellipotherwise they donrsquot get the important language bit done Once complete pupils can then email you the Voki so that you can then display them on a blog or wikiHere is an example of how my pupils used Voki in an eTwinning Project Letrsquos Blog

Voicethread

Voicethread ndash This is a fantastic s i t e t o g e t p u p i l s t a l k i n g spontaneously You can upload a photo or a document and then others can comment on it They can either type or then can record their comments This is great to get pupils preparing for their presentations for GCSE Speaking AssessmentsI used Voicethread to encourage pupils to talk about a picture of a house giving adjectives opinions etc Here is our Voicethread

Songsmith

Songsmith ndash This is my current favourite Itrsquos a great program that adds a backing track to what you record You can choose the style of the track and it picks up the rhythm of the words you say Itrsquos fantastic for getting pupils to make up raps and rhymes to help remember vocabulary or verbs I got my Year 8 group to make up Haben raps I put my laptop at the back of my room gave them a quick tutorial and then let groups do the recordings while we did a carousel activity in the main

classroom Itrsquos amazing how easily they p icked up how to do everything ndash even exporting the files as wav files I told each group to nominate a techie who was responsible for the computer side of things and it worked really well They recorded a wonderful rap explaining about Haben ich duerhellip

Make a podcast

Make a podcast - A key feature of getting pupils to be able to speak a language is getting them to listen to it as much as possible This can help them improve their accents and give them the confidence to try it too A really good way to do this is to create a podcast so that they can download sound files that you create and put them onto their Mp3 Players or iPods so that they can take their language work wherever they go I rsquove also recorded my classes doing some choral repetition and turned that into a podcast You could really do anything as a podcast chants raps vocabu la ry fo r tes ts grammar explanationshellip theyrsquore particularly good for the auditory learners To publish my podcasts I use Podomatic a free podcasting platform I currently run two p o d c a s t s t h a t h a v e b e e n particularly useful for my Year 7s Langwitch Radio (German) and Radio Langwitch (French)

Make a slidecast

Make a slidecast ndash The next step on from a podcast really is a slidecast To make a slidecast I


13

use Slideshare which is really simple and it gives you step-by-step instructions This is essentially a slideshow with sound So for example if you introduce some new language with a PowerPoint in class you could have you class doing the repetition and turn it into a slidecast so that they can re-visit it at home I envisage my classes going home and having the whole

family sat round the computer practising new language that has been learn thelliptru ly invo lv ing everyone in the learning This has worked particularly well with some phonics work that I did with my Year 7s earlier this year Les Jolly PhoniquesMy final pieces of advice would be to start small and simple and then see where it takes you Once you

begin yoursquoll find all kinds of amazing ways to encourage your pupils to develop their speaking skills These are just a few relatively straight forward ways of getting pupils talkinghellip if I can do it anyone can

Photo CreditJoseacute Picardo


14

My degree is actually in French with Norwegian Mindful that there isnrsquot much call for Norwegian teachers in the North West of England I did my PGCE in French and German When I was offered a job at my current school (the only job Irsquove ever had) I was asked if I would mind in a full timetable of French just teaching one hour a week German as a favour I agreed and somehow during the ensuing 24 years I ended up in charge of German despite myselfIn recent years itrsquos become even harder than normal to motivate most students to learn German or opt for it at GCSE When the only other Germanist in the department retired and two keen new MFL NQTs arrived with Spanish as their specialism it seemed a good time to change departmental policy we would offer Spanish alongside French in the main curriculum with German as an added extraRather than bemoan the loss of a language I never actually intended to teach or worry that those few students showing an interest in German wou ld su f f e r as a consequence I saw it as a great opportunity to use our VLE ndash Moodle ndash as a vehicle for delivering the bulk of the learningIn Key Stage 3 we offered a one hour a week after school German club to Years 8 and 9 ndash the only face to face experience of German the children would have We focused on oral work with a great

emphasis on games (it was a club after all) The only requirement to join was that the children accessed our club page on the VLE and did the activities there in the days between meetingsI set up the page (Moodle calls them ldquocoursesrdquo) in weekly sections with the resources wersquod used in class practice tasks to consolidate the grammar and home works which they had to send in to me to mark online before the next club session We used so-cal led SCORM compliant games from C o n t e n t g e n e r a t o r a n d Linguascope which meant that while the pupils thought they were playing games the VLE was saving their scoresClub members used Audacity to r e c o r d t h e m s e l v e s h a v i n g conversations and then used Crazy Talk to put funny faces to the voices ndash then I embedded the videos on our Moodle club page

We also tried a bit of blue screening ndash well ok it was a blue sheet I stuck to my whiteboard with b lu-tak but i t worked Moviemaker has a plugin to enable you to bluescreen which is OK but not great so we ended up using Serif Movie X3 from the school network ndash very cheap and highly recommendedThe onus was very much on them to take their learning further ndash and i n f a c t d e v e l o p i n g t h e i r independence would stand two of the pupils in good stead the following year when they opted to do German GSCE Two pupils and one teacher was considered not economically viable to run in school time ndash so once more I turned to MoodleI taught two girls GSCE German for one hour after school every week using another Moodle course to keep us in touchbetween times They asked me

German OFF the curriculum but ON the VLE by Mary Cooch


15

questions via a private discussion forum they kept their own notes in personal wikis on the course page I uploaded sample speaking test presentations as mp3 they uploaded their efforts to me as assignments Vocabulary and grammar were tested by the ndashnow totally free ndash Hotpotatoes and Moodlersquos inbuilt Quiz module Both these allow you to include video sound and images to b r igh ten up the exercises They will mark the work for you and record the grades in Moodle lsquos mark book- a win-win

situation Despite that I still worried last summer on results day Could we really get good grades on one hour a week plus Moodle I seriously misjudged the girls and feel very bad about it I predicted a B and a C They got an A and a B respectivelyhellipThis year Irsquove passed the German mantle onto a colleague as Irsquom focusing pretty much full time on Moodle However Irsquom involved in Primary Liaison and Year 5s from our feeder schools have been visiting us for a ldquofun session using our VLErdquo All they know when they

arrive is that they will be playing some games on our Moodle for an hour and that they will leave having learned something they never knew before As itrsquos billed as a ldquoMystery Moodlerdquo session I obviously cannot tell you what they do and what they then rush home to continue with on our VLEhellip But isnrsquot it fortunate how German has so many cognates to bui ld confidence in young learners



16

Irsquove always believed that ICT should not be used for the sake of it but only when it enhances traditional methodology One of the highlights of the noughties for me was the discovery of RSS and how it can be used in so many ways to nurture onersquos personal learning network RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is basically a delivery mechanism for subscribing to frequently updated content on Web 20 tools such as blogs podcasts and wikis etcIn simpler terms this means that instead of remembering to visit your favourite websites to find out

the latest news the information can come to you and be read all in the same place through an RSS reader This seems to save a lot of time and improve productivity as a resultHowever RSS can do so much more than just that Below I plan to share with you some of the gems I have discovered by reading my feeds in the last few years and I encourage you to try some of the ideas out for yourselfThe first idea is a site called Podcast Pickle and if you have got your own podcast you can create a player which you can then put on

your blog Basically you take the audio podcast RSS feed which you could get from say a website like Podomatic which gives you 500MB of space for free and you can just upload your podcasts on to there That will then generate the embed code that you need to post the player on your websiteEssentially this will allow others to listen to all of your episodes in the same place on your blog rather than having to subscribe to the information They can just go to your blog and press play on the individual episode and every time you update a new episode it will

The power of RSS for 21st century educators by Joe Dale


17

appear on the blog Thatrsquos the great th ing about RSS i t rsquos dynamicAnother idea I have come across with RSS is Feedburner and in particular Feedburner chicklets which are the little bits of code that you put on your blog which then tell other people how many people are reading or have subscribed to the RSS feed that yoursquove created This is great because you know how many of your blogrsquos readers are subscribing You donrsquot actually know how many people are just going to the website because theyrsquove just found it using a search engine or what have you but you can actually quantify how many people have subscribedNow when I say subscribed that doesnrsquot cost any money at all Sometimes when I talk about this sort of thing at conferences etc people get the impression that you have to pay Well itrsquos absolutely free and I think in the present sort of climate certainly in England in which teachers are finding it more and more difficult to get out of school because of the Rarely Cover issue I think that RSS and taking control of your own CPD Your own continuing professional development is really importantAnother thing about Feedburner is if yoursquove created letrsquos say your RSS feed through a website l ike Podomatic then Feedburrner will allow you to if you like create another version which means that if you then change the host feed that you have the original feed yoursquove set up and create another feed but use the same Feedburner feed then your content will not be

changed which is a fantastic tip I found out from a great podcast called Podcastersrsquo Emporium Episode 17 which is called Feeding your audience has great i n fo rma t i on no t j us t abou t Feedburner but RSS feeds in generalAnother tip I would give about RSS feeds is in relation to YouTube Searching for content on YouTube can be very time-consuming However it is possible to create an RSS feed to display any recent clip which has been tagged with a certain keyword For example I used to be a languages teacher so I might be interested in Key Stage 3 topics say the family By putting in ldquofamillerdquo the French word for family into the RSS feed that I create it would mean that anyone who has tagged a clip with the word ldquofamillerdquo will then appear in my Google Reader which is a really great way of finding contentIn addition you can subscribe to someonersquos YouTube channel by creating your own RSS feed which in YouTube itself is not actually possible You can subscribe to somebodyrsquos YouTube channel but you canrsquot generate an RSS feed which will then go into Google ReaderAnother way of using RSS for researching is using Google Alerts which is fantastic for finding about topics of interest or individuals who are writing interesting blog posts etc and by going to Google Alerts and setting up an account you can either choose to subscribe via RSS or via email and if you have a Google Reader account already yoursquoll automatically send that feed

to Google Reader So it makes it easier to find useful links online for topics yoursquore interested in and itrsquos a fantastic way of researching for up to date information which comes to you instead of you having to go to it as it were to find it which saves a lot of timeRSS feeds are also a great way to keep in touch with the core group of people that you follow onfpr example Twitter Twitter is a great way of creating your own personal l e a r n i n g n e t w o r k T h e disadvantage is that if you are following 1500 people letrsquos say therersquos no way that you can read every single tweet that they make every single message that they sendTherefore if you want to follow a core group what you can do is go to the Twitter Search website put in the username for the person you want to follow or track and then create an RSS feed for that username Put that into Google Reader and as a result you can see anything that they send as long as their tweets are not protected and also anyone who replies to them So thatrsquos really good Itrsquos also a great way of meeting like-minded colleagues as wellFinally I discovered a few days ago I could create an RSS feed for my friendsrsquo updates on Facebook which has been possible in the past but Facebook tend to change their security settings from time to time which sometimes makes this not possible although it is possible at the moment So hopefully that will continue for awhile and it means you donrsquot have


18

to log in to the site You can just find out what your friends are up to on Facebook by having the RSS feed straight into Google Reader or straight into your RSS reader

So to finish off with the challenge now is to spread the news about the power of RSS and to show how effect ive i t can be for enhancing learning in the 21st century

Photo Credithttpwwwflickrcomphotosjintan363837160


19

A year ago I would have described myself as a technophobe an MFL teacher who thought us ing Powerpoint as a teaching tool as well as allowing pupils to create t h e i r o w n P o w e r p o i n t presentations was more or less the limit of using ICT in Modern Foreign Languages lessons along with CDs and the odd DVD How wrong I wasLast January I discovered Twitter and the myriad of enthusiastic and supportive teachers that go with it My Personal Learning Letwork (PLN) broadened rapidly Having s u c h f a n t a s t i c s u p p o r t encouragement and advice on hand almost 24 hours a day gave me the confidence to begin trying out new ideas and web 20 tools both as an aid to teaching and as a creative tool for my pupils to use when practising and consolidating new language Tools such as Edmodo Voki Wallwisher GoAnimate Xtranormal Animoto and Wordle have all become part of the armoury of resources used in my day to day teachingWordle is one particular tool that I have used in a number of ways It really is easy to create a Wordle

You input a piece of text or a list of words click go and your text becomes a Wordle a word cloud in which the most frequently used words are displayed in a larger fontInspired by posts written by Samantha Lunn and Tom Barrett about ways in which Wordles can be used I decided to take the plunge and give it a goIn terms of my own teaching I have used Wordles as starter activities As classes enter the room I have my Wordle displayed on my projector Pupils then look at it and guess the topic they are going to be learning Another way I have used them is as a vocabulary classifying exercise which has proven to be a big hit with pupils arguing over how they have classified itI have also allowed pupils to create their own Wordles when they have been in an ICT room Year 7 and 8 classes have typed sentences on v a r i o u s t o p i c s i n a W o r d document before copying and pasting them into Wordle At first I was a bit sceptical about the worthiness of this in terms of language learning but the pupils

are so keen to produce a top quality Wordle that they are very happy to draft and re-draft their work in Word thus contributing to their learningAlso the knowledge that their work might be displayed for the whole world to see on our department blog drives them to produce a quality piece of work (you can see some examples here) From a slightly negative point of view pupils could become bogged d o w n i n fi d d l i n g w i t h t h e appearance of their Wordle once they have inputted their text I have to admit however that I havenrsquot f o u n d t h a t t o b e a n unsurmountable problem Reflecting back on the past year I have gained confidence and am no longer afraid to try out new ideas with classes even if they donrsquot always work the first time around Remember the old saying ldquoIf at first you donrsquot succeed try and try againrdquo I feel itrsquos just as important for us as teachers to be taken out of our comfort zone from time to time as it is for our pupilsMy PLN has g iven me the opportunity to reflect much more on my own practice and to work more collaboratively with my pupils themselves as their feedback is invaluable in terms of tweaking future lessons and tasks More importantly from a purely selfish point of view I have gained a new enthusiasm for teaching and my pup i l s a re becom ing more enthusiastic language learners

A word or two about Wordleby Saira Ghani


20

There has never been a better time to be a world language teacher Every day there is new information to make teaching even more exciting My PLN (Personal Learning Network) on Twitter has been a wonderful source of new ideas and resources and this has made me grow in ways I had not imagined However there are so many tools

g a d g e t s w e b s i t e s a n d applications to choose from that it can be difficult to know exactly where to begin To best take advantage of this new technology it is a good idea to create a filter so that you know exactly which information you can use of right away and which information you can file away for later

The American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) created national standards for language learning which focus on the areas of Communication C u l t u r e s C o m p a r i s o n s Connections and CommunitiesI realized that even with a clear understanding of what I needed to teach I still needed to create a

Resources keeping them real and keeping them together by Andrea Henderson


21

clear focus for my own classroom based on these standards my philosophy of language acquisition and my studentsrsquo needsWhen I changed schools four years ago I created a mission statement that not only allowed me to focus on what was most important in the classroom but also to focus on which technological tools would best suit my purpose An excellent tutorial for creating a mission statement can be found at Cedar Rapids Community SchoolsMy mission which is a component of my full classroom plan is to t r a n s f o r m s t u d e n t s i n t o francophone Francophiles who are self-motivated lifelong learners and world citizens My main goals are

bull to bring real world language experiences to my students by using authentic resources

bull to encourage my students to be autonomous learners

bull to create formative assessments of and for learning

bull to incorporate developmentally appropriate learning strategies

Additionally I need to maintain an efficient storage and retrieval sys tem to keep eve ry th ing together In this post I wi l l concent ra te on the use o f authentic sources and how to organize said resources

Real World Language Resources

As a teacher of French in Texas it is not always easy for students to realize that French is a global l a n g u a g e s p o k e n o n fi v e continents In addition to having my students communicate in

French I must also show them that French does actually exist outside of my classroom and is spoken by real people Using authentic resources brings the francophone world into my classroom and students understand that French is indeed a global languageSome of my favorite authentic resources are

bull LrsquoInternaute is an extremely rich French resource with everything from restaurant reviews to the analysis of names There are also wonderful short videos that give instructions on how to make a Tarte Tatin as well as how to tie Windsor knot (the boys really a p p r e c i a t e d t h i s o n e ) LrsquoInternaute distributes several newsletters which highl ight various articles I recently found a wonderful article on the first jobs of the heads of state around the world My French IVV class has been studying education in France and we were amazed to find that one world leader once worked as a street vendor selling peanuts Keeping LrsquoInternaute as my home page g i ves me constant exposure to every-day French life

bull Lodgis is a real estate site where one can sublet apartments in Par is You can select the quart ier pr ice range and amenities you would like in your apartment There are wonderful pictures of all of the rooms of the apartment as well as a written description of the contents of the apartment and the name of the closest metro stop There is even a list of the stores and other c o n v e n i e n c e s n e a r t h e

a p a r t m e n t A l t h o u g h t h e apartments are in Paris the language can be changed into Ch inese German I t a l i an Japanese Portuguese Russian and Spanish After studying the various arrondissements in Paris my advanced students get to choose an apartment to live in They love this and I also have my dream apartment which I have printed out in color and placed in the front cover of one of my planning notebooks These visuals provide a constant source of descriptions comparisons and narration

bull Houra provides the ultimate online shopping experience Not only are students able to compare French and American products but they also are able to augment their vocabularies with the rich descriptive words that are present in the ads Although I have mentioned many t imes that the French use decimal points where we use commas it becomes real to them when they actually see this system in use I also have the students convert the euros to dollars at XE when you access the Houra site you must put in a zip code I use 75007 the arrondissement of La Tour Eiffel Here is the lesson I created using Houra

bull Wordle has been invaluable recently for providing pre-reading and pre-listening exercises for news stories of the earthquake in Haiti I teach French levels 1-V and Wordle allowed me to provide comprehensible input for all of students


22

I paste the text of a French news article from France 24 and allow Wordle to create the word cloud I then change the color to black and white select alphabetical order and set the maximum words to 20-30 I then display the Worlde on my TV screen so that the students can see the words as they come into class We first find the words they do know and find meanings to the words they donrsquot know The students then make predictions of what they think the article will be about Finally when I play video of the news story even the beginning the students are able to understand the gist of the story For the more advanced students I print out the article and I may additionally target a certain grammatical structure Here is an example of a Worlde I have used recently with every level

bull Commercials movie trailers and music videos have been another g r e a t w a y o f b r i n g i n g francophone culture into my classroom Every Monday as the students are coming into the r o o m I h a v e v i d e o s o f commercials playing on my TV Allocineacute provides movie trailers so that students can see what is playing in France I also use it for students to post their film reviews we write in class The students take their writing much more seriously when they realize that it will be posted for the francophone world to see Le Top 50 at MCM keeps me aware of what the most popular songs and artists in France On Fridays

I play film trailers and music videos The students love this and often tell me that they have included these francophone art ists in their own music collections

Organizing resources

Keeping all of your ever-growing number of resource together can be a cha l lenge There are however there are many tools that can help you organize your resources My favorites arebull Netvibes allows me to keep my

websites and other accounts all in one place With Netvibes you to have a private page and a public page My private page keeps my email accounts Flickr my bookmarking sites and blogs I read together as well as allowing me to see updates of the blogs in one place I started Netvibes when I took several online courses and had to o rgan ize the many on l ine resources we used for the courses I had multiple logins wikis and blogs to manage at once and Netvibes helped me keep my sanity I was able to create a tab for each course I was taking as well as the courses teach These tabs are a lifesaver when I take students to the computer lab (we go about every two weeks) because all of the resources are in one place Here is a link to my public Netvibes page

bull iTunes allows me create playlists of all of the audio I use for my various levels without having to dig through a mound of CDs Teaching multiple levels means that I have quite a few CDs for

each level I can easily create a collection of listening exercises organized by theme so that I can find them when I need them Creating the playlists makes it much easier to monitor the class during assessments because Irsquom not chained to the CD player trying to find the track I need iTunes also allows me to add podcasts to the playlists which provide move opportunity for listening experiences

bull One of the challenges of working on mu l t i p l e compute rs i s o r g a n i z i n g y o u r m u l t i p l e bookmarks Delicious and Diigo a l low me to o rgan ize my bookmarks so that I can find and share them easily I started using Delicious because I liked the aspect of being able to be part of a bookmarking network Many members of my PLN use Diigo and I created an account there as well Diigo allows me to be a member of groups so I use it most often Fortunately my Delicious bookmarks can be updated simultaneously from Diigo which makes keeping everything updated simple

U s i n g t e c h n o l o g y c a n b e intimidating unless you have a focus Many teachers become overwhelmed at the number of resources that are available and do not know where to begin If you begin by creating a mission setting goals and focusing on a limited number of areas you will be able to tame the information jungle


23

If this term has proved anything to me itrsquos that the use of Web 20 in Modern Fore ign Languages teaching is a wholly worthwhile and effective enterprise Even the most intransigent class can genuinely learn and show real motivation if some of the great applications available to us online these days are harnessed in the right wayMy journey with using ICT in MFL teaching began properly this year with the discovery of a wonderful online community of practitioners en thus ias t i c to sha re the i r excellence Twitter has been an incredible education for me and has had a direct impact on classroom teaching as a non-stop source of ideas and support As we all know new ideas can be slow to take root in any institution and schools are no different But the MFL Twitterati have been invaluable to me in reminding me that it ainrsquot about how fast I get therehellipTo cut to the chase one of the web applications I had targeted for use this term was Google Maps Over the summer I had produced a YouTube tutorial on this topic Figuring it was about time I took my own advice I determined that I would have a go at it with my Year 10 group who a re not a l l enthusiastic linguists and can be less than focused at times As it happened this series of lessons was key in turning their attitude around

The project in briefbull Students to produce an account

of a journey in the past tense using Google Maps and its ldquoStreet Viewrdquo function

bull Students to produce this on PowerPoint for display on the VLE and and on the classroom wall

Things I was worried about before doing this projectbull It would take me ages and I

would fall behind in the Schemes of Work

bull They would just mess about and get nothing done

bull It would be too complicated to explain

bull They would use technology as an excuse not to do the work

bull They would not actually learn anything

In order to address some of these worries I took steps to ensure the smooth running of the lessons I produced a step-by-step guide including screenshots for the students which I left on the school network and on our VLE I planned a destination for each pupil to save timeI set minimum targets to be achieved in each of the three lessons and of course I was on hand to help This might seem like a lot of work but I now have a great resource to use in future yearsAs I had previously delivered a lesson on Montpellier where I spent a year abroad in the dim and

Google Maps in the MFL classroomby Simon Howells


24

distant past it seemed appropriate to use destinations around that town to further ldquobring aliverdquo the place theyrsquore always hearing me mentionThese three lessons turned out to be probably the most enjoyable of the term Pupils less conversant with technology realised they could follow instructions and produce something that looked great Others got inspired and produced incredibly detailed instructions The editing process really hammered home the past tense and this was perhaps the thing that pleased me

the most ndash I felt that using it practically made them really learn the past tense We went from a class who hated grammar and failed tests to one that saw the passeacute composeacute ashellip a bit passeacuteSo how do I know for sure that it was a success Much of the answer to that quest ion is necessarily anecdotal My grouprsquos writing though has already shown a marked improvement The secret pride I detected in our classroom display and the satisfaction they got from seeing work appear on

my blog and on the VLE hinted at a changed attitudeThey feel like they can ldquodordquo French all of a sudden They have seen a practical application for it They have taken pride in producing accurate work spurred on by the knowledge that it will be on public view They are ceasing to see French as a difficult bore and starting to believe in themselves They are still far from perfect linguists ndash arenrsquot we all ndash but the challenge now is to keep that goinghellip itrsquos the climb


25

Powerpoint she had produced to learn basic animal words in Spanish After trying out different microphones it seems that a headset produced the best resultWhat struck me the most was how uncomfortable I felt at first giving feedback that way We always respond to other peoplersquos body l anguage and look ou t fo r paralinguistic clues when we are giving feedback in order to assess its impact In many respects feedback given through a Pixetell can be seen as fairer but I suspect some training would be needed in order to ensure that it still feels personal Saying the studentrsquos name using different turns of phrases for praising and offering positive and constructive criticism are all essentialThe structure of the feedback is roughly as follows

bull description of good points criteria for assessment

bull praisebull suggestions for improvement

bull next steps (target-setting)Used at the end of a short project applications such as Pixetell would be a way to ensure that due praise is given to all the students that have put in the effort I also feel that the impact on the studentrsquos self-image as a learner would also be stronger than a well done note on paper In addition the students who feel that they are ldquotoo cool to be praisedrdquo could still get their pat on the back in privateFor the specific purpose of teaching languages the benefit of i nc l ud i ng aud io i n t eache r feedback is obvious Students then have a model that they can use and replicate if needed It is also not an impersonal sound file that they have to listen to in its entirety before they reach the bit that applies to them but it supports a

personalised answer to their own work Very powerfulIf used for feedback Pixetell would work great with private student teacher platforms like Edmodo for responses to individual projects but used tactfully example of studentsrsquo work could also be presented on a class wiki VLE page with oral comments included Examples of coursework at different grades from real or imaginary students could also be included for discussionThere are other tools like Jing GoView or Camtasia who offer some of the features of Pixetell so this very useful comparison chart helps the potential user to assess whether this is the right tool for them as well as to find free alternatives for specific features

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotosshaggypaul

624190252

Supporting assessment for learningPixetell is an ldquoon-demand software that enables you to quickly add voice screen recordings and video to email and other electronic documentsrdquo The twist is that Pixetell supports visual communication but also allows collaboration through sharing multimedia messages -called pixetells- and allowing discussions to take place around themMy vision of how it could be used relies on the need for teachers to develop a more structured approach to verbal feedback to students and links directly with assessment for learningSo I decided to test it out giving feedback to a first year student-11 years old on a

by Isabelle Jones


26

There is a phenomenal range of technological resources available to MFL teachers to enhance our pupilsrsquo skills in the classroom However it is inevitable that either resources or an ICT room are not always available in order for every pupil to be able to produce something they can be proud of therefore at the moment I find that I am the person us ing the technology the most in the classroom ndash although my new yearrsquos resolution is to get the pupils using moreThis post will therefore look at the elements I use the most in my classroom when teaching and what technology I use in order to

make my resources stimulating and engaging

bull Colour ndash I believe there is no point in creating a resource using a variety of colours fonts andor images unless they have a purpose ndash after all you do not want to distract the reader so I colour-code language feminine nouns are red and masculine nouns are blue (if I wish to emphasize plurals ndash in French for example I use green) Spanish verbs are coloured g r e e n p u r p l e o r o r a n g e according to whether it is an -AR -ER or IR verb respectively (I use a slight variation for French) and I only tend to colour the verb

completely if it is conjugated otherwise I just colour the endingI do not explicitly explain to pup i l s my co lour cod ing however as my classes develop I encourage them to begin to talk about what they recognise using the target language eg ldquoEs azul porque es masculinordquo which can then build up to ldquoes azul porque es masculino y termina en ordquoThis metalanguage can develop to an advanced level by the time they have studied the language for a few years however it does require a bit of planning in order to develop it beyond the basic What tools are required

Simple but effectiveby Samantha Lunn


27

Not much is required except a c o l o u r p a l e t t e i n W o r d PowerPo in t o r equ i va l en t application Simple but effective

bull Image ndash I will not add a variety of images to a slide or a Word document unless they are needed When c rea t ing a resource to introduce vocabulary I will always have on every screen the question that we are working on from the scheme of w o r k I n e v e r i n t r o d u c e vocabulary without a structure w h i c h s t e m s f r o m a Contextualising Question and the re levant answer stem for example Where are you from I am fromhellipFranceGermanyEnglandSpain etcBefore introducing to pupils the item of vocabulary that they will be learning I try to get them to tell me what it is through using a variety of techniques such as paraphrasing in the target language or showing an image however ra ther than jus t showing the image directly I make use of a variety of tools to reveal an item very slowly enabling the pupils to think about what it could be before learning the wordIn PowerPoint the animation tool is an effective way of slowly making an object dissolve on to the screen and I l ike the interactivity of the trigger tool (which allows an item that you have clicked on to be animated rather than being animated in a s p e c i fi c o r d e r w h i c h i s predefined in the PowerPoint)In an ActivStudio Flipchart I can replicate these techniques using

rub and reveal placing a shape over the image and moving it away bit by bit or placing items over a word or image and deleting them in order to see wha t i s unde r nea th By displaying an image and then showing the word in the target language I make a conscious effort to move away from linking vocabulary back to English words and the images are then a useful tool to practise language later on through activities such as Kimrsquos game quick flash slow reveal through the keyhole and many morehellipWhen I first trained to teach in 2005 we created resources on acetate to display on the overhead projector Even though these resources were made in W o r d t r a n s f e r r i n g t h e pedagogical reasoning behind the methods of introducing and practising vocabulary in this manner to presentation tools such as PowerPoint or more recently Prezi took a lot of work and is now an essential part of my teaching and nearly every resource I make is displayed electronically on the interactive whiteboard You can download examp les o f th i s t ype o f resources from my website LanguagesResourcescouk

bull Audio ndash I rarely use a textbook in the classroom as I prefer to create my own materials which are tailored to my teaching needs and my pupilsrsquo learning needs You will find that I use more regularly the audio that comes with the textbooks however I

also enjoy creating my own listening material for example through recording my voice in Audacity (sometimes changing my voice by using effects) and uploading the sound file to a VokiI use also regularly use songs in the classroom in order to drill language and if the class produce a particularly good rendition then we create a Voki ( d e s c r i b e d i n t h e t a r g e t language of course) and the audio of their version is added before I publish it onlineMore recently I have begun to use LingtLanguage to create activities for students and I will be using the departmentrsquos recently acquired EasiSpeak microphones and Flip digital cameras in order for the pupils to create audio and video to practise their speaking skills further Of course I cannot forget to mention all of the video resources that are available to us through the internet on sites s u c h a s Y o u T u b e a n d TeacherTube which are an excellent source of authentic materials

bull Sharing ndash The most essential element of creating resources for me comes from the sharing of good pract ice W i th in my department we share nearly everything that we create ndash which includes flash games and audio files ndash through a well-organised shared network area which led to the creation of my website

I also rely on the many kind people


28

who make their resources available o n l i n e s u c h a s t h r o u g h AsiSeHacenet MFL Sunderland MFL Resources and the TES resource bank I have come across so many phenomenal onl ine resources that I have found that the best way of lsquosavingrsquo all of them is through using the Delicious bookmarking siteI cannot end this article without mentioning how I come across so

many excellent resources The MFL TES forum Twitter Yahoo MFL Resources group and the reading of a variety of blogs (and writing one) are all essential means of communication for me now and as I look back over 2009 I realise that I would not be aware of half of the things that I know without the Personal Learning Network that I have developed around me The MFL Flashmeetings MFL Show amp

Tell and TeachMeet NW have been part of this yearrsquos highlights and I look forward to enhancing my knowledge in 2010 through the continued use of ICT both in the classroom and beyond

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotostwoacresphotography3936235776


29

As long ago as 2001 the UK government asked the Stewart Inquiry to set guidelines on a minimum age for mobile telephone users It didnrsquot but that didnrsquot stop the government from issuing a circular to all schools in England discouraging non-essential use of mobile telephones among students under the age of 15Since then things have changed Children used mobiles and didnrsquot grow the tumours the government warned them about and the techno logy has become so

advanced that most children I teach have a mobile telephone in their pocket which is considerably better and faster than the desktop PC in my studyMuch has been written about how students can use their telephones as learn ing tools However officially mobiles are still banned in many schoolsI have been using them with my KS4 students with some success and here are some ways in which we have used them

bull Voice recording - The students record themselves speaking in the target language using the mobile phonersquos in-built voice recorder They then play it back listening to their work Instant self assessment and possible peer assessment What did they do w r o n g H o w c o u l d t h e y improve

bull Video recording - Using the video recording function one student records two others performing a dialogue in the target language

Mobile phones in the MFL classroom by Dominic McGladdery


30

This is great for practising GCSE Role Play activities and also for improving pronunciation We have also done this using the schoolrsquos video cameras but for some reason the students prefer to use their mobiles The fact that they donrsquot need to be taught to use them saves valuable time in class tooThe finished work can then be sent to my laptop via Bluetooth and shared with the group

bull Sending files via - BluetoothFor the last couple of years the students have recorded their Presentations for their GCSE speaking exams using Audacity I edited them taking out long pauses and erms saved them as mp3 files and bluetoothed them to each student They then listened to them on their mobiles or copied them to their Mp3 Players We found this an excellent way to revise Your friends donrsquot need to know that you are revising for your German exam do theyI also used Xtranormal with Year 9 students to create movies which I embedded into my departmentrsquos wiki I downloaded them using RealPlayer and sent

them to studentsrsquo phones using Bluetooth They were really proud of what they had done and achievedWe have used Bluetooth to revise grammar points too I conve r ted some g rammar PowerPoint files I made into movies with Movie Maker and b l u e t o o t h e d t h e m t o t h e students

bull Downloading - I made some Crazytalk movies with some of the students and uploaded them to a YouTube account I created for the department The students then downloaded the files to their mobiles to show their friends and families

bull Using the web - I recently had a student use her mobile phone in my class to look up the meaning of a word on WordReference because she couldnrsquot find it in the dictionary I have also allowed students to use Wikipedia to find information on certain topics in the target language

If you work in a school which allows students to use their mobiles responsibly I would definitely recommend that you try out some of the ideas listed above

So what are my future plansWell next term I hope to get the students to use their phones actively in lessons Ideally I want them to use their phones to a n s w e r q u e s t i o n s b y t e x t message Irsquod already heard of one site SMSPoll and after reading Mark Cunninghamrsquos blog about his recent experiences another called PollEverywhere Both these sites allow students to answer multiple choice questions and give realtime answers which can be put straight into PowerPoint presentations which would be ideal for starters and plenaries in the classroomPollEverywhere also allows you to create free text polls where students can respond with their own answers and allows answers via Twitter too This would be ideal for feedback and gather ing information in languages lessonsIrsquom aware that not all students will have their mobiles in school and that not all of them will be able to send SMS for free but I hope to find a way around this When I do Irsquoll let you know

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotosleonardlow1142365603


31

I started teaching languages in the mid-eighties (last century) Our use of technology in the MFL faculty was limited to using a reel to reel tape-recorder and showing films from the film strips projector With the introduction of the tape-recorder our life became easier as locating the right track was less time consumingMy first encounter with a computer was a BBC acorn At first I did not see how computers could be u s e d i n M F L H o w e v e r I discovered a game called Granville I started taking classes into the then very basic computer-room to play the game The students enjoyed playing the game which involved visiting the town of Granville and spending holiday money I started seeing the potential of computers and how students could control their own learningI have been in my present school since 1992 and I have seen technology evolved at such a speed that the mind boggles My teaching has changed so much in the 21st century My favourite tool in the classroom is the Interactive Whiteboard but for me access to the Internet in the classroom has been the greatest breakthroughFinished are the days of collecting newspapers magazines or leaflets and filling up my car boot with realia to enhance my teaching I still use some but students can now be exposed to the latest news up-to-date prices products etc They can explore towns

shopping precincts visit museums and so much more i n t he francophone worldSearch engines have helped me access these resources Listening exercises are more appropriate to the students all our bought textbook recordings are accessible on the schoolrsquos Intranet I like to challenge students with the news from Mon jt quotidien songs from YouTube their own recordings using Audacity or the Easispeak microphonesReading skills are enhanced by texts which are more relevant to their lives Students have read about their favourite actors by searching information online Often the learning does not stop at school research is also done at home as independent studyI also use the Internet to create and host my own games I use Hot Potatoes Quia and Linguascope to promote new vocabulary Every day I discover new tools and

interesting websites which I know wi l l make my lessons more interesting and will bring the world to my classroom Twitter online Languages fora and flashmeetings have given me access to resources that I would not have imagined possible at the beginning of this centuryM y t a p e - r e c o r d e r a n d m y overhead projector are still in a c o r n e r i n m y c l a s s ro o m hellip gathering dust

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotosdigger-c64745817175

Mrs Perkinsrsquos journey into the w w wby Marie-France Perkins


32

A c c o rd i n g t o W i k i p e d i a microblogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send short text updates or micromedia such as photos video or audio clips and publish them either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user The fact that these updates can be sent to a restricted group is an essential consideration in the context of education and online safety Essentially microblogging is the purpose for which the vast majority of students use social networking sites such as Facebook MySpace or increasingly microblogging services such as TwitterIn the absence of an institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) social networking online can be used as an extension to classroom teach ing and as a too l to encourage communication and inquisitiveness among students with the overarching objective of enhancing teaching and learning of by improving both teacher-student a n d s t u d e n t - s t u d e n t communication and in so doing bridging the home-school divideThe advent of what we adults call Web 20 -I say this because to our students Web 20 is the web- has brought us a myriad of tools with considerable educational potential that the education establishment would be unwise to overlook or disparage Old fashioned ICT -

word processing powerpoint p resen ta t i ons and desk top applications in general- has often been demonstrated to motivate studentsHowever the bright colourful engaging and intuitive world of Web 2 0 has opened new possibilities to encourage creativity (photo and video sharing and editing sites) promote participation (social networking sites) and improve access to information (social book-marking sites) in ways which we are only beginning to u n d e r s t a n d S h a r i n g a n d collaborating can be redefined as the main characteristics of the whole Web 20 phenomenon as opposed to its earlier more static incarnationThere is no doubt that although my students might be blissfully unaware of the term Web 20 they are all familiar with the concept behind it creating content sharing collaborating and networking online In fact social networking online has rapidly become the principal means of communication for the current generation of teenagersSocial networking is after all what they do on their mobile phones and other hand-held devices under their desks when we teachers are not looking This is what they do as soon as they get home from schoolMany will argue that most students

Microblogging making the case for social networking in education

by Joseacute Picardo


33

are just wasting their time and gossiping online but whatever anyonersquos opinion on the benefits or dangers of social networking is it cannot be denied that they are all s h a r i n g c o l l a b o r a t i n g a n d networking and they are doing so in a way which they enjoy and find engaging otherwise they simply would not do itMore and more people not just our students are becoming aware of the power of belonging to a network each individual member contributes a small part so that the resulting body of knowledge is much greater than that which any individual member could have amassed on their own This is why the social internet has become so successful groups of people have c l u m p e d t o g e t h e r f o r m i n g networks generally because of some sort of affinity or shared i n t e res t and have s t a r t ed communicating and passing on information that matters to them Social and Personal networks fora blogs and microblogs have become the narrow end of the funnel through which a seemingly chaotic maelstrom of voices is poured resulting in a steady flow o f mean ing fu l and re levant informationMy pupi ls may wel l not be consciously aware of this or fami l ia r w i th the word that describes the activity in which they love to engage microblogging However they are extremely well versed with the concept the word microblogging encapsulates brief updates photo and video sharing tagging and poking

They are communicating with each other on an unprecedented scale spending more and more time in front of a computer screen with multi-player games email the Internet and instant messaging becoming an ever more integral part of their lives The rising importance and availability of online social networks and their popularity among young people in particular cannot be dismissed putting the use of ICT at the heart of 21st century interconnectivity in all areas of society not just educationPedagogy in my opinion needs to reflect these social changes and con fo rm to the needs and expectations of todayrsquos students and if we teach them in a way that mirrors how they live their lives when they are not in school if we help to ensure that the gap between their school life and real life is minimised we then become better able to guarantee the commitment and engagement of the vast majority of our studentsMotivation and engagement are often seen as the holy grail of language teaching Lack of m o t i v a t i o n r e s u l t i n g i n disengagement continues to be a big problem for language teachers which helps to explain in my view why they have traditionally been e a r l y a d o p t e r s o f n e w technologies first tapes and overhead projectors then CDs DVDs and digital data projectors More recently widely available internet access has heralded the arrival of the next logical stage in the evolution of the language teacher the connected teacher

My challenge was therefore to provide my students with the means to communicate with their teachers and with each other in a way which they would find both attractive and natural fitting in with their technological expectations and making use of the skills they already possessed whilst at the same time adding value to their educationUsing a microblogging service which looked and felt like those already in use by my students would in theory allow teachers to enter their territory and continue to bring education to them wherever they happened to be through their computers and portable devices I felt it was important to bring access to language learning opportunities from home and therefore started to look for a way in which I could bridge the gap between school and home (by home I really mean not school) by tapping into the potential offered by social networking in terms of catalysing studentrsquos interest therefore making the most of the positive attitudes my students displayed towards Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)Using ICT with a focus on the C for Communication is in my view the next logical step and would allow us to bring the learning online and to blend the use of traditional tools such as textbooks or dictionaries with more up-to-date relevant and authentic multimedia materials from the web Microblogging would provide teachers and students with a platform in which they could interact beyond the constraints of the school walls and


34

with which the teacher could provide further personal ised feedback and supportEffective use of ICT in education is in my view the key to personalised learning it increases learnersrsquo access to resources and support and helps to motivate the most reluctant learners to practise complex skills and achieve more than they would have done through other more traditional means thus benefiting those who do not generally do well in formal contextsBeing able to contact the teacher electronically and in private to ask for help or clarification without fear of peer pressure or ridicule would help engage the hard-to-reach students and leaves the door wide open to new ways of personalising and differentiating tuition On the other hand those students who are engaged and doing well would relish the opportunity to obtain extension materials designed to stretch the more able delivered directly to their own social network wall in their computer screenAfter having considered using Facebook groups and Twitter I o p t e d f o r a s p e c i a l i s t microblogging service named E d m o d o w h i c h h a d b e e n designed to be used specifically in an educational context Twitter was discarded on the grounds that it offered a very limited service of 140 character long messages sent to a group of users called tweets or direct messages of equal length sent to individual users Facebook was rejected after consulting our students and arriving at the conclusion that they might see our

use of Facebook for educational purposes as an intrusion into their privacy therefore negating any possible benefits obtained by using this medium I got the distinct feeling that our students wanted to keep work and play separateEdmodo on the other hand was clearly for school work an aspect which appealed greatly to my students However it still looked and fe l t l i ke the i r be loved Facebook Upon signing up to the service students and teachers are told what the purpose of Edmodo is lsquoA private social platform for teachers and students to share i d e a s fi l e s e v e n t s a n d assignmentsrsquoA distinction is also made upon signing up between students and teachers Teachers are able to set up classes and groups (for which Edmodo generates a unique alpha-numerical code) set and collect assignments send alerts link to o n l i n e r e s o u r c e s a t t a c h documents and embed audio visual material When students log on to Edmodo for the first time they are prompted to enter the unique code generated for their class and thus both teacher and student accounts become linked and the can begin communication privately and safelyM y s t u d e n t s i m m e d i a t e l y understood the purpose o f Edmodo and embraced i t s simplicity and ease of use As it is often pointed out a website should not make the user think as far as usability is concerned However the feedback we kept receiving again and again from students was that Edmodo was just such a

convenient service Convenience rather than ease of use turned out to be the key to the adoption of Edmodo by my students as their preferred means of keeping track of assignment deadlines and communication with their teacherStudents by and large embraced Edmodo as a useful time saving tool which helped them keep on top of their work and communicate with teachers when their help was most needed that is when they were away from the classroom and were attempting to put the theory learnt in the lessons into practice in their homework In fact being able to assess their work and answer t h e i r q u e s t i o n s i n f o r m a l l y demonstrably increased their confidence in the subject and helped to secure their knowledgeTwo further aspects I would like to mention are the democratisation and personalisation of the learning experience Firstly through the use of a microblogging platform such as Edmodo all students are given the opportunity to interact with the teacher outside any perceived pressures and constraints which may be present in the classroom This levelled the playing field for those students who were less ready to shout out in lessons feared ridicule or were simply less willing to participate in the open forum of a classroomSecondly using microblogging in this way resulted in a more personal ised exper ience for students who felt individually supported by their teacher and on occas ion a lso the i r peers Personalisation also came in the form of being able to receive


35

updates reminders and notices from the classroom in their own computers or mobile devices which could be addressed to the group or to individual students Teach ing and learn ing thus became connected beyond the constrains of the school timetableD e s p i t e t h e s e a p p a r e n t advantages I often detect a strong sense of scepticism among some of my colleagues who see the implementation of tools such as Edmodo as a capitulation to what they perce ive as a lack of discipline absence of self-control and preference for immediacy among the current generation of s t u d e n t s S t u d e n t s w a n t everything now instantlyUpon fur ther cons iderat ion however this appears hardly surprising particularly given that on the internet for better or for worse everything is just a click away allowing them to follow links where their interest takes them pursuing mul t id imens iona l threads of information often leading to learning outcomes that bear little resemblance to the or ig inal objectives that is the reason for the first clickThis which is often perceived as a lack of focus rather than a new perhaps better way to synthesise information and therefore acquire

knowledge does go some way to explain why our generation of students struggle to write essays under controlled conditions using pens and paper It simply is not how they do things anymore yet we still insist on assessing their work as ours was assessed and teaching them how we were taught Understanding this might lead to the rea l isat ion that classroom pedagogy needs to be transformed and that we cannot continue teaching the way we want to teach but rather the way our students want to learnMy own view is that educators need to wake up to the needs and expectations of our students and reach a mutually acceptable compromise which would exploit the skills our students already possess whilst safeguarding our pedagogical principles without caving into a teenagerrsquos natural propensity to instant gratification and superficiality These are traits lest we forget that have been found in teenagers since time immemorial and not just among the current often unfavourably p o r t r a y e d a n d u n f a i r l y misrepresented generationPerhaps what is familiar to our students feels threatening to teachers given that we prefer to stay in control and we do not like

our students being one step ahead of us Perhaps we fear that we would not be able to control them in their territory onlineYet we cannot deny that the internet has undergone a revolution in terms of the services and possibilities it offers It is no longer a static repository of information in which information flowed one way from the source to the recipient Information nowadays flows both ways as more and more websites encourage or even rely on two-way communication and the creation and sharing of contentI t i s c l e a r t h a t b e t t e r communication between school and home between teachers and students is not only desirable but also essential in a world in which t e c h n o l o g y i s c o n t i n u a l l y discovering and developing new excit ing and useful ways of improving communication between people In a sense our students have tasted the proverbial honey and the move towards this type of social interaction in the field of e d u c a t i o n i s i n m y v i e w inexorable Educators would be unwise not to take advantage of their studentsrsquo will ingness to communicate and their desire to participate via this medium


36

I suppose it is normal to reflect back on the year as Christmas approaches and the new year looms and even more so when it comes to writing a guest post I feel that I am often a lsquoJack of all trades master of nonersquo yet I suppose that I am hard on myself given how far I have progressed in a relatively short space of timeAnd it leads me to consider how did I get to this point Well it all started with a trip to the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston in the summer of 2008 closely followed by a jaunt to the Isle of Wight to an MFL conference organised by Joe Dale I came away from both conferences totally i n s p i r e d a n d s e t a b o u t

establishing my own Personal Learning Network (PLN) primarily through contacts I had made at said conferences as well as Twitter and the MFL Resources Yahoo groupThere is so much I could talk about but the main aim of this blog is to share practical examples so I am going to focus on Edmodo and our departmental wiki It was Joseacute Picardo who first mentioned Edmodo and this interested me as I had issues with the current VLE in school and plans to change it were slow to come to fruition Edmodo is free and has an appea l i ng s t y l e s im i l a r t o Facebook which many pupils are obviously familiar with

It proved extremely easy to set up a n a c c o u n t f o r m y s e l f a t wwwedmodocom and equally so to establish group accounts for each of my classes Pupils were given the group code and told to set up an account My tip to encourage this would be to set a homework on Edmodo and tell them it is only available thereWithin Edmodo there is a poll facility which is useful as well as t h e p o s s i b i l i t y o f p o s t i n g comments and replies I use Edmodo to set assignments for pupils of all ages they like it as they can access the site at home and download any relevant files I have uploaded as well as see the due date They can also submit

Looking back and moving forwardby Amanda Salt


37

the work electronically which saves a lot of time in class instead of using memory sticks and it is more contained than email You can grade the work on Edmodo or download it to Word and use track changes before uploading it againI also set optional ICT tasks such as creative websites like Image Chef or Toondoo whereby pupils gain stars for the star chart if they choose to complete the task P u p i l s a r e e m b r a c i n g t h e opportunity to use their language in a more creative way and are keen to show their end product off to a wider audienceAnd this leads me on to my second focus our departmental wiki I set up the wiki primarily as a means of displaying the pupilsrsquo work and they love looking at the Clustrmap on the home page to see how many visitors we have

had and where they come from Each class has their own page and those who are confident in ICT or keen to learn are encouraged to upload or embed their work themselves otherwise they can email the code or file to me and I do it for them at this stageSo far this year we have Toondoo GoAnimate and puppet dialogues recorded using our new FLIP camera This encourages peer assessment on a formal or informal basis and pupils are enthusiastic about this display of their workOther pages include a list of useful websites study skills and audio files amongst others I find the wiki so handy from this regard as pupils invariably lost the pages produced in the past with this kind of information or paid no attention to them Putting them on the wiki means that we are talking their

language through a medium they understand and valueThere is no doubt in my mind that m y t e a c h i n g h a s c h a n g e d dramatically for the better At this s t age t he resu l t s a re no t necessarily different but the buzz in our department and the uptake figures tell their own tale Teachers in other departments come to us for advice and to borrow some of the equipment pupils have told them we are using in lessonsAnd as a department we are keen to share and learn from others and go into 2010 with an enthusiasm for the benefits technology brings to our pupils and ourselves

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotoswonderlane2318269286


38

Irsquom sure that quite a few of my students over the years have thought that French and Spanish are languages that I have made up del iberate ly to confuse and bewilder them Their immediate reaction to the hard work and thinking involved in the subject is often ldquoEveryone should speak Englishrdquo ldquoFrance is stupidrdquo or ldquoIrsquom never going to Spainrdquo Irsquove needed to have in my repertoire something e l s e t o t e m p t t h e m w i t h something else that will help them to have a deeper understanding of what the languages they are studying are all aboutCommunity cohesion is one of the big things at the moment and the Global Dimension is now an integral part of the KS3 curriculum As teachers of MFL we are ideally placed to address these issues we are fortunate to be teaching a subject where different cultures

and ways of life are the essence of our work We deal with other countries on a daily basis By bringing aspects of culture into our lessons we not only enrich and enliven them but we also enable o u r s t u d e n t s t o s e e a n d understand that their culture and way of life are not the only ones and are not necessarily the right ones It is imperative that students understand that foreign is not synonymous with wrong or badWe are very fortunate in 2010 that we have the KS2 Framework with its Intercultural Understanding strand of which I am a big fan and the new KS3 Framework which also has an Intercultural Understanding strand to point us in the right direction It is also the year when we have the World Cup in South Africa to facilitate work of an intercultural nature not to mention the Winter Olympics in

V a n c o u v e r a n d o n g o i n g preparations for London 2012When I started along the road of international education in 1997 the internet was really still in its infancy There was some information out there but it was hard to find and then we did not have the facility to view it in the classroom No in te ract i ve wh i teboards no computer suites And if one ICT class was using the internet in those days it became intolerably slow for everyone else So the cultural input relied on the FLAs photographs that I had taken on holiday brochures magazines and of course the huge piles of realia which I collected while abroad and which are the scourge of the s p o u s e s o f M F L t e a c h e r s everywhereBringing the world into your classroom these days is so easy thanks to technology If yoursquore studying weather bring it alive by looking at some webcams If yoursquore teaching ldquoschoolrdquo have a look at the websites of some schools in one of the countries where the language is spoken For example have a look at the subjects that the students at this Spanish school learn Do your students know all the vocabulary What is EuskaraIf itrsquos French yoursquore doing you could show them pictures of schools in France but Martinique is much more interesting There are some superb video clips available now

Really understanding cultureby Clare Seccombe


39

There are also countless video c l ips audio recordings and photographs which are readily available to MFL teachers via the internet not to mention the numerous websites themselves with which it is easy to supplement the driest text bookThe internet is omnipresent in the lives of todayrsquos young people They are able to access all kinds of things things which will help them to form their opinions Some of these things will touch on other cultures on other peoples and the opinions that they begin to form may not be those of tolerance understanding and interest that we w o u l d h o p e f o r C u l t u r a l stereotypes are everywhere in their lives in the toys that they play with the books that they read the television programmes that they watch and the music that they listen to What we need to do is to try to prod them in the right direction to show them the difference between stereotype and realityAgain technology comes to our rescue and enables us to do this with ease I love showing this video clip from YouTube which gives us some stereotypical views

of France and the French We all have a good laugh at it Then I show th is one the Engl ish equivalent We know that this is not an accurate depiction of England and being English so we have to ask how accurate the French one isModern technology allows us easy quick and most importantly free access to materials which will help us in our endeavours to increase our studentsrsquo tolerance and understanding of other countries and cultures But nothing will achieve that aim more than personal contact between our students and their counterparts overseas In ldquothe olden daysrdquo of the late 1990s all we could manage was hand-written letters some cassette recordings of students speaking and if we were really lucky some videos that we had made using a camera the size of a small suitcase And of course it all had to be sent via snail mail or faxedW h i l e w e c a n s t i l l n o t underestimate the impact of a personal letter arriving in the post there are so many other ways to c o r r e s p o n d a n d w o r k collaboratively now There is

etwinning where schools can find European partners and then work and correspond with them within a secure environment And the correspondence is almost instant ndash no waiting three weeks for replies to l e t te rs to a r r i ve ndash thus maintaining the impetus and interestAudio and video recordings which are so much easier to make these days can be shared via email or on shared spaces such as wikis and blogs as well as the more traditional methods And there are the numerous online authoring tools which are well-documented in Box of Tricks and which can be u s e d t o g r e a t e f f e c t i n communicat ion with partner schools and friends in other countriesSo the ball is in our court We have the ways and the means Letrsquos use technology to ensure that our students really understand culture

Photo credithttpwwwflickrcomphotosbcostin2906131566


40

I love technology I havenrsquot always loved it but over the last few years Irsquove fallen in love with all things geekie and become a bit of a technochick as Irsquom called at school Itrsquos true that lsquoshiny thingsrsquo appeal to me but itrsquos more than that Irsquove become increasingly convinced of the importance of using technology in everyday life and as an educator that means in my job tooI have many roles mother (very important) Spanish teacher in a primary school Language Coach for my local authority eTwinning Ambassador for the Br i t ish Council Apple Distinguished Educator consultant and speaker ndash and in all of these I have seen the power of technology to make my job easier better and more fun For me itrsquos not about using technology for the sake of it ndash there has to be a good reasonAs I was thinking about this I thought back to a blog post I wrote last year about one unit of the Key Stage 2 Spanish QCA scheme of work and how wersquod done it in our classroom You can read the original post hereIn a six week period we used technology every week to enhance our learning Without it wersquod have met the objectives of the Unit ndash thatrsquos true However it wouldnrsquot have been the same and I doubt that the pupils would have gained as much as they did from using all the tools we utilised

So what did we do and what did we useWebsites ndash The unit was based on inspired by Saint-Saensrsquo Carnival of the Animals and I found a wonderful Spanish website which featured clips of each of the animalsrsquo themes and also gave information about Saint Saens the piece and the musical instruments used This meant that I was informed as the teacher but the pupils could also have a look surprising themselves as to how much they understood despite it being in Spanishbull YouTube - One lesson was

based on the sounds animals make and this I introduced with a c l ip f rom YouTube of a traditional Spanish song Los pollitos dicen This captured attention and set the pupils a challenge What was our learning objective for the lesson I might have just written it on the board and got on with the lesson but in this way pupils were actively

involved in their learning and engaged from the start Plus there was much singing along I use YouTube all the time and we are fortunate that it is not blocked in our LA ndash however there was a time when it was and then I just downloaded the clips using Zamzar or the widget on my Firefox browser for use in the classroom

bull Sound recording ndash Linking with the cross curricular element of t h e t o p i c w e m a d e a lsquosymphonyrsquo ndash some may say lsquocacophonyrsquo ndash using the rhythm of the animal names in Spanish and clapping We recorded ourselves using Audacity on the classroom PC This enabled us to listen back and assess our work It also gave me evidence of what wersquod been doing And the pupils loved it We used sound recording later in the unit too with indiv idual pupi ls recording themselves personal

Enhancing learning in the MFL Classroom by Lisa Stevens


41

information as if they were animals On that occasion we used Audacity on a laptop and a headset microphoneNowadays ndash how time flies- we use Easispeak microphones about which I could rave for hours and frequently do These are much easier to use in terms of portability background noise a n d s t o r a g e R e c o r d i n g themselves was a novelty for the pupils (less so now that we do it often in Spanish) and had the benefit of allowing pupils privacy to speak without an audience to intimidate them and also of motivating the more reluctant learners to have a go They had pride in their achievement that I would suggest they would not have felt if I had simply asked them questions in class

bull Podomatic ndash Recording the pupils proved to be not only practical but motivational And we took it a step further Using Podomatic a free podcasting site I made a school podcast channel ndash WCPS Spanish ndash on which we published the resultant s o u n d fi l e s H e r e rsquos t h e lsquosymphonyrsquo and some of the sound files ndash you can scroll forwards for more examples all entitled Soy un animal (name) Using Podomatic meant we could publish on the school website and also meant that we had a presence on iTunes ndash a big thrill for the pupils who were full of it and wanted to check on downloads

bull In te rac t i ve Wh i teboards Animated Powerpoint ndash Using technology isnrsquot just using

spangly tools and hardware itrsquos about using what yoursquove been given effectively And using your interactive whiteboard is one way of using technology all the time Flipcharts allow pupils to be active in the lesson ndash rather than passively looking at the board they can move items group them play games find out if they are right or wrong using graphics and so much more And using Powerpoint animations is another way of engaging interest I used it in telling the story Querido Zoo ndash much easier to see than a book with the animat ions replacing the flaps in the book

bull Build your Wild Self Avatars ndash Bu i ld your W i ld Se l f i s a wonderful site from the Bronx Zoo that allows you to make an avatar that is a hybrid animal Irsquod discovered it before but it really came into its own here Pupils m a d e t h e i r a v a t a r s t h e n described them They had the possibility of talking about body p a r t s a n i m a l s g i v i n g descriptions talking about the noise their animal might make where it might live and what it might like to eat The pupilsrsquo were less complicated Again we might have drawn the animals by hand but this is time consuming and the objective of the lesson was description and links to adaption and habitat so the tool allowed us to have fun whilst getting on to the crux of the task

bull Animation ndash Each unit of the QCA schemes of work ends with a lsquocelebration of learningrsquo and for this unit inspired by Oscar

Stringer I decided to try some animation Brave as I had 30 kids in the class and no support you might think but using technology in my experience brings out the best in pupils who revel in the responsibility you give them to look after equipment and work together sensibly Good job as we used my 3 day old MacBook about which I was extremely precious I split the group into pairs gave them a couple of farm animals and tasked them with getting their animals from one side of the lsquostagersquo to anotherThe resulting footage was then put into iMovie and each pair vo iced the i r an imals The resulting film may not be the best animation ever ndash itrsquos very dark as we used the iSight camera on the MacBook and was filmed over two weeks so the scenery shifts half way through However the pupils were pleased with t h e i r e f f o r t s E v e r y o n e participated Theyrsquod cooperated spoken Spanish and shown creativity as well as learned a new skill And theyrsquod done it with minimal input from me Posting it to YouTube made them even happier and they still check now for the number of times their work has been hit

So that was just one unit ndash six weeks of work For me the use of technology made perfect sense on each occasion It made sense to the pupils too From feedback I received informally as I welcomed and dismissed classes it was


42

welcomed by parents who had heard about and seen what wersquod done from their excited children And although it took time it provoked questions from other members of staff who wanted to

know what wersquod been doing as the pupils had been enthusing about their tasksPerhaps we donrsquot use technology that often in every unit but it is now quite normal to record speaking

activities or make Voki or use Voicethread or Wallwisher to collaborate and show what wersquove learned And so it should be


43

ContributorsAlice Ayel teaches Spanish and French at Thuringia International school in Weimar Germany Alice blogs at httpaliceayelposterouscom Twitter aliceayel

Suzi Bewell is a secondary teacher of French and German at All Saints Language College in York She also works for the SSAT as a Lead Practitioner for LanguagesSuzi blogs at httpwwwallsainslanguagesblogtypepadcoukTwitter suzibewell

Alex Blagona is Head of Language College at Northgate High School in Ipswich where he teaches French and GermanHis websites are httpwwwnorthgatemflcouk and httpwwwalexblagonablogspotcomTwitter blagona

Helena Butterfield is International Schools Co-ordinator and an MFL Teacher at Ian Ramsey C of E School in Stockton-on-Tees where she teaches French German Spanish and ICT Helena blogs at httphelenabutterfieldnetTwitter langwitch

Mary Cooch has taught Languages and Geography at Our Ladyrsquos Catholic High School in Preston Mary is the author of Moodle 19 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds as well as a VLE trainer specialising in MoodleMaryrsquos websites are listed at httpwwwmarycoochcomTwitter moodlefairy

Joe Dale is a CILT Language Teaching Adviser BBC Languages consultant Links into Languages trainer eTwinning Ambassador host of the TES MFL forum former SSAT Languages Lead Practitioner regular conference speaker and

recognised expert on technology and language learningJoe blogs at httpwwwjoedaletypepadcomTwitter joedale

Saira Ghani is Head of French at Chiltern Edge School near ReadingSaira blogs at httpwwwchilternedgemfltypepadcomTwitter sghani

Andrea Henderson teaches French at Elkins High School in Missouri City (a suburb of Houston) Texas at Fort Bend Independent School DistrictAndrea blogs athttpmmehendersontypepadcom and httpwwwmmehendersontypepadcomfrancophileTwitter mme_henderson

Simon Howells is Modern Foreign Languages ICT Coordinator at Cheadle Hulme School in Cheshire where he teaches French German and ItalianSimon blogs athttpsimonhowellstypepadcommy-blogTwitter simonhowells

Isabelle Jones is a qualified translator interpreter with 16 years of experience teaching French and Spanish Head of MFL since 2002 and involved in PMFL since 2003Isabelle is a keen ed-tech enthusiast who blogs at httpisabellejonesblogspotcomTwitter icpjones

Samantha Lunn is Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Arnold School in Blackpool where she teaches Spanish and French Samantha runs the LanguagesResourcescouk websiteSamantha blogs at httpwwwlanguagesresourceswordpresscomTwitter spanishsam


44

ContributorsDominic McGladdery is Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Roseberry Sports College in Chester le Street where he teaches French and GermanHe blogs at httpwwwdomsmflpageblogspotcomTwitter dominic_mcg

Marie-France Perkins is Head of MFL at the Oldfield School in Bath where she teaches mostly French and some GermanMarie-France blogs at httpmmeperkinstypepadcomTwitter MarieFrance

Joseacute Picardo is Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Nottingham High School He is also a consultant and speaker on the effective use of technology in educationJoseacute blogs at httpwwwboxoftricksnetTwitter josepicardo

Amanda Salt is Head of Spanish at Grosvenor Grammar School in Belfast Northern Ireland Amanda blogs at httpamandasaltblogspotcomTwitter amandasalt

Clare Seccombe is Sunderland Local Authority Support Teacher for Primary Languages and the International DimensionClare has an MFL website http wwwsunderlandschoolsorgestrellasand blogs at httpchanging-phaseblogspotcomTwitter valleseco

Lisa Stevens is a primary teacher and PLL and International Coordinator at Whitehouse Common Primary School eTwinning Ambassador Apple Distinguished Educator Language Coach for her Local Authority consultant and speakerLisa blogs at httplisiboblogspotcomTwitter lisibo


45

Except where otherwise noted the content in this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 20 Licence


2

Contents Acknowledgements 3 Foreword 4I Using Images in the MFL classroom 5 Alice Ayel

II Videoconferencing in the classroom 7 Suzi Bewell III Collaborate facilitate Educate 9

Alex Blagona IV Tools to get pupils talking 11 Helena Butterfield V German OFF the curriculum but ON the VLE 14 Mary Cooch VI The power of RSS for 21st century educators 16 Joe Dale VII A word or two about Wordle 19 Saira Ghani VIII Resources keeping them real and keeping them together 20 Andrea Henderson IX Google Maps in the MFL classroom 23 Simon Howells X Supporting assessment for learning 25 Isabelle Jones XI Simple but effective 26 Samantha Lunn XII Mobile phones in the MFL classroom 2913 Dominic McGladdery13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 XIII13 Mrs Perkinsrsquos journey into the WWW13 13 13 13 13 13 31 Marie-France Perkins XIV Microblogging making the case for social networking in education 3213 Joseacute Picardo1313 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 XV13 Looking back and moving forward1313 13 13 13 13 13 36 Amanda Salt XVI Really understanding culture 38 Clare Seccombe XVII Enhancing learning in the MFL Classroom 40 Lisa Stevens Contributors 43


3

Acknowledgments





4

Foreword






5


Flickr



Big Huge Labs




6


PHRASR



BOOKR







7





by Suzi Bewell


8






9






10









11






12


Voki



Voicethread


Songsmith



Make a podcast


Make a slidecast



13






14






15






16






17





18





19






20






21
















22












23














24





25







624190252


by Isabelle Jones


26







27









28






29







30










31







32






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34





35





36






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39






40








41










42





43














44








45



3

Acknowledgments





4

Foreword






5


Flickr



Big Huge Labs




6


PHRASR



BOOKR







7





by Suzi Bewell


8






9






10









11






12


Voki



Voicethread


Songsmith



Make a podcast


Make a slidecast



13






14






15






16






17





18





19






20






21
















22












23














24





25







624190252


by Isabelle Jones


26







27









28






29







30










31







32






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34





35





36






37






38






39






40








41










42





43














44








45



4

Foreword






5


Flickr



Big Huge Labs




6


PHRASR



BOOKR







7





by Suzi Bewell


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