So Much to Learn...So Little Time

Great moments with S2

My postings seem to be all about my S2 class at the moment, but they are doing such good and interesting work, with such gusto

I mentioned in recent tweet how happy I have been with them, particularly the standard of recent homework, but also the great work they've been doing in class. Due to their cooperation and sense of fun the recent series of lessons has been so enjoyable I thought I'd share them with you.

For those of you who know Métro 2 (Mod 2 Unit 4) we are looking at arranging to go out, using the conditional phrase "on pourrait". Since acquiring an IWB I've been finding an awful lot of super resources via TES Connect, but the one below is my favourite. I made a simple search using "on pourrait" as my keyword, filtering it through Modern languages. This gave me 17 different resources. I looked at 2 or 3 before I came to chocolatchaud's "Qu'est-ce qu'on pourrait faire?" PowerPoint.



What an brilliant idea...an Explosion of Ideas. Using the powerpoint I presented the idea of the "on pourrait + infintive" construction and gave each table group an A4 sheet with a photocopy of the spider diagram from slide 2. I then explained the task, emphasising that the ideas didn't have to be serious BUT they had to be in good (ok reasonable) French, and that they had to get as many as possible. On the board I put up a 15 minute countdown courtesy of e.ggtimer, and I gave them some background music ( a couple of tracks from Trans-Europe Express by Kraftwerk) which was not hugely appreciated but I kept it on anyway.

After the fifteen minutes were up the recorder's from each table went to another table and discussed and noted their ideas for 2 more minutes. On their return the groups then had to decide of their Top 5 activities.

Then I dropped the bomb...the next lesson they were going to find their perfect partner via Speed Dating. That caused no end of groans.

That evening I collated all the top 5's and drew up this table ready for the next lesson.

Speed Dating Sheet - Free Legal Forms

The lesson involved a major room reorganisiation which had the students puzzled on their arrival, but they soon got over it. Next came the tricky part of explaining what to do.

• in the column headed "moi" tick 5 fave suggestions
• put 1st partners initials in next column, ask "Qu'est-ce qu'on pourrait faire ce soir?"
• place a tick against each of partners 5 responses
• answer partners question with your 5 faves
• on signal move 1 place to the left and repeat process

At first I gave them 2 minutes using classtools.net timer, but as they got more confident we got it down to about 45 seconds per pair...serious speed dating. Here's a wee film I took whilst they were working, and as you can see each and everyone student was working away, and having a laugh along with it.



This took us almost to the end of the lesson but first they had to find their ideal partner by finding the best match from the responses gained during the exercise.

At the start of the 3rd lesson I dropped the second bomb, now they had to sit and work with their perfect partner. Cue serious groaning all around. The aim of this lesson was to introduce the idea of making excuses using "je ne veux / peux pas, parce que..." Again I resorted to TES Connect and found an excellent presentation by Cestrian to introduce the excuses. To this I added my own slide with an exemplar of the sort of dialogue I wanted them to produce. Here it was my turn to be proud of myself as I dicovered how to add sound to a ppt.



I then set them to work producing a dialogue in their pairs. This took longer than I anticipated because of various disruptions affecting the timetable, but we finally got it done.

Then we came to the culminating event...presenting the dialogues. Of course as soon as I mentioned the video camera the grumbles started. My initial idea was to have each pair do a sort of Alias Smith and Jones head-to-head, but then I had an even better idea (inspired I must say by Emma's homework). Why not get puppets to do the speaking for them.
They seemed to like this idea much better.

Here are the results:



In analysis the series of lessons took a little longer than I antcipated, but in some respects I wasn't able to control that. I really enjoyed this topic and the students have definitely had fun in the lessons. We didn't go into the grammatical explanations of "on pourrait + infinitive" but the students have used it in a question and in making a series of (ridiculous) suggestions. Most importantly they have worked with lots of other classmates and they have showed off their creativity and imagination both in thinking up strange activities and producing their dialogue.

As the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence approaches is it more of these kind of lessons we should be getting our learners to experience? Yes and no I think. On a simple physical and mental basis maintaining the kind of drive necessary for these lessons would be impossible everyday...and doing this kind of stuff everyday would render them becoming as stale as lessons in classes taught by those who have "taught the same thing successfully for the last 25 years and can't see why i should change now." However these kinds of lesson allow students to experience different kinds of learning (collaborative, direct teaching, experiential) and to allow their creative juices to flow. It also allows for something to be created at the end, i.e the film.

I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

languages, learning, edtech, lesson, french

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My Super 2nd Years

A couple of weeks ago I set my S2 french class a homework to tell me about their daily routine. I specified that I wanted digital versions, but would also accept a traditional version (i.e. pen and paper).

When I introduced the task I reminded them that many of them had already used animoto and goanimate and I also introduced bubbleshare as a way to create slideshows to which text (and supposedly voice but the kids say that doesn't work).

I have to say that once again they have overwhelmed me with the high standard of work produced, not only linguistically but creatively. I emphasised the need for accuracy in their French and the vast majority bore that in the production of their work.

So

to 2S.

If you are interested and want to see all the digital works go to RateMyMates.

Cait's film below is a work of pure genius and I can happily say I had no hand in the production of this at all.

Emma's use of the puppet is also fantastic.

Basically what we have here are SUCCESSFUL LEARNERS (without a doubt), CONFIDENT INDIVIDUALS and very EFFECTIVE CONTRIBUTORS.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

Boys and Languages

After a month into the new timetable I can say that I am very happy with my S3 German class.

Through a mixture of timetabling and us sorting out classes it so happened that a class of boys sprang out of nowhere. It wasn't planned as some great educational experiment, it has just happened. And I'm really enjoying the class at the moment.

It is a mixed ability class with and a wide range thereof. Some of the boys like contributing voluntarily, but some will only do so when asked. They enter the class and get ready and they get down to work quickly. There is a real workng atmosphere in the class. One boy's mum who I know quite well said that her son is really enjoying the class because there are no girls to distract them... I'm not saying this is a reason for separating the sexes but it does make you think.

Anway we had a lot of fun this morning sending my vocab podcast to phones via bluetooth (shhh don't tell the Rector), mainly laughing at some of the names they have given their phones (I H8 fish, Ginger 4ever or Caravan of Tinkies!!!!!).
We then worked on some basic "at the doctors" dialogues with a view to having the boys perform.

Not one of them whinged when I brought out the video camera and set up the "doctor's surgery". Every pair wanted to have a go. They all really enjoyed themselves. Particular congratulations to Martyn who through the magic of television performed his role play on his own.

Here are the results.



As an addendum, i noticed that José has been writing about similar experinces with his class of boys...although his was far more planned than mine. But I feel we are experiencing similar results.

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Really making use of the tech that kids bring to school

I got to thinking the other day in my register class as one of the students pulled out his iPhone, other mobile and iPod.
Although this pupil was a bit of an exception to the norm, most kids have a mobile phone on them at least.

I have already had my students using them to help vocab learning via simple audio files, but I wanted to go further and allow them to see either a picture which illustrates the vocab or the word itself.
Here is my solution:

• i recorded the audio in garageband
• i typed the vocab items onto slides in keynote
• i set the garageband file playing whilst recording the keynote slideshow (I could simply have narrated but it wouldn't have had the music)
• Hey presto a narrated vocab slideshow which I then exported to quicktime
  

I now needed to convert this in somehow to an acceptable format for mobile phone (3gp). My first idea was to use youconvertit.com to simply transcode the .mov file. This didn't work as the 3gp option isn't available for this conversion. I then thought I'd try to convert it from an online file, so I uploaded to blip.tv. BUT youconvertit isn't compatible with blip.tv urls. However with blip I was able to download an flv version. Using this I was then able to convert to 3gp...unfortunately this didn't work very well, the file was corrupted somewhere...and it was all getting a bit complicated.

THEN it dawned on me . Ok so it cost me £20, but it will be worth it. It worked like a dream. I just opened the .mov file and then exported it as a 3gp file. The reason why I say it will be worth it is that now I will be able to convert all the vocab guide podcasts ( which I want to redo) to mobile phone files to give out to students.

Result!






And here's the proof...sort of.

In case you are interested the film is below in the previous post.

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A Terribly Creative Events Day

Last Friday I had the pleasure of accompanying 8 students to BBC Scotland's fantastic new building on Pacific Quay, Glasgow, to attend an animation workshop at the Creation Station.

The Creation Station is a facility set up by BBC Scotland's Learning department to get children involved in creating media. At the moment there is a choice of 3 different workshops: a movie in a day, animation and podcasting and news making. It's run by L-J who is brilliant. She knows how to talk to the kids and they get on well with her. During the day I discovered that she is currently brushing up on her French with Coffee Break French and as a result we have 2 mutual friends, Mark and Ewan...Scotland really is a small place and I should have known that someone involved in the media and creation would know those two. My students (and myself) were fascinated to find out that she had done work on those cool Sony Bravia ads.

Anyway the day was really good and we got a tour around the building as well, which is very, very smart. Here are the results of our day. I would like to add that these films really are the kids own work. Myself and LJ assisted on some technical matters but they did all the rest... well done indeed.

Pic: BBC Scotland, Pacific Quay, Glasgow by Fatcontroller

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Blogging CPD

After promising to do so for ages, I am hopefully going to do a bit of CPD with some colleagues this lunchtime. The topic: Blogs, and how to start one using typepad

I have put together a presentation in keynote (which now looks rubbish in ppt but oh well) and I also sent it to garageband and added some music so there's 2 versions.

During the session (only the first in a small series I hope) my colleagues will have the opportunity to set up their own blog under the school's account.  So fingers crossed that there will be someone there.

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Non-Web Applications I Use - Part 1

This is going to be a biggie. Please have patience. (This also my first use of ScribeFire)

I've been meaning to do this for a while, as a follow up to the post I did back in October about web tools that I've used. The purpose of this post is to look at the computer based apps I use day to day or in putting together special projects. Unfortunately for you PC users I use a MAC so most of them are mac-based, however I'm sure there are PC versions of some things.

So here we go. To make it easier for me I'm just going to list in alphabetical order, as I go through the applications menu.

Audacity
A great, FREE audio editor. You can record directly to it via your computer (use internal or external mic), voice music whatever you want. You can also import audio files from other sources such mp3 recorders etc. Once your sound file is in the editor you can cut, paste copy etc until you have the sound file you want. You can also import copyright free music from various websites (google podsafe audio and see what it comes up with. Now to export your file as mp3 (the most commonly used and recognised form of audio compression) you also have to download and add a Lame 3 encoder. You only have to do this once and instructions come with the download. Click here for features, here for screenshots and here for tutorials. If you use a variety of different computers there is also a portable version which you can download to your usb drive and use on any computer. Here is the mac version.

My aim is ensure that at least one suite of the new pcs in school has Audacity uploaded to enable the students to use it in school. Asked for it ages ago, but we only have one technician and then I've not been there.

Audio hijack
Does what it says on the tin, records to record any audio on your mac. If your macine can play it, audio hijack can record it. With the pro version you can create podcasts containing music clips and skype / iChat recordings. You can record your vinyl or cassettes and have the recordings sent direct to iTunes. You can even record from multiple sources. As yet I have only used this once to record a skype chat with Joe Dale. The sound quality seemed fine. I think though that I would like to investigate the pro version further, I wonder whether it can't be used to record input from multiple microphones, then I could use it to record conversations with more than 2-3 voices and upload to garageband to edit.

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Disc Label
Lets you produce labels, covers, case inserts for cds and dvds that look seriously professional. It can import track lists and track info onto your design. You can use pictures from iPhoto and it is LightScribe compatible. Used it to produce  cover for the fundraising DVD I produced towards end of term, for the schools chosen charity, Spinal Injuries Scotland.

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(Photo copyright Slacker)

DVD Player
It plays  DVD's!

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Griffin Final Vinyl

A piece of software that comes with Griffin's iMic. The iMic is a usb audio adapter that allows you to connect your mac or pc to any sound input device. Along with Final Vinyl this device allows you to convert your vinyl and cassettes into mp3 files. Compatible with GarageBand, iMovie and Final Cut Pro. This could be useful to back up some of the older cassette based resources we have in the department.

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GarageBand

I love GarageBand. It is so easy to use and yet so powerful and great fun, and that's just the podcasting element to it. I've not even made a serious exploration of the music-making side. I've made podcasts, vodcasts, enhanced podcasts, imported from iMovie etc etc.  Well what is it. Its a recording studio on your mac. If you are so inclined you can record your own music by linking real or software instruments (as I say I haven't gone into this yet). With the newest version,'08, there is the Magic GarageBand function which can help you get started. (Here's one I did for a film I made about Huntly Cricket Club).
I really do enjoy being creative with this application. I like the recording process, the way it handles, how you can add images to reflect part of an audio recording (enhanced podcast) and I'm just beginning to discover all the effects and fun things to do with each track. What I love most of all are the included loops, sounds and melodies (all without copyright) contained in the package. I enjoy trying to find the right piece of music to fit the mood. All in all its my favourite toy. Tons better than audacity. Apparently the closest windows app would be mixcraft.

       

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I can Animate
THE animation tool for Mac. Used mainly for stop motion animation (think Wallace and Gromit). You can capture from a digital video camera or a web cam. Clips can be exported to iMovie. You can create animations by drawing within the app and you can also make time lapse films. I've tried stop-motion and time lapse, both of which are time consuming but still fun. Before using I Can Animate I tried a couple of other similar apps (iStopMotion and Frame Thief)
Both of these were fine to use but I Can Animate just felt more instinctive (and I didn't have to pay for a full version..ha!)
Tell me what you think:
Swordfight (Frame Thief)
Murder Most Fowl (iStopMotion)
But my favourite is this one
Yanick Gets His Hair Done (I Can Animate)

I would like to use this in class but the time it requires I just don't have. It's something I'd like to get kids to look into doing at home to get them creating something to which they can add some French. I had thought about an animated pencil case.

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iDVD
When I first got my own pc one of the things I wanted to was transfer stuff from mini dv cassette to dvd. It seemed as if I had to download and mash up all kinds of different apps (either that or I was just daft and didn't understand what I was doing) and it just didn't come together. Then I got the PowerBook from school...
iDVD segues so seamlessly with all the other iLife applications that even one with my lack of nouse got it. Making a dvd is so easy with iDVD. It has some lovely themes, especially the new ones, which sing and dance and make everything look professional.
You can put together a dvd from scratch by choosing everything from themes down to the buttons, you can make a Magic iDVD where you just choose your theme and add your desired media or you can create a dvd direct from your digital video camera and the application does everything for you.
My one gripe with iDVD is that it seems to take an age to swap between themes and options. The new version is better and it now tells you how long your project will take to encode (a long process.) At the end of the burning you also have the option to burn another disc without having to encode it all again.

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Using I Can Animate

Yanick Gets His Hair Done.

I'd been looking for an excuse to use I can Animate. When Yanick said he wanted his hair braided I took the opportunity to use the time lapse function. Just look at the clock to see how long the patient lad had to sit down. Bravo to Jeannette as well. I'm now the only one in the house his hair not braided...if you know me me you'll know why...

Click To Play

Nell Nelson - The Woman who ate Huntly. Huntly Food Trail.

Due to my enforced absence from work (back is still in agony) I have been able to catch up on some film editing.
Here's what happened when Nell Nelson came to eat her way around some of Huntly purveyor's of fine food and drink. Thanks to:
Sinclair's of Rhynie (Bakers)
Forbes Raeburn (Butchers)
Rizzas Ice Cream
Dean's of Huntly (Shortbread)
Duncan Taylor & Co. (Whisky)

PBwiki Tutorial - 2

Welwitschia Tutorial 2 - Editing an Existing Page