So Much to Learn...So Little Time

Mobiles in class...a wee success story

Result today at parent's evening...drift back in time 2 weeks...

A couple of weeks ago I set my S1 class the task of preparing a speaking test which would take the shape of me asking basic questions about themselves. To help them along I recorded these questions and added slides with the questions written out to form an enhanced podcast, which I promptly posted on my resources blog. However I also  bluetoothed the mp3 version to a couple of kids phones who then also passed it on to their mates in class...ALL UNDER THE PROVISO THAT IF I CAUGHT ANY OF THEM DOING ANYTHING ELSE THEIR PHONES WOULD BE CONFISCATED. As you can imagine they loved it. Those who didn't have that kind of phone I put it on either a usb drive, mp3 player or a blank cd. For those who so wished I also recorded myself saying their answers onto their phones / mp3 player. Were the results any better...I don't know as I don't have any comparative material BUT all those who availed themselves of the tech for learning said they enjoyed their learning more.

...back to today...

Parents evening, 2nd appointment, "wow, my such and such, really enjoyed using his phone to help with their speaking test...never stopped listening to it...". At least 6 parents brought this up, with no prompting from me, and the consensus was 100% positive and in favour.

Extrapolate that to a whole school, imagine if and enlightened Head / Authority were to actively encourage staff and pupils to use their tech in classrooms for learning purposes I am sure this would have the approval of many many parents. In my case they obviously saw (and heard) for themselves their kids gadgets being used in an educational manner. Whooppee!

Also this week my employers advice for use of mobile phones in schools came out:

It is accepted that in secondary schools the carrying of mobile phones to school is reasonable, provided the following code of practice, in conjunction with any individual schools behaviour policies, in regard to the use of mobile phones, is fully adhered to.

Where school policy allows the carrying of mobile phones into classrooms they must always be switched off during class times unless specific permission has been granted by the class teacher to allow the phone to be turned on.

Now I have to say that I find these 2 extracts (and the policy as a whole) quite well thought out and cognisant of the fact that kids have this stuff and would use it for learning if given half the chance. So "chapeau" to Aberdeenshire Coulcil for that one.

Why learn languages

I love this sildeshow for an assembly James Padvis has given (has to give) why it is importatnt to learn languages. I like the idea of the kids actually taking part in it rather that listening to a drone from the stage. It gives me some ideas for the European Day of Languages event we are planing for 26 September.

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LAFTAS

I've blogged before about the Language and Film Talent Awards promoted by CILT. Fortunately as the deadline was pushed back I got a chance to get one of my classes to produce something.
We only had effectively 2 weeks of lessons (5 periods in all) and I was at the GLOW conference for 2 of them, so the kids basically came up with the stuff on their own. Here are the videos and I warn you they are rather off the wall but interesting all the same. There are also some good ideas in there but I didn't have the time to tease them out and help the kids to develop it in their films.

Brain Training for Languages

Game Announce: Learn Foreign Languages On Your DS

So the gaming in education craze is hitting languages. Now I am not a fan of gaming per se. For one I am utterly useless and secondly the word gaming brings up images of those killing and car jacking games that all my students talk about. BUT I am prepared to open my mind and think about the uses of appropriate games to aid in the teaching and learning of languages. Having watched Derek Robertson of LTScotland on the BBC (thanks to Ewan's handy recording) I was rather impressed by the work that is going on via Consularium.

On first thoughts something like this could be an excellent way of acquiring vocab, especially if you could set the game to work on vocab pertaining to a specific topic. I wouldn't be averse to trying out this kind of thing for say 5-10 minutes at the beginning of each lesson or every other lesson. Plus it appears the games are being developed with Berlitz, therefore there will be some serious language learning content...I would hope.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not advocating that this kind of approach should over take teacher based language teaching, but it could be an enjoyable yet useful addition to a teachers tool box. (Nightmare for security though...count them in and count them back...)

Virgin and Berlitz are planning a series of games (going under the title of Mind Your Language with Spanish and English being the first releases (due this summer) and French, German and Japanese to follow in autumn.






It will be interesting to see whether these games have a similar sort of impact on the general populace as the Brain Training games have had.

By the way if you get to read this Derek, I'd be prepared to trial these games in my class if you wanted to set up a project...


Learn Another Language On Your Nintendo DS ~ Game Invasion

Technorati Tags: nintendo, nintendods, mindyourlanguage, derekrobertson, gaming, consolarium

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Grammcasting in German

A long time ago, deep in the mists of time, before my back decided to give up the ghost I set my S2 German class a task to produce podcasts in which they would explain the finer points of a particular grammar item. The idea was that the podcast (or Grammcast as I have termed them) would help fellow German learners grasp that point.

Due to my recent incapacity this never got finished, until now. This week I have recorded these Grammcasts and am going to post them on RateMyMates for the kids to assess them.

I recorded them without checking the scripts for accuracy, mainly because I have plans for the class next week and wanted to get their work published. This decision has thrown up what I hope to be a nice little teaching point, as in one or two of the podcasts there are some quite glaring errors. When I ask the class to listen to and assess their mate's work I want them to try to identify those mistakes (sensitively) and then come back and re-record the podcasts grammcasts accurately.

Here is the task.

Have a listen if you get a chance...CAN YOU SPOT THE MISTAKES?
There's a couple more to be added as well.

Click here to get your own player.

Technorati Tags: grammar, podcast, languages, learning, german

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Second Life - SLanguages 2008 - Conference for Language Education in Virtual Worlds

Synchronicity has deemed that this post be the 200th on my blog...it feels nice to commemorate this "landmark" with an interesting development in the Learning and Teaching of Languages.

Cool Cat Teacher blogged about this last night and I picked up on it in google today.

Second Life, the virtual world, will host an 24 hour multi-lingual conference on the subject of language teaching and learning in virtual worlds. Its free and will take place from 18.00 GMT 23 May 2008 to 18.00 GMT 24 May 2008.

Here's the slideshow to introduce the conference.

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There are no details of the programme as yet but organisers are asking potential attendees to register their interest online and also to submit proposals for papers. Now I have never yet set foot upon a virtual world, as I have to admit I find the idea quite sad, but I can see the value in using these kind of applications in an educational context. Therefore I want to use this as an opportunity to learn about Language Learning in a virtual environment. (I've even got myself a SL name...Chuffin Dreadlow!)

The organisers have released details of the thematic areas they want to cover in the conference presentations, and what interests me is looking at how students could use SL (or other similar "worlds") away from the classroom to back up their learning. At the moment I cannot forsee us being able to access something like this in classrooms with current filtering policies.

I'm quite looking forward to it and maybe next year I'll be in a position to submit a proposal after having a year of experiencing this stuff.




Technorati Tags: slanguages2008, secondlife, languagelearning, coolcatteacher

A Nifty Widget for Learners of French

I've just been mucking around in Yahoo widgets (thanks to Mashable) and came across this Yahoo! widget which enables the user to access 52 Francophone web-streamed radio stations from around the French speaking world.

The list of stations includes all the Radio France serious ones, plus stations such as Fun Radio and NRJ which would appeal more to our students. On a personal level I am pleased to see that Radio Nova is in there. I listened to this all day every day when I lived in France and I blame it for my interest in African music, brilliantly eclectic (or it was back then) and very weird. You also get the benefit of programme info on a lot of the stations.

As a language teacher I'm constantly on at students to get as much experience as possible at listening to a foreign language...even if they don't understand everything. Its a simple matter of getting the ear atuned to the rhythm of the language. By installing this widget students have an enormous, easily accessible choice of French listening material. Listening for pleasure, no task attached, just listen and see what you can understand.


Technorati Tags: yahoowidgets, radiofrance, radionova, funradio, nrj, listening, learning, language, french

Why Learning a Language is Important in Primary Years...and should continue into Secondary

I like Google Alerts. It always throws up some interesting stuff.

This one came from my "Languages" alert and is a Forbes article based on an interview with Noam Chomsky, noted linguist.
In the article he speculates that the learning of a language has a critical period for development, and that for languages this could be from birth to around puberty.

If you have learned a language by that time, you will be able to learn more languages later, but probably in a different way, and maybe by connecting it to the languages that you do know.

I'm sure most language teachers would agree with this and indeed anecdotal evidence nearly always concurs. How difficult do adults find it to acquire a second language?

From birth children seem to absorb language (mother tongue) with no need for formal lessons and the idea of language lessons has always been to try to include as much target language as possible to attempt in some way to replicate this. However as kids get older it becomes more difficult for them to absorb any new language.

This is why it is important that kids get the chance to learn a 2nd language in primary school, whilst they are still at their most receptive. It is also important that at this stage they get a chance to really enjoy a second language. In my experience most kids really do enjoy language study in the primary stages.

However, as a secondary teacher I fear that all too often we seem to slog this fun out of language study. Why? Is it because we start to get into the nitty gritty of language, i.e. grammar and it becomes boring? Is it because we often have to deal with a class in S1 where kids arrive at totally different stages in their language learning; some at zero because they have changed language and some for whom a lot of the S1 topics have already been covered in primary? Unfortunately as a common denominator we often start at the basics again.

What can we do to resolve this problem? To my mind TRANSITION becomes all important. Somehow secondary teachers need to be able to latch onto the enthusiasm of the primary school whilst still pushing the boundaries of linguistic knowledge? But how?

Could this be where emerging tech should get involved, by enhancing the creative skills of these kids? Rather than starting with a text book why not use kids prior knowledge and introduce them to the delights of podcasting to introduce themselves. Or use web resources such as glogster, scrapblog start to compile e-folios. Lets try to build on the creativity kids often get to express in primary to ensure that they remain motivated to study a language throughout secondary. AND let us encourage those who may not be naturally gifted linguists to be as creative as possible with the language that they know. Lets allow CREATIVITY and COMMUNICATION to be the by-words rather than 100% accuracy.

Photos:
"Talking at Google: Languages on the Internet" by Stephanie Booth
"transition" by SGT Butler (deployed)

Technorati Tags: primary, secondary, languagelearning, creativity, communication

Speaklike...or just a lazy app for anglophones

I caught an article on this new beta in my reader, via Webware.com.

SpeakLike: Home via kwout

As a languages teacher I'm actually at a loss as to what I think about it. At first I thought it could be a fun kind of application. As it is an companion to an IM  client it is obviously not going to required to translate a huge amount of text. So for maybe a business person in a rush to communicate with a colleague overseas this could be a useful tool. The user types in their own language and apparently seconds later the interlocutor sees the translation in their own language. (English, Spanish and simplified Chinese currently available.)
The interesting bit is that human translators are also used along with HAL (Human Assisted Language) (2001: A Space Odessy, anyone)

However  as an MFL teacher I am obviously wary of any kind of translating machine. No machine can ever replicate the humanity of language. Words often have multiple meanings which sometimes require an understanding of nuance to translate. I suppose the creators of SpeakLike have realised this and added the extra buzz of human translators, but this is bound to slow down the whole process and it would no longer be quite like IM (INSTANT messaging.)

This application came hard on the heels of VOXONIC which has apparently developed some proprietary software which can replicate a person's voice in ANY(!!!!!) language. Apparently from a fifteen minute sample of you speaking they can present you saying whatever you want in any language...without more info (or maybe more brains on my part)I can't see how this would give a good translation, I just keep thinking about Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films "Deu yeu 'ave a reum? etc. Some rapper (Prodigy from Mobb Deep) has decided to release his latest album in 14,000 languages using this software.

Technorati Tags: speaklike, voxonic, language, adamsutcliffe

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Two More Resources and Online Safety

This film looks at 2 other web learning resources, Palabea and iTalki.
As learning resources for pupils I am not convinced as to their relevance they are more geared to using language learning as social network. Not that I'm against that per se, just they do not appear to be 100% set up to learn a language.
The majority of this film gives advice about using these sites and the amount of information required to be able to use them.


Click to Play

A brief look at 2 more language learning resources and also a word about your safety when using these resources .