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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Yours Truly Glowing on Edtechroundup 5

Edtechroundup is a regular online meeting of educationally, tech-related minds. Just about every Sunday a group of tech interested teachers get together, usually via Flashmeeting, to discuss technology and its place in the classroom.

Last Sunday I took part in a special edition where the topic under discussion was VLE's (Virtual Learning Environments) and GLOW. It was special because we were recording for a podcast. Much of what was discussed looked at how VLE's are being adopted in England, which despite my not having any experience of a VLE was fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the insights from Ian Usher, who works for Buckinghamshire LEA.

However I got my chance, to bang on about GLOW. It's actually an extremely difficult concept to explain, and I'm not sure that I did it justice. But here's your chance to assess how I did. If you want to go straight to the Glow bit it comes in at just after 30 mins.

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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.

Click To Play

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ICT is Fun in Learning

Last week The Boss gave me an excuse to mess around with animoto again. He has to give a presentation to a cross service conference about the work the e-learning committee in Aberdeenshire's education service is doing. As his spot is in the death zone (afternoon, after lunch) he wanted something jazzy to represent why kids seem to like learning with ICT.

So he asked me, and I immediately thought of animoto. I was to do it from the secondary perspective and link it with a colleague's work in the primary.
Although fun to do it was a bit of a bind at times.

1. I recorded some of my pupils opinions on my Marantz pmd660
2. I wandered around school and took some pictures of kids in action with ICT on my Sony Ericsson k800i
3. imported audio files to garageband and edited the best bits
4. created some slides in keynote and exported them as jpeg images
5. used another garageband file to create a kind of dancey techno track

Then I got the stuff from a primary colleague. She had spent a good part of the day filming students in her school and asking why they like ICT. There are some wonderful quotes I wanted to use but unfortunately the audio on the mini dv was so corrupted as to barely useable. I only managed to salvage a few short bits about Google Earth. But this is what I had to do. I am sure some of it would have been easier with Quicktime Pro, but I don't have it...yet.

1. import video to iMovie HD
2. extract audio
3. scroll through film to find interesting bits
4. use grab to take screen shots
5. convert screenshots from TIFF to jpeg
6. select clips with salvageable audio
7. export to garageband
8. delete movie track leaving audio
9. open previous garageband file and import new audio and music tracks
10. mess around with levels and effects

Then I imported my image files and audio files to animoto and they did the rest.

Et voilà!

Get Up and GLOW

Anyone else noticed that there are more and more blog posts referencing GLOW . There's a movement afoot. It is starting to catch hold?

As I have stated before I think GLOW is so exciting. Scottish education is going to be a torch bearer for the world...and we don't need any blue tracksuited guards to protect us.

I have just spent 2 days mucking around on GLOW in my capacity as GLOW Champion for TGS. My impressions are that it is a wee bit "clunky" I can do most of the sort of things on it that I do on my blog (embeddding, hyperlinking etc) but in a slightly different way. And somethings are not all that easy to do, but nevermind.
There are many out there who will say, and who have said, that all the various functions of GLOW are already out there on the web so why replicate them. I say yes indeed they are, but they are not under one umbrella AND they are not as secure as GLOW.
Glow is a safe and secure environment to help teachers teach, learners learn and, hopefully, parents parent (not sure about the last one but I wanted to keep the double alliteration.) I am getting to grips with GROUPS. I already love MEET, not too fussed about MESSENGER but willing to be persuaded, PORTAL is a potentially superb source of info and a timesaver. LEARN is not yet up and running here in the 'shire but it could obviously be awesome.

Those are the things that ROCK, now for a couple of things that SUCK(ish). I am sure that being champion of GLOW is going to be a lot of work (consequently I will get 2 days cover a term for the next year to work on GLOW stuff) but I don't get a laptop, the mentor does (as well as getting paid to lead twilight sessions.) I have accepted all this in taking on the role but it got me to thinking how in this aspect the education system in Scotland lags behind my homeland (England). Doon sooth I would be paid extra for taking on a role such as this as a form of encouragement, here we do it because we want to and in the hope that if it goes well this will reflect well on our cv when wanting promotion at a later date. Yes I know we get paid slightly more than our colleagues in England but the promotion opportunities are few and far between now (especially with the advent of the F-word (faculties)).

But anyway, incoherent and slightly irrelevant to the post grumble over.

Here is my clarion call to Scotland's teachers.

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