So Much to Learn...So Little Time

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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Global Campaign for Education -The World's Biggest Lesson

Worlds Biggest Lesson | Send My Friend 08

It is so easy for us in the "developed world" to sit at our computers and grumble about filtering policies in our education authorities and how we can't access such and such a site which would be so useful for our kids.

Unfortunately there are 72 million boys and girls in this world of ours who are missing out on an education because of poverty, the majority (57%) being girls.

According to the Millenium Development Goals every single one of these 72 million children will have access to QUALITY PRIMARY education by 2015...time is running out.


In 2006 the UK government promised £8.5 billion to help achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2015. In the following financial year £365 million was given out. This means that the government now needs to commit £1 billion every year from 2010 to keep its promise.

It is my firm belief that every school in the UK should help the UK government to remember its commitment by taking part in the Global Campaign for Education's Action Day on April 23.

There are different ways of taking part but the easiest and possibly most exciting is The World's Biggest Lesson. At 9am or 4pm on April 23 schools in over 120 countries will take part in a record breaking attempt to deliver the World's Biggest Lesson.

All the lessons plans and necessary material are provided on the sendmyfriend08 website. Its easy.

Get your students involved. Get the media involved. Get your elected representatives involved.



Technorati Tags: sendmyfriend08, globalcampaignforeducation, globaleducation

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BACK to the Chalkface

After a long 4 and a half months off work...half of it due to needless waiting around thank you very much NHS Grampian, I'm back to work tomorrow. I'm still not 100% but needs must. This time off has given me quite a lot of time to think and I'm returning with a few ideas in mind.

• I am not going to spend every lunchtime doing "something" as I have for last 4 years. I will give up 1 per week, the rest are mine.
• Having experienced the benefit of timely communication from my son's teacher I have decided to be more proactive in communicating with parents, particularly for something positive
• I am going to get some students blogging
• Encourage creativity and reflection

Lets see how it turns out.

Footballers...spoiled children!

AND THEIR MANAGERS ARE THEIR PARENTS.


Last weekend saw extensive coverage on the news about how children whose parents "find it difficult" to say no can be disruptive in the classroom...not really NEWs to most teachers I suspect.

In my (warped) mind this segued rather neatly into the RESPECT debate currently surrounding football in England. Last Wednesday we had the extraordinarily petulant behaviour of Ashley Cole on being punished for a dangerous tackle. How like some uppity teenager he was as he turned his back on the ref, unbelievable, yes. Unsurprising, sadly no. It was absolutely typical of many people in todays society who seem simply pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions. They obviously never listened in physics classes...for every action a reaction.

Fast forward to Sunday's North West derby, United vs Liverpool. Javier Mascherano gets booked for dissent. As the camera focussed on him after the booking you could see him shouting expletive after f-word at the ref. This went on until just before half time when (according to his manager) he again approached the ref (from 20m away) to "ask him a question". As a consequence he got a 2nd yellow followed by a red and had to go off...but he couldn't understand why because he only wanted to ask a question...GROW UP YOU OVERPAID FOOL.
Now did his manager, whose reaction in the dugout indicated that he knew that this would happen, come out and back the ref for taking this decision...NO. The player did nothing wrong. He had only been booked for dissent previously, he had only carried on a non stop torrent of abuse at the ref. I would like to think that if Rafa Benitez took a hard line with his player, in public, then that player would be very loath to commit a similar error in the future.

This brings me to the point of this post, and I'm not talking about the role model position that these footballers should occupy. How many of us teachers have taken some form of disciplinary action against a pupil to find that a parent takes exception to it. As teachers we are expected to take on the role "in loco parentis" yet as soon as the s**t hits the fan, it becomes our fault. It's never wee Johnny's. He was upstairs doing his homework all night etc, etc. . Surely if parents accept the discipline imposed on their kids at school then maybe discipline in society will start to improve.

To go back to football I used to enjoy running teams at school. I have refused to do for the last 3 years because I will not ref a match. Maybe I am being soft but I do not see why I should have to put up with insults from teen age players and from the sidelines, insults that would not be tolerated in class. My breaking point was being told to f-off by one of my own players and then being sworn at by his Dad because I subbed him for it. Makes you wonder doesn't it.


Technorati Tags: football, respect, teaching, discipline

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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.

| View | Upload your own

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

Storytelling Goes 2.0

I just picked this up off my reader, via West Lothian Secondary English Network blog (vis Scotedublogs of course.)

What a great way of using web tech to tell a story. It kind of reminds me of those books you could by where the story changed dependent on the readers choices (hated them myself.)

We Tell Stories has been launched by Penguin, and over the next six weeks they will be releasing six new stories, each told in an innovative way. The first one is "The 21 Steps" by Charles Cumming and it uses Google Maps. It's rather fun reading the short paragraphs and following the blue line to show where the characters go.

I'm sure we could use ideas like this in the ML classroom to get kids writing about past holiday experiences, or planning a school trip.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Technorati Tags: penguin, wetellstories, googlemaps, storytelling

Vote For Your Favourite Poem

A few weeks ago my son's teacher asked if I could go into their school and record some of the Scots poems the students had memorised for a competition, in order that they be posted on the school website.

With not much else to do recently I did so. However I decided to add a bit of backing music to jazz them up a bit. All the poems were superb, and all done from memory, but which one is your favourite.

Use the survey form at the bottom of this post to indicate your favourite...pleeeaase.

A Cat Came Fiddling

Castle Creepy

Holiday Blues

Mam It Wisnae Me (L)

Mam It Wisnae Me (I)

Mam It Wisnae Me (R)

Social Dancing

The Chookie Hen

The Dentist

The Doctor   
 

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

The Results Confirm It

Its there, written in black and white (with blue hyperlinks), despite the fact that I am now no longer in my 30's and having a crocked back, I am a typical teenager...as far as my hearing goes.

You are the typical teenager

You can hear the frequency of the mosquito teen repellent - but probably not for much longer! The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 17.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

I wonder how many kids would go this far to have a tone that adults couldn't hear in order to prevent them from knowing a mobile has gone off in class. I know most just set it on silent or vibrate.


Technorati Tags: cellphones, mobilephones, hearing

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Finally a vague light is glimmering at the end of my period of incarceration, and with it the prospect of returning to my classroom after the Easter break...on a phased basis naturally.

I decided to create a wee flickr fun thing from Phrasr to celebrate.

LIGHT at the END of the TUNNEL by CHUFFIN

By the way if any of my dear readers suffer a ruptured disc, I can recommend the op. I feel totally different already, after only one week.




Technorati Tags: work, operation