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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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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Non-Web Applications I use - Part 2

iMovie 06
I love this almost as much as GarageBand. Notice I have specifically mentioned the previous version of iMovie rather than the 08 one. I don't get the new one...well actually I've not spent enough time with it but it didn't leap out at me. iMovie 06 interface is simple and to my way of thinking, logical. You upload your film edit it and then export it in whatever way you choose. I had few problems a bit ago with it not transferring files properly to my usb storage drive but that seems to have been solved by an update. I enjoy mucking around with it and trying new things and this and GarageBand have released a (quite) creative part of me that I didn't know was there. I've even got some senior students using it for their drama project and they seem to find it easy enough.
As it is part of Apple's iLife suite it fits quite happily with GarageBand, iPhoto etc, so you can add garageband jingles as part of the soundtrack (same for iTunes) or you can use pictures from iPhoto.
There are all kinds of themes you can integrate into your projects but I've not investigated those as yet...one step at a time.

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iPhoto
The new iPhoto is great. No longer do you have to search through your library photo by photo, your uploads are automatically sorted into date organised events. The new editing tools are also miles better than the previous version; even though I know next to nothing about photography and editing even I can make a photo look better. I really like the facility to use your photos to create things such as calendars and card etc. I created 2 fundraising calendars for the school using iPhoto and a colleague's pictures. Dead easy and they look great. As I don't have a .Mac account its not that easy to email photos direct from iPhoto. I did try out the MailPlane app but gave it up when I had to pay and went back to Thunderbird...but this is why I have a Flickr account anyway.

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iShowU
iShowU is a screencast recording application. I tried out the demo version at first but wasn't all that impressed. Then I heard about Jing and tried that but I couldn't get it to record anything. So I went back to iShowU and started to muck around with the demo...lo and behold I worked it out, so I bought the full version. It seems to be relatively simple to use, but it took me some time to come out with a recording I was satisfied with. You can set the amount of screen you want to capture, and the quality of image you want (there's a huge choice and I found what I wanted through the old trial and error technique. You can record from the inbuilt computer mic or via a usb mic (recommended). Using this app I have produced a couple of tutorials for my Connecting Classrooms Partnership wiki.

Welwitschia Wiki Tutorial pt 1

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iTunes
Do I really need to write about the "best digital jukebox on the planet". Create playlists, upload and browse album covers, burn your playlists and let the grace note database do the work when you import your cd's. But thats not all. Of course iTunes links with GarageBand and it is here you can store and convert your podcasts, vodcasts etc.. Then of course there's the store, a great place for music but more so a great source of free learning resources in podcasts. Finally I like to use iTunes to "impress" my registration group with my wide and eclectic taste in music...it's not worked yet though, "Who are Bad Brains?"

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iWork 08 (Keynote)
iWork 08 is the new suite of presentation and spreadsheet tools from Apple. Pages is like microsoft publisher, Numbers is a spreadsheet application and Keynote is Apple's Powerpoint. I can't comment on Pages and Numbers as I haven't used them but Keynote leaves powerpoint languishing far far in the shade. It is stunning and so easy to use..the only difficulty is deciding what your presentation is about. The themes are amazing, as are the text effects and transitions. It simply looks superb. You can record your presentation and export it to post on the web or on dvd. You can import pictures, films, music, anything, because it all fits nicely with iTunes and the iLife suite. I love it, AND if necessary you can export to PDF, Flash or PowerPoint...but it just doesn't look the same.
Here's what I produced (during my enforced absence) to promote a languages-based filmmaking project.

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Mousepose 2
A very cool presentational tool from Boinx. It helps you highlight the particular area of the screen you want to show by spotlighting that area and dimming the rest. The new version also includes keystroke visualisation, enabling your audience to see which keys you are pressing. You can also visualise your mouse clicks. Look at this pbwiki tutorial I made to give you some idea.

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Open Office
As I didn't want to pollute (and have to pay for the privilege) my PowerBook with Microsoft stuff I decided to use Open Office as my word processing application. Put simply it is an open source office suite (as m/soft office) which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager and a drawing programme. The WP app is very similar to other office suites and it works quite happily with M/soft Office. In other words I can write something on it at home, email it to school and open it up quite simply as a word document. It offers all the features you would expect from a WP app. (I haven't used the others in the suite.)
I do quite like it but there are times when it (or more likely me) doesn't seem to be quite the same as Word which I am much more used to using. I can't really explain how or why, because I don't really know enough about it. But for my needs it works perfectly well.

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PDFPen
Not so long ago I had to download a pdf form fill it in and send it to someone (in Cameroon) via email. But you can't write on a PDF normally. So I thought I'd try this thing out. And it did indeed Smile on my Mac. It works. The form filling seemed to be a bit fiddly when I used it, but since then I have discovered how to lock the text filling tool on. Thats all I've used it for so far and I only have the demo, which leaves a not too obvious watermark on the document. In laymans (my) terms it seems to create another layer over the document on which you can then write. It served its purpose and who knows, I might need it again.

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Quicktime
Probably the most readily used and available platform for content in the world. I convert all my films and podcasts to quicktime which ensures that most people can access the content.

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Text Edit
When I just want to jot something down and can't be bothered opening Open Office I use Text Edit. Its a simple word processing app which lets you do quite a lot of fun stuff like importing music and film files. You can spell check, change fonts and format and create bulleted lists. Quite simple really.

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Thunderbird
As i use Firefox as my browser of choice and was looking for an email client to host multiple gmail accounts I decided to try Thunderbird. No complaints so far. I've linked 3 gmail accounts to it and it works like a dream...i.e. I don't have to do anything more than click. I'm not even going to go into all the other stuff it can do because I don't understand although it has good junk protection and as it is open source it is very secure (a strange but wonderful paradox isn't it?)

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Twitteriffic
My main Twitter client (I also use Twitterfox via my browser but that doesn't count for this post). I sings when a tweet comes in and there is a pretty looking blue bird in my dock. I use twitter but am not fully sure/convinced but can see its potential. I tend to use twitteriffic to advertise my latest blog posts. Oh yes its free if you are prepared to put up with 1 advert per hour otherwise I think it costs $14.95 to stay ad free...no prizes for guessing which version I have. The free one.

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Well that's all folks. Hope this mini series has been a little informative and not too tedious.

Coming soon, Web Apps I've not used yet but will do soon...bet you can't wait.

Technorati Tags: twitter, twitteriffic, thunderbird, textedit, quicktime, pdfpen, openoffice, mousepose, boinx, smileonmymac, iwork08, itunes, ishowu, iphoto, imovie06

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