Year 9: Touristes a Paris

Virtual Exchange

Since September my Year 9 French class has been running a blog alongside a similar aged class in France. It's the first time I've done anything like this so we've kept it quite simple. Our aim was for both classes to complete and post a task on the blog each month, and then look at one another's work, comment and generally get to know and help one another. In September we decided each student would post a voki, introducing themselves in the Target Language. We had some great lessons recording ourselves, and then listening to partner students' introductions. In November we realised a task a month was a bit ambitious, and sent bears to one another for a Christmas exchange visit. Toffee (our Woldingham bear) and Francois and Jules (pictured left) enjoyed Christmas in their exchange country and posted slideshows (hosted by scribd and voicethread) to report on their experiences.

While we were using snail mail we also sent some handwritten letters to our partner class, which they then corrected, commented on and returned. In the meantime we have also posted individual photos, text, and the odd interactive game relating to work done in class.

We have had to overcome several challenges, such as restrictions using Blogger in school, and the reliability of equipment at times, but the students are having great fun, and I would definitely recommend it as a relatively simple (and really cheap!) way of getting your classes enthusiastic about the country and seeing a real purpose for the language.

Isle of Wight Conference

Had a great time at the Isle of Wight Conference last weekend. It was good to put some faces to names, and a great opportunity to pick up some tips on podcasting and eTwinning (in my case that is, the choice of workshops was far wider). Persuaded by Kathleen Holton's session on digital voice recorders I've invested in a Sony UB70X and am already enjoying recording and uploading audio much more simply and quickly than with audacity (press record, talk, press stop, plug into the USB port and off you go). Yesterday I added a comment voki to the voki posted by our partner class in France on our shared blog using the Sony recorder and am hoping the French class will use comment vokis maybe rather than typed comments to give us a bit of feedback (this will make sense if you follow the links above).



So a big thank you to Joe and Heather Dale, and all the speakers at the conference for a fantastic weekend. Lots of inspiration, and several instances of making digital life easier: we couldn't ask for more. Didn't have an opportunity to go to Alvin's Waffle House, however. Next year maybe.

Whodunnitblog

Get a Voki now!



Check out www.inspecteurduval.blogspot.com for an idea on how to use a fictional blog to encourage research, creative writing and problem solving. This blog is designed for an able year 11 or a Sixth Form group. Inspecteur Duval (of course Duval, as those familiar with the valley our school is in will know) has to solve the mystery of a diamond theft from a luxury Paris Hotel. Using links to sites connected with the suspects and scene of the crime students begin to develop the characters, and prepare vokis giving a brief statement of innocence, as well as mp3s of initial interviews with Duval. Students then decide which of the suspects is going to be guilty, and plan a subtle gap or discrepancy in their story, as well as plenty of motivation for all three suspects, just to make things tricky! They can then record or post statements from supporting characters. When the project is finished (I estimate three weeks of 1hr 20 a week) we have a murder-mystery blog activity for other groups to solve. At that stage I might invite new participants onto the jury and use the polling feature in Blogger for them to cast their vote, with a 1G memory stick as a prize for the best judge's sentencing speech posted as a comment.

My Voki

Voki.com enables you to create speaking characters to accompany your blog. They can be your face-double, an odd-ball character or even a talking animal, and you can pick language and accent (for example I have a French-speaking cat for my edublogs blog, if only I could work out how to embed it). They are free, good fun, and encourage your students to engage with the blog.