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.

Pixton again

I had a great time last week with my Upper Sixth playing with Pixton. We're studying two films of Truffaut for A2 and as we are homing in on character work at the moment, I thought it would be fun for them to write their own extra scene for the film and set up a heart-to-heart between a couple of characters, using the Pixton cartoon site as a medium. Despite taking a while to get to grips with it (not for the colour-blind: in advanced cartoon creation everything depends on whether the editing box over your character is blue, red or green...) they really enjoyed the creativity of the activity. Within half an hour they had found imaginitive ways of expressing the character's views and feelings in words and by using the highly-customisable posture and expression options Pixton provides. The bonus was that the students are beginning to understand, hands-on, what sorts of decisions a director has to make, frame by frame ("shall I zoom on the character or will I miss out on the other character's reaction?"etc.). The corrected, printed versions are going to make an eye-catching start to our Truffaut character wall.

PS Links are playing up for me again tonight, so with apologies, the one vital address here: www.pixton.com

As I previously suspected, Pixton is maybe a little too complex and less visually appealing than other sites, such as toondoo, for younger students, but is a fantastic tool for the more ambitious or experienced. I'm now wondering about setting a cartooning task for November's "blogechange" project...

Pixton Advanced Cartoon Creation

Isle of Wight Conference

This is the moment I have been waiting for: booking has started for the Isle of Wight Conference, the MFL/ICT conference organised by Joe Dale and taking place this half-term. For any reading this who are linguists, do have a look and consider treating yourself to a few days on the island this October. Not only will you be able to visit Dinosaur Isle, enjoy invigorating strolls along the beach and maybe even paint your own piece of commemorative pottery (and I'm not scoffing, I love all those things), you can also immerse yourself in cutting-edge technology, explained and tutored by some of the best language teachers in the country. I've already signed up for sessions on podcasting, e-Twinning and using avatars in MFL teaching, to name but a few. At £100 for a two day dose of inspiration I challenge anyone to find better value and you will still have money left to feast on Alvin's Waffles (Old Shanklin - you have to go) before you leave.

So if you only ever follow one link from this site, follow this:http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2008/09/book-now-for-th.html
(apologies for not linking more neatly blogger is playing up on me tonight)

How to talk to students so they will listen to you

I came across a book recently of virtually the same name about talking to young children in a way they understand and remember. We also need to find ways of getting our students to tune in to us and one another. Vokis are amongst my favourite applications for doing this, and the next batch I have planned are to be prepared by my year 9s to post on our shared blog with a class in France as a way of introducing themselves to their new friends.

Last week Nik Peachey posted on using Virsonas with EAL students in a similar way (as far as I can see they are a super-deluxe version of a voki, using Artifical Intelligence technology and with far greater potential). I immediately mailed the company to enquire if they would be bringing out versions that can cope with languages other than English, and to my delight received the reply they were already working on it and hope to make a French version available in January 09. Definitely a date in my diary.

To read more about vokis you can check out today's Times Ed. magazine, in the dubiously-named "Geek Speak" section, where I've shared a few ideas on using speaking avatars, and text to speech technology generally.

Did I slip that in smoothly enough? Just nipping out now to buy copies for all my friends and relatives....

Woldingham School ICT Day

On Thursday 4th September staff had a great day at Woldingham, discovering more about the potential of ICT in students' lives. To kick off our Head of ICT, Joanna Winstanley, gave a presentation on basic skills covered by all our students in years 7-9. It is a great help to see what students' skills already are when we use ICT in our subject teaching, and also to see how we can reinforce the ICT Department's messages about how to use core programs.





We then welcomed Ellen Coen from Childnet International, an internet safety charity, who led a session on internet safety. She covered the main new technologies students may be using out of school hours, as well as showing us a a really effective video to use with students on cyberbullying. Childnet's approach involves informing of the potential dangers of the net environment, whilst encouraging us to model good usage of it by using these technologies with our students.





In the afternoon we spilt into workshop groups to spend some time "hands on". Music, Maths and Science worked on their own software, whilst other staff looked at blogging, podcasting, intranet and IWB. For Woldingham staff, you can take a look at what John and Kelly produced using Promethean interactive whiteboard software on our T drive in the IWB Training folder. Look for the files entitled Sutton Hoo and Skeleton, and click on the N at the top of the page for an explanation of how to use them. I'm just waiting for more links to the baby blogs created on the day to add them to the blogroll - but you can already check out the French and Japanese Departments' offerings. Let's hope there will be plenty more activity on these fronts over the next few months. Hopefully taking a group of staff to the TES and BETT shows will give us added impetus.

Widgetbox

Unable to sleep because of a very sore throat (it seems strange to be up at this time without a toddler having woken me...), I've just been browsing www.widgetbox.com for some extra features for my subject blog. There are several "learn a word a day" widgets, and this (sidebar left) is my favourite. As well as presenting a key word it provides pronunciation, and an example sentence. In the case of verbs you can scroll forwards or back to conjugate in different tenses. Looks like a straightforward and useful widget which I hope to get my Year 10s looking at in the Autumn. Now for another strepsil and back to bed...