What it says on the can

I’ve just been hunting down examples for the generic blogging course I’m starting in the summer and thought I’d do a quick post on this. I used technorati, the international edubloggers directory and blogger (Google). My tips are as follows:

1) go straight to “advanced search” and make sure you are searching blog titles, not simply blog posts, otherwise you will end up with thousands of posts which happen to mention “geography”, rather than Geography blogs.
2) limit your search to those blogs which have been updated in the last couple of months, to avoid your search taking you to a blogs' graveyard
3) try searching for blogs with a word like “GCSE” or “revision” in the title to home in on school-run blogs
4) specify “English” to filter out foreign language blogs
5) read the first line of the post displayed before clicking on the link, and look at the blog address for clues as to the level of the blog (there are plenty of Science blogs run at University level for example)
6) once you have found a decent blog, check out their blog roll before moving on – there may be useful links

And finally, once you’ve found what you’re looking for, in future bear all this in mind when titling blogs and blog posts! Spending several hours on this task has made me determined to keep a balance between memorability, practicality and (occasionally) whimsy in future when I’m thinking up blog titles.

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.

A New Year's Resolution

10 IWB Lesson Ideas Presentation

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Teaching Education mfl promethean

Have you made a resolution to start using that expensive gym membership you paid for, or to get going on the rowing machine you coughed up for but only use twice a year? No? Well in that case spare a thought for your poor IWB. Are you just using it as a projector for PowerPoints, or only using it on a Friday afternoon to go on a language-learning website? There are so many really quick and easy ways of creating your own flipcharts it needn't be too time-consuming (less so than going to the gym, definitely).

Have alook at the two documents here in scribd (you can search for my documents in scribd under the name Magpie41). The Word document gives an IWB lesson idea a week for ten weeks, and the PowerPoint shows you what your flipcharts might look like. I'd like to thank Lesley Welsh for her inspirational presentation on using IWBs at this year's Isle of Wight Conference, particularly for mix, match and memorize and 9 lives (my names but her ideas). You are free to download my PowerPoint and chunk it down into your own IWB software.

So resolve to give your creativity a work-out this Year! If you need a second resolution, incidentally, I'd recommend sharing with your department and dividing up the work so between you it is a manageable job to update your Schemes of Work by including original, bespoke whiteboard materials. Enjoy!

10 Lesson Ideas for IWB

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Teaching Education mfl IWB

Grammar Queen

I picked up a feed a few days ago about xtranormal, a site that allows you to create animations using text to speech software (despite my good intentions I forgot to note whose blog pointed me in this direction: so thanks and apologies!) This site is really easy and fun to use and can cope with several languages and accents. My first experiment is aimed at getting my Year 10s to remember the basic rules and a few key forms of the perfect tense. I asked the group to write some questions and answers about forming the tense, and then typed their dialogue into the site. It is great fun choosing the camera angles, gestures and facial expressions. In episode two the French tutor demonstrates some of the verbs, and I'm going to invite my students to script episode 3, where our learner takes her first uncertain steps in the perfect. I think then I might invite students to invent another character our French learner can meet. The resulting videos can be posted on youtube, embedded in your blog or simply searched on xtranormal's site, which offers the usual possibilities of ratings, comments and remixes. Try it now while they are offering free credits.

Whoops!

Simon Howells at Cheadle Hulme School has just alerted me to the fact that I seem to have dispensed with the comments option on my posts. Don't know what came over me - I would love to hear from you (and especially having invited nominations for most tedious topic)! Anyway, we're now open for comments again, so please click on the link below if you want to get in touch.

Nominations for most tedious topic

Until this morning mine would definitely have gone to "buying a metro ticket in Paris". I mean, who has ever actually had a conversation about this? You look at the map, buy tickets from a machine, and don't even have to bother interupting the flow of your iPod. However, this morning I found ratp's wonderful interactive site which helps you to plan metro journeys. Click on your departure station and then mark it with a green flag as your departure station. Then select your destination station and mark it with a red flag. You can also click on the local map symbol to plan your walking route to an attraction once you have finished you metro journey. It is a really user-friendly, practical tool which my Year 9 enjoyed experimenting with. It then isn't too difficult to slip in a quick "carnet-buying" conversation before the glow of the website wears off.

If you have any nominations for more tedious topic for MFL (or any other subject you teach) please drop a comment on to this post and we'll see what ideas and resources we can come up with.

Training in Leeds

We're finding out about blog basics today.