Word Magnets

Nik Peachey recently blogged about Word Magnets, a site I was instantly attracted to for teaching MFL. Basically this site enables you to make movable word labels without needing to use an IWB. The main drawback is that you can't save what you have done.

I wanted to use this to practise the perfect tense with Year 8, so saved a series of sentences in Word, for quick copying into the Word Magnets site during the lesson. I started off with just one short sentence at a time, then by the end of the lesson copied the whole of the text in and got students to form their own sentences from the vocabulary available. By then, it looked like this:

Word Magnet Example

I love the fact you can make the labels larger and colour code them do easily. Although you need to set this up ready for the lesson as it can't be saved, it actually turned out to be quite an advantage to do it in front of/with the students, as they were involved in thinking through which words were to be coloured and why.

I'm looking forward to using this now with all my classes and letting them have a go themselves setting challenges for partners in the ICT room.

Gifted and Talented Blog

Long time no blog, I know. Well actually, I have been blogging, just somewhere else. I've been running an experimental after-school club for students identified as G&T in KS3 over the last half-term, and (of course) decided to plan and run the whole thing using a new blog (whose name may seem familiar) at www.sprqs.blogspot.com
As ever, it has been really convenient to have all my resources together, all the more so because I am running the club in parallel with a colleague, so it is very convenient to be able to put all our ideas and materials in one place.
Parental involvement (or at least liason) has been high on our list of priorities, so we have contacted everyone involved with the blog address and are trying to encourage them to follow the sessions (lesson plans are on the blog as well as materials) and have a go at some of the activities themselves. I'll find out next week how many had a go at "Einstein's problem" over Christmas.
So far we have looked at values, and logical and lateral thinking, and our next session will be Russian/Japanese tasters. After that I plan to get students establishing their own blogs, and practising how to use online networks and communities to further their interests and learning.

Moblogging in Zaragoza

Well, the Zaragoza blog this week has just had its 1000th hit! Angel Lopez, who runs our Spanish blog here at Woldingham, done made a fantastic job of uploading slideshows, audio interviews with the students and of course photos, resulting in a colourful and engaging blog. Back at school we have had some problems ensuring the students can access every aspect of the site, including being able to comment, but they have now been ironed out and we look forward to increasing our readership and more active participation next week when our students are in Bondues.

Moblogging again

Summer term and time for a couple of moblogs. We started moblog experiments last year with our Montpellier trip, and tried out some cross-curricular blogging with St. Petersburg in the Spring. Now we are branching out with two moblogs operating at once, one from Bondues one from Zaragoza, thanks to the Spanish Department's purchase of an additional camera phone.

Last year we used gabcast and podcast pickle together to publish some audio as well as photos from the phone. This year, thanks to Adam Taha's's very clear video featured on Joe Dale's blog recently, we are going for including audio via divshare and a tiny mp3 recorder.

Tomorrow I brief a group of students and accompanying staff on the basics of moblogging. Having set up blogs in blogger for both parties and linked their camera phone to the blog to post directly, once they are abroad our mobloggers just need to take pics, add an accompanying text, and click on "send to blog". In addition internet access in the evenings from host families/hotels gives an opportunity to add further photos from other devices or simply more cheaply. I'm hoping the students will also be able to make recordings of reports in the Target Language of their day's experiences, which can then be posted in a divshare player directly onto the blog.

I'm looking forward to seeing (and hearing) what they have been up to and hope we will have good interest and participation from parents and friends. Watch this space for an update on how they are getting on.

Revising for the orals with Photostory 3

It's a bit late for Year 11, I know. My Year 10s are preparing for end of year orals and have been using a multimedia approach to drum those conversation topics in.

The first stage was very conventional: write answers to questions on school, hand in, then type up the corrected version. Next, choose images from the net to reflect each of your answers. Drop these into Photostory 3 and add the questions as subtitles.

Now the more unusual bit: upload your answers to readthewords, choose one of the available French-speaking voices, and listen to your own answers. For students lacking in confidence this breaks the back of any pronunciation problems without the need for an unrealistic amount of time practising with the teacher. After a final rehearsal with me, the students then record their answers in Photostory, making a great resource to share with other students, mail home, or download onto a smartphone etc...

This took two 55 minutes lessons and two homeworks, and I'm looking forward to hearing the impact on their oral performances next week. The students certainly enjoyed making their short videos, and using speech simunlation as pronunciation support was excellent for boosting the independance of a bottom set.

Nice to feel new technologies can help us meet the old expectations of learning a certain amount of language by rote.

Come and work at Woldingham!

Due to a combination of unusual circumstances we are currently looking for a full-time teacher of French and/or German to start in September at Woldingham School in Surrey. Woldingham is an independent girls' school for ages 11-18 and a fantastic place to teach. There is the possibility of appointing a suitably experienced and qualified applicant as Head of German.

You'll be able to work with motivated students in beautiful surroundings, and (most importantly of all!) have ample opportunity to develop your IT skills by working with us on blogging, podcasting and other exciting innovations. Languages staff each have their own teaching room equipped with IWB, and we have easy access to large ICT suites. Please contact me through this blog, or Liz Gillies, the Head's PA, on 01883 654205 for more details.

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.