Another interesting week...

Exchanges

Just as PE teachers kind of have an unwritten bit in their contracts that says that they are expected to run fixtures after school, and like Music teachers organise concerts and performances, MFL teachers involve themselves in the colourful world of Exchanges. As some of you may know, our school's 6th Form French Exchange has spent the week in town, and it has been a successful week. in fact it wasn't difficult when you consider that our trip to St Etienne involved us returning minus one student's appendix!

Anyway, the chaps from the Lycee St Louis have been our guests, and as a host teacher, it has involved doing the little things that we wouldn't normally do. These sorts of things include, in no particular order...

* Getting dressed for breakfast, and eating it at the dining table, as opposed to sitting on the sofa, in my dressing gown, watching Sky Sports News.

* Cooking meals every night. I made a conscious effort to prepare typically English meals. I was particularly impressed with the steak and ale pie, if I do say so myself.

* Doing the touristy thing - I spent 3 years as a student living in Norwich, and yet never went to the cathedral or castle. (I think I must have had other, more important places to visit!)

Now, don't get me wrong, I have thoroughly enjoyed the week, despite the exchange coinciding with GCSE Speaking Tests, and the students also appeared to have had more than a good time, judging by some of the stories! But I have to feel for one of my colleagues, who having hosted a teacher from France, has now left to take part in the Y10 exchange in Amiens!

Blogging News

This week I was invited to take part in a Key Stage 3 project aimed at looking at ways in which we can develop pupil independence in language learning organised by the Suffolk LEA, and thanks to the success of the Northgate MFL blog, and our school's attempt at podcasting, I hope that I can have something to offer. Since starting on the blogging road, I have become a real advocate of the benefits that it can have for our students, and after a year of working on it with some help from colleagues, we will have our blog featured in the Northgate Review, the school's magazine. It will be interesting to see if that has any effect on the interest generated in the blog amongst parents, as opposed to just the students. It is always important to publicise a blog to get people to read it and use it. At school we have done this by placing posters around the language centre, and even having a big banner in our computer room with the website address on it! Thanks to the guys in our technical support department, they have even created a desktop icon on all school computers so that students can click there first! Now we have the article in the school magazine. I'm toying with the idea of trying to get the local paper interested in the story, as we are still the only school in Suffolk with an MFL blog... I'd be keen to have people's advice on publicising a blog... Any thoughts?

Blog Goner?

I played cricket last night (we have a staff team!) and came back home and checked the latest post from several other blogs that I read. Joe Dale's blog featured an interview between himself and David Noble on use of technology, and in particular blogs and podcasts. I was very interested to listen to the interview, and felt that both the questions posed and the answers given were excellent. I was also interested to listen to the various viewpoints on Scottish and English blogs, and how there are more and more cropping up. However there do seem to be a number of blogs that are started up and then are either left to die, or just disappear, and I started to wonder why.

The Northgate blog started up almost a year ago, and to be fair, when we launched it, all the staff in my department were up for it, and were keen to chip and contribute. Eleven months on, and it is now just me, for any number of reasons. Some colleagues felt that getting to grips with the technology outweighed the possible advantages. Some felt under pressure to write things on the blog, whilst others didn't have the time. So as I look back at Northgate MFL, there are a few things that I have personally found challenging -

* Having the time to blog.

That for me is the key thing. As a teacher, especially at certain times of the year like this, most of us are incredibly busy, and sometimes writing your thoughts and opinions on things instead of sorting out Year 11 coursework is not the best plan.

*What to say?

When the Northgate blog started, it was designed to be used by our own students. As we have moved on, I notice that other people from other schools begin to see some of the things we publish. Does that mean that I should cater for those outside of my original intended readership? In a week's time the school magazine comes out with a full page article on the blog, so that finally, the whole community will get a chance to read what it is about. Do I starting think of tailoring my content for parents and possibly local businesses? As yet I haven't. I've tried to keep it focused on the students.

*Finding things to talk about which are relevant.

I have set homework via the blog, uploaded useful resources to help students prepare for exams, offered links to other websites, and articles. We've embedded video so that students can watch relevant stuff from home, all of which has been well received. I'm always desperate to see what other mfl bloggers are doing so that I can learn from their ideas.

Why do we do this?

Since the Northgate MFL blog was created back in June, we've been trying to find ways to harness new and evolving technologies to help students, and to provide greater motivation in learning MFL at our school. We've gone from what are now simple things like exchanging emails with students, to using the blog to upload and store resources for students to download. This year we've produced podcasts and mp3 recordings, conducted online projects like the Gifted and Talented, used Wikispaces to develop groupwork online, and have used mobile phones to record sound and images to share work. The question I have to ask myself is whether it is actually worth it. I tried a couple of times with the mobile phone in lessons, and initially the kids were too preoccupied with actually using the phone as opposed to what we were using it for, but eventually we got the students to Bluetooth their files to my Mac which was linked up to the data projector - a good bit of peer assessment. The podcasting and MP3 recording has really worked well, the students love doing that, and enjoy the recording experience much more than I gave them credit for. So as far as I am concerned it has been totally worth it.

I'm fortunate that I work in a very forward thinking specialist language college, where most of the staff are keen to give things a go. But when I attend conferences and talks given by people like Joe Dale and Ewan McIntosh, both of whom have proved to be a great help and sounding board in getting the school blog going, I can't help but feeling that I am still in a minority. Many teachers I speak to in the East of England love the concept of starting a blog, or making a podcast, but are either too apprehensive to give it a go, don't have the time due to other pressing workloads, or just don't think it will work. There are also too many for my liking who are, for want of a better word 'scared' of the the fact that they feel that thewy can't dare to leave the text book or syllabus. I for one can understand this to a certain extent - I'm caught between the need to motivate my students, to show them how much fun languages can be, and the need to cover everything in the course in the limited time available. For those of you who have taught AS and A2, you should be able to empathise with me. Some teachers look at me like I'm mad when I talk about using mobiles to send kids' work to each other, and I know that they think that I should have covered that really important gap-fill on page 32.

How do I get them to change their minds?