Talking ICT and MFL at UEA

I was delighted to be invited back to the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia in Norwich today. In the 90s I was a student there myself, and have nothing but fantastic memories of the place, and consequently I always look forward to going back. It's changed a lot since I was there, but still possesses the same friendly atmosphere and vibe which made it such a great place to study.

I was invited to spend the afternoon with this year's cohort of MFL PGCE students, sharing ideas on using ICT in lessons, and a few thoughts about its use in the classroom. I'm continually inspired by the enthusiasm and motivation shown by these students; and being a PGCE mentor, I reckon that what is required of students wanting to enter the profession these days is greater than when I was studying for it back in 1996. You may disagree, but with the theory, teaching load, lesson preparation, assignments, observations, late nights, and no proper social life, the lot of the modern PGCE student is not an easy one.

Nevertheless, I spoke at length today about the various Web 2.0 resources out there, in a similar vein to my presentation earlier this year at The Language Show, and we also discussed wikis and blogs as well. I was also really keen to demonstrate the power of Twitter and in particular the vast number of MFL teachers that are active participants. I think many of the students were surprised at how many language teachers make use of Twitter to share ideas and resources and to help each other, and I'm really grateful to my colleagues who took the time to chip in and offer their advice to the students.

Photo by Leo Reynolds

The A-Z of ICT in MFL - The Language Show 2009

A Z Of Ict

View more presentations from Alex Blagona.

It was an honour to be asked back to the Language Show following on from my presentation last year on Blogs and Wikis. This year, I've gone a bit back to basics and produced a list, with some timely help from Joe Dale, Jose Picardo, Lisa Stevens, Suzi Bewell and a few others from my twitter network, of an A-Z of useful ICT based resources that can be used by teachers of MFL. I hope that you will have heard of a few of them, and that you may have even used some of them. I also hope that there are a few here that you might not have heard of and that you would consider having a go at using. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch!

Using Twitpic and Evernote for Peer Assessment

Wow. It kind of came to me by accident, yet it was just so obvious. My Year 9 class had to create an email for their homework, asking for information from the tourist office. If you're a languages teacher, you know exactly the exercise I'm talking about. Of course not all of the students emailed their work in. For some the internet 'unbelievably failed', others got my email address wrong, and so on and so forth. A couple of students wrote the homework down into their books, and handed that in. Hmm, I thought, that's not really what I was after. But then I had an idea, which seems so obvious, I'm sure that other teachers have done the same. I took a picture of Laura's work (above) with my iPhone, and uploaded it to my Evernote page. I then logged on to Evernote and had Laura's work up on the screen for all to see. I then thought - I've two twitter accounts - @blagona for me, and @northgatemfl for my department. Why not use the my department's twitter account to take pictures of students' work, send them to twitpic, and get students to log on and comment. It's simple! You can keep things anonymous if need be, and for those of us with iPhones, you can instantly take a picture of a student's piece of work and within seconds, with no USB pens or memory cards have the work on display on your interactive whiteboard. It formed a key part of my lesson today, and it only came to me because Laura's computer had crashed at home. There just has to be someone somewhere who has done this already...please get in touch if you have!

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?