#CampEd12

So… after months of build-up, the weekend finally arrived, and from all over the country the CampEd-ers assembled! The excitement had reached fever pitch on Twitter some time ago – the twin hashtags of #CampEd12 and #woohoo had been peppering the ether with increasing frequency!

Thanks to the tireless preparative work of the incredible CampEd organising committee (@helendaykin, @Joga5 and @dughall) – whose names will hopefully be added to the wall of the barn on a commemorative blue plaque before too long – the scene was set, and all that was needed was the cast…

…and what a cast! As I tweeted from a collapsed heap-like state after my 7-hour journey home (more on that later!), for me the real highlight had been the sheer sense of camaraderie forged all weekend amongst people who had, in most cases, never set eyes on each other before we gradually gathered in Sue’s barn. From the very youngest to the oldest present, everyone mucked in and just… well, got on with it. In years to come we will look back on this event with a real sense of misty-eyed pride at being able to say: “We were there!” for the first CampEd!

As I said to Dughall in the pub at one point on Sunday evening: the reason it was working out so well was that, although we are all very different people with a hugely varied set of experiences, interests, areas of expertise and so on – if you were to draw a Venn diagram of us all, there would be a big, solid core of shared “stuff” which pulled us all together and formed the foundation for this weekend of hilarity, discussion, singing, activities… and beakers

Others have already blogged with entertaining eloquence and thought-provokery about the event, such as @NuttyA10 here, @TeaKayB here, @chrisrat here and @mattpearson here, so I won’t go over the same ground again… suffice to say that even before the event was over, ideas were already being formulated for CampEd13. Bring it on, I say!

 

PS: the journey home took 2 hours longer ‘cos I had to stop off and get a flat tyre replaced on my way down the M1… on a Bank Holiday Monday! Woo-hoo… #not

PPS: here are my pics from the weekend – I hope they give a taste of what it was really like: https://picasaweb.google.com/107266760879229752497/CampEd12?authkey=Gv1sRgCJfw-NLjwZ-93AE

Triptico goes SOLO!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been a keen user of David Riley’s wonderful suite of desktop IWB tools for quite some time, now… but the latest addition to the range (as I type, still in beta mode, but available to trial here) looks to me like a real game-changer in terms of the learning and teaching in my classroom and beyond its walls.

David calls it Think Link. It is founded upon the SOLO taxonomy, described here, and explored here by Tait Coles, and Damian Clark’s idea of using tesselating hexagons to show understanding, and to make and justify connections in learning.  SOLO and its basis for Think Link has already been blogged about already by Kristian Still here, here and here.

I tried it out for the first time this morning, so as to be able to give David more informed feedback about the new tool before it goes “live” in the Triptico suite! I thought we should go straight to the source and involve the kids…

As a vehicle for exploring the tool, we chose the recently-covered topic of colours in French – complete with masculine v feminine and singular v plural, plus of course the colours which can be both masculine and feminine (e.g. rouge, jaune) and others which are invariable (e.g. orange, marron).

I filmed the class using the tool, and then recorded us discussing its use afterwards. I think they made good first use of it – I was really pleased with how they used the correct metalanguage to decide where to position the various hexagons – and I also think they explained really clearly what they though of it, and why! #proudteacher

This is before the pupils started:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and here is how it ended up a few minutes later (roughly! – I lost the saved file, so this doesn’t look like how it ends up in the video…

Clearly, there is (and was!) discussion still to be have over whether there are better ways to arrange the tiles – but that is one of the beauties of this tool!

Once I have edited it for e-safety reasons, here will be the video of the class using Think Link, and here is an Audioboo of the subsequent discussion. I would be very interested in what you think!

#ililc2 – The Return of the MFLTwitterati

It’s taken nearly a week to get over last weekend and put virtual pencil to paper (more on that later!)… but having read some fab posts on last weekend’s conference during the week, I finally have enough energy to get started on one myself!

The original ICT Links Into Languages Conference last year was a seminal moment for me, in the sense that it crystallised a lot of what I was already thinking about in my own approach to learning and teaching. I met face-to-face many of the people whom I had already been following for some time on Twitter, and the sheer positivity, dynamism and refusal to be brow-beaten by the tide of top-down tedium and ideological idiocy peddled by those at the Department for Education left me on a tremendous, year-long high.

And so it was with gathering excitement that I and many others around the country and beyond prepared for #ililc2! The Twittersphere shimmered with pre-conference anticipation, and a certain recently-Swissed Miss prepared for a raid of the UK’s paracetamol reserves…

The event kicked off with Joe Dale‘s opening keynote: “Turn on, tune in, Dropbox out!” in which he drew countless threads together to show just how much the use of various technologies can add to the learning and teaching of languages in our schools. One highlight of Joe’s talk was his very entertaining summation of the Twitter #pencilchat hashtag discussion, which had seen tweeps poke fun at the whole “anti-technology” approach. This section of his keynote can be viewed here. The following slide caused much mirth!

By the way, hats off to Joe for producing a tremendous opening talk despite feeling very much under the weather…

The rest of the weekend unfurled in a bit of a blur! I am glad I have my pictorial notes; I always travel to events such as this with at least 3 or 4 ways of visually recording things. At the moment, as well as my battered but still trusty Lumix camera, with an 18x digital zoom, handy for grabbing detail of peoples’ presentations, I have my Asus eee Pad, whose built-in camera is perfectly adequate for quick whole-screen shots. (I didn’t even use my Kodak PlaySport HD videocamera this year – probably quite a good thing, as far as the Show & Tell was concerned! More on that later…

I also managed to squeeze off one or two (hundred!) tweets during the event, the more serious of which serve as a record of all the talks I attended. Having my Evernote account set up so that Tweets which I “favourite” are saved there automatically is a useful conference tip I have picked up from somewhere or other along the way. 

Talking of tweets, I have saved the entire #ililc2 hashtag as a permanent archive, but until I finally work out how to make it more easily readable (with the help of @chilledteaching, who makes it look so easy with the weekly #ukedchat archive!), it will have to await publishing!

So… back to the talks!

What was so wonderful about #ililc2 was the sheer RANGE of the programme of talks, plus the opportunities for hands-on workshops…and even if the talks are led from the front, there is plenty of scope for interaction with the “audience”. Not to mention the fantastic Twitter back-channel, which means that even though you have to make a tricky choice between talks, you feel almost as though you have attended the one’s you have missed, via colleagues who were in there! In fact, many others who were not able physically to  attend, for one reason or another, tweeted that they almost felt like they had, such was the Twitter-traffic generated over the weekend… 

Thanks to the following for their wonderful talks and workshop sessions (in no particular order), all of whom have given me countless ideas, techniques and so on for immediate use in the classroom, or as I continue to learn as a teacher:

Stuart Gorse, who had me crying with laughter in his session on “Cheap and cheerful animation”. Have a look at his Youtube channel for evidence of what he and his students have produced…

Jen Turner, whose session on using ICT to conquer the Controlled Assessment offered me perhaps the most immediately usable tools and ideas. Check out Memorizenow and Cueprompter, for a start…

Lisa Stephens, who flew in all the way from her new Swiss abode to offer us an opportunity to play with fruit-based tablets and the myriad tools now available to make life easier and more productive for ‘appy language learners and their teachers… (see what she did, there?) PS I still prefer my eee Pad…

Esther Hardman, who ran through some of the many ways in which she employs webtools to enhance the learning and teaching at her school – such as personalised avatars for online safety: see if you can spot the Godfather of the #mfltwitterati, here:

Jo Rhys-Jones and Amanda Salt provided very different approaches to how to tackle (and indeed make the most of) the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in our classrooms. Speaking as someone who fully embraces the Games (x2) taking place here – and indeed is a volunteer helper for both, over the Summer – I am looking forward to harnessing, or where necessary stoking up – the enthusiasm of my pupils with some of these ideas!

Catherine Elliott, with a hands-on session on basic in-class video-making which could easily have been three or four times longer – but which still managed to produced some hysterical results from the various would-be Oscar-winning groups who took part… The results of our 45-minute session are here!

Juliet Park, whose session entitled “Shaken and Stirred!” offered suggestions on how to engage, motivate and captivate pupils (as Ofsted requires… by making MFL lessons interesting, meaningful, authentic, emotive, funny, novel, challenging…and naughty! Juliet plans to email out the contents of her presentation, and I will add it to this post when I receive it – it’s pure gold!

Links to most of these presentations and others which I was unable to attend are available for download on the Languages South East website here - thanks to Zena Hilton and team for getting them all on there so efficiently! PS Good luck with maternity leave, Zena!

The evening saw the traditional MFL Show & Tell, where a combination of beer/wine and mad presenters produced a real highlight of the whole weekend. Once again, as no one presentation is like any other, the variety on offer was really broad… but compared with last year, the amount of physical interaction and sing-along fun was even greater! To such an extent that the initially slightly confused bar-staff ended up participating with several segments – to our huge enjoyment! (And I got my massive Toblerone off of Lisibo…

Another personal highlight for me was finally meeting José Picardo, whose thoughtfully-delivered second keynote on the second day made a totally convincing case for embracing Social Media in education (not that I need any persuasion, you will say!) I have followed José for years, but actually getting a chance to have a beer and a natter together was great. There is too much in his keynote to mention here, but one slide which struck a chord with me was this one:

All that remains to say is how much we all missed our absent friends – in particular Chris Harte (who has fled the country after suffering enough first-hand experience of Nick Gibb for anyone to bear), and John Connor, whose family suffered a dreadful bereavement in the run-up to the conference weekend. John, our thoughts were and still are very much with you and your loved-ones.

And now the countdown starts for #ililc3! Woo-hoo! (Got a few more verses of “Academy Cop-out” taking shape in my head already…

 

Academy Cop-out (to the tune of “Beauty School Dropout”…)

The story’s sad to tell…
A system gone to hell.
A dangerous ideologue at the top.
Our future’s so unclear now;
What’s left of our career now?
It really makes me want to have a strop!

Academy cop-out,
No graduation day for you.
Academy cop-out
Michael Gove hasn’t got a clue!
Well at least he could have taken time
To listen to some teachers,
After spending all his time
With Gibb and other dreadful creatures!

Govey get movin’
Please keep our fading hopes alive!
What are you provin’?
Before teacher morale takes a dive,
If you moved in a re-shuffle, we could heave a mighty sigh,
Undo the damage you have done and wave bye bye!

Academy cop-out
OFSTED are just outside the door.
Academy cop-out
Sir Michael Wilshaw – what a bore!
Well they couldn’t take a class themselves;
Have they ever taught a lesson?
And now satisfactory’s no good,
We’re all doomed to fail, I’m guessin’!

Average pupil
You’re not cut out to hold a job.
Better forget it -
Unless you speak Latin, you’re a yob.
Your eBacc’s done, it wasn’t fun,
Controlled Assessments are so cruel…
What was the point of going to West London Free School?

REPRISE

Govey you blew it!
You put our good advice to shame.
How could you do it?
All those King James Bibles in your name!
Guess there’s no way to get through to you,
No matter who may try
Might as well flop down in our staffroom chairs and cry!

(World Premiere at #ililc2 Show and Tell, Southampton, 25th February 2012)

Post 25

WordPress told me that last one was my 24th post – so I just HAD to do the 25th one to see what happened!

Triptico a-go-go!

I have been making good use of Triptico, the wonderful suite of in-class tools designed and developed by David Reilly, for almost two years now. I have also talked about my usage of it at several TeachMeets, such has been its impact on my classroom practice.

And now plans are afoot to share resources created using Triptico, so that users of it from all over the globe can benefit from each others’ ideas. The pioneering spirit of Kristian Still is behind the idea, and we are using the powerfully simple functionality of DropBox to streamline the sharing process. Folders are now set up to allow teachers of a full range of subjects to add their resources.

Kristian has set the target of 1000 files in 100 days! Well, I have added over 50 in two days, so let’s see…

diary of a BETT first-timer…

sun goes down on BETT for the last time at Olympia...

(NB this is most definitely NOT an in-depth examination of anything in particular – merely a meander through my Friday 13th at the 2012 British Educational Training and Technology Show…

BETT was not really “on my radar” until a couple of years ago, to be honest. Only when I started to follow such a fantastic group of edu/tech-y people on Twitter did I start to appreciate the role technology could play in the teaching and learning taking place in “my” classroom…

And this year I made it to the show for the first time. I had read some of the advisory blogposts out there – such as this one from Ian Addison, downloaded the map of the stands from the BETT website, dusted off the magnifying glass necessary to be able to read the blinking thing, booked a couple of seminars…and shared in the buzz online as people all over the place started to build up to it!

Ian had devoted his incredible energies to creating a one-stop BETTprep site for like-minded folk to sign up for everything from a breakfast meet-up, to TeachMeet Takeover slots, to helping out before the blue riband TeachMeet proper in the evening (and the vital TeachEat afterwards)…

The trip up from Hampshire was in the company of the estimable Gideon Williams and Rob Harrison, both foolhardy enough to trust themselves to the ‘Bellars Taxi Service’… and the banter increased still further at the “William Morris” in Hammersmith over a tasty and very good-value brekkie, where we were joined by a veritable who’s who of hungry BETT bigwigs such as Dai Barnes, David Mitchell, Dawn Hallybone, Nick Dennis and John Sutton – with apologies to others with equally large wigs who were there whom I didn’t recognise! (That’s one of the fun things about attending such events as this – you meet people you know well but have never seen in your life… a recurrent theme throughout the day!)

After the short walk to Olympia, we all headed into the cavernous interior of the venerable exhibition centre (hosting BETT for a historic final time), and all its shiny delights.

I soon worked out that I was going to become a walking monument to man’s desire to raise the brochure/flyer to a fine art, unless I honed my ability studiously yet politely to avoid making eye-contact with the myriad salespeople populating the many stands. Within about 2 minutes I already had a mug, three badges and a bagful of all sorts of other clobber…

Time for a tactical retreat to a seating area. Quite by chance, I bumped back into Rob, and together we discovered quite how ropey the Olympia wifi was… His fruit-based tablet seemed to be coping fine, whereas my ASUS Transformer was no more than an extra digital camera for much of the day (until several of us relocated to a pub at 4.30ish, all BETT-ed out, and found a wifi network in the heartiest of health!)…

My goals for the day had always revolved, to a large extent, around wandering about putting faces to twitternames, as much as actually checking out any fun kit, but opportunities to check out Scholastic, BrainPop and 2 Simple’s Purple Mash and Life from UniServity were all very welcome. I will look forward to trying to persuade those who hold the purse-strings back at school that some of these solutions might well fit our requirements. And thanks to Chris Ratcliffe at Scholastic for letting me indulge my Twitter addiction on one of his stand’s PCs, and to Susan Banister for a Life-saving* glass of fruit juice, comfy chair and chat at the UniServity stand… (*see what I did there?). Also great to see Marie O’Sullivan on the Sanako stand and Joe Dale talking about Microsoft’s newest acquisition Skype, on their stand – including a fantastic live hook-up with a class of kids in the USA…

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to cross off all the boxes on my “BETT Twitterati Bingo” sheet – but there’s always next time!

My main reason for attending BETT was the evening’s events, though. Having been introduced to the world of the TeachMeet last year, the chance to be at one with a large proportion of the Twitter-fuelled part of my PLN physically in the room was too tempting to pass up – not to mention the likes of Lisa Stevens following from afar via live stream and back-channel! I must confess to having been more than a little star-struck at times, seeing all these people in one place whose names such foot-soldiers as I often preface with a “The” with a capital T! But that’s what’s so brilliant about rubbing shoulders with such individuals on Twitter – it is by definition a very democratic network… or at least, it is if your name isn’t something like @piersmorgan or @toryeducation…

A few of my personal highlights:

• the “all hands to the pumps” attitude which saw the Apex Room transformed in a matter of minutes by a combined workforce of Olympia staff and attendees…

• meeting a LOAD of people face-to-face whom I had been looking forward to meeting for AGES: too many to mention by name here, but you know who you all are…!

• a host of presentations from first time TeachMeeters such as Simon Lewis and Paul Hutson and (even) two student teachers from Plymouth University, Emma Taylorson and Amy Parkin…

• the usual backchannel tweckling…!

• some great ideas – such as collaborative planning using Google Docs (thanks to Claire Lotriet, Julie Stanton and Cherise Duxbury); using My Ebook to foster pupils’ writing (Colin Hill); not being scared to use Facebook to enhance home-school communication (Alberto Garrido); a Model United Nations project (from Ian Usher); taking technology out into the world using Mission: Explore, and her own village’s version of it (by Emma Dawson)… and much more besides. I look forward to checking out some of these ideas in more depth via any follow-up blogposts which are produced in the near future, and implementing some or all of them in school myself! Please let us know if you put any such posts out there!

There was also a poignant moment of reflection as glasses were raised in memory of Tom Cooper, the recently-deceased leader of Lewisham Council’s strategy on ICT – as Dawn reminded us, someone who always encouraged us to “grasp the moment”…

A good third of the assembled throng made the short journey downstairs to Pizza Express for the final event of the day – a well-earned TeachEat buffet and a further opportunity for a bit more banter and networking – a chance to cook up future schemes, talk over the packed day, plot the downfall of the Secretary of State for Education… and so on!

With tummies pleasantly full of pizza, off we all headed into the London night and beyond; tired, but buzzing with rekindled enthusiasm for our respective roles.  For those of us still lucky enough to be in the classroom – the best job in the world…

word order with Lego

A Twitter buddy was asking for ideas to help with practising word order and linking sentences today, and I mentioned that I sometimes use Lego bricks. She asked me to elaborate: so here we go…

(NB the following example is aimed at Germanists encountering the Time-Manner-Place word order rule, but I would imagine that it could be adapted for other learners, in other curriculum areas.)

I have a box of the larger-sized Lego bricks, which I bought as a very cheap job-lot on eBay (what a great resource-source for the hard-up teacher!).

I hand out a selection of bricks to each pupil/pair/group of pupils, ensuring that each group has the same set (i.e. one each of red, blue, white, black, yellow, etc.). We decide together which colour will have which function: e.g. red for main verb, white for a pronoun, black for a conjunction, etc. It can be quite fun to debate which colour fits best for which part of speech, and why… (Colour of grammar #thunks?!) I always leave the “colour key” up on the board throughout the lesson.

We then explore the nature of the standard German sentence (i.e. main verb is always the second “idea”, any other piece of verb – e.g. an infinitive or a past participle – goes to the end. I will always try to get the *pupils* to make this discovery themselves, of course…

And then we use the bricks to make sure the pupils are getting the words in the right order. I will write up a jumbled-up sentence on the board, and the pupils have to put their bricks in the right order.

The two great things here are, they don’t have to worry about spelling, AND the teacher can see at a glance if they have “got it”, because the colours are in the same order all around the class…

The fun bit comes as you then explore the notion of Time – Manner – Place, which is a prescribed order in the German language, for those of you who are not German scholars. (They need three different colour bricks for Time phrases, Manner phrases and Place phrases, of course, now). Again, I will guide the pupils towards an understanding of the existence of this rule by exposing them to examples, and seeing if they can work it out for themselves.

Depending how complex you want to make it, you could work on subordinate clauses, coordinating conjunctions, etc., etc., etc.

What’s fab is, the more they “get it”, the more they get to just mess around with Lego – all the tricky stuff is out of the way!

(I have used this with pupils from Y7 upwards – and the ones who love it the most are the Y10 and Y11s, of course!)

I hope this proves useful. Let me know what you think, and if you come up with any other ways of doing it…

 

On the 12th day of Christmas (2011)…

I remember writing an attempt at a satirical/alternative “12 Days of Christmas” last year, and feeling nicely catharticized afterwards… so I thought I’d do the same again! Apologies for the total lack of originality…

 

On the 12th day of Christmas, twenty-eleven gave to me…

12 rioters rioting

11 fat cats purring

10 mad back-benchers

9 unions striking

8 hollow apologies

7 more educational policies devised from a purely ideological standpoint, rather than with any real basis in pedagogical, practical experience (sorry – this line doesn’t actually seem to fit into the rhythm of the rest of the carol, but I felt it was important that I try to squeeze it in, somewhere…)

6 euro bailouts

5 tossed dwarves!

4 less dictators

3 cr*p party leaders

2 Murdochs lying

And a Royal Wedding – oh how lovely!

 

(P.S. some numbers may not be that close to reality!)

 

Happy Christmas!

*This* is how you write a piece of Controlled Assessment!

Meine Eltern sind verheiratet und ich wohne mit ihnen und meinem Bruder zusammen. Mein Bruder und ich sehen wie unsere Eltern aus. Wir haben blaue Augen und sind ziemlich klein, jedoch ist mein Bruder sehr dünn und klein. Er heißt Sam und er ist zwölf Jahre alt. Sein Geburtstag ist am zweiten März. Er treibt gern Sport. Sein Lieblingssport ist Kricket, aber er mag auch Fußball, Rugby und Skifahren. Als wir jünger waren, haben wir in Deutschland in der Nähe von München gewohnt. Da haben wir fast jedes Wochenende Skifahren in Österreich gemacht, also sind wir jetzt sehr gute Skifahrer und Skifahrerinnen. Sam und ich gehen in dieselbe Schule.

Meine Eltern heißen Tania und Graeme. Sie sind in dem Jahr neunzehnhundertsiebzig in Nordengland geboren. Aber als meine Mutti jünger war, sind sie und ihre Familie nach Cambridge umgezogen. Die Schwester meiner Mutti und ihre Kinder, und der Bruder meiner Mutti wohnen jetzt noch in Cambridge. Als mein Vater jünger war, hat er für eine kurze Zeit mit seiner Familie in Amerika gewohnt.

Ich verstehe mich gut mit meinem Bruder. Er ärgert mich nocht oft, aber wenn er schlechter Laune ist, kommen wir nicht gut miteinander aus. Wenn ich schlechter Laune bin, möchte Sam helfen, jedoch möchte ich meine Problemen nicht besprechen.

Ich verstehe mich gut mit meinen Eltern. Meine Mutti ist so wie ich. Sie ist unsportlich, burschikos und versteht nichts von Schminke. Normalerweise ist sie geduldig und guter Laune, aber kürzlich hat sie einen neuen Job angefangen, und sie hasst es, weil die Schüler böse und furchtbar sind. Wenn sie gestresst ist, ist sie reizbar. Ich bin auch so wie meinen Vater. Wir sind ungeduldig, hitzig und entschlossen. Wir machen viel Windsurfen zusammen, also verstehen wir uns gut.

Es ist besser Geschwister zu haben, weil man immer einen Freund oder eine Freundin hat. Wenn du ein Einzelkind bist, haben deine Eltern mehr Zeit für dich. Kleine Geschwister können ärgerlich sein, wenn sie immer zu laut sind, oder wenn sie deine Hausaufgaben angreifen. Einzelkinder sind oft selbsüchtig und egoistisch.

Ich habe drei beste Freundinnen. Sie sind verschiedenen Gründen meine besten Freundinnen. Sie heißen Rachel, Lucy und Ella. Rachel ist eine Freundin, mit der kann ich über alles sprechen. Lucy und ich lachen zusammen. Sie nimmt keine Wettbewerben ernst, also ist sie eine gute Freundin zu haben, wenn ich wegen Wettbewerben gestresst bin. Ella ist sympatisch und nett. Alle von meinen besten Freundinnen haben die richtigen Eigenschaften von einem guten Freund. Sie sind treu, verantwortlich und anständig. Wir unterhalten uns. Sie können mir anvertrauen und ich kann mich auch ihnen anvertrauen. Wir haben keine Heimlichkeiten.

Am letzten Wochenende bin ich nach Weymouth gefahren, wo ich ein Trainingswochenende hatte. Es gab viele von meinen Freunden und eine von meinen besten Freundinnen, Ella, da. Am Samstagmorgen haben wir Fitnessprüfungen gemacht und später haben wir Windsurfen gemacht. Es war dunkel, wenn wir fertig mit Windsurfen waren. Am Abend haben wir viel gegessen, ferngesehen und Spiele gespielt. Am Sonntag haben wir mehr Windsurfen gemacht, aber danach sind wir ins Restaurant gegangen, wo ich viel Eis gegessen haben. Es war lecker, obwohl es kalt war. Beide Tage war es windig und ziemlich neblig.

In der Zukunft denke ich, ich möchte Mutter werden, aber ich möchte auch eine Karriere haben. Oft möchte ich drei oder vier Kinder haben. Manchmal möchte ich Zwillinge haben. Jedoch brauchen alle Kinder Zeit und ich denke, ich werde nicht so viel davon haben. Wenn ich Mutter würde, muß ich einen guten Mann haben.