The Langwitch Chronicles has moved

The Langwitch Chronicles has moved and can now be found at:
http://helenabutterfield.net
I hope to see you there soon :o)

7 things you may or may not know about me!

I love a challenge (:o$) and earlier this week, Lisa Stevens gave me a huge one by tagging me in this meme. Curiously I was also tagged for a "25 random things about me" thingie on Facebook this week too and I found that rather easier than this to do! Anyway, if you've read that, then you may find that I'm repeating myself is some place, but really I'm not interesting to enough to have over 30 things that are random or that people might not know about me! So here we go:

1. I always start with this one, I'm deaf in my right ear after having had meningitis 3 years ago. At least that's the worst thing that happened as a result of that.
2. I'm a control freak and hate not being in charge of things. I really dislike that fact that at work I'm always at the mercy of other people's decisions.
3. I have absolutely no will power at all, which is why just about every diet I try fails.
4. I find it really hard to say "no" and therefore end up taking far too much on and rushing to get things finished.
5. My favourite colour is wine red (hmmm, curious that!)
6. I hate doing the housework and would have a cleaner if my husband would let me! (I even thought of getting a secret one but he'd probably figure it out when the house was clean and tidiy for a change!)
7. It really, really, really frustrates me that most of the kids I teach see no value in the subject that I teach and that , despite working at a Language College, other subjects have a much higher profile within my school that MFL. I can't understand that people don't see the importance of being able to communicate with others and that learning a language can add so much value to one's life. There are so many things in my life that I could not have done and so many people I would not know, if I couldn't speak French and German (oh and a little bit of Spanish!).

OK, so now I need to tag some people...maybe they've been tagged before, maybe they haven't. So here goes, Amanda Salt, José Picardo, Marie-France Perkins, Isabelle Jones,

Turning into a naughty school girl?

Yesterday, I was privileged enough to attend the ISA briefing at Regent's College, to help schools who are hoping to gain the International School Award understand how to compile their portfolios of evidence. This blogpost is not about that! So, why mention it now? Well, one of the speakers (whose name escapes me at the moment) had a quote "dead fish can only float down stream, live fish can swim upstream". I've no idea what it means but felt that it was quite apt fo me at this moment in time. I've recently been feeling like I was stood still and could go no further with my ventures into new technologies, in the situation that I'm in, upon thinking about this quote I felt like maybe there was something I could offer others after all and that maybe I could re-awake my enthusiasm.

Upon my arrival back at work today I had a look at what I was going to be doing...obviously using those well-prepared 3 part lesson plans that I create for every lesson that I teach...and it occured to me I could do a section of a lesson involving using the sound recorders on mobile phones (I'd been thinking about mobiles ever since watching Chris Fuller's presentation at the IOWconference about use of mobile phones in the classroom). At my school mobiles are banned, as such, but pupils shouldn't have them turned on in class. I fore-warned a couple of collegues at break who all said "go for it", so I did.

It was my Yr10 NVQ Spanish class...so anything to avoid me having to teach/speak Spanish is a blessing...and we were learning how to understand/make phone messages about dates and rooms booked in hotels. We looked at some models, researched some vocabulary and did a listening exercise then wrote our own messages. Then I asked who had a mobile with them (halting hands rose) and then I asked who had a voice recorder on their phones (again, all hands half-way up, as they started to worry about what I was going to ask them to do!), so, I asked them to get their phones out and record their messages. Of course there was hysteria "wouldn't dare", "can't do that" etc...but then a cool girl just got on and did it and played it back...and then of course they all did it, realising that no-one was going to criticise what they said. I then asked them to play their recording to someone near them for their friend to note what they'd said...and there we had a listening comprehesion created by them. They were clearly impressed and I could see the lights going on in some heads as they realised they could do this was all of their language work to improve their speaking and listening skills.

Of course we had the looking through photos, listening to music (someone said "can I set mine to music?"...of course you can!), comparing of phones (I was jealous of some of them!). It was only to be expected but that, of course will disappear with more regular use. Although, naturally the use of the phones will lose its appeal if they are used too often.

I was very pleased with the activity and am now planning my next venture into breaking the rules, don't know what it will be yet...maybe I'll not take my register folder up to registration...since it's done on the computer! As for the phones I'm trying to come up with something with a more able class that involves speaking for longer and bluetoothing it to me for me to do something with.

The reaction of my Head of Area? "I'm all for this blootoothy thing. Keep developing this H. It WILL catch on"...and we're back to that dead fish again...(oh didn't mean that HOA is a dead fish!!!!!)

Training at Carmel

I was lucky enough to be invited to Carmel RC Technology College on Tuesday to speak to the MFL department about blogging and using Audcity. It was really nice to be asked by our PGCE student from last year who is have a very successful NQT year there now.

I always get very nervous before going to speak anywhere so it was really calming to be greeted by such a friendly team of teachers.

I spoke briefly about blogging and how it can be used with pupils to improve motivation, to show off their work, to communicate with them outside of school and even for that new "buzz" phrase of AfL. They all responded really positively and were keen to find out more.

We looked at several blogs that are used by MFL teachers with their classes such as:

Langwitch

Edgehill Spanish

Sans Problèmes

Moving on we then looked at some blogs written by Modern Linguists that give an insight into using technology in our teaching and generally give us motivation to be adventurous and creative with our classes. In particular we looked at:

this blog

Integrating ICT into the MFL Classroom (of course)

My Languages

Box of Tricks

Vámanos

Languages and Learning

I also pointed out to them that there are several other excellent blogs out there that they can read and get great ideas from.

We discussed how to set up a blog, including blogging platforms, what the purpose of a blog could be and how simple and straight forward it can be to set up a blog and create the contect. I pointed out that if I can do it, then anyone can!

We also spent a little time looking at how to create posts and how to embed a You Tube video into your blog...all this in 1hr!

Next we moved to their computers and learnt how to use Audacity and create Vokis and talked about how Vokis could be used to do speaking assessments and, following José Picardo's

example how they could be used in AfL, with pupils assessing one anothers' work via the comments in a blog.

By the end of the session, it was obvious that there was the usual "information over load" but also that many members of the department were keen to go away and consider how they could used a blog with their pupils and also how they can move into creating soundfiles with pupils and makeing Voki with them.

It was definitely time well spent and I felt that the session was a great success.

Here is the slideshow that I used:

A Beginners’ Guide To Using Ict Creatively

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: cpd mfl)

New Year's Resolutions

Does anybody else find that New Year's Resolutions can be quite depressing by the middle of February whey they find that they've not managed to keep up their demanding list of Resolutions made on the 1st January? I think I remember last year hearing that some date in February is the most depressing day of the year for several reasons, one of which is that fact that by that date most people have usually given up on the New Year's Resolutions.

This time last year, I remember writing a blog post about my resolutions for 2008 and feeling really positive about the fact that, having them written down here it would make it easier to keep...ha, ha, ha.

What were they? I can't remember, something about weight no doubt, and something else about confidence, oh and a new job I believe. Well, I suppose I lost a bit of weight and gained a little more confidence and as for the job, well...let's just I have a "new perspective" now.

What about this year? Well, I decided that, in order to avoid being too disappointed in myself by February, I'm not having any this year. I'm just going to take each new challenge as is comes, which is currently being able to to see properly with both eyes.

Have you made any New Year's Resolutions? Where will you be at the end of 2009? (Hopefully I'll be lying on a beach somewhere not having to think about work, as I will have won the lottery...)

Dinner for One

I didn't blog much about Christmas this year so I decided I'd add this little post about a German New Year tradition instead.
Each year on New Year's Eve (Silvester) in Germany there is a rather odd (in my opinion) of showing a very old English film called "Dinner for One". It's about an old lady, Miss Sophie, who, each year on her birthday, invites all of her friends for dinner. James, the butler, is to serve them and do the same as he does every year..."the same procedure as last year?". The sad thing is though, as Miss Sophie has got older her friends have all died off. James, not wanting to upset his mistress pretends that they are all still there (she's a bit batty, so doesn't realise) and as the evening wears on he drinks more and more as he must eat and drink all of the guests' meals. All of this has "hilarious" consquences...anyway have a watch and see how it ends up...

A new blog

I've started a new blog!
It's about my laser eye surgery and how things go from now on.
Here it is New Vision