February 2009 – ¡Vámonos!
 

Month: February 2009

School Run French

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Mark Pentleton of Radio Lingua Network fame has one more worked his magic and a few days ago, launched a new addition to the plethora of products already available to help you learn languages.

Called School Run French, the series of 6-7 minute episodes allow you to take advantage of the school run, football run, Brownies / Badgers / BB run – in fact, any short journey to learn or practice your French. As Mark explains

Many of our listeners have been asking for materials which they can use
with their children or grandchildren, and we’ve been working for some time
on the development of materials aimed at this group. We’re delighted to
announce “School Run French” as the first in a series of shows which will
be aimed at younger language learners.

Picking up a language at an early age equips children with valuable skills
for life, and just as our many hundreds of thousands of adult listeners are
learning a language in their coffee break, so too can children learn a
language while they’re doing something else, for example in the car on the
way to school, football practice, ballet class, or whatever.

School Run French breaks down the French language into short chunks of 6-7
minutes, and every episode contains an interactive audio game which helps
children consolidate what they’ve learned.

School Run French is available on iTunes to download and sample audio
episodes will be put there on a weekly basis. However, the first ‘pack’ of five
lessons with colourful pdf puzzle sheets is now available for £5.00 (+VAT for EU customers).

I’ve had a listen and I love it – so do my ‘testers’ – marvellous having two kids who are a acaptive audience! They like the fact that it’s fun and there are games and challenges to test whether they know the answer.

Just itching for Mark to do School Run Spanish as I am constantly asked for such a resource by the parents, grandparents and carers of pupils at school. How about it, Mark? ¡Por favor!

What is safety? Here is the list we compiled in a workshop on the subject of eSafety in virtual spaces.

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http://www.wordle.net/
Much of the material we considered n the early part of the session came from the following site -: http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

Here’s the link to a videoclip linked to people not always being quite what they seem online – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp5nScG6C5g

We had a discussion based around the theme – where do you draw the line? Do we mind people taking our photos? Does it matter on the context? What about children? Is this different? Should it be the matter of course that we seek written permission for use of children’s images? Does this extend to their work or just their photos?

Then we were asked to come up with a scenario that could be used to provoke debate on eSafety.

Our scenario – a 10 year old child with a Facebook profile. The child has given herself a false DOB to register but then revealed the truth on her profile that she is 10 and single. The profile was open to people who weren’t friends as she was member of a network. What issues does this raise?

Another scenario – some pupils in a class don’t like a teacher and provoke them – the pupils video the teacher arguing with them in the heat of the moment and publish it online. It is devastating for the teacher and they hung themself.

And a further scenario – pupils make a video on their mobiles of children wrestling and publish it. A few weeks later, the police arrive with a complaint from a parent who feels the school is a violent place.

Very interesting – what do you think? Any ideas of your own on this subject? You might gain further insight by listening to Edtechroundup (ETRU) Podcast 4!

Here are a couple of movies of ideas from the first running of the Creativity in eTwinning workshop this morning.

The first shows some of the ideas raised about creativity and what it feels like to be creative.

The second are the reflections of the Sunglasses group on what they consider to be the ideal conditions for creativity to happen.

A really interesting seminar with lots of discussion about creativity and innovation.

Key ideas included the need for freedom, for space and for the acceptance of diversity; the need to spark ideas in one another, to accept that there are no right and wrong ideas and that the best conditions for creativity can be different for each person. Here are a number of photos taken of the ideas sparked by the session. Perhaps you’d like to add your own comments.

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eTwinning conference Prague 2009, originally uploaded by lisibo.

I’ve been blogging all weekend from the European eTwinning Conference in Prague on the special blog set up for the event. I’ve also been tweeting our activities when I’ve had a chance.

Thought I’d put some of the posts on ¡Vámonos! as well! If you’re interested, there are many more posts by other delegates found on http://blog.eun.org/etwinningconference2009/

eTwinning in Prague

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Wenceslas Square, Prague, originally uploaded by lisibo.

I’ve just arrived in Prague for the European eTwinning cnference entitled Creativity and eTwinning. The conference hall is very full so I am cross legged on the floor – however, I am comfortable, have free WiFi and my crossed legs are the perfect Mac stand!

Edward de Bono – he of the thinking hats – is currently speaking – I’m tweeting his talk as I blog too!

Also blogging on the eTwinning blog so looks like I might be busy!

It’s good to be back in Prague – the picture is from my last visit, also for an eTwinning conference last year!

More as it happens!

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