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Humber Bridge light reflections, originally uploaded by David Locke1.

Just spent a lovely day in Hull at their primary language conference. The sun shone, the trees were very autumnal and it was far from ‘grim’

About 90 delegates attended the day which focussed on Using ICT in Primary Language teaching, attending workshops on film in education by Mark Reid of BFI, the use of animation for improved speaking and listening in language learning led by Oscar Stringer, using school networks to support language learning led by Dorolyn Parker and cross curricular collaboration, led by me.

I’m becoming more used to presenting seminars now and, whilst the adrenalin rushes and I have butterflies, it is not as frightening as it once was. However, Hull presented a new challenge as I’d been invited as keynote speaker as well – a first! Anyone who has been following my tweets this week may have sensed the growing anxiety I experienced as the ‘big day’ approached; that was but nothing compared to my state this morning. However, once I’d cracked a joke and got everyone doing a ridiculous warm up dance, I felt much better and, despite one or two issues with projector not wanting to talk to my Mac and then the Internet failing to connect, I think the session went well. I even think my use of a Fernando Torres clip (a mere four days after he scored a hattrick in the 6-1 defeat of Hull City by Liverpool) may have been forgiven by 95% of the delegates.

My Keynote was entitled Inspiring Creative Teaching in the Primary Language Classroom and centred on what ICT can do to enhance and support language teaching and learning. As Ewan McIntosh said – it’s not about the tech, it’s about the teach.

My seminar was entitled Don’t be mad, get cross curricular with ICT and PLL and focussed on embedding and entwining language learning into the existing school curriculum, making links and collaborating, and tools that might help in this. We talked eTwinning, eLanguages and it was also pleasing to see that schools are working collaborativel on a local level in clusters to support one another.

Below I’ve posted my presentations – pop back over the next couple of days to see the screencast with audio. I’ll also post both sessions on Lisibo talks! as soon as I have a spare moment!

Any queries, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me directly – my details are at the end of the slideshow.

A couple of things I mentioned that weren’t in the handout (also below)

The wiki sites I mentioned were Wikispaces, Wetpaint and PBWiki.

For ways of using Youtube, and/or downloading clips where it is blocked, have a look at a previous presentation You and Youtube where I mention RealPlayer, Zamzar, MediaConverter and Firefox widgets.

You can obtain Take Ten en français or en español from Devon Education Services or from Little Linguist.

And finally, check out this post for details of tutorials for some of the tools I mentioned today.

Thanks for a great day Hull! You’ve definitely made an impression on me!

Last June I spent a very enjoyable but also very tiring day being filmed by Teachers TV. The premise of the series of which my programme was to be a part was that an ‘expert’ in an area of ICT was visited by an interested / curious ‘beginner’. The ‘beginner’ observed the ‘expert’ for a day then went back to their school to try out some of the things they had learned. My area was ‘online communities / social media’ and my visitor, Marie Guyomarc’h, a secondary French teacher.

I love it when I open my Inbox and come across an email that points me to a new resource. I received one such email tonight and loved it so much that I had to blog it immediately.

Wallwisher is a site that allows you to add multiple short posts on a wall. As JimmyP says in his email –

It’s got a lot of potential I think to encourage pupils to write in the
target language. The site lets you create a page or ‘Wall’ very
easily. You give the address of the page to the pupils and they double
click on the page and can then write a short post. They can even add a
picture/video although I haven’t tried this yet. When you create the
page you can set up some restrictions in terms of viewing and posting.

Jimmy posts an example that he’s made with his class – http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/miordenador Looked impressive so I decided to have a go!

My resulting wall is on the theme of Los planetas, linking into Yr5’s topic this term.
I’ve tried embedding a video – works well – and a picture – from wikicommonmedia

I’ll be inviting pupils to join in later on in the topic. This to me is a little like Tweeting and blogging at once. There is a limit to how many characters you can use so pupils are not expected to write a long post which I feel will appeal!

Thanks Jimmy for the heads up!

Made it to the hotel at 2.30am this morning and this is what I did!

Already engrossed in the conference and tweeting madly, but I’m looking forward to the sun sea sand and swimming pool!

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Cathedral, Varna, Bulgaria, originally uploaded by Tim Waters.

By now I should be schmoozing wth eTwinning Ambassadors from across Europe at a 5 star hotel in Varna, Bulgaria. Instead, I am sitting in a pub at Budapest Airport. It’s a long story….

I will finally arrive in Varna at 1.35 am – was due at 15.30. However, I am grateful that
a)I met George Glass at Heathrow this morning to save me from a serious panic attack
b) the ladies at the Austrian Airways ticket desk were much more pleasant than their representative at the gate when our original ‘plane was horribly delayed
c) BA had flights today to Varna
d) George had some euros

So, hoping to report from Varna tomorrow.

This video speaks for itself.

Very thought provoking as a parent and an educator. I’m taking it as a challenge at the start of a new academic year.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSVMht1VrMc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1]

Thanks to the lovely Joe Dale who has just blogged it, I have discovered this marvellous site called My Avatar Editor.

My Avatar Editor enables you to design your own avatar for use as your ID on, say, Twitter or for a tool like Voicethread or as your ‘online persona’ on your blog.

As Joe points out, it’s also great when teaching personal descriptions – either pupils are given a range of people to describe – see below – or are given descriptions and asked to make the avatar to match.

You could also use them to inspire pupils to creativity – eg characters for stories; to demonstrate feelings; talk in the style of….

Great fun! Not sure my hair is quite right though….

BTW – I’m the one at the top, not the very scary Granny ;o)

Whilst writing an article on storytelling for a future publication, I found a song I’d downloaded to which I wanted to refer. As often happens, I couldn’t recall whether I’d been sent it by a friend, downloaded it from a fora or found it online.

After a bit of searching – which took me once more to the wonderful West Sussex GFL language resources – I found that it had come from a site called MrsJonesRoom. When I approached the eponymous MrsJones for permission to use the song, she was very accomodating and pointed me towards other Spanish resources on her page.

I’ve had a look at some of the links and particularly like the downloadable mini books and the songs, complete with sound files of the tunes! There are even some Spanish Disney songs – great for EDL? Sadly there are a number of ‘dead’ links which is a shame but it’s well worth a look.

Just back from 11 days in Switzerland. Had a great time with my family exploring and investigating, and have to say that I am missing the mountains and lakes already. Absolutely stunning! My photos don’t really do justice to the beauty of Interlaken and the surrounding area but here are a few of my favourites.