Category: Sharon Tonner

Having been told not to say anything for a bit, when I was given the all clear to blog about the IoW Conference, I’ve been a bit slow off the mark! But…más vale tarde que nunca as dear Nando would say!

October 25th and 26th 2008 will see many teachers from across the UK (and beyond?) gathering at Nodehill Middle School in Newport, Isle of Wight for Joe Dale’s annual IOW Conference. As usual, the focus is on creative language teaching using ICT, and it promises to be a great weekend. This year, there’s so much going on that it has been extended to two days with a Show and Tell event on the Saturday night so that everyone can share, not just those who are presenting.

And speaking of presenters – look at the line up!

• Sharon Tonner – ICT specialist, ex- High School of Dundee, now working for a Scottish Uni!
• Jo Rhys-Jones – AST in MFL, Kingswear Primary School
• Lisa Stevens – Spanish Teacher and eTwinning ambassador, Whitehouse Common Primary School,
• Carole Nicoll – Language Factory
• Drew Buddie – ICT coordinator, Royal Masonic School for Girls and eTwinning ambassador
• Nick Mair – HoD in MFL, Dulwich College
• John Warwick – Deputy Head, St Luke’s School and eTwinning ambassador
• Kathleen Holton – HoD in MFL, Argoed High School
• Mark Pentleton – Radio Lingua Network
• Lesley Welsh – AST in MFL, English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College and SSAT languages lead practitioner coordinator
• Chris Fuller – Spanish teacher, Edgehill College and SSAT languages lead practitioner
• Sharon Balch – French teacher, Swanmore Middle School
• Doug Dickinson – Independent ICT consultant
• Kathy Wicksteed – Languages advisor for new KS3 curriculum
• Adam Sutcliffe – MFL teacher, The Gordon Schools and Glow Champion
• Lesley Haggar-Vaughan, Shireland CLC manager
• Julie Adoch, HoD in MFL, Heathfield Foundation Technology College and her students

They will be tackling topics including-

• Mobile Phones
• Wikis
• Primary Languages
• Ning networking
• Songs
• Virtual Learning Environments
• Digital Storytelling
• Games based learning
• Gender differences
• Videoconferencing
• eTwinning
• Digital Voice Recorders
• One Stop Animation
• PowerPoint
• Interactive Whiteboards and Voting Systems
• Blogging and Podcasting
• Assessment for Learning
• New KS3 curriculum
• Web 2.0 tools
• vodcasting
• eCreativity

Having had the privilege of speaking last year on Primary Languages and eTwinning, I’ve been asked again – must have done something right ;o) – and this year I’ll be co-presenting with Jo Rhys-Jones. It promises to be a highly entertaining session as we always end up in fits of giggles when we meet up, and I’m sure plenty of that fun will be manifest in the session.

So, watch out for the delegates pack that Joe will soon be launching, and take the opportunity as term nears a close (in England – I know Scotland has already broken up) to put in your PD request whilst there’s still money in the budget, and while everyone else is just hanging out for the holidays!!

Check out Joe’s blog for more information and for reports on last year too here and here. See also here, here, here and here. And not forgetting here! And for my response, read Trains Ferries Buses and Ford Anglias. (note to self – go via Southampton not Lymington this year!)

I’ve mentioned before the Voices of the World project, initiated by
Sharon Tonner creating links around the world using our voices / sound rather than solely as a way of written word. It’s a genius project as it offers-

• a monthly task – short sharp bursts are great for keeping up interest , and also work well for me as the whole school want to be involved so I can rotate classes to lead
• a different tool each month – so far – Voki, Animoto, One True Media and Voicethread (not to mention using Audacity and Flickr to gather and create things!) so we’re introducing new ideas and techniques into the classroom – and they’re free!
• links with classes across the globe – Greece, Thailand, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Australia, USA… the list goes on.
• the opportunity for my pupils to ‘be’ Spanish. I teach them Spanish and, in the absence of a Spanish school, and because I have to be different, Whitehouse Common are doing their tasks in Spanish (the other schools are doing the tasks in their own language)

This month, the task is on Voicethread and is on the theme of customs. It’s a two part task – Sharon has selected some slides featuring fruit, clothes, musical instruments etc and each school is going to record the name of each fruit, instrument and so on in their own language. Then each school is going to create their own Voicethread based on their country – the food, costume, sport that most represents it.

I must admit, with January half gone, we haven’t started yet. There are many reasons but one is the issue of our icon.

We need to create an icon to represent our school on Voicethread, and Sharon asked that it be the flag of our country. Problem – we are in England, but our words will be in Spanish so which flag do we use? Sharon and I exchanged e-mails on the subject and concluded that it needed to be a hybrid! So, we were about to head off to Paint to redesign the flag when i discovered a very timely post from Langwitches, Silvia Tolisano, on a tool she had discovered on Twitter via Karen Bosch called We are multicolored.
This tool allows you to make a hybrid flag, based on three questions –
Where is your home?
What other country has affected you?
Where have you dreamed of going?

So, off I went and had a play and came up with these – not sure which I like best but it’s a start.Is this one a bit boring and predictable?

I like this one with the English bit of the Union flag at the front – but does the St George’s cross get a bit lost?

And this one is for our Euro08 project – we’ve drawn Sweden!

It’s a tool I wish I’d discovered yesterday when I was teaching Year6 RE about signs of belonging and identity – but we’ll be having a go next week for sure (they’ll be thrilled – tweeting on Twitter with Ewan McIntosh last week, designing flags next week – what will it be next?)

And I also think it’ll be a great new tool to add a new dimension to European Day of Languages next September – we’ve discovered the languages spoken by our school community – wouldn’t it be great to have a display of the 480+ hybrid flags of the pupils? And we thought last year was brilliant!

Need a rest before my brain overheats….

Just rushed out of Oscar Stringer’s workshop to upload our finished animation (it is coffee time so I’m not being rude!)

The idea of our animation was as a promotional video short for the Voices of the World NING group that Sharon began following a previous eTwinning conference, hence the multilingual big mouths.

This was made by Sharon (Scotland), Elissa (UK via Australia), Kurt (Germany), Nikolay (Bulgaria) and me (UK / Spain) in about an hour and a half (although we fiddled and tweaked for longer!) and I can see it as something that I could now use within my practice. We talked about how we might use this kind of animation in our classrooms, specifically in the context of eTwinning, and suggested that an animation could be started in one country, sent to a partner school for music and sound to be added and perhaps sent on for subtitles, credits etc, thus making it a collaborative project. That’s a really exciting idea that I may well be pursuing so watch this space!!