Category: tech

Now in its fourth year, ILILC (ICT Links into Languages Conference) takes place at University of Southampton on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th February. Offering something for language teachers of all ages (and language enthusiasts too!) it is not to be missed. So much so that for the last two years I’ve flown in from Switzerland to attend.

The theme this year is Putting the Pedagogy in the Technology – very important message that I’ve been banging on about for ages, inspired many years ago by Ewan McIntosh saying “It’s not about the tech but about the teach.”

The two keynote speakers, Joe Dale and Clare Seccombe,  are always worth a listen and the list of speakers is impressive:

Amanda Salt – Chris Fuller – Davis Riley – Dominic McGladdery – Dominic Traynor – Eleanor Abrahams – Garry Mills – Isabelle Jones – James Gardner – Jo Rhys-Jones – Lisa Stevens – Rachel Smith – Sadie McLachlan – Samantha Broom – Suzi Bewell – Tom Hockaday

The programme will be on the Languages South East website very soon but I know that people are talking about all sorts of things including SOLO, flipped learning, mini books, mobile learning, apps, Flubaroo, Triptico and much much more!

As you may have noticed from the above, I shall be speaking.

My sessions are entitled A beginner’s guide to using iPads in the Primary classroom and Something old, something new… 

Shall I reveal more? Perhaps in another post…

Can I encourage you, if you possibly can, to join us in Southampton for what is always a brilliant conference at which I learn tons, have a shedload of fun and make new friends that support me throughout the year.

There’s also a Show and Tell on the Saturday night at which people can share their ideas, activities, games and songs in an informal manner so if you’re local and can’t make it for the whole conference, pop along! Sign up on the wikispace!

Find out more here

Last Wednesday I was invited to be the guest on Radio Edutalk.

EDUtalk is organised by David Noble (@parslad) and John Johnston (@johnjohnston) and encourages people to talk about education, using mobile and web technologies.

I was really honoured to be asked and enjoyed the talking about my experiences and thoughts on education.  We talked about my background, how I came to be in Switzerland and what I’ve been doing here before going on to talk about creativity and technology in education.

My summary of “the important bits”!

• Be patient – things don’t happen overnight.
• Lead by example. And if learners enjoy it, they’ll be your greatest help!
• Technology is just another tool that can be used to enhance and transform learning – it’s not THE answer.
• Before using technology ask “why?” – it should suit the task rather than the task being made to match the technology.
• When starting out using new tools, don’t try to do everything at once. You’ll end up with too many plates spinning. Start with one or two ideas and “practise” for a bit before adding something else.
• Learning should be celebrated. Loudly. And I love doing it.
• Twitter is wonderful for keeping in touch and feeling connected.
• We need to support one another, especially as other support, such as advisory teams, is being decimated.

Thanks to David and John for the opportunity. Great to talk to you again! You can listen to the programme here.

My first presentation at ICT Links into Languages Conference aka ILILC3 was entitled I want to break free.

The blurb promised –

In I want to break free  we’ll be looking at ways to break away from ‘chalk and talk’ and involve learners, encouraging them to interact with and demonstrate their understanding as they learn using (mobile) technology. We’ll investigate some ways of doing this using tools such as Nearpod, Socrative and Memrise and whilst I’ll be using my iPad and Mac to present, that doesn’t mean you need a fruity device to join in as some tools are web based and others are both Android and iOS. And on top of that, we’re a friendly bunch so I’m sure people will share!

Below are my slides which were more a summary of the session for those who weren’t there, and an aide-memoire for me to make sure I said all I wanted as we were flipping between apps most of the time! We did a Socrative quiz on the MFLTwitterati, learned about Healthy Eating in Spanish using Nearpod, saw how rubbish I really am at German using Memrise, looked very quickly at how to use Book Creator app and explained everything using Explain Everything!

(Apologies for the weird typeface – Slideshare has done something odd as it’s fine when I open in PPT!)

[slideshare id=16645089&style=border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px 1px 0; margin-bottom: 5px;&sc=no]

An excellent video from Junta de Andalucia about the use of technology.

It advises children –

• ask an adult e.g. your parents to help you find suitable sites
• don’t give out your personal details
• playing with your friends, reading and playing sport is fun too
• be selective about what you play/watch
• your imagination is the best game

A worthwhile message and a great video to teach good online behaviour in a fun – and different – way!

httpv://youtu.be/dZQxORd0icA

There are other videos in the series – watch out for more posts in the near future!

Really interesting infographic on developments in classroom technology.

Courtesy of: OnlineSchools.com

I received an invite to the ‘Trade and Press’ preview of the Gadget Show Live, taking place today ahead of the ‘real’ Gadget Show Live that runs from tomorrow until Saturday at NEC.

I have to admit that I felt a little out of place as

a)I’m not a man

b)I wasn’t wearing a suit

c)wasn’t toting a huuuge camera

However, I had a very pleasant few hours wandering around, looking at all sorts of technology and taking photos of interesting things.

So – what were my impressions?

Firstly, it was great to be able to get near to things! We went as a family last year and struggled to see or try anything as there were so many people. I had a go on an electric bicycle – very slowly it has to be said as it took me a while to get used to the throttle, and the course was very windy – I’d never have managed to get a go on a ‘normal’ day.

I sat in the Hub Theatre and caught the end of a talk by people from Warwick University about robots used in emergency situations such as nuclear disasters and earthquakes toassess safety – fascinating!

Then I heard the whole of a talk by Tom Dunmore, ex editor of Stuff and now CEO of MediaBlaze about smartphones and apps. Very interesting – I captured a few of the slides below. Very interesting that the projection of smartphone useage in 2015 puts Android ahead of iPhones and Google on a par with iPhones…

Enjoyed meeting R2D2, seeing the Batmobile and seeing all the tech from 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

And texting a machine that then delivered me some Smarties, and then tweeting @mbedmicro for Billy the Bass to read it out.

I was particularly interested to discover Practical Action

Practical Action uses technology to challenge poverty, working with poor women and men around the world.

I enjoyed talking to the staff on the stand about their Zeer pot fridge – ‘a simple technology that brings new hope’ as they put it – and treadle pump. These are just a couple of their projects in the area of agriculture; they’re also involved in other areas such as transport, disaster risk prevention and new technology such as podcasting to support local dialects. And I’ll be having a closer look at the education resources on the site – especially the Squashed Tomato challenge and Small is… challenge (closing date 30th April)

So, that was the Gadget Show Live Professional. More pics here.