I’ve just got back from the Practical Pedagogies conference at the International School of Toulouse. Organised by Russel Tarr, the two day conference brought together educators from around the globe. Here’s the rationale behind the conference which explains why I travelled to Toulouse at my own expense to speak (I wasn’t paid to it):

“Educational conferences can be prohibitively expensive for ordinary teachers, and often focus on abstract theory delivered by professional academics with very little hands-on classroom experience. Such events often appear more concerned with making money than with genuinely improving the quality of education being delivered within schools.

In contrast, “Practical Pedagogies” comes out of the belief that the best teacher-training conferences are delivered by practising teachers, for the benefit of each other and their students, as not-for-profit events.”

I attended some excellent workshops and chatted to so many people that further inspired me.

Below are my sketch notes of the conference that document the sessions I attended. I hope that they give you a flavour of the conference. You can find out more by checking out the Twitter hashtag #pracped16 (which was trending at various points in various countries over the two days!) or by looking at the conference website. I’m sure that many will share their presentations and that there’ll be lost of blogging so I’ll update the post over the next week or so to share them.

Opening Keynote by Ewan McIntosh. @ewanmcintosh @notosh

Curriculum, controversy and current affairs: manoeuvring in a multicultural world by Mariusz Galczynski @MariuszEDU

Philosophy for Children across the primary Curriculum by Jenna Lucas @JennaLucas81

I’m a teacher: Get me out of here! by Mike Watson @WatsEd

Coding with cards by Yasemin Allsop @yallsop

The Art of Voice:bringing characters to life by Ben Culverhouse @ben_culverhouse

You shipping it? Closing keynote by Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh @notosh

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.

I was really interested to read the following press release this week  –

Education Scotland publishes new online resource for modern languages called ‘Passeport pour la Francophonie’ at the Scottish Learning Festival on 19 September 2012.

Passeport pour la Francophonie will support primary teachers to provide stimulating and exciting learning experiences at second level, developing skills for reading, writing, listening and talking. The website provides suggestions for exploring the other curriculum areas such as religious and moral education or maths and numeracy through the medium of French language and culture.

Below you can hear Fhiona Fisher of Education Scotland speaking about just that – ‘widening out’ the idea of French as European to go on a voyage in their imaginations to see it as a worldwide language, and how language learning can be done cross-curricularly.

Another part I really like is the Links between languages page, looking at language in general, and also the Using this resource section which gives helpful information to the teacher on using the resource and also some CPD videos on Primary Language learning (MLPS in Scotland) Lovely to see some familiar faces from Le Français en Ecossewho were so instrumental in helping me love French again (merci Richard et Elise)

On Saturday I attended the Purpos/ed Summit for Instigators in Sheffield, meeting with others to debate the purpose of education and discuss how we might ‘kickstart’ a wider debate on the subject.

Part of the time was given over to 3×3 presentations by attendees – 3 slides in 3 minutes on the question of the education. The random fruit machine from Classtools didn’t pick me so I decided to rcord what i might have said.

Without adrenaline and anyone to tell me to be quiet, it went on for a bit longer than 3 minutes, but here it is.

I challenge you – what do you think the purpose of education is?

Find out more and join the debate here.

Image from superkimbo

So – what will YOU do?

Image from ransomtech

I think that’s fairly self explanatory!

for more reasons, have a look at Why study languages? and Why languages?

Image from acjeppo

I was shocked the first time I son talked about ‘stealing’ a friend’s idea. ‘but my teacher told me to do it!’ was his response to the look on my face.

Gone are the days when my planning was mine  alone and a colleague teaching the same lesson had to plan their own lesson. Pooling knowledge and ideas is positively encouraged, and I for one am VERY grateful for this.

Image from klmontgomery

A new mini series starting today of ‘thoughts’.

This is increasingly what I aim for in my lessons – for pupils to discover for themselves, and to accept that there isn’t always an easy answer, that I am not a walking dictionary and Google is not the source of all knowledge.

Image from Colette Cassinelli