Yesterday I visited London in my role as a British Council Schools Ambassador to meet up with other ambassadors, reflect on last year and look to the future.
Throughout the day I sketchnoted the sessions, a variety of presentations giving information and sharing of international projects carried out in schools, clusters and organisations. Below are the results; I did tweet as I went along, but decided to retake the photos as they had shadows on them!
It was an interesting and inspiring day, and I hope that the notes give you a taste of the day, and what a wonderful thing international work is!
Opening session – Welcome and Marketing UpdateHow to influence and approach senior stakeholders? How can ALL groups and areas be reached by the message of internationalism and the SDGs?Let’s support each other with great international teaching and learning. A global learning journey.
Wellbeing and resilience in school. How can children be happy and resilient if their teachers aren’t? How can we ensure wellbeing for ALL members of our school community?
What’s New? Programme updates – resources and campaigns, eTwinning, Connecting Classrooms, Erasmus+How can we continue being global educators and create global citizens in the 2020s? A rallying call to speak up, get even and build a better world!
It seems a long time since Language World 2019 (it is three weeks I guess) so I apologise for the delay in uploading my presentation here; I’ve had a few website issues.
However, here it is, and below are some notes that you may find helpful in recalling what I said, or trying to decipher the slides! You’ll also find below Clare Seccombe’s lovely sketchnote of the session which summarises what I said as well!
Pictocuentos Pictotraductor Pictoaplicaciones Unfortunately I haven’t managed to find an equivalent for French or German. WidgetOnline is a subscription website that allows you to make visual stories similar to the Pictoaplicaciones suite but in English, or other languages with an add on pack.
I wanted to share more about using Makaton and to highlight that there are a number of free as well as reasonably priced resource packs that can be downloaded from Makaton.org I got the materials to accompany my retelling of Dear Zoo/ Querido Zoo from there and then translated them/applied them to the Spanish story. And there’s an article on Using Makaton in Storytelling that you might find interesting.
Ten in the Bed songs : In Spanish – Diez en la cama In French – Dix au lit In German – Zehn im Bett Download the Makaton signs here to accompany the story/song And watch the story told in English and Makaton by Rob Delaney below:
Finally, I had a pile of books to share but completely forgot with the pressure of time so here are screenshots from a couple. Firstly, Don Quijote de la Mancha which has the 2 USPs of being an authentic Spanish text, and also being written in Spanish ‘handwriting’, and El Pájaro, el Monoy la Serpiente en la Selva which is a charming story about living and working together.
If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below, or you can contact me via social media!
Thanks to José García Sánchez in the Secondary MFL Matters Facebook group for this lovely infographic/ map of European present givers. Whilst Christmas is past for most, Spain and those who follow the Orthodox calendar have another day or so before they receive their gifts on 6th January or Epiphany. I’ll certainly be thinking of activities to use this next year, perhaps preparing comprehension questions based around practising name of countries and / or nationalities but I’ll also be using it as soon as we go back to school as a way of eking out one last activity from the array of Christmas cards and greetings we received as part of our eTwinning projects.
Below are some images of our cards, temporarily taking over the Achievement Tree!
This year at Language World I was invited to present some ideas for using technology for collaboration in language learning. I teach primary so the focus was on that age group but there are many ideas and tools that are equally applicable for young and old! In spite of some technical hitches and running out of time as there was so much to share, the ideas were well received and I hope that this will serve as a reminder/update for those who attended, and a snapshot for those who didn’t.
Below is my presentation. Whilst all the links work, the videos don’t I’m afraid but you’ll find some below to give you a taster.
Link to BetsyBelle’s webinar Out of this World on using apps in the Primary Language Classroom. Highly recommended viewing especially if you’re interested in the how as much as the why.
A little later than planned, and with huge apologies, here are my presentations from the East Midlands Primary Languages Conference held on Nottingham on 5th December!
Más vale tarde que nunca. Mieux vaut tard que jamais! Besser spät als gar nicht.
Firstly, my presentation on Crosscurricular links:
I spent this past weekend in Nottingham at the 12th eTwinning UK National Conference held at The DeVere Jubilee Conference Centre – always the NCSL to me though! The name of the venue might have changed but the sense of community, fun and learning never varies, and once more I came away inspired, energised and still laughing at onions, pants and Bollywood Maori dance moves.
The theme this year was inclusion and below are my sketchnotes from the sessions I attended. Lots to reflect on and many ideas forming already.
Walking the walk as well as talking the talk, I’ve tidied up my sketch notes from Nottingham and the National eTwinning Conference, added references that I needed to look up and completed quotations that I’d not managed to finish.
They’re presented below in chronological order. I hope that they give you a taste of the weekend’s sessions if not the atmosphere of communication, collaboration and celebration of all things eTwinning. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll try and answer them!
Opening thoughts from Susan Linklater and the NSS.
Keynote by Rohan Guntillake about digital wellbeing, and the connection between mindfulness and technology.
Drew Buddie talked about how you might use Microbits in the curriculum and in projects.
Participants in a recent PDW reflect on their experiences.
eTwinning, digital literacy and beyond – a presentation by José Mour Carvalho about society, technology and the need for awareness to lead to action.
Ray Chambers talks about Minecraft in education; lots of ideas of how Minecraft can be used in curricular projects.
Joe Dale’s session on Green screening – very practical but tried hard to take notes too 😉
This weekend I’ve been in Nottingham at the NCL (I think that’s what it’s now called!) for the National eTwinning Conference. “Interesting” given the events on Friday but also good timing as I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather have been at such a time, reaffirming the joy and value of collaboration.
After several requests following fascination with my sketchnoting at last year’s conference, I volunteered to lead a seminar on sketch noting, thus completing my busy week with a third presentation. You can see a very similar presentation on my Slideshare channel here. I also sketchnoted as many sessions as I could, trying not to be intimidated by the wonderful @inkythinking InkyEllieC from inkythinking.com who was provided ‘real time graphic animation’ of the event.
I’ll post my sketchnotes as soon as I’ve had time to tidy them up (not a spare moment all weekend!) as well as my reflections on the event. A hint: I had a great time!
eTwinning Ambassadors from across the UK met together at NCL in Nottingham to find out what’s new in eTwinning, share ideas and plan for the future. It was great to see so many old and new friends, and meet up with LiPS ladies, Erzsi, Vikki and Fátima as well as other language mates like Helena and Aurelie.
Although I felt very rough the whole time (illness not alcohol induced!) I managed to sketch note the presentations. You can find them below.
If you’re interested in eTwinning or any of the other British Council programmes, feel free to contact me via the contact form or check out Schools Online
Susan Linklater shared the work plan and priorities for eTwinning (have to admit that the stats made my head hurt so I missed most of them…)
Gary Sheills (Mr Stats!) presented on eTwining Live, the new eTwinning portal aided by Kevin McCabe.
John Rolfe updated us on British Council news and priorities for 2015-16
Helena Butterfield shared how to use Webex to present eTwinning Webinars
George and Lesley gave ideas on how to engage school leaders and enthuse them with eTwinning.
Nick and Anne facilitated a session about the Ambassador’s Handbook
The first weekend of June saw the annual National eTwinning Conference take place at NCTL in Nottingham. Once more it was a weekend of learning, laughter and (can’t think of another L) celebrating the wonders of collaboration across boundaries. I spoke once more about Twitter – Are you a Twit or a Tweep? You can see my presentation here – twitter nottingham – if you’re interested! And there’s an eTwinning guidance document as well: TwitterGuidelines (thanks to Erszi for the photograph!)
During the weekend, I continued to sketch note the sessions.
Below are my sketch notes interspersed with pictures and comments on the sessions!
Happy 10th birthday eTwinning! The cake was delicious too!
Dinner the first night in our regions – odd grouping but it meant that I got to chat with Helena. And special thanks to Kevin for being such an amazing sunshade when the setting sun got in our eyes 😉
Really brilliant to see – and hear – Ewan McIntosh once more. A very important person in my ‘learning journey’, both as a language teacher and an eTwinner. A very thought provoking presentation – I think I’m captured the main points in the sketch note but you can check out the NoTosh website for more details!
An important thought that I wanted to capture!
Ewan’s workshop ‘Diving Deep into Learning’ introduced us to Guy Claxton’s 3Rs and 3Cs, and also to ‘The Squid.’ Too much to take in at once, especially as the very first session had overrun so the session was truncated, but the materials are accessible from the NoTosh site!
And then on to Action Jackson – The Power of Motivation. Lots of the session was really common sense that isn’t often considered or applied, but it was an empowering and sometimes emotional session! Certainly believed I. Am. Amazing.
Coming back after lunch, Action Jackson did a short reprise – this slide sums up what he was saying.
And then onto the wonderful Sugata Mitra who presented via video link about the future of learning. Interesting ideas about the future of teaching and learning, particularly about the role of the teacher, and moving away from subject boxes.
Final session of the day was John Rolfe (standing in for Vicky Gough) and Joanna Speak talking about British Values and International Work. The conclusion they reached – and many of us concurred- was that British Values aren’t anything new, and actually are values that are held by many, not just the British! Great ideas and good to hear how Joanna’s link with Tabasco has developed.
Robin Hood and Maid Marion joined us for dinner!And Vikki Bruff was highly commended for her eTwinning project using Skype.
Lovely to see the LiPS girls, Erszi and Vikki – and Fatima too!
And good to see that selfies live on 😉
You can find out more about the weekend here and via the Storify, photos here and more presentations from the weekend here .