communICTy

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Whilst in London for a SSAT conference with Joe Dale in June, we met Leon Cych at our hotel. He heard that we were in town and asked us to do an interview for his blog, Learn for Life. We managed to smuggle Leon’s camera lights and video equipment into Joe’s room (despite a lot of giggling and what must have looked like quite a dodgy sight!).

We chatted about how we use web2.0 in education. Including:

Spellmaster
Hot Potatoes
TaskMagic
Making PowerPoint interactive
PieCast
VerbCast
Ewan McIntosh
The Language Show
TES ICT Blog
Linguanet forum
MFLresources
Flashmeeting
Notre Dame High School blog
MFL blogs
Scotedublogs
Interviews
Skype
Pretty May
Flickr
YouTube
Keepvid
YouTube goes international
Moderating comments
Nodehill Bloggers
Breaking down the classroom walls with technology
How local blogs can create communities
Blidgets
Ning
Google Reader
Feedwhip
eTwinning Ambassadors

Click on image to view a pdf of the leaflet

It is clear that technology has a significant role to play to inspire and motivate our learners. We all know that WWW stands for World Wide Web. However, many schools have yet to realise its true potential for bringing the real world into the classroom. Communication is literally at the heart of ICT. Sadly, students are often given tasks involving made up situations rather than being given the opportunity to communicate with a real audience for a real purpose.

In the past students at Notre Dame High School, Norwich did a project to research and create leaflets about their school. They included information about the history of the school and subjects they learn. The ICT skills they demonstrated were fine, but their sense of audience and purpose was very limited.

This year we adapted our leaflet unit by making it more personal. We asked the students to think about how they learn best and what makes a good teacher. They shared their ideas by adding comments to a blog post set up for free on edublogs.org. We also invited children at our link school in the USA to contribute their ideas. We gave our students a digital camera and asked them to take images of the school from their perspective. Students at our link school in Malawi took photos of their school using disposable cameras and we uploaded them into a digital gallery using bubbleshare.com. Our classes then did some basic research about the universal right to education and why it is such a valuable part of our lives.

With all of the ideas and information they had gathered themselves, the students created leaflets on the right to education and learning to learn (see examples learn1 | learn2 | learn3 | learn4 | learn5 | learn6). The best examples have been sent to our link schools. The students helped to make the selection, thus providing a real reason for peer assessment. The project culminated in a flashmeeting video conference between children at both schools to discuss and compare school life. A recording of the conference was put onto a blog post and the students contributed comments to give feedback on the experience.

We did a student voice online survey using SurveyAtSchool at the end of the project to research whether giving their work a real purpose and audience motivated them to produce better quality work. According to the analysis 78% said that sharing their ideas on a blog helped them to write better ideas. 88% said that having a real audience gave their work a clearer sense of purpose.

Enabling students to research real issues, create real resources and communicate with a real audience gives their work a real purpose. The improved quality of our students’ work proves that this motivated them to produce their best. So, if you want to inspire your learners, remember to Keep IT Real!

Click on image to view a pdf of the leaflet

If you think that social network sites such as My Space and Bebo are just for teenagers and pop groups, then think again.

It is now possible to set up a social network of your own and customise it for a group of people with the same interests as you.

Ning.com provides a free service with similar features to My Space such as a blog tool and discussion forums as well as the ability to upload and/or embed images, audio and video. You can also communicate with other members of the network via email.

With a traditional blog, you put up your ideas in isolation and hope that other people will find them. With Ning, you are able to bring your ideas and questions to an existing group of people. This process of firing ideas off other people enables the content of the site to grow organically. Consequently, it becomes possible to show how your ideas form part of a wider context.

Ning also extends the concept of social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us. By clicking on a member’s avatar you can view not only their contributions on this network, but also what other networks they belong to and who all their ‘friends’ are. This more social form of tagging enables you to literally put a face to an idea.

Rss brings the site to life as you are able to keep up with new additions as they are added. As a result you sense that the contributions become more of a dialogue than a list of seperate ideas.

Networks such as classroom2.0 are excellent for finding out about new teaching tools and resources. However, they also enable you to communicate with teachers who are actually trying them out.

Some teachers are even considering using a closed Ning network as a form of VLE to enable groups of students to access activities and learn how to create their own virtual space in a safe and responsible way.

It is tools like Ning that are changing the internet from an artificial environment of ideas, into a space to meet and share ideas with real people.

Why teach global issues?
Teaching the National Curriculum is a challenge in itself. So is the idea of enhancing the curriculum with a global dimension yet another thing to squeeze in, or could it be the solution to bringing the existing curriculum more to life?

Secondary Curriculum Review
QCA has launched a review of the NC for KS3-4. The new curriculum will have 4 dimensions;
Global
Enterprise
Creativity
Cultural Understanding and Diversity

Ideas for Etwinning
Elanguages.org is a free website for schools to share information. For example, look at our project with a school in Ariège, France.
Edublogs.org is a free website for educational blogs. This is a very simple way to raise an issue and ask students to contribute moderated comments. For example see Qu’est-ce que tu fais le weekend? and the Global Issues Forum
Audacity is a great free download to enable students to record their own audio. This means that they can use the software at home as well as at school. The files can either be uploaded to a blog, or a podcast website such as podomatic or Gcast.
Bubbleshare and AuthorStream are free sites that allow you to upload images or powerpoint presentations.

LickHill Primary School have used audacity and bubbleshare to create a great activity on clothes and put it on their blog.

Videoconferencing
Flashmeeting is a basic videoconferencing tool with the following benefits:
It is safe to use as you have to be a teacher to have an account
It doesn’t require special software, just flash
It can be used with a basic webcam and/or microphone
It uses commonly open firewall ports, so rarely gets blocked
You can watch a recording of a flashmeeting between students at Notre Dame, Norwich and Summit High, Cincinatti.
For info about flashmeeting and how to get a free account click here.

Global Issues
Tour de France
UN Cyberschool bus – Great for UN MDGs and in lots of languages
International day of Peace

useful sites
Joe Dale’s Blog – A great blog with regular updates on how schools are using web2.0 in MFL.
Global Messenger – My website on elanguages.org with free downloadable resources
Global Gateway – Etwinning portal
British Council International School Award – A framework for global education in your school
Global Dimension – Links to the best global education resources
Oxfam Cool Planet – Excellent online resources based Oxfam’s work
Climate Challenge – Pratical ways to reduce global warming
BBC Newsround – Best site for internation current affairs in child speak
My global del.ici.ous tags – To see all my favourite global links