Friday 30 September 2011

#MFLSAT ALEX BELLARS - A trio of Os

Alex (finally) decided to talk to us about a trio of toolhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs. He started with ClassDojo for rewarding pupils in real time, which he feels has increased engagement dramatically. Teachers create a class, with each pupil getting an individual avatar. There are awards for participation,creativity etc. The sanctions not really used as the positive are so good. You can also edit the positive and negative rewards. There is an end of class button for collective performance, with the possibility of a % performance download as pdf, and send to the form teacher, parents etc. There are Apps forms for Apple and Android phones. Alex suggests you make it a peer assessment tool as the next step.

The next tool, Lingro, turns any webpage into clickable dictionary resource. You simply paste the link into the box, choose thelanguage, then you go to the website and hover on the word.
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Finally Triptico is a suite of tools for use in the language classroom eg word magnets, class timer, random group creator – you put the names in, it creates the groups, with scoreboards showing the results of up to 4 teams . Another option is answer boards, whereby pupils guess the question.

This was a brilliant session and the perfect way to end the perfect day.

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