#ILIlC3

For the past two years I have been fortunate enough to talk at the ICT Links into Languages conference in Southampton. It is a weekend of learning, sharing, collaborating and sheer unadulterated joy. This year's conference will be taking place on 9th-10th February 2013 and you can sign up for it here This year's theme is ‘Jail breaking the MFL Classroom’ and the keynote speakers are the fabulous duo of Joe Dale and Isabelle Jones. I am delivering two talks/workshops. The first is called "Triptico Tips to jailbreak the languages classroom" This session will illustrate how to use the Triptico resource application to liven up your classroom and turn learning on its head. There will be practical demonstrations of the organisational tools such as the group sorter, timer and score board. I will also demonstrate the higher order thinking tools such as the hexagonal Think Link resource and show how it can be used for promoting Solo taxonomy. The session will give specific examples from my own classroom practice as listed here and here as well as feedback from the pupils. There will also be plenty of time for participants to create their own resources which they can then take away with them, as well as showing them how to access the files already created in the likes of the Twitterati Dropbox. The second session is entitled "LITERALLY JAILBREAKING THE LANGUAGES CLASSROOM" This session will look at how to move the pupils' learning outside the languages classroom with practical examples which I have done with my own pupils including using Posterous to moblog a language trip, Voicethread to collaborate with other language learners around the world, Animoto to create videos such as the videos my pupils made on why our school should be the venue for the 2020 Olympics and QR codes to create a speaking wall with videos created by pupils on a variety of topics which other pupils can then access using their mobile phones to scan the QR code. This conference is an excellent opportunity to meet like-minded language teachers, learn some new stuff, share ideas and enjoy the excellent atmosphere. The Show and Tell event last year had us tweeting for months afterwards! If you want to catch some of the buzz in advance, search for #ililc3 on Twitter or join the MFL Twitterati

Guest posting and my year of web 2.0

I was genuinely flattered to be asked by Ken Royal to be a guest author for his blog http://www.educatorsroyaltreatment.com, although I asked him what he felt I had to offer as I really feel like a complete novice at this whole malarkey! It is true that I have a great enthusiasm for all that I use in my classroom, but I would never profess to be any kind of expert. I work on the theory that if I want to do something, it is surely possible, so it is just a matter of working out how So I settled down to it, and here is my post for Ken's site.

LANGUAGES AND LEARNING - THE PATH I HAVE FOLLOWED
Today I led a whole-day event on ICT & MFL teaching and learning, which included my own department as well as 12 members of staff from several other schools. I have never led such an event before and therefore wanted to keep the numbers manageable.
Why did I even want to run such an event? Believe me, I was asking myself the same question last night, as I prepared the last of the handouts. But yet I am so glad that I did, for it has benefited me as well hopefully as those who attended. As teachers, we are told that we should be reflective practitioners, and yet it is rare that we have time to take stock and really evaluate what we have learnt over a given period of time. The aim of running this day was to show people some of the new stuff I have learnt over the past year, and let them have a go too. It was only when I started to map out the agenda that I realised just how much I have learnt since last July, when I had the extreme good fortune to be sent to BLC 08, in Boston. The November Learning conference was mind-blowing and I came home enthused, armed with a list of of sites to visit and web 2.0 tools to check out.
I followed the instructions of David Truss (http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com) and Ewan McIntosh (http://edu.blogs.com/) who both said that if we did nothing else, we should start a blog when we went home. This I did, with my "Languages and Learning" blog at http://amandasalt.blogspot.com I also joined Twitter, although I found it a lonely and pointless activity initially. I now find it to be one of my main sources of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and also a place where people are generous with their praise and genuine in their concern.
A visit to the Isle of Wight for a languages and ICT conference, organised by the amazing Joe Dale (www.joedale.typepad.com), added to my enthusiasm, and as I approach the end of this academic year, I have created a wiki for my pupils (http://spanishingrosvenor.wikispaces.com) and also dabbled with Audacity, Goanimate, Voki, ToonDoo, Animoto and Voice Thread, amongst others.Today I ran workshops on all of these as well as an overview of blogging, Twitter and Diigo.
The format seemed to work well, with a very hands-on approach by the participants, and a vast quantity of helpsheets to take home. They were amazed that I did none of this before last summer, ut in a way, I think that reassured them. I do not profess to be an expert at any of these, yet I find my approach to teaching re-energised and my pupils highly motivated. I too have much to learn, and it is a true pleasure to show others all that this brave 2.0 world has to offer us.