Wordle #savewordle

Wordle is one of my favourite web 2.0 resources.

Wordle is one of my students' favourite resources.

They love it. It helps them learn, it motivates, and it lets them be creative. From the least able beginners in languages to the experts in my 6th form class, all of them have used it with a degree of success.

You can find some of their work on this blog and if you were to visit my classroom you would see one wall dedicated to students' Wordles comprising vocab lists, notes for presentations, grammar points, irregular verbs...I could go on all day.

And it is free to use.

And it isn't just my students who love it. It is students from all over the world in all subjects.

If you google "wordle" you'll find hundreds of thousands of pages singing the praises of the application, its uses in education, and its creator Jonathan Feinberg.

So imagine my sadness when I checked my tweets this morning to find that the site is no longer live and that when I went to check, I found this message left by Jonathan Feinberg:

wordle.net is Down Until Further Notice

I am seeking pro bono legal advice, to evaluate
a trademark claim against my use of the word "Wordle" for this
web site. If you're an intellectual property lawyer, with expertise
in trademark law, and you wish to offer professional
advice on this matter, please contact me.

So if you know such a lawyer, or are one yourself, please get in touch with Mr Feinberg at your earliest convenience.

Oh, and one final thought, if the educators on twitter spent as much time trying to help Mr Feinberg as they did trying to find another, similar (but obviously not quite as good) tool they can use for free with their students, the problem would be solved in no time at all.

I really hope that it is.

Options Evening - or - What's your subject worth?

This Wednesday is Options Evening.

Options Evening is the time of year when non-compulsory subjects in school compete with each other to try to get the Year 9 (14 year old) students (and their parents) to choose to study their subject for the next two years. This also has massive implications on departmental budgets and, quite possibly, staffing levels.

Over the last few years attracting students has become harder for the Languages Department due to the way options groups are set up and the increasing popularity of non-exam subjects which, it is claimed, are "worth" 2 or even 4 GCSEs.

So, what is a qualification in a modern foreign language worth?

Well, imagine you are a 14 year old boy.....(Horrible, isn't it?)

You can choose to study French, for which you will have to learn vocabulary and grammar, do homework regularly, revise and then sit exams and at the end of the course, if you have worked hard over 2 years, you will get a good GCSE grade.

Or...

You can choose to study a subject for which you must produce a portfolio of work and at the end of the course you get the equivalent of 4 GCSEs. If you haven't achieved the required grade you can go away do it again and keep resubmitting until you achieve your target.

Which would you choose? (If you say "French" you are not 14, you are lying, or you are French.)

When will schools and parents realise that it isn't the number of qualifications but the quality of education the students receive which matters?

SMS in the MFL classroom (or MfL in MFL)

I have written 2 posts recently about using mobile telephones in the classroom. One on this blog and one for José Picardo's box of tricks site.

In the boxoftricks post I outlined my plans for using mobiles in different ways this term.

This week I finally took the plunge and planned an activity to which my Year 11 students (16years old) could text their answers.

The lesson I chose to do this was also observed by the LA MFL inspector. So, no pressure there, then.

I planned a range of activities which the students could complete using their mobile phones.

Firstly, they wrote and practised dialogues in French, which they then filmed (although the more self-conscious students used their voice recorders instead. The cowards!)

Secondly, they sent their work to my laptop by bluetooth which we played back in order to do some peer assessment.

Thirdly, I created an exercise using SMSpoll.net to which the students sent their answers via SMS. When I was setting up the exercise I chose the option allowing students only one vote per telephone. Their answers then appeared in a graph on my interactive whiteboard.

You can see the results here:

Was it successful? I hear you cry.

Well, yes, of course it was. In some ways. (The correct answer was 1783, chosen by only 20% of the students. They were so keen to send off their texts, they didn't read the questions properly!)

The inspector was impressed by my use of technology: "Mobiles for Learning" he called it. Perhaps that is what MFL really stands for?

The students loved it and asked if they could do it every lesson.

I like smspoll it's good, but not perfect.

Obviously, the brains behind smspoll didn't intend for it to be an MFL classroom application but with a few tweaks it could be.

Firstly, you can only offer multiple choice questions.

Secondly, as far as I can make out, it will not allow you to use foreign language accents and characters. It was quite difficult for me to find answers for the task which didn't have "é" in them. It does let you enter them, but they appear as a blank space in the results.

Thirdly, the students are charged each time they send a text, unless (like all students in this particular class!) they have a contract which gives them unlimited texts.

Having said that, I shall definitely use it again.

And while I'm in a technological mood, I think I'll take a look at polleverywhere, too.

Watch this space.

Using technology in the MFL classroom

Recently, José Picardo invited some MFL teachers to write guest posts for his box of trickswebsite. The idea behind this was to focus on practice, promoting and encouraging the use of ICT in practical ways. Some amazing practitioners have already had their work published over the last couple of weeks and I was both surprised and flattered when I was asked to contribute.

So far José has published posts by:

Amanda Salt. Her post Looking back and moving forward is about the success of her PLN and how she has enhanced her teaching by using web applications.

Isabelle Jones. Her post was supporting assessment for learning. In it, Isabelle reviews some commercially available applications and assesses how they may be used to support AfL.

Simon Howells offering was using Google maps in the mfl classroom. I recently started to follow Simon on twitter and I have been impressed by his enthusiasm, his blog and his storybirds.

Helena Butterfield's post was based on the presentation she gave at TMNE09-2 and entitledtools to get pupils talking. In her post, Helena recommends some equipment and web applications which she has used with her students and which have improved their speaking skills.

My post was about using mobile phones in the classroom. I wrote about activities I have done with my students in which they used their mobile telephones and about my plans for the future of mobiles in my classroom.

Marie-France Perkin's post was fantastic. She wrote about her journey into the www and how technology has changed so much since she started her teaching career and helped her and her students to achieve much more.

In her post, using technology to enhance learning, self-confessed (or is that self-diagnosed?) "technochick" Lisa Stevens wrote about why she incorporates technology into her learning and how technology has enhanced learning in her classroom.

In Saira Ghani's post a word or two about wordle, she reflects on how her PLN has had a positive effect on her teaching and how it has inspired her to incorporate some of the tools she has discovered, focussing mainly on wordle, into her teaching repertoire.

Next comes Mary Cooch and her post German: OFF the curriculum but ON the VLE tells how by means of her school's VLE (which I believe she created) she managed to teach German GCSE successfully even though the school has taken that language off the curriculum. Fascinating and inspiring.

Finally, the most recent of the guest posts comes from Samantha Lunn. Her post simple but effective is a wonderful explanation of how she uses available technology simply and effectively in her daily teaching and in her preparation. Excellent advice for everyone.

So far, that is it. Each of the posts is interesting, educative and could be tried by almost anyone who is willing to put in the effort and step out of their comfort zone.

I'm sure that José will add more posts as he receives them and even without guest posts, his own work is worth reading on a regular basis, anyway. It is one of the best blogs you could possibly read.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading and commenting.

2009 has been a rollercoaster of a year for me.

I can't believe that I've only been doing this for 9 months (it seems like a maternity!)

I have learned so much since March and I hope to continue to learn even more over the next year.

I'd like to wish you all a happy and successful 2010.

Switching off.

Woohoo! It's the Christmas holidays.

School is finished.

There is nothing urgent I have to do.

Finally, I can relax.

Do nothing.

I can switch off.

Totally.

Or can I?

If that were true, why do I keep doing work-type things?

In the last 2 days...

I've made storybirds.

I've updated my department's wiki with some students' work and an Xtranormal greeting for the homepage.

I've spent ages looking into how I can get KS4 to use their mobile telephones in class.

I've just taken a look at some homework my year 8 and year 9 students have emailed me and emailed my thanks and encouragement back.

I'm working on my yr13 Scheme of Work, reading Ripon Grammar School's MFL site (really excited about the new Year 10 & 11 listening exercises), having a look at Ashcombe School's MFL resources for some inspiration as I haven't visited for a while, and I've been reading all the updates on the blogs listed below.

And later this evening, I'm hoping to find some time to read a bit more of Geoff Petty's Evidence-Based Teaching.

Can a teacher ever switch off?

MFL Storybird wiki

As you all know I am a huge fan of storybird and I have blogged about what a fantastic resource it is on a few occasions now.

If you have read my previous posts on this subject, and there is really no reason why you should, you will know that stories written in languages other than English are not yet made public.

The good news is that Fiona Joyce has started a wiki to which half a dozen or so MFL teachers, myself included, have added their storybirds in French, Spanish and German.

Please visit the wiki and read the excellent work which has been submitted. There is some excellent material there. Use the stories in your teaching, or read them for your own amusement, and share them with your colleagues, family and friends.

Then, why not make and add your own storybirds, and join us.

It's not a cult, honest!