Champions of quizlet

Quizlet is a great tool for revising vocabulary in a language or for learning definitions in any subject. It allows you to set up class groups and when students are logged in and completing the tests or games their scores are recorded. So, for part of our 8 French lesson today we logged in to quizlet and the whole class jumped on to the recently created set to practice conjugating the verb 'aller' (to go).

Students were given 10 minutes, which was counting down on the board thanks to the Countdown Timer over at classtools.net. At the end of 10 minutes jelly snakes were handed out to those on top of the leader boards for each "Set Champion" - the 'Scatter Champion', 'Space Race Champion' and the champion of the 'Most Right Answers' category. All in all, it was a great way to round off the lesson and all were on task.

 

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Web 2.0 Tools that worked in 08

Recently I've been trying to reflect a little on the year that has just passed (school has now finished for the year for me) and was thinking about what worked and what didn't. So, keeping in line with the internet's fascination with lists, I thought I'd put together my list of web2.0 tools that have given me the most success in the language classroom this year.

1. Quizlet was without doubt the most successful. Boys were motivated to use it, create new lists and outdo each other in the vocab games. Students were even using it in other subjects to help learn definitions, etc. I suggested that they share this fact with their teachers.
2. Voki - again, this motivated students to create and use the language we had learnt. This also proved successful in getting others in the department inspired to use ICT in their language classroom. The languages department went a little "Voki mad" in the last weeks of school - kids loved it.
3. Wikispaces - This has been great for Year 7 & 8 students. One central place they can go to for vocab, grammar review, activities, links and a place to view each other's creations. Simple to use & can be private as well as ad free for educators.
4. My StuDIYo - Students can create their own quizzes, which can then be embedded in other pages (ie. wikispace). Good for mixing culture and language. Worked well with engaging some of the more reluctant students; in mixing culture and language they were able to make questions that matched up with their interests. I learnt a lot about French Rugby Union through this exercise.
5. Making comic strips with the students at Make Belief Comix. There are many sites to do this sort of activity and some that I aim to try out in the holidays but this one did the job well this year.

These are my top 5. Below are some sites I aim to check out during the holidays ...

• GoAnimate
• Scribd
• Glogster

What worked for you? Any other suggestions???

PS: A note on Ask500 (thanks to Lucy Barrow for the tip)

As I was going over programmes for next year & considering the "old ways" and possible "new ways" of doing things, it occurred to me that we often use little surveys in the language class. "What's your favourite food?", etc. So, as an experiment, I went to the survey site Ask500 to type in my question.

• Firstly, very happy that it accepted the Japanese script!

• Secondly, even happier when I went back a few hours later to see that I had about 35 responses to my "好きなかもくはなんですか" (What's your favoutite subject?) question.

• Even had a comment!

Now, if I was impressed by the world's response to my little question, I guess the students would also be happy. They could then report back to the class in the target language, summarising the responses received. "The favourite subject for .. people was ..." OR "...% like history"

The ability to comment on questions is both a positive and a potential negative. Some of the discussions in the comment are interesting and could be well worth discussing in some classrooms. Unhelpful or inappropriate comments can be "downvoted", meaning that (if enough people subtract points from the comment) the comment will disappear from the default view. Here's mine here ...

Gathering thoughts on writing a language programme in the 21st Century

I'm currently working / thinking as I blog here - it seems to be the only way a blog post gets written (most are still in the draft folder).

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a new and hopefully more effective approach to teaching the languages that I teach. There's a lot floating around in my head that I'm trying to gather together and create a relevant 21st Century Programme with. I am fascinated by and love the work of Andrew Churches at his Educational Origami wiki and am looking forward to a time when I can delve further into the wealth of information and ideas there. On the front page of the wiki it is written quite clearly - "Welcome to the 21st Century". Happy to be here!

But what is that for a language teacher? How can we use the Web2.0 tools available to enhance our student's experience of language learning and indeed get them speaking, reading and writing the language - being able to communicate in the language. Well firstly it brings an overseas country (where they speak the language) into the classroom. But how do I put all these tools and ideas into a programme that would be accepted? Also, my programmes at the moment are based around a textbook; do we need textbooks anymore? Do parents really need (at a school with a laptop programme) to fork out more money for textbooks when all that is in them can be found for free using the laptop? Now that's a programme I want to create and I suspect that Blooms Digital Taxonomy can help us here.

There are some great tools to aid in the lower order thinking skills (when applied to languages) - remembering & understanding. I love the simplicity and fun of Quizlet and, it seems, the students find this a very useful tool; not only do they ask to use it but I happily discovered that the Quizlet bug spread to other students in the year group who are using it in a variety of subjects (unfortunately their teachers are not yet aware of quizlet or that their students find it an effective tool for 'remembering' and thus for revision). Voki is another simple and effective tool to engage language learners.

I know I'm rambling but bear with me - I am trying to gather my thoughts and the endpoint is an effective programme for teaching language in this new era of change. For the moment, let's take it back to the beginning. To be able to communicate in a language you need to remember the vocab and understand the grammar. We'll start with the vocab. Textbooks are full of lists of vocab, usually topic based. I like topic based approaches but sometimes the vocab selected in a list is a little odd (my favourite in the text I use at the moment is 'haunted house'). So, for the next unit with my Year 9s I think I'll take a different approach; trying to make it more relevant using Web2.0 tools. The first stage will go something like this ...

• The students will need to learn the skills necessary to use a bilingual dictionary - both print and online. I will create a lesson to show them how to best use each of these types of dictionary and ensure that they are choosing the correct word in its right context. They also need to be sure the online dictionary is an accurate and reliable source.
• They will then decide on the words in their vocab list and work together to build a suitable list of vocab on that topic (using Google docs). My theory is that they will choose words that are relevant to them, they they would want to use. If they thought 'haunted house' was relevant and useful, then it will go into the list.
• As they have created the list for themselves, it should be easier to remember, but quizlet can always help.

Teaching grammar is always a little trickier but I suspect an interactive whiteboard would serve as a useful tool. Hmmm... we now have one in the library. Need to install the software on the laptop and check it out.

Will have to leave this next stage for the moment ...

Flickr photo: Scattered Thoughts, Like Scattered Leaves:-)
Flickr user: mysza831