ARCHIVED SEPTEMBER 2006
Top stories | Other current news | Quick-stop news | Events | Archives
Top stories
The Practical Support Pack - Learning and Teaching using ICT
The Department for Education and Skills has recently launched a new online collection
of resources to help teachers embed ICT into their teaching. There
are helpful tutorials to download and video clips of classroom practice
to watch online. The languages resources cover Key Stage 3 topics only
at the moment, although more will be added later. The materials are
available free and can be used for continuing professional development.
Blogs and Blogging
What is happening in the world of blogging or the ‘blogosphere’? This emerging
technology is inspiring teachers to post their thoughts in the form
of educational blogs. The big question is whether these blogs can really
improve learning and, if so, how. There are some language teachers
who believe they can.
Other current news
The ICT Register
The ICT Register is a list of schools around the country who wish to share their
skills and expertise with others. Set up by the Specialist Schools
and Academies Trust last year, the register already has an impressive
number of members who can offer a range of different services, including
some which particularly support training in the use of ICT in modern
foreign languages. To find out what is on offer near you, just go to
the home page of the ICT register site and click on the virtual map
of England according to where you live. Then simply click to find out
which services are being offered in a school in your region. Interested?
Partners in progress
Partners in progress is a homegrown initiative from CILT, The National
Centre for Languages and the Association for Language Learning via the
Languages ICT website. Similar to the TeachNet UK programme, the scheme
encourages innovative classroom teachers to take part in action research
in the area of ICT in languages and pass on their good practice to other
colleagues. As well as reading material and guidance on setting up action
research, these web pages detail a wealth of funding and dissemination
opportunities available.
Becta seeks your feedback
The government agency for ICT in education, Becta, is looking for feedback from
MFL teachers on their use of ICT to teach languages. They would like
to know the types of software you use and what you would recommend
to others. If you’ve discovered that the sorts of resources you’d like
to use just don’t exist, you can tell them what you need. Becta will
then pass on your comments to the developers of digital resources.
The Good Guide to Interactive Whiteboards CDROM reprinted
The Good Guide to Interactive Whiteboards CD ROM is a resource for professional development, designed to share good practice on the use of interactive whiteboards. It contains help and advice in the form of video case studies and helpsheets to support classroom teachers. It is the product of the REVIEW Project set up by the University of Hull, during which researchers observed and analyzed over two hundred classroom lessons. After the project ended, the original release of the CD ROM ran out. However, The Good Guide to Interactive Whiteboards has now been reprinted and copies can be obtained by emailing Jill Fowlie at the University of Hull.
Latest Becta ICT Advice: Focus On … MFL
The February edition of the free Becta e-magazine is now available and features the following:-
Made in Scotland: the new Modern Foreign Languages Environment for Scottish languages teachers
-
The VerbCast: an innovative form of verbal delivery
-
Reviews: create comic strips, contrast life in the UK and Germany, and take to the football field
-
Events: including a distance learning ICT course
Destination Death
New from BBC Bitesize is a multimedia adventure game grimly entitled Destination Death. The game is designed to help GCSE students of different abilities to revise French, German or Spanish. You choose the country whose language you are learning and then imagine you are a journalist, Paul Hackett, who arrives at an airport only to find his sister, Kelly Hackett, has gone missing. You have only four episodes to find her. Watch out for some virus-spreading vampires on the way!
Teachers' TV
The latest offerings from the educational channel Teachers’ TV provide more free CPD for primary and secondary MFL teachers. Take your pick from the following:
Primary
-
KS1/2 Modern Foreign Languages - Integrating Spanish - Reception to Year 3
-
KS1/2 Modern Foreign Languages - Strategies and Pay-offs - Spanish to Year 6
-
Resource Review - Primary MFL
-
CareerWise - Episode 41 - Is there a crisis in our modern foreign language teaching?
-
Inspirations - Santé
Secondary
-
KS3 Modern Foreign Languages - ICT and MFL
-
KS3 Modern Foreign Languages - Why Learn a Language?
-
Resource Review - Secondary MFL
-
Teaching With Bayley - Ecoutez!
MFL Conference DVD
A free double DVD set of workshops from the recent MFL conference for primary teachers organised by Northamptonshire County Council is now available. Each disc contains two sessions.
Disc one - ICT Lite workshop and Learning MFL through Song session
Disc two - Pedagogy in Action and Storytelling
For more details, go to the Learning Discovery website or contact Guy Shearer at Northamptonshire County Council (Tel: 01604 662250).
Communicate.06
Communicate.06 is Scottish CILT’s 2006 National Conference for ICT organised jointly by Learning and Teaching Scotland and Partners in Excellence (PiE) and funded by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED). Delegates have been selected from Scotland’s Local Authorities and the Scottish Council of Independent Schools to attend this free event at The University of Stirling on Saturday 18th March. For those unable to be there, the MFLE website will host an online version in the weeks following the conference, featuring audio and video and including downloadable seminar presentations and examples of classroom practice covering the themes of Communication, Creativity and Display.
Events
ICT Events from CILT, The National Centre for Languages
For full details of events focusing on ICT run by CILT, The National Centre for Languages, please visit the CILT website
Core Skills in ICT
A distance-learning course in the application of core ICT skills to effective MFL teaching and learning, including two contact days
Wednesday 10 May to Wednesday 12 July 2006, CILT, London
Language World Conference 2006: Working together, the Association for Language Learning
7-8 April, University of Manchester
The Language World 2006 Conference & Exhibition from the Association for Language Learning offers a rich programme of ICT-focused sessions. Please see below or visit the ALL website for the full programme.
Using photo-stories to develop writing skills
Mark Pentleton
Working together to share best practice and resources...today and in the future!
Helen Myers
Lights, camera, action: out-of-school film-making activities for languages
Mark Pentleton
Blogs and podcasts: the learner is the resource
Ewan McIntosh
‘Working together’ - live online language teaching
Karsten Stephan
Interactive whiteboard resources sharing forum: bring an idea – take 20 away!
Wendy Adeniji and Ros Walker
Free games, time-saving utilities and fun with MS Word: integrating ICT into the MFL classroom
Joe Dale
Primary French on the interactive whiteboard (Harcourt Education Limited)
Jackie Coe
The i-way to great lessons – and exam success! (Oxford University Press)
Louise Perrier, Dick Capel-Davies and Richard Matthews
Including every child: an analysis of student response systems in the MFL classroom (Promethean Technologies Limited)
Ros Walker
The ICT news update pages are published on a termly basis. See Archives for previous editions.
