Beyond the Pier

@spanishsam has collected together Wordle word cloud ideas for MFL in this post:

Here is a link to an excellent, comprehensive list of useful online language learning sites compiled by Graham Davies and distributed through the Linguanet email forum:

http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm

The following document is full to the brim of innovative uses of ICT in MFL.  Great to see so many contributors sharing their good practice, successes and ideas.

Technology in Modern Foreign Languages – A Practitioner’s Perspective

I have been using the extremely useful Google Maps service personally for some time now and recently had success in integrating it into teaching French.  During a Year 10 (14-15 year olds) topic on describing cities and making your way around town, I projected maps.google.fr (use .fr for extra exposure to French in the Google menus and directions) and Google Streetview screendumps to complement and add some interest to the work we had already done on giving directions and using prepositions of place to describe the layout of the town.

By using the local London area, the students were keen to spot our school/landmarks/shops etc that they were familiar with and even argue about how to get where and best.  This also let students consolidate shops/places having only the English on screen as it won’t say “supermarché” on shop signs, which would be a giveaway had we gone directly to France.  Admittedly, going to France would add an excellent cultural element and this could be developed in future lessons.

Using screendumps from Streetview of a nearby shopping street gave a chance to practise the prepositions of place in a more engaging and familiar context: Utilisez les prépositions de lieu pour décrire les images: e.g. la pharmacie est à côté de la banque

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In another activity, the newly added Google Maps functionality of viewing Streetview and the traditional aerial map view simultaneously came in very useful.  I pretended I was a tourist standing in front of the school and students had to give me directions - Excusez-moi, pour aller à la bibliothèque s’il vous plaît?.  I then followed their instructions accurately in real time on Streetview and Google Maps to check if I would end up where I’m meant to.  The map view allowed phrases like “deuxième rue à gauche” to be produced while the streetview allowed prepositions to be exploited (et c’est au coin, à côté de la pharmacie) This forced students to flesh out their directions and be much more precise with prepositions etc.

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Simon Howells has taken the use of Google Maps a step further, intergating it into an ICT based project.  See his excellent video below and finished product for details and ideas.

Typical story: a blog starts of well with enthusiasm and then life (more specifically a busy PGCE schedule) gets in the way.  A bit of a re-think means I’ll plan to post shorter posts and focus especially on useful resources and links.

With this in mind, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that free tickets are available for the Languages Show 2009 in London’s Olympia on the 30th Oct – 1st Nov.  Simply register for free via their website and print out your tickets.

The show is ” For language learners,l anguage teachers, linguists and everyone who loves language”and features seminars,  exhibitors, intensive and taster language courses and much more besides.  It is sure to be a valuable and inspirational event for anyone with a passion for, or working with language.

Another useful organisation for language teachers, and a sponsor of The Language Show, is ALL – The Assossciation for Language Learning.  Check out their program for lots of interesting and useful events.

La Jetée - a work of genius

With a bit of time to go before I get started on teacher training and edublogging proper, I’ve decided to post a bit of an aside which is nevertheless is still somewhat related to languages and learning.

So, why Beyond the Pier as a blog name? A somewhat convoluted story involving World War III, a personal love of French and photography, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys ,  the joys of translation and not finding the domain name I really wanted.

While studying French at university I happened across La Jetée while looking for some films to watch as an easy and painless way to improve my French.  In a nutshell, it is the story of time travel in Paris  in the aftermath of apocalyptic World War III.  Survivors carry out time travel experiments as a way to try and save the human race.  Sound vaguely familiar?  That’s probably because Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys subsequent film was based upon Chris Marker’s 1962 short film.  I fell in love with the film and after seeing it had a few moments of genuinely stunned silence.  What captivated me, besides the intelligent and thought provoking storyline, was the format: a 28 minutes long, dialogue free, narrated photomontage of exquisite black and white stills. Read more…

Last year I came across an extremely valuable teaching resource website called Teachers.tv.  The UK-based site is regularly updated with content and is nicely laid out.  The site has 3 main areas focusing on videos, classroom resources and community respectively.  Resources are also broken down into in subject and age group Early Years, Primary and Secondary.

There is an active community on Teachers.tv and it is a great point of contact for teachers to share resources, ideas and tips.  There is a lot of good material on Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), especially in relation to ICT.  In time, and over the course of my PGCE, I hope to get to try some of these out in the classroom and report back on the Beyond the Pier.  Here is an example video titled Resource Review – ICT Special: Secondary MFL that typifies Read more…

Having alluded in my first post to linguistic tidbits, I would like to encourage all (especially, but not exclusively, language lovers) to listen to and follow Patrick Cox’s  wonderful radio podcast The World in Words.  It’s punchy, rich, diverse, meaningful, funny, on the pulse and extremely interesting.

“The World in Words focuses on language. We cover everything from bilingual education to the globalization of English to untranslatable foreign phrases. You’ll learn how to insult someone in Icelandic, among other things. Hosted by The World’s Patrick Cox“

You can also read his blog at http://patrickcox.wordpress.com/ and find him on twitter as @patricox

For me this show hits the nail on the head and I find it highly inspirational.  Anything that confirms and awakens my passion for languages is worth its weight in gold.  An uninspired teacher will have a hard time inspiring young minds.