Tag » etwinning « @ The Langwitch Chronicles

Busy Weekend

Posted on July 8th, 2010 Langwitch View Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve been so busy over one weekend. However this weekend I shall be speaking in 3 different venues between Friday and Monday evening plus I am even going out with my husband!!

Tomorrow I am at the Northeast Regional ATLAS Conference at the Radisson Hotel in Durham. Myself and 7 of my best Year 10 eTwinners are talking about our school’s eTwinning activities

Tomorrow evening the Links into Languages Northeast Secondary Residential begins at Redworth Hall and I am to give a presentation on International Online Collaboration.

On Monday I am in Birmingham at my old stomping ground of Aston University for a Links into Languages West Midlands ICT event where I am speaking about eTwinning.

I will share all presentations next week…although 2 have the possibilitiy of being very, very similar…!

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Happy 5th Birthday eTwinning

Posted on May 5th, 2010 Langwitch View Comments

This week marks the 5th Anniversary of eTwinning.

For those of you who haven’t heard of eTwinning, it is the European Commission’s partner-finding and online collaboration tool. Schools and colleges (working with pupils and students between the ages of 3 and 20) can register their details, create a profile, search for partners and engage in online partnerships – all free of charge. Teachers and their students can form short or long term partnerships and collaborate on a whole range of curriculum based projects in any subject area using a variety of exciting and innovative ICT tools.

Photograph courtesy of Tony Barraclough Photography

I became involved with eTwinning 3 years ago when looking for a French partner school. I was inundated with schools wanting to set up projects with my school and we set up many successful projects. Since then I haven’t really looked back and run 1 or 2 projects every year, not just in MFL but also through PSHE with my lovely tutor group. In additions, it was our eTwinning work that really created the backbone of our International School Award last year.

Today is when schools are celebrating the 5th Year of eTwinning and to mark the occasion, thousands of schools around Europe had some kind of European

Photograph courtesy of Tony Barracough Photography

Celebration. Many school planted blue and yellow flowers but, always wanting to be different, we decided to have a “balloon release” with a birthday cake! After all of the environmental safety checks had taken place to make sure our balloons were eco-friendly we were good to go on Friday at midday. We released our balloons (blue and yellow of course), with a tag on them asking people who found them to email us to let us know where they found them. It was very effective and the balloons looked very happy bobbing away in the wind. I’m sure the hail storm 10 mins later helped them on their way no end!

Oh and the cake…it was delicious.

You can find our what other school have been doing to celebrate here.

Happy 5th Birthday, eTwinning!

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Online International Collaboration

Posted on April 2nd, 2010 Langwitch View Comments

The second CPD session that I ran for Links into Languages was about Online International Collaboration. Here is the presentation I gave for that session…

International Collaboration

View more presentations from Helena Butterfield.

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The French Exchange Finally Happened

Posted on February 16th, 2010 Langwitch View Comments

Took this at the NRM and thought it was funny!

Many moons ago (so it seems)…well, 3 years, just when I was starting on this adventure into new technologies and discovering the possibilities for MFL teachers, such as myself, in terms of getting pupils using language for real, I was asked by my then Head of Area to find a French school in order to establish a link for exchanges. We already had an extremely successful link with Meppen in Germany and an equally successful link with Cheste in Spain but French was most certainly the poor relation in terms of links and opportunities for exchanges.

I had just discovered eTwinning via Joe Dale‘s marvellous blog and decided to find out what all of the fuss was about. Having registered with eTwinning, I quickly found a partner and established a project with a view to setting up an exchange the following year. The project “Je blogue, tu blogues…let’s blog!” was very successful with pupils from both schools develping frienships and helping one another with their language learning. However unfortunately for many reasons the link didn’t develop into an exchange and the hunt was on again.

One of my colleagues in the MFL Department had a link with a teacher in Caussade near Toulouse. I contacted her and things looked positive. We worked together on an eTwinning project (in English only, this time, as there were several schools involved) and my class exchanged letters every half-term or so with a class from her school and set things in motion for an exchange.

There were hurdles to overcome, as with any new link. The biggest hurdle being that our partner school wanted to bring 27 pupils!!! This was unheard of in Ian Ramsey history of exchanges…we are normally over joyed if we get to 20 (as I think most schools would be). Nevertheless, we persevered and, with a plan to house some pupils in a local hotel got plans underway. I was over-joyed when I managed to persuade the final 2 pupils to host French people, meaning that no-one was to stay in a hotel!

The week itself arrived and we had an action-packed programme, hightlights included a visit to Durham, the Angel of the North and the Metro Centre, a whole group trip to York and the National Railway Museum, project work at Teesside CLC and a visit to meet the Mayor of Stockton. The funny thing was, I got stick all week for organising the visit to Mayor and in fact our French friends loved it – telling me to definintely keep in on the programme for the future! As part of their CLC project, pupils started to work on a wiki as a diary of their week, to which I will add their presentations and leaflets about the history of the railways and York tourist leaflets as soon as I can. You can see what has been done so far here (still needs a bit of work!).

What of the future? Well things look very rosy. In 3 weeks time our pupils will return to France. Again, a record of 21 pupils (some of whom were so enthused by the whole event that they asked if they could come eventhough they didn’t take part in the home-leg!). In addition we will carry this through to another eTwinning Project specifically aimed at improving Speaking and Writing Skills for GCSEs.

Sadly I’m unable to go on the return leg – I’ve been off gallavanting around Europe too often already this year, so am indebted to my colleagues, Fiona and Julie for taking the return trip and for their invaluable support during the exchange week itself.

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Holidays and High Hopes

Posted on September 9th, 2009 Langwitch View Comments

The Zen Fountain in Les Rosiers-sur-Loire

Where did the holidays go? It seems like no time at all since the summer holidays were approaching too slowly and now they’re over.

What wonderful times I had with my family. We went to France for two weeks and seemed to travel the full width of the country. Spending a week in the Loire Valley, 3 days in Disneyland Resort Paris (to give it it’s full name) and then 4 days in a tiny little village on the French/German border called Liederschiedt visiting a friend. It certainly was action packed a lots of fun. Best of all I and my family got to speak lots of French and I discovered that my 7 year old really is a budding linguist, able to work out the meaning of signs and words with far more ease than many pupils I teach. It was so amazing watching her use all of the clues that I tell my pupils to use, without me even having to tell her. Also fascinating was the friendship that developed between my two children (7 and 4) and my friend’s two (4 and 2 1/2). My children speak next to no German or French and Heike’s children speak mainly German and often French. Despite the language barrier all four children played really well together and there were tears shed upon our departure.

Naturally, we had our usual visit to Eastbourne to visit my sister and watch the airshow. We saw the Red Arrows an all of the days we attended the event and enjoyed many other thrilling displays.
After that work seemed inevitable and I began to contemplate the year ahead of me. Where am I going? What am I doing (and why)?
There are some exciting things happening this year – none less so than the fact that I am to teach ICT for 6hrs a fortnight to Y7, Y8 and Y9. In order to do this I am going to have to learn how do use some applications quite quickly. Can’t wait! In particular it will be interesting to see my job from the perspective of another subject area. How do they teach in ICT? Is it really different from teaching MFL? In addition ICT is taught in Tutor Groups throughout KS3, whereas MFL is taught in sets from Christmas of Y7, what will that be like? I already like teaching ICT before I’ve even had one class, as I already have all of the lessons and resources!
Added to that I have acquired a “new” job title, that of “International School Co-ordinator”. Basically it means I just continue doing what I’m doing already. Continuing with that theme, we will re-apply for a Comenius Grant, after failing to gain funding last year. I’m currently trying to organise a preparation visit for January which will be entertaining! Also we have an all new French exchange with a school in Caussade near Toulouse.
As far as my MFL teaching is concerned, I have to admit to feeling a little stale, so I want to focus on injecting some enthusiasm into things. Naturally I’ll continue to use ICT to motivate pupils and also lead some staff CPD within the department to encourage colleagues to follow suit. I’m also going to do some work on Phonics with my classes. After seeing Rachel Hawkes speak at Grasping the Nettle and being in touch with Suzi Bewell, I’ve bought a Jolly Phonics French book and a lovely Frieze and am going to spend time focusing on pronunciation with many of my pupils.
So not much then, in the year ahead. It should keep me out of trouble anyway!

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TeachMeetNE – eTwinning in Practice

Posted on June 21st, 2009 Langwitch View Comments

On Thursday evening, I went up to Newcastle to the Tyneside Cinema to attent the first ever TeachMeetNE.

This was a whole new experience for me, as I’d never attended a TeachMeet before and also I decided I’d take the plunge and do a presentation. I spoke about eTwinning in Practice and promised that I’d put the presentation on here, together with useful links.

As this was an event for teachers from all curriculum areas, I decided to focus on how eTwinning could be incorporated into all subject areas, not just MFL. There are countries from all over Europe desperate to work with schools in the UK in English and in particular, many Primary Schools want to work with Primaries here. I looked at projects involving History, Citizenship, Maths and Geography. It’s also good to know where eTwinning can lead. It is an ideal way of finding Comenius Partners and getting to know them before applying for funding projects and also eTwinning Projects can contribute to the International School Award – a subject on many schools’ agendas at the moment.

Well the presentation is below…I decided to create a Wordle all about what eTwinning means to me and there is also the slide show that I used. Anyone who wants to know more is welcome to contact me via this blog. I have also written in other posts about my school’s projects and a presentation about that can be found here. In addition, I have a page on there dedicated to setting up eTwinning Projects here. You can also see two of the projects that I’ve work on in the past online. Je blogue, tu blogues…let’s bog was a project with a French school last year ( I let you guess what it was about!) and How Green is your World is a Wiki-based project that I and my Tutor Group have worked on this year in Citizenship lessons.

To register for eTwinning go to eTwinning.net it might also be useful to read the eTwinning UK Blog which always has lots of information about what’s going on in eTwinning around the UK and beyond. You can also find out about local eTwinning Ambassadors on the British Council eTwinning Ambassadors page

eTwinning In Practice Uptodate

View more OpenOffice presentations from Langwitch.

It was also really great to see other presentations from people I’d met virtually and people I’d never met. To find out about all of the other fab presentations you can watch the Flashmeeting and visit Chris Harte’s blog where he has given details about other presenters such as Darren Mead, Ian Hardy, Fergus Hegarty, Régine Schneider, Steve Bunce, Holli & Mike (from Tyneside Cinema Education), Mark Clarkson and Dominic McGladdery

On a personal level, it was really nice to finally put some faces to names such as Mark Clarkson (@mwclarkson), Dominic McGladdery (@dominic_mcg) , Doug Belshaw (@dougbelshaw) and of course Chris Harte (@charte). All of whom have blogged about the even as well.

Can’t wait for the next one…

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TeachMeetNE

Posted on June 2nd, 2009 Langwitch View Comments

I was very please to learn that there is to be a TeachMeet Northeast later on this month. I’ve read about TeachMeets before, noteably the Midlands TeachMeet which took place recently and hoped that there would be one more locally that I could attend.

As far as I can tell they are informal get togethers of like-minded teachers from all curriculum areas. There will be 7 minute presentations, 2 minute nano presentations and learning conversations. In addition, “enthusiastic lurkers” are also welcome (of course).

The action will happen on Thursday 18th June from 7.00 pm – 9.30 pm in the Tyneside Bar at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle. If you want to attend you need to sign up on the TeachMeetNE Wiki. I have decided to take the plunge and give a nano presentation on “eTwinning in Practice”. No idea what I’ll talk about or how I’ll get everything in in 2 minutes. I’d also like to add that I’m terrified but we all need to start somewhere!!!

I am, however, really looking forward to meeting many fellow Twitterers in real life!

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Comenius Northeast Good Practice Guide

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 Langwitch View Comments

Sadly, on the 31st March the Comenius Network officially but to go out on a high, the Northeast Good Practice Guide has been published for the last time. It’s a great place to find out about all of the great projects going on in the Northeast of the England in MFL. There is a lot of great stuff in there with loads of Primary and Secondary projects featured.

Oh and I’m in it of course…

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eTwinning workshop at Stockton CLC

Posted on March 10th, 2009 Langwitch View Comments

eTwinning

Today, I was privileged to be invited to our local CLC to speak to Stockton’s GTP (Graduate Trainee Programme) trainee teachers about our school’s eTwinning experiences. It was nice to work with Jenny Compton of the British Council and Val Brooks, Deputy of the Stockton CLC and fellow eTwinning Ambassador as well as to meet some of the new talent coming through from our local LEA Graduate Trainee Programme.

I promised that I’d upload my presentation onto this blog for the participants to look at in more detail at their own leisure and thought it would also be good to put down some of the areas that I ellaborated more on, as I spoke.

I covered how I got involved in eTwinning initially, as a part-time teacher to give me some focus and how now it has become an integral part of my teaching life. I think it’s important to stress, particularly for Secondary teachers who don’t seem as widely involved in eTwinning across the UK as they are in the rest of Europe, that it is quite easy to mould your eTwinning projects into the curriculum without it being onerous and without it impacting negatively on exam results. Infact, I firmly believe that eTwinning can enhance exam results as well as enhancing enjoyments of subjects. It is also something that is ideal when thinking about ways of delivering the new KS3 curriculum and it can be cross-curricular and be something where pupils really can try out their creativity and love of the internet and all things computer-based.

I think that the presentation probably speaks for itself. There are links to our highly successful prject from last year, Je blogue, tu blogues…let’s blog! as well as various projects that our pupils did whilst involved in the project. In addition there are links to one of our current projects that involved no MFL at all “How green is your world?” .

I think it’s really important to remember that, whilst ideal for the MFL teacher as a way of stimulating real contact with native speakers of a similar age, eTwinning can be used in many creative ways using English as the means of communication (just about everyone wants to got their pupils practising English if at all possible). One of our most successful international projects is one with a school in the Netherlands that covers Victorian England and the First World War through our History department and doesn’t involve the use of Languages at all. Also, a little idea I have in my head for cross-curricular links…to work with a department in school on a project from that curriculum area but work in French or German or Spanish (maybe with schools from across Europe, whose language learning is on the same level as our pupils). That’s just my sneaky way of getting pupils to use the language they learn without even knowing that their doing it!

Here is the presentation…

Ian Ramsey’s eTwinning Experience

View more presentations from Langwitch.

I have also add this presentation to my Langwitch Wiki and you can find it here.

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It’s here

Posted on October 3rd, 2008 admin View Comments

Well, here we are…our Netherlands project has finally arrived. As I have blogged about previously, we are working, for the first time, with a school in Terneuzen in the Netherlands on a joint History project. In April, they came over to us to work on a project about Victorians etc… and it proved a great success. I can’t believe it, but here we are in October and we are to go to Terneuzen for the return visit. On Sunday we head off to the Netherlands. Whilst looking forward to actually being there, I am concerned about leaving my husband with 2 small children for 6 days whilst I take care of 15 other children!
We are to take the ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge on Sunday evening. I think that is probably my biggest concern…12 hours on the North Sea in October, hmmmm! At least we have cabins – bed time at 10.30 pm. The preparations haven’t been without hitches, mainly that one girl dropped out last week, which was a shame and then yesterday, another girl fractured her foot so that means that she can’t come either. Oh well, at least it means there are less children to lose! It must be said, that with 15 of the most delightful children one could imagine (without them being your own), I don’t think that looking after them will be the most onerous task!
So, Sunday is D-day and I’ll be haveing a week off-line (as I got a BIG shock when I got my mobile phone bill after our summer holidays). I don’t know whether I’ll survive!

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