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  • IWB Challenge: Task 1

    Posted on September 5th, 2008 admin View Comments

    The week was my opportunity to complete the Seven Wonders of the Whiteboard Challenge‘s first task. Set by Jess McCulloch it was all about using mp3 files and voice recording etc…
    “How on earth” I wondered to myself, “do I get that into my first week of the new school year”and a little voice inside my head said “you can do it”…I will go to the doctor’s about these voices very soon, I promise!
    I have a gorgeous Yr 7 German class and decided that, since by today I would have seen them twice already and they would know about some of my little “nuances”by now, that last lesson on a Friday afternoon was the perfect time to use them as guinea pigs. Having had an induction lesson last term when they came to visit, I thought it was a pretty safe bet that they would have learnt greetings and saying their names, so I decided to launch them in at the not-so-quite deep-end. I found some pictures of celebreties (see above) and recorded myself saying hello, saying their name, asking “What is your name?” and then saying “bye”. The class then had to listen to the sound-bite and drag the picture of the appropriate celebrety to the symbol of the speaker. They worked really well and they responded very positivly to this (although, I think in the future I need to stick to Simpsons characters) then moved on. We then practices a roleplay along the same lines and then I asked for volunteers to be recorded. Using my new USB microphone, I got 5 conversations recorded (some from the other side of the classroom…I was well impressed-much to the class’s amusement) which they actually really enjoyed. It was really great to hear them leaving the room telling their friends that they had been recorded. I think, in the long run, that being able to hear themselves speaking will really help them improve their spoken German as they’ll be able to hear their pronunciation for themselves and therefore hear when they need to make changes.
    I’m hoping to be a bit more ambitious with my next stage of the challenge, as I’ll have been back a work for a bit longer and will know my classes better (I hope).

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  • Return of the IWB Challenge

    Posted on August 28th, 2008 admin View Comments
    Whilst away on my eventful holidays the IWB Challenge was resurrected. I couldn’t wait to get home (I know but have you read about my holidays!) and get myself signed up for it.
    As a previous participant of the IWB Challenge, set up bu Jess McCulloch in April / May I discovered that there is so much more that the IWB can do other than show Powerpoints, I figured that taking part in this new, longer and more challenging (to me) challenge could only do me (and my pupils) good.
    I’m really looking forward to learning what more the board can do for my teaching and my pupils.
    For me, it’s really important to get them involved and have them come to the front to participate. I know that others in my department disagree, feeling that it demotives other pupils when only a few get to come up and do things. My answer to that is that I am sure there are severaly members of each class who would be mortified if they had to do anything in front of the class (as I would have been as a pupil)…however this kind of activity can build their confidence and also if the pupils know that everyone who wants a turn will get a turn in the course of time they won’d mind not being chosen straight away. During the last IWB Challenge, some of my best lessons were with a class of 31, most of whom were boys. They were so well motivated I couldn’t believe it (although it was chaotic and very loud)…the main thing was though that they were engaging with the lesson and with the language (something I struggled to get them to do during activities involving textbooks).
    I will be blogging about by successes (and failures) as the term progresses.

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  • My IWB Challenge Week 4

    Posted on May 16th, 2008 admin View Comments
    At last… I thought I might crumble under the pressure!
    Well, here I am at the end of my IWB challenge. I actually taught a full week of lessons this week – my first and only one of the half term! I was therefore able to “get stuck in” and use the board in ways I hadn’t done before. Maybe I missed the training on “How to use the Activestudio to its full potential” but this week I taught myself anyway! It’s so easy to use!
    • I created 2 of my own listening exercises this week by just recording myself in Audacity and converting to mp3, then instead of just saving the sound files into “My documents” I saved them in the “my sounds” folder within the “My Activstudio3″ folder and then when creating the flipchart I was able to just drag and drop them into the correct place. Fabberoony! The end result, a beautifully laid out table with a soundfile next to each person in the table and me knowing exactly what was going on (oh, and the pupils/ other staff in my Area being very impressed at my technical abilities!!)
    • I also made an Animoto video of hobbies and tried to embed it into a flipchart but I think that needs more practice!!
    • I also had a look at the “Flipchart builder” and founda lovely venn diagram, so I used that to do a “thinking skills” activity as a starter about breakfast food. One section was “France” the other was “Angleterre” and the class had to drag and drop the French words into the section they thought best fitted – naturally there were a lot in the middle bit!
    • In addition, I used the drag and drop to create severla sentences in several different ways.

    It didn’t help that in all of my activities the software kept crashing so kids had to sit at the computer and move things around.

    Onto Animoto, briefly, I’m currently working on a couple of projects with some classes…more to follow after half term!

    Throughout this challenge I have learnt that:
    1. The Activestudio 3 software is a lot more versatile than I gave it credit for
    2. Lesson planning can be fun
    3. Kids really enjoy the interactivity the IWB brings and are a lot more engaged thus they (should, theoretically) learn better!

    I probably learnt a lot more too but have already forgotten it!

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  • My IWB Challenge Week 3

    Posted on May 10th, 2008 admin View Comments
    Oh dear…
    I think I taught 2 “proper” lessons in my classroom this week, with a Bank Holiday, Orals and SATs going on!
    With one of those classes I couldn’t do anything with the IWB, as I’d just finished my Orals and was lacking in the creative department. The other lesson, I did use my IWB but it wasn’t particularly innovative or new! I created a flipchart of food pictures for a game of splat as a started (the kids love my all new fly-shaped fly swatters that one of my colleagues brought me back from Germany!). We then dragged the pictures into columns for masculine and feminine. Following on from that, I used the pen to just write and discuss du, de la and des, Then the pen stopped working so I had to type – which was better really, since the kids could read it more easily.
    That was last lesson on Friday so that was it !
    I have made some steps forward though. I now have Activstudio 3 installed on my computer at home so am now able to have a “play” and learn how to use it all properly!

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  • My IWB Challenge Week 2 and the Animoto Challenge

    Posted on May 2nd, 2008 admin View Comments

    Two challenges for the price of one this week!
    Embarking upon the IWB Challenge for this week, I decided it could be a good way to begin working on the Animoto Challenge that Jose Picardo set on his blog Box of Tricks the week before last. So, despite only being in my classroom 3 days this week due to my French Speaking Exams, I’ve been a busy bee.

    Firstly, I used Mystudiyo.com that Joe Dale blogged about and Lisa Stevens also used last week, to create a plenary for my Yr 8 class who have just begun to learn about food (I’m absolutely miles behind where I should be in Metro 2 vert!). It a was very simple word level activity, however they really enjoyed coming up to the board to click on the right answer. (Despite not being able to read the smaller words due to my high-quality projector) Here it is

    Naturally, I used animated Powerpoints…my Yr 9 set 5 class, who seemed “unteachable” back in September loved them. I also did a “vocabulary circle” (as we call them in our dept.) automatic slide transition and music for their plenary, putting together countries and transport (we’re planning a holiday) which they adored and didn’t get too carried away with the music.

    I got brave and started to use the ActiveStudio this week as well (I say brave, because it is like diving into the unknown wondering where the writing is going to appear this time – and yes, it is callibrated!!!). However, with Yr 11 I did Speed Dating, with one question on each page and set the clock to chime every 2 minutes (much to the frustration of the class above me!) so that they (and I ) knew when to change. I’ve use the timer quite a bit this week – mainly to annoy my colleagues – only joking!

    Going back to Powerpoint, I’m planning a different kind of holiday with my other Yr 9 class (no, not one that involves running very quickly off a cliff), as they are – apparently of a higher level than the previous class. We are consolidating knowledge of Europe at the moment, so I decided to do some European Geography with them. I’m working with some Yr 7 pupils on the Alternative Eurovision Song Contest as mentionned in a previous post and Jo Rys-Jones provided us with a fanatastic map of Europe powerpoint where you could move the map pins around. I hope that she doesn’t mind that I used this with my Yr 9 class and they loved it! I was stunned at how much they DID know :o ) I only wish I knew how to do something so clever myself, as I tried all night one night and failed :o ( Thank you Jo!

    Finally to Animoto. My Tutor Group, whom I adore (Yr 8) are doing a unit on the EU at the moment in Citizenship, so as a starter I created a 30 second Animoto video that feature items relating to various EU countries and they had to see how many countried they could spot. Couldn’t decide which I liked best one with some latin music (seen below) or another with Ode to Joy…see YouTube.

    Continuing with the Animoto theme, I also made a video of some of the photos from our Dutch project. Here is is (there is a rare photo of me with colleagues in there…can you spot it?)

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  • The IWB Challenge Week 1

    Posted on April 26th, 2008 admin View Comments
    As mentionned in a previous post, I (somewhat foolishly, I fear) decided to take up the IWB Challenge as set up by Jess McCulloch and also take up by me (of course) and Isabelle Jones from My Languages.
    What a week to start off with! I think I was actually in my classroom, fully focused, for a day last week, I therefore have to admit to not being very adventurous at all. I did mage a few things, all of which were newish to me:
    • On Monday I introduced clothing to my Yr7 bottom set. I used Powerpoint to introduce the clothes with their colours, like flashcards (not new) and then, as a plenary to see how much they had learnt I created another, more flashy Powerpoint. The slide transitions were all timed and there was music the started with the first slide and continued to the end, whilst on each slide there was a picture and a multiple choice of the correct sentence for them to pick. I know that to some this may be nothing new, but I only recently learnt how to do it (after having been taught by a wonderful colleague). The pupils seemed to like it too, the music seemed to keep them more focused on what they were doing, somehow!
    • With the same class, the next lesson I used a flashcard powerpoint where puils had to click on a number, a picture appeared, told me what theyn thought the French work for it was and then they “flipped” the slide to see if it was correct – could have been quite effective, if somehow things hadn’t got out of sync a bit in transfer from my lap to to my classroom computer :o (
    • The only other thing I can think of is not very exciting, or new really. To revise European Countries with my Yr9 Set 3 German class, I got them to come and draw links from the German name of the country to where it was on the map. It was very interesting to see their knowledge of European geography (and lack of it), so they learnt where some European countries were (see, I even got in some cross-curricular links!)
    The rest of the week was spent either in the computer suite or learning Japanese Calligraphy with Noriko, our Japanese Assistant.

    I have some rather ambitious plans for using placeSpotting.com and MyStudiyo that Joe Dale blogged about earlier this week for next week. We shall see how it goes…

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  • My IWB Challenge

    Posted on April 15th, 2008 admin View Comments
    Having read on Jess McCulloch’s excellent Technolote blog a couple of weeks ago about her Interactive Whiteboard Challenge and then seen Isabelle Jones‘ commitment to take up the challenge too in the comments on that post and in her own later post, I decided that since my own IWB lies dorment in my classroom much of the time that now was the ideal opportunity to improve upon my IWB skills.
    The idea is to use the IWB in 2 new ways every week and then blog about it at the end of that week. Hopefully, I can keep the ideas rolling and find 2 new ways to use it each week!!! I have some ideas for next week’s lessons anyway, so that’s a start.
    So from next week, when we return from our 2 week break I will begin and I intend to write a blog post about my ventures on a Friday evening (with the aid of Grolsch or Stella, depending on Tesco’s best offers that week!)

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