Steve Whittle is Assistant Head at the Hayes School in Kent. He is fortunate enough to have a dedicated language lab at his school which he and his team have worked very hard on to make a place where pupils not only practise their languages but where they learn languages too, using all 4 skill areas. The MFL department have put in years of hard work to create an enviable bank of resources to use within the language lab and now, also within the schools' VLE. While they use their digital resources in their dedicated language lab, it was easy to see how many of the activities could be done without the specialist sortware and equipment that they had, it would just need setting up in a slightly different way.
The most interesting thing for me was the fact that their language lab is provided by Sanako / Tandberg. We actually have that system in our "dedicated" language lab! Now this made the whole workshop a revelation to me...I've worked here for 6 years now, nearly and don't think it's ever been used properly!!! It meant that I was able to speak to a man who works for Sanako and discuss with him getting our stuff working properly again. It must be said that I don't think it's anyone's fault that this amazing (and expensive) equipment has gone (realtively) unused at our school, I think it has more to do with high turn-over of staff (up until about 4 years ago) which meant the people who knew how to work it moved on and also a bit of the "fear factor" from some colleagues. This workshop has, however given me the momentum to get this room working properly again and really help our pupils fulfull their true potential.
I really got a lot out of this workshop and I think that this session, in particular will be one that can transform the whole MFL department's use of ICT across the board!
The most interesting thing for me was the fact that their language lab is provided by Sanako / Tandberg. We actually have that system in our "dedicated" language lab! Now this made the whole workshop a revelation to me...I've worked here for 6 years now, nearly and don't think it's ever been used properly!!! It meant that I was able to speak to a man who works for Sanako and discuss with him getting our stuff working properly again. It must be said that I don't think it's anyone's fault that this amazing (and expensive) equipment has gone (realtively) unused at our school, I think it has more to do with high turn-over of staff (up until about 4 years ago) which meant the people who knew how to work it moved on and also a bit of the "fear factor" from some colleagues. This workshop has, however given me the momentum to get this room working properly again and really help our pupils fulfull their true potential.
I really got a lot out of this workshop and I think that this session, in particular will be one that can transform the whole MFL department's use of ICT across the board!
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