UK eTwinning Conference 2013

As an eTwinning Ambassador, I was delighted to be able to attend this year's eTwinning Conference at the NCTL in Nottingham at the weekend, after having missed last year due to work commitments. As ever, the whole event filled me with enthusiasm and inspired me to get going with more eTwinning projects in the coming academic year.

I think, it's fair to say that, in a time when the teaching profession is criticised daily in the media for being "enemies of promise" and failing pupils no matter what it does, it's not easy to remain positive about a job that I love.  This is why an event such as the UK eTwinning Conference is so fantastic, as you never meet a negative eTwinner. They are always so full of energy and new ideas that you cannot fail to be uplifted.  This was certainly true of this weekend.  Not only were the workshops (which I'll come to later) inspirational but also the opportunity to catch up with old friends and meet new ones to share ideas and experience is invaluable.

The British Council and eTwinning always manage to put together a programme for these events that gives opportunity for collective reflection and also for personal (professional) growth and this weekend was no different.  The conference was started with a Key Note speech from Aileen Monaghan, and HMI for Education Scotland. She spoke about "Transformative change in learning and links with international education". It was truly awesome to hear an HMI praise teachers and talk about how our work is crucial in moving pupils forward. She also highlighted a project from a workshop that I attended, showcasing how eTwinning had worked together with HMIs to move a school from a very difficult place where staff were unhappy and children weren't getting the most out of their education to transforming the learning and the school.  I have to say that I ended up wishing that I worked in Scotland, where people seem very sensible indeed!
 
My first workshop was run by David Mitchell and was on the theme of Quadblogging. This is something that I have been interested in for a while and have often thought about getting involved. David spoke about how blogging had increased pupil achievement with his Year 6 class over the course of a year and also about how he came up with the idea of Quadblogging.  The idea is fantastic. 4 classes with 4 different blogs who visit and comment on those blogs in a cycle each month.  That is way too simplistic a description of it and would suggest that if you don't yet know about Quadblogging, you can read about it at Quadblogging.net. I have signed up and hope to get my new Tutor Group Quadblogging in September.

Saturday afternoon saw me going to Bob Harrison's workshop on Education's Digital Future.  It was mind blowing to think about where technology can take our pupils and how little (some) schools have prepared for this.  I was particularly interested in a quiz that Bob did with us about new technologies and to find out where pupils often sit with this in comparison to their teachers.  We need to make sure that we keep up with them otherwise schools will be left behind.

The eTwinning Awards, as ever were full of inspirational teachers being rewarded for their outstanding projects, giving me lots of food for thought in terms of projects for next year.

Sunday saw us in more workshops. In the one I went to run by John Warwick and Lesley Atkins I found more about the school and project that I mentioned earlier.  It was really fascinating to see how international education can transform a school and the learning within that school.  What a shame more people can't see the possibilities. It is essential that for international education within schools to be successful, it needs to be embedded in the curriculum otherwise when staff change, it dies.  eTwinning is so easy to do and to embed into the curriculum!

As the conference drew to a close, we were reminded of how important it is to make sure that our pupils are digitally educated by Connor Galvin of University College, Dublin and discussed the topic of who is responsible for our children's digital safety. There is no easy answer to this but we did decided (on our table) that digital safety was essential and should be a partnership between school and parents - however all too often parents don't know what "digital safety" means.

The conference closed and we all bid our sad farewells to one another, happy in the knowledge that we had not given up our weekends for nothing and fully enthused for the end of term!

Watch out for new eTwinning projects from me coming your way in 2013-14...including something involving Scratch (I hope)

You can find out more about eTwinning at http://etwinning.net and at eTwinning UK's blog.

Motivation and Engagement through International Links #ililc3

My other presentation was on my favourite topic of International Links.  There was a strong focus on the benefits of eTwinning as I'm such a fan and an eTwinning Ambassador (also that is where I have most of my experience in working with schools across Europe). virtually.

Here is the presentation, also if you search for the eTwinning tag on this blog, you will find out lots more about eTwinning and how it can benefit your pupils and you as a teacher.  Enjoy...

International collaboration from Helena Butterfield

European eTwinning Conference Berlin 2012

Berlin 2012, a set on Flickr.

I had a wonderful time at the European eTwinning Conference in Berlin this weekend.

When I received the invitation to Berlin 2012 I was overjoyed, as Berlin is my most favourite place ever, so I awaited the conference with great excitement. As ever, eTwinning did not disappoint.The theme of the conference was "eTwinning Teams" focusing on the importance of working with others both near and far to have successful collaborations.

Inspirational speeches and workshops, combined with great company of old friends and new  meant that conference will stay in my memory for a long time.  I particularly enjoyed being able to exercise my linguistic skills, listening to speeches in French, German and Spanish and also going to a workshop in German on the role of SLT in international projects which I truly enjoyed.

I really enjoyed Anne Looney's Keynote Speech which was fun and interactive with a serious message at the same time. The eTwinning Prizes provided much needed inspiration for me, leaving me with many ideas for future projects.  Saturday was filled with workshops giving me ideas on how to involve more people in my school in eTwinning and how to overcome obstacles that could be in the way of getting more people involved, getting SLT on board with international projects in terms of support and involvement and finally a nice workshop where various eTwinning shared their experiences and projects.  This was really nice to see the what other people across Europe were doing in terms of eTwinning.

Other highlights of the weekend included a coach tour of Berlin with the most brilliant tour guide, who was as hilariously funny as he was knowledgeable, as visit to the Irish Pub in the Europa Center, a visit to the Havana Salsa club and of course to top it all off arriving at Berlin Schoenefeld Airport just after Jedward!

All in all a great time was had by everyone.  Thank you, eTwinning.

ps I'm even starting to learn how to use Flickr after all this time!

For a more detailed look at the speeches and workshops, along with links to resources you can read the UK eTwinning NSS blog about the conference here

A bear named Michel...or Michael, maybe!

Some of you may remember Michel le Voyageur who had many adventures around Europe though an eTwinning project last year. He was French and had a wiki that was updated as he travelled round Europe. Upon arrival back home in Billingham, he sat in my classroom and was admired by all who gazed upon him.

I feared that Michael was getting bored by February as my classroom isn't always the most stimulating place to be all day everyday, as the worksheets come out :)

One day, my lovely Year 10s gave me an idea. Some of them were heading to Iceland on a Science trip at half term. They asked whether Michel could accompany them. He did and had a great time going to glaciers, causing trouble and even gaining a companion in the shape of a (cuddly) puffin! Upon his return from Iceland, Michel seemed restless and told me he needed a change so, I kindly obliged.

He has had a (small) name change and is now known as Michael der Reisende and he has a blog.  This blog, however is not written by me, it is written by members of my Y8 German class.  Each week, one of them will take Michael home and blog about what he has done.  I hope that this will help improve their writing skills and also keep them interested in German.  It also gives them the opportunity to have a real audience for their writing in German - normally only I get to see it...and SLT when they do work scrutiny.

Posterous is brilliant for class blogging, as you can set up the account so that anyone can email a post in and you just have to approve it.  No logging in,  no passwords to forget, just an email address to send to. The class seem really interested in the project and he has already had one blog post written, with many comments.  I'm looking forward to reading about what else he does.

What's also nice is that he seems to be gaining a network of other cuddly travellers along the way as well.

Do you have a mascot that blogs in a foreign language or goes home with pupils? If so let me know and I'll share with Y8, they would love to see what other classes are doing.

If ever there was a reason to do an eTwinning Project...

...then this is it!

Whenever I talk about eTwinning, one of the biggest things I mention is the fact that it gives pupils an audience for their work, aside from the excellent opportunity to collaborate with other pupils across Europe and find out about our European neighbours.Over the past few months this has really shown itself to be true.

One of my classes have had a bear called Michel that has travelled around Europe this year. A bit childish for Secondary School pupils, some may think (though not me and certainly not them) ...however they have loved it.

At moments when I have been in the depths of despair (not really) one of the boys has asked how he's doing and we've learned such a lot about Europe and schools around Europe. We've learned that older pupils like have bears visit them just as much as younger ones (in fact more, judging by the photos of Michel playing in a band!).

Anway, last week Michel returned to Billingham for the Summer and we used the opportunity to do some creative writing (yes, creative, writing). I believe the resulting work is fantastic (specially considering these pupils could scarcely build a sentence in French in September).

The activity also gave opportunity for pupils to address those other skills that are so important in everyday life; working as part of a team, being creative, reflecting on previous work, being a good self manager etc..., as each group had to assigne group leaders, collators and time keepers to make sure the task got completed to a high standard.

Why has the work been so successful? Well, because they've been so well taught all year...no but really it's because they are interested in what they're doing, it's something real (we've had lots of boys cuddling teddies in the classroom recently) and also they know that someone other than me will read it!

Here's Michel's Wiki...have a look for yourselves:

Les aventured de Michel le Voyageur en Europe

I haven't directed you to the exact page, I'll let you have a look round. The technical college in Rominia with the older pupils is a must, as is his trip to Balamory Tobermory!

MFL Show and Tell

On Saturday I was lucky to be able to attend the third MFL Show and Tell which was held at The Radclyffe School in Oldham and hosted by Isabelle Jones.

About 40 people had signed up on the Wiki to attend and it was really great to see so many MFLers there, keen to share ideas and learn from one another.

I decided to have a go a presenting and spoke about my eTwinning experiences. You can see the presenation here below.

Show and Tell eTwinning

View more presentations from Helena Butterfield.

There were so many fantastic ideas to take away and use straight away my head is still buzzing. Just some of the things I'm planning to have a go at in the near future are:

• Getting my very own Mug of Misery, as demonstrated by Dominic McGladdery, to randomly choose names in a low-tech fashion.


• Making games for my school blog using Zondle and Studystack - ideas that were share with us by Kath Holton


• Getting pupils to create their own Minibooks, as demonstrated by Clare Seccombe.


• Using Kagan co-operative learning techniques for getting pupils talking, as shown by Marie O'Sullivan...I'm planning to use the Rally Robin idea tomorrow!

There was loads of other fabulous ideas that I listening to and I'm sure I've missed loads of inspriring stuff...I'll blog more about things as I try them!

Thank you to Isabelle Jones for organising and hosting such a wonderful day and to Dominic McGladdery for driving!

For some more detailed blogposts about the whole day you can read more on Dominic's blog and Isabelle's blog.

Spicing up your Y7 Scheme of Work

Well hello there! Long time no see ....!!!

I have had a manic half term and may have time to blog about it over the half term break.

Until then I hope this will interest some.

Today I am doing a short presentation about Spicing up Y7 Schemes of Work. There are lots of hyperlinks to other things so will try to upload them all either to here or will find somewhere else to share them.

All of the documents referred to, together with many other resources are now available here on my new Wiki!

Hope you find this useful...

Spicing up your y7 sow

View more presentations from Helena Butterfield.

Busy Weekend

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...!

Happy 5th Birthday eTwinning

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.

[caption id="attachment_439" align="alignleft" width="205" caption="Photograph courtesy of Tony Barraclough Photography"][/caption]

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

[caption id="attachment_440" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Photograph courtesy of Tony Barracough Photography"][/caption]

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!

Online International Collaboration

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.

The French Exchange Finally Happened

[caption id="attachment_395" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Took this at the NRM and thought it was funny!"][/caption]

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.

I think I'm addicted...

...to Wallwisher!
I thought for a long time about a project for the EDL on Friday that could included as many of our international partners as possible and, after having a go a Voicethread and no-one contibuting, I decided to go for something simpler. As I mentioned in my last post, I had a go with Wallwisher this week and I thought it was a great idea for a collaborative international project, so I set one up. It has already begun to have additions made so I'm hoping that by Friday all contributers will have a wonderful resource to share with their pupils and colleagues.

Holidays and High Hopes

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!

TeachMeetNE - eTwinning in Practice

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...

TeachMeetNE

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!

Comenius Northeast Good Practice Guide

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...

eTwinning workshop at Stockton CLC

[caption id="attachment_191" align="alignleft" width="79" caption="eTwinning"][/caption]

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.

Annual eTwinning Conference, Prague

I was really fortunate to be invited to attend the Annual eTwinning Conference last weekend.  The event took place in Prague and it was really amazing to be involved.

I began my journey with eTwinning nearly 2 yrs ago, in a search for a French school so that we could set up an exchange.  Once I made my first advert for a school I was hooked and found it very hard not to accept every offer of a project that I came across.  However, one of the projects I set up with a French school was highly successful and even got into the short-list for the European eTwinning Prize (though not to the finals) and that was how I ended up, last Friday heading to Prague rather than taking part in our usual LEA-wide CPD Day that was taking place.

Several delegates, inlcuding Lisa Stevens, were blogging on the conference blog throughout the weekend, so I'm not going to go into too much detail about workshops etc..., as I think that they are very well written about there.  I thought that I might just write about some of the highlights for me.

One of the main things I was looking forward to was the Key Note Speech given by Dr. Edward de Bono.  I must say that he didn't disappoint.  His presentation style was unique, using a webcam to project the writing he was doing throughout his speech he spoke about how we can learn and teach creative thinking.  I found this most inspiring and it certainly gave me some ideas as to how I can harness my creativity and how I can help my pupils to be more creative with their language work. 

There were plenty of other activities aimed at helping us develop our creativity and also think about how we can "spread the word" about eTwinning in our local areas and further afield.

Another major highlight for me was a coach tour of Prague.  Unfortunately is was at night but even so, it was amazing to be visiting such a beautiful city.  The Czech CSS had provided coaches for all 400+ delegates and guides to give us a  comprehensive description of their beautiful capital city.  It was a very pleasant experience, made even more pleasant to have the opportunity to leave our coach and walk into the Old Town.  Only three of us from my coach took up the opportunity to brave the cold of the night but I was pleased we did.

I also came away with a fantastic moto; "What we learn without joy, we forget without regret".  I have forgotten (with regret) the name of the lady who said this but may of us thought how apt that was!

I had a really great time at the conference, not least because I got know and spend time with some really lovely people of differing nationalities and backgrounds.  Thank you, eTwinning for inviting me!

I took very few photos, so here's a short video I made in Moviemaker with thanks to Smetana for the appropriate backing music...

 

It's here

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!

Feeling enthusiastic and motivated!

Well it's not often I can say that!
I was very pleased today to find out that service can be great if you order from the right places. My USB microphone and web-cam arrived this afternoon and I was very impressed, as they had only been ordered on Friday! I collected them and eagerly took them upstairs to show them off to my waiting Year 9 class. I decided that, rather than wait for our over-worked technician to intall them, I'd plug them in and see what happened. Imagine my (and my class's) delight when they worked. We had great fun with me recording them making too much noise and filming them doing no work! I then started to tell them the sad tale of my wireless keyboard and mouse, puchased at Christmas and still sitting sad and unloved in a dusty office. They suggested that I might be able to just plug them in too. So I dispatched one of them to get said keyboard and mouse and what do you know it worked! How chuffed am I? (I know it's really sad but I actually feel a bit like a naughty school-girl not waiting to have them intalled - but that would take until sometime next year). The web-cam does have some features that do need installing via the CD but they can wait...the important thing is that I can now video-conference from the comfort of my own desk and also get classes involved too (you can just about make out the class it you put the camera at the front of the room)!!
In addition to this, I'm beginning to think about new eTwinning projects for the coming year. We're apparently going to launch head-long into planning a Comenius Project and I have been charged with finding a Polish school to work with...all very well and good but how do I turn down the other 3 Polish schools, 2 Romanian schools, Spanish school and Swedish school who also want to work with us? (I'm not good at saying "no") ...although Sweden sounds interesting. In addition, a very interesting German project was being advertised and I couldn't help myself...oh and of course there's the French school that would like to blog with us too... The more the merrier I say! I wouldn't be put off at the thought of having a different project for every class I teach it's so important for kids to see that what they're learning can have a real and immediate impact on their lives.
No wonder my Head of Area made the comment that I'm "up for anything" (in the nicest possible way, of course).