Turning into a naughty school girl?

Yesterday, I was privileged enough to attend the ISA briefing at Regent's College, to help schools who are hoping to gain the International School Award understand how to compile their portfolios of evidence. This blogpost is not about that! So, why mention it now? Well, one of the speakers (whose name escapes me at the moment) had a quote "dead fish can only float down stream, live fish can swim upstream". I've no idea what it means but felt that it was quite apt fo me at this moment in time. I've recently been feeling like I was stood still and could go no further with my ventures into new technologies, in the situation that I'm in, upon thinking about this quote I felt like maybe there was something I could offer others after all and that maybe I could re-awake my enthusiasm.

Upon my arrival back at work today I had a look at what I was going to be doing...obviously using those well-prepared 3 part lesson plans that I create for every lesson that I teach...and it occured to me I could do a section of a lesson involving using the sound recorders on mobile phones (I'd been thinking about mobiles ever since watching Chris Fuller's presentation at the IOWconference about use of mobile phones in the classroom). At my school mobiles are banned, as such, but pupils shouldn't have them turned on in class. I fore-warned a couple of collegues at break who all said "go for it", so I did.

It was my Yr10 NVQ Spanish class...so anything to avoid me having to teach/speak Spanish is a blessing...and we were learning how to understand/make phone messages about dates and rooms booked in hotels. We looked at some models, researched some vocabulary and did a listening exercise then wrote our own messages. Then I asked who had a mobile with them (halting hands rose) and then I asked who had a voice recorder on their phones (again, all hands half-way up, as they started to worry about what I was going to ask them to do!), so, I asked them to get their phones out and record their messages. Of course there was hysteria "wouldn't dare", "can't do that" etc...but then a cool girl just got on and did it and played it back...and then of course they all did it, realising that no-one was going to criticise what they said. I then asked them to play their recording to someone near them for their friend to note what they'd said...and there we had a listening comprehesion created by them. They were clearly impressed and I could see the lights going on in some heads as they realised they could do this was all of their language work to improve their speaking and listening skills.

Of course we had the looking through photos, listening to music (someone said "can I set mine to music?"...of course you can!), comparing of phones (I was jealous of some of them!). It was only to be expected but that, of course will disappear with more regular use. Although, naturally the use of the phones will lose its appeal if they are used too often.

I was very pleased with the activity and am now planning my next venture into breaking the rules, don't know what it will be yet...maybe I'll not take my register folder up to registration...since it's done on the computer! As for the phones I'm trying to come up with something with a more able class that involves speaking for longer and bluetoothing it to me for me to do something with.

Thinking outside the classroom box with Chris Fuller

My first workshop at the IOW Conference was "Thinking outside the classroom box" run by Chris Fuller. I must admit that I kind of gate-crashed this session, as I arrived much earlier than I expected having got on the Red Jet fast ferry rather than the slower car ferry. I got talking to someone who was going to his session and decided to tag along, not expecting to learn much new, as I blog myself. However, I went along to meet the man who left an amusing comment on here once and was certainly proved wrong about not expecting to learn anything new!
Chris runs the Edgehill College Spanish Blog and it's fab. He gave some great examples of how he has used the blog with pupils. I have already used my other blog with my pupils but nowhere near on the scale that Chris uses his. In particular, I loved the idea of getting the kids to write descriptions of themselves (without adding names), paste them into the blog and get the class to guess who was being described, adding their guesses via the comments...watch out for that idea being used when I get onto that topic with my Year 7s later this term! He also spoke about how he promoted the blog around school and made me think about how I could market mine a bit better around my school. I know that some pupils do visit and comment frequently but I'd like more to visit and get as many pupils as possible visiting and being enriched (can you say that?). So, although I sometimes struggle to talk myself up, I will be launching a huge advertising campaign around the school after half-term.
Chris also spoke about Podcasting and Moblogging using Gabcast and ShowZu both of which I'm hoping to try out with my pupils in the near future.
Next, he spoke about using mobile phones in language learning. I am really keen to get my pupils using their mobiles but have put of having the discussion with my Headteacher as I knew what the answer would be! It didn't help that a colleague, who saw Chris speak earlier in the year (I believe) went straight in to talk about pupils using them as soon as he got back to school and was (naturally) turned down. However, I'm considering the financial angle and thinking of going for the "look how much money we could save as a school if pupils used their phones instead of video recorders, voice recorders etc...". Money often talks louder than anthing else.
So, my first session of the conference was fascinating and I can thoroughly recommend going to hear Chris speak if you get the opportunity. He's really easy to listen too and has great examples of how he's using the technology he's talking about with his pupils...something that's worth it's weight in gold, in my opinion. Thank you, Chris!!!