Top Tools for Digital Creativity in MFL: St. Robert of Newminster, Washington

Today I was very lucky to attend a CPD session that was run by the Catholic Partnership South for the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Co-ordinated by Sara Crawshaw, the Catholic Partnership runs CPD sessions, enrichment activities and a whole host of other things for staff and pupils who work or attend Catholic School in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. This particular event was for Heads of MFL and MFL teachers from the region.

In the morning we focussed on Ofsted and improving teaching of MFL, with a particular emphasis on independence. Sarah Brough and Sarah Sharpe both from County Durham LA inspired us with great ideas that work to help improve our pupils' indepence, particularly at KS4.

In the afternoon I was invited to run a "short" session on digital creativity in MFL. Below you can find my presentation that gives a whistle-stop tour of my current favourites in no particular order. I've also added links  mentioned in the presentation below that incase you can't access them from the slideshow. I know some people asked about having the powerpoint available to show their departments. You can do this either by downloading from the Slideshare site or it you're not sure about doing that follow this link to  be able to download the file from my Langwitch Language Resources Wiki.

Last night in preparation for the presentation, I asked MFLers on Twitter what their favourite Web 2.0 tools for MFL were and they posted their responses on a linoit, which you can view here (I'm unable to embed it, unfortunately but there is also an image of it at the top of this post). Favourite Web 2.0 Tools for MFL

I hope everyone found the session useful and many more find it useful viewing here.

Top tools for Digital Creativity in MFL

View more presentations from Helena Butterfield.

Websites that were mentioned:

For word clouds

• Wordle: http://wordle.net


• Image chef: http://imagechef.com


• Tagxedo: http://tagxedo.com

For making language walls

• Wallwisher: http://wallwisher.com


• Linoit: http://linoit.com

Voice recordings and collaboration

• Voicethread: http://voicethread.com


• Voki: http://voki.com


• Xtranormal: http://xtranormal.com

Cartoon makers

• Toondoo: http://toondoo.com


• Go animate: http://goanimate.com and http://domo.goanimate.com

Story telling

• Storybird: http://storybird.com


• For MFL Storybirds: http://mfl-storybirds.wikispaces.com

I'll add more when I remember them. If there are anythat I've missed please let me know and I will add them.

If you'd like some examples of how I have used some of these tools, please feel free to look around my school blogs and wikis:

Langwitch (blog that I ran at my last school)

Langwitch @ St. Michael's

Langwitch Wiki

Time to have your say

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On Thursday, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, announced the review of the Primary and Secondary National Curriculum in England. The Department for Education, apparently, wants our opinions and evidence about the National Curriculum...so now its our chance to give our views through the Call for Evidence.

Whether they decide to listen to us or not, I think it's still important that we give our views, as teachers, parents, students...infact anyone who has an interested in the education of our future generations, it maybe our only chance!

If you wish to contibute you can do so by following this link. You can do it either online, or download it as a word document and fill in a hard copy instead. I've already started mine and have found I have some pretty strong views, not only about my own subject buy also about every other subject on the curriculum! I just keep typing everywhere I can that I believe MFL should be statutory at Primary Level and that I would like Languages for All at KS4 but not  necessarily GCSE Languages for all! Maybe they'll get the message...eventually...

Linked Up Update

In my last post I talked in particular about the Linked Up project that I had been involved in. There have been a number of projects running around the country dealing with a wealth of strategies, phases and topics.

If you are looking for inspiration, or for something different then look no further than the Linked Up projects that are curently up on the website. There have been so many running up and down the country that I sure many more resources will be uploaded in the coming weeks and months. They can all be viewed here on the Linked Up Award Scheme page of the Links into Languages website.

Linked Up Resources now available online

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have been working on a project funded by the Linked Up scheme developing resources designed to encourage independent thinking amongst KS4 pupils, in particular. The project, lead by Zahida Hammond, ran between networks of teachers in the Northeast and in the Middlesbrough and Stockton Networks we worked on the topic of the environment, in particular using Yannick Noah's Aux Arbres Citoyens as a starting point.

The project has now come to its end and the final results, including resources, learning plans and evaulations (including one by Helen Butterfield!) are also available. These are particularly helpful, if like me, you have an idea that you'd like to do some Thinking Skills activities but don't really know where to start! They can be used as stand alone activities within the topic of the environment, or over a series of lessons. Personally, had I not been doing this for the project I would have mingled the activities in with more "traditional" activities, however the pupils got a lot out of the project and were able to produce some fantastic French...and eventually they will be ready to do their Controlled Assessments on it as well, if we don't have anymore snow disruptions...

The project, together with all resources can be found on the Linked Up pages of the Links into Languages website here. You will have to be logged in with your Links into Languages account to download.

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.

Hello MYLO!

About a year ago I was asked whether I would be interested in becoming a MYLO Ambassador. I was intrigued, having heard about the new My Languages Online website that would be a free online resource for language learners so, naturally I agreed, always keen to use technology with pupils to motivate and engage them.

From Easter through to the summer holidays I trialled the website with my Year 8 top set French class and also a lower ability Spanish class. I have to say that they absolutely loved using it. They really liked the points aspect of the activities both for the sense of achievement of amassing points and also from the competition point of view of scoring points against their fellow classmates and also...against others schools!

I was therefore extremely pleased to hear today that the MYLO site is now finally out of the trial phase and live. You don't need to register to use it, however if you do, you can set up school groups and class groups and they can compete against one another. Maybe just the ticket for those who have go the competitive bug after the Language Olympics!

Visit the site here: http://mylo.dcsf.gov.uk/ to create an account or just have a play around and think about how you could use it!

Think German

As a German specialist I often feel dismayed when I see and hear my first foreign language being sidelined in favour of other languages.

I have therefore been very pleased recently to find out about the Think German website. It's all about raising the profile of German and promoting the learning of German to both adults and children. Even better I am loving the adverts on Real Radio promoting the website stating "Think German, you already speak it!"

In an era where times are hard for us Modern Linguists - particularly we Germanists - it's nice to know that people are promoting languages!

If you haven't aready visited the Think German website, you really should! It's packed full of information about learning German, online German links, quizzes, competitions and ideas for teachers. I've just ordered a the free magazine from UK-German Connection that I'd never come across beforeand hope to be able use it for authentic texts, helping my pupils gain an insight into German youth culture and much, much more! They also have a Facebook page so that you can keep up with what's going on, why not "like" their page and join in.

Go on..."Think German...you already speak it!"