Pollyglott's Adult ELEarning blog

new classes!

2011-10-03T14:21:00.001+01:00

I have finally launched out on my own, hired a hall and started my own Spanish classes for adults. It's a different experience but one that I'm thoroughly enjoying!

Sevilla , diciembre del 2010

2010-12-27T18:42:00.000Z

Tapas

2010-06-04T17:06:00.001+01:00

My beginners class had a memorable tapas meal last night. They thoroughly enjoyed practising their Spanish. I took loads of photos of them ordering, eating and paying for their food and they all practised asking the waiter questions about himself. Next, I shall ask them to provide Spanish captions for all the photos!

Chile and Argentina 2010

2010-06-02T21:03:00.002+01:00

Another wonderful trip to Latin America, new friendships formed and inspiring life stories heard.

When I came back after Easter the six week summer course at Intermediate Plus Level started. This will prepare students for the advanced course in September, so we have been consolidating this year's work on the subjunctive mood. We've also had Isabel from Chile as a volunteer. Students wanted to know more about Chilean food, transport, history and the poetry of Pablo Neruda, so we have been weaving these topics into our classes. Six weeks is not enough!

class videos

2010-02-28T16:36:00.004Z

This term our Intermediate Plus group have been preparing short videos about why they are learning Spanish and what the challenges of learning a language are for them. We have been working on increasing oral fluency and better pronunciation and imitating the 'music' of the language. The aim was to talk naturally and to rely on prompts as little as possible.

This sort of work takes a long time and several attempts each at the videos. We used inexpensive, easy to operate Busbi videocameras, so the picture quality is not the greatest, but acceptable for our purposes. Here's an example of a video clip one of the learners made.

If you listen to the video all the way through, I think one thing you won't agree with is when the speaker says she doesn't think she has the language skills to undertake a trip to South America. She is just being very modest! In fact another of my learners from this class made a solo trip around Venezuela for a month last November and managed really well. Her confidence in speaking Spanish has soared this year!

Our new language volunteer

2010-01-22T17:31:00.009Z

In a previous post I wrote about the Adult Learning Language volunteers scheme in our area , which was awarded the Mary Glasgow annual award in 2009.

I now have another volunteer, Bea , who has just started helping with one of my adult classes. Bea is from Gran Canaria but has recently moved to England to live.

Here is Bea, (above, first left) reading some question cards in a new game ' Viaje a España', one of an excellent series of board games by the Eli company. This was excellent listening comprehension for the learners , testing them on vocabulary, grammar, and Spanish history, geography and culture.

And here's another view of our classroom with Bea and another learner. ( note : laptop, portable Smart Board- we're doing well with the technology hardware now in Adult Learning - we now use digital video cameras and recorders as well!)

In her first session with us, Bea also explained (in Spanish of course) how the Spanish of the Canary Islands differs from Castilian Spanish . I had been aware that the c before e and i and the z were pronounced as s rather than th, but I didn't know in the Canary Islands they used the 'ustedes' rather than the vosotros form, as in Latin America. The cultural and language enrichment which comes from having a volunteer in the class benefits us all, learners and tutors alike.

BETT 2010

2010-01-17T14:19:00.016Z

As a first time ever visitor to BETT, the world's leading educational technology exhibition, I was struck by the immense size of it all and by the crowds that were there, even on the final day. For some years now I have been going to the Language Show, but this one is an order of magnitude bigger.

I have to say that my main reason for going was to meet some of my friends from ALL, Second Life and Twitter and only secondarily to look at the exhibits, as most of them are geared to school education and many entail the outlay of considerable investment in the cutting edge software and hardware. But I am always fascinated to see what is going on in ed tech in all sectors. How language laboratories have changed since my secondary school teaching days! In those days back in the earlier 90's taking certain classes to the language lab was something to be dreaded, as the pupils were enclosed in litlle closed off booths which afforded all kinds of opportunities for destructive behaviour such as inserting magnets or sticking chewing gum in the tape recording equipment whilst the teacher was trying to operate the very complex console. It all looks so much more fun, more creative and easier to operate now.

Like the Language Show in the autumn, BETT is also free to get in , and there are loads of interesting seminars, either bookable or just ones where you turn up . I just happened to be passing a talk by Stephen Heppell of Bournemouth University on 'Playful Learning', and stopped to listen to his animated presentation. There were some impressive interactive whiteboard exhibits and every other technology you could think of- this year I only had time to see a tiny bit and you certainly need comfortable shoes as there is a lot of walking involved.

Feliz Año Nuevo

2010-01-09T21:53:00.008Z

Happy New year to everyone!

Snow has delayed the beginning of the Adult Learning term, so it´s time now to get back into blogging and reflect a bit on last term.

Things have been changing fast. We´re all having to adapt to new exam specs which have meant a large amount of extra paperwork. Learners now have to meet 100% of the specified criteria, rather than the previous pass mark of 70%. At least they can have as many attempts at the assessments as they need now, and we have a lot more leeway over the topic fields chosen.

I have been able to develop the Learning platform a lot more last term and this has been one of the most enjoyable and creative parts of my work. Most of the learners seem to appreciate it too, although it is always an uphill battle to get some learners to use it. Success in a language is just not going to come by some process of osmosis. It's like the inscription that my husband, with tongue in cheek, wrote in a book about Windows 7 that he gave me for Christmas :

'DISCLAIMER-Possesssion of this book does not, in and of itself, ensure the acquisition of the knowledge contained within!'

(hmmm.. I have still not put my iTunes music onto my iPhone despite having a book which has a whole chapter about it! )

Language learning requires perseverance, passion and self knowledge, knowing how you learn best and how to seek out what will help your learning. As tutors we are far more aware now of different learning styles. New technologies make it much easier to provide a greater variety of visual , auditory and kinaesthetic activities. I love to add a lot of visual material to the Learning Platform, and our 'Moodle' is to be updated this year so that richer media can be embedded. We now have new Busbi video recorders and sound recorders to eventually replace the old cassettes. So as long as we don't have another great snowfall (unlikely down here on the coast) my classes are going to be playing with some new equipment next week!

And finally, I'm looking forward to my first visit to BETT next weekend, and .. I have just booked flights to Chile this Easter!

texts, SMS,

2009-11-21T21:35:00.005Z

We´ve been trying out some new things in the Intermediate class recently . There´s now a Wiki on the learning platform , which I hope will develop into a script for a podcast in a few weeks time. And last week I invited learners to send me texts (SMS) during the class, using textspeak if they wished. Here are a couple ! ( :-Q = acatarrado, full of a cold ! x =por)

1492 and all that - la Fiesta Nacional and the pitfalls of teaching 'culture'

2009-10-12T16:59:00.003+01:00

One of my most important Personal Learning Networks is the mfl resources forum. Yesterday there was a link on the forum to this song by Mecano.

There's a link at the side of the original You Tube video to another series of clearly narrated videos about the history and culture of the Americas, in Spanish, from artehistoria.com.
This one is 'el descubrimiento de América'

Well, it seems a nice historical story which affords plenty of opportunities to recognise and work on past tenses, in a cultural context. And perhaps the lower level classes might find it difficult to go any further than that in the target language. Most of my learners were surprised to hear that Columbus was not actually looking for the Americas but for the spice-laden Indies.

However, other implications of the discovery cannot be romanticised. Because of course, this national holiday is not universally 'celebrated'. For many the overtones of colonialisation, and the spreading of 'Hispanidad' by force, are repellent, and no cause for celebration. That's why I 've put a link to this Wikipedia article in English onto my learning platform pages, which describes how the holiday in viewed in other countries and communities besides Castilian Spain. Indeed, some Catalan friends on Twitter yesterday told us they were going to work today as usual, and to **** with 'la Hispanitat'!

Trying to give learners just some small picture of the diversity of the Spanish speaking world is always a real challenge! What I can hope for is to give a few pointers and stimulate a bit of curiosity so that they can discover more for themselves.

¡Hola a tod@s!

2009-10-09T16:46:00.003+01:00

We´re a few weeks into our term and classes are settling in well now. It is so satisfying to be teaching learners who really want to learn and who bring their unique contributions to the classes!

I heard somewhere recently that Web 2.0 is not a technology, it´s an attitude. An attitude of sharing and collaborating which crosses all boundaries, which is changing the whole way we teach and learn.

Talking about nationalities, I´ve just been looking at my ClustrMap, (scroll down, to the right)and I see that people from many parts of the world have been finding this blog recently. Welcome to you all and thank you for reading! I hope you will find some useful resources here (please check out some of the older posts too) and will get in contact and tell me about your adult language classes too.

hasta la próxima....

waiting for the beginning of term

2009-09-16T21:41:00.004+01:00

Less than a week to go before classes start again. As always at this time of the year, some classes are nearly but not quite viable. Will we have a few late enrollers to bump the numbers up? Not to mention those who may just turn up on the night.
Adult learning is becoming more and more expensive for the learner as government subsidies are being gradually reduced year on year. This is having a definite effect on the numbers of beginners in Spanish. Years ago we used to have full beginners classes, now it's difficult to get a beginners class off the ground. But at least we have an Adult Learning service in this area- there are already large areas of the UK where there is no provision at all.

more visual aids to conversation - wordles and photo collages

2009-08-23T19:42:00.006+01:00

Photo collages are easy to make using a free application such as Picasa and learners can easily make their own and use as prompts to talk about their holidays or free time activities or interests. Having the visual stimulus makes it so much more interesting for the others in the group and keeps their mind on the task!

Last September in this blog I wrote about Wordle This turned out to be popular with the learners from my intermediate group. We used 'wordles' to form a kind of learner 'profile'. Learners interviewed others early on in the course, practising question and answer techniques and writing a resumé of their findings which was then converted into a Wordle, printed up and laminated. A few weeks later, as an icebreaker activity, I gave the 'wordles' numbers and stuck them on the walls. I then asked learners to assign the right name to each 'wordle', using both reading and speaking skills to find out information from others. During the year the 'wordles' were used for other group conversation activities and finally learners took their own 'wordle' home at the end of the course.

Cute Alert!

2009-07-17T22:27:00.006+01:00

This could be a nice Spanish song to use in class for beginners ..'yo soy tu amigo....'. Or look at this blog for activities and the complete text of the song - Asociación Argentina de Docentes de Español

It's got a simple catchy tune, just like this one which practises the days of the week.

It may be cutesy but all my beginners loved it. Music fixes language in the brain like nothing else.

Volver, Argentina and blipping

2009-06-24T22:53:00.011+01:00

All my Wednesday classes have now finished for the summer and so there's a bit more time to catch up with blog writing and also spend a bit more time just doing fun things, like starting to put together a music compilation on blip.fm. I suppose blip.fm is like a musical version of Twitter- instead of 'tweets' you 'blip' music of any genre, which you can search for. You can make your own lists and listen to other 'DJ's'. I was interested to find this 'blip' today (scroll down and click on 'play')

In my third year class we have been watching the Almodóvar film Volver over a couple of weeks at the end of term. If you have seen the film you will remember Penélope Cruz singing this song. What I didn´t know was that it was originally a Carlos Gardel song. Carlos Gardel was *the* big name in tango music In Buenos Aires in the 1930's, and there is a small square named after him, where we went to a rather over-priced tango show when I was there at Easter.. but that's another story.

The European Award for Languages - success for Adult Learning!

2009-06-16T23:04:00.014+01:00

We've heard so much gloom and doom recently about adult courses being cut. Some regions in the UK no longer offer any public sector adult leisure courses. So it's encouraging to have some good news for once and to be able to celebrate!

We recently heard that Dorset Adult Learning has been awarded one of the prestigious CILT European Awards for Languages for 2009. To qualify for these awards, projects have to be creative, innovative, have an international dimension and also be replicable - that is, the same kind of project could feasibly be carried out in other areas or even countries.

Just under three years ago, Corinne Middlemiss, our curriculum manager, had the idea for a new 'Volunteers in MFL' scheme. Secondary schools have welcomed language assistants in their classrooms for many years but the concept had never been piloted in adult learning classes in the UK before. Initially native speakers who had been learning English as a foreign language with Adult Learning were invited to become volunteers in language classes as an assistant to the class tutor. The first volunteer was a young lady from Chile who became a volunteer in two of my own classes. So far we have had French, German and Spanish speaking volunteers, and the scheme has been extended to include members of the wider community, both native speakers and those who have lived in another country for many years. Corinne has overseen the project, monitoring its progress and evaluating the outcomes, and volunteers are offered training and support.

Having a volunteer in a class does entail some extra preparation by the tutor before each class, but the benefits of having a volunteer are enormous. Small group, carousel activities are much easier to manage with the help of a volunteer. Apart from the varied types of language practice input that a volunteer can give to small groups of learners, there's an extra cultural dimension. Isabel from Chile helped my learners to appreciate that Spanish is a world wide language and that customs and ways of saying things can be very diverse on different sides of the ocean!

Have any readers outside Europe heard of any similar schemes in adult language classes, perhaps in EFL classes?

addendum - Breaking News 30.06.09 We have just heard that the same project has been awarded the Mary Glasgow Trust annual award of £2000 for the European Award for Languages which best impressed the Trust's judges!

El anuario de la clase

2009-06-12T16:58:00.006+01:00

It's nearly the end of the year for most of our classes. My intermediate class has been producing a class yearbook, which we hope will be ready for the last class next week. One learner has done a 'Wordle'. Another has produced a page which is a lovely mash-up of a screen shot of one of their favourite internet Spanish sites and some class photos. There's a word search on one of our topics this year- Services and Emergencies. I've just received this contribution from a learner who has produced a 'glog' about imperatives, which she planned and directed unaided.

'Glogs' are an effective way for a learner to make a grammar point become alive, and to involve the rest of the class too. I'm hoping that in the next academic year we can start to use video too and hopefully produce some podcasts!

Animoto - Argentina and Uruguay

2009-05-12T23:31:00.001+01:00

and here it is....

Animoto for Education

2009-05-12T23:14:00.003+01:00

I 've wanted to try Animoto for some time, having read so much about it in other blogs. I signed up for an Education account a few days ago. This means you can make longer videos and it's free for educational institutions. Your students can also make theirs and share them with other students.
For the first one I just put in my Argentina and Uruguay photos again., just to see what happened. The idea is to encourage my students to make their own videos on Hispanic travel and themes and see what emerges.

Argentina and Uruguay Easter 2009

2009-04-21T22:32:00.005+01:00

Here's just a selection of my photos from Argentina and Uruguay, i.e minus the ones of me trying to get on a horse - but including about half a dozen from a supermarket in Uruguay which have some essential food, drink and shops vocabulary and prices in Uruguayan pesos, the sort of photos that only teachers take!

My travelling friend Wanda (also a teacher, formerly of Spanish but now on a year's contract doing secondary Maths!) and I are already planning next year's trip.... Planning it all ourselves meant that we got to meet so many more lovely people and felt we could get much more under the skin of the culture this time, compared with our previous visits in groups to Peru and Cuba. We stayed in a variety of accommodation , including student digs for a week, two days on an estancia relaxing and horse riding (well, for half an hour!) , three days in an aparthotel on the coast in Montevideo, and even a five star hotel in Bs As for two nights, booked over the internet at a price which would have got you a Travellodge in central London.

Yes, we watched tango indoors and out of doors and even did an hour's tango class. We spent hours and hours talking about Argentine history, politics and psychology to people of very varied opinions. On Good Friday we watched a very moving Via Crucis, and noticed how the Easter procession was much more low key with very few statues compared with similar events on mainland Spain. We took the ferry from Bs As to Montevideo, met one of my friends from 'Second Life', Alicia , who owns a business English school in Montevideo. We also met a few cats , dogs horses and a tarantula along the way (health warning - the slideshow includes a photo which may upset arachnophobes!) And finally, we could not fail to notice the names of the two rival football teams in Buenos Aires are Boca Juniors and River Plate (that's enough football - ed. !).

the Twitterverse

2009-03-23T17:18:00.010Z

Twitter has had a lot of publicity recently. Some say it's just a way of letting the world know what you're having for breakfast, others rely on it for keeping in touch with the most up to the minute information from all over the world.

I got myself a Twitter account at the end of the last year. I wouldn't say I am a prolific 'tweeter' and I certainly don't give a running commentary on what I'm doing throughout the day --well that would be too much like ...talk to cats, look at emails ... stroke cats.... make coffee... read book with cat on lap etc etc. I tend just to reply to other peoples' tweets and from time to time post a link which might be interesting to someone in my network of mainly language teachers or educationalists.

Recently I used Twitter in a beginner's class. I asked people in my network if they would like to say hello to my students

Fairly soon we got a few replies saying hello, including this one from a teacher in Ohio who has always been so generous in sharing resources. Recently we were both doing Food and Drink and Imperatives with our classes and we pooled our PowerPoints and other resources.

When we had got a few replies I asked our learners to compose a reply to one of them

and later on another tweet came back in Spanish commenting on the weather in another part of the world!

Twitter is very easy to use. More advanced learners could ask questions and seek opinions and see what comes back, and from where ! And the answers won't be too long... in this kind of 'microblogging' you can't write more than 140 characters.

Smartboard activities

2009-03-07T21:27:00.013Z

Life is now getting a bit more back to normal after inspection , so it's time to start blogging again. The term has gone very quickly - now only four more weeks to go and I'm off on my trip to Argentina and Uruguay during the Easter holidays.

I've been raiding the Smartboard gallery to see what interactive activities we could use or adapt for use in classes. Here are the ones I've used so far...they are all to be found in Lesson Activity toolkit 1.0 > Interactive and multimedia

Vortex Sort - I've used this to revise masculine and feminine nouns, regular and irregular infinitives, the difference between Spanish tenses that have similar endings that could be confused. As long as you can sort the concept into two categories the possibilities are endless. If the learner or class makes the correct guess, the vortex sucks the word in. If it's incorrect the vortex spits it out and they can try again . I think they like choosing the wrong answer just for this effect sometimes.. it makes it fun and removes pressure to get a right answer- whatever happens they still learn.

Blue Keyword match - the classic drag and drop keyword translation exercise. Use it with the pull down or pull across SmartBoard screen (on the toolbar)to reveal parts of the screen at a time.

Word guess - guess the word game in Soccer, Basketball and Tomato Splat formats. Good for revising the alphabet at the same time as key vocabulary and for a wrap- up activity at the end of the lesson.

Interactive dice -the first of the interactive tools I used on the SmartBoard and possibly still my favourite. There are vowel dice, consonant dice, number dice which can be all be 'thrown' on the board, and used for various activities - for example - get learners to think of as many words from a particular vocabulary field as they can . Instead of just shouting the words out or sharing them with their partners, 'throw' the consonant and vowel dice by left clicking on them and see which half of the class has a word beginning with that letter, to introduce some element of competition. With a number dice you could clone it using right click and clone, and use two or three dice for teaching the words for plus , minus etc

However , there are also IMAGE dice.... In these dice you can insert your own images. The easiest way to do this I have found so far is to open a separate PowerPoint presentation. Using a free clip art image site such as http://www.clip-art.com/index.php and paste the pictures you need onto the PP slide. Then have two windows open side by side, the PP slide and a new Smartboard file onto which you have dragged an image dice. Left click on the little arrows on the top left hand corner of the dice and the dice will open out to reveal six blank squares . Simply click and drag the separate images from your Powerpoint, across the screen and into the boxes. The images will resize themselves automatically, as you can see below.

When you have finished, left click on the arrows again and the dice will return to normal and can be used to practise vocabulary.

And on another note, I have just learned today through Twitter, that Smartboard are bringing out a new board which can distinguish between the touch of a pen, finger and the palm of the hand and can change automatically between these usages (on the new board-pen for writing, finger for the mouse and palm of hand for an eraser) http://www.ameinfo.com/187735.html

It's nearly OFSTED time!

2009-02-13T20:56:00.002Z

Life is getting very busy at the moment. Adult Education in my area is preparing for an OFSTED inspection after half term so everyone is running around like headless chickens trying to get everything in order to meet the ever increasing demands of inspection.
But as long as my computer and interactive whiteboard work at the time, I'm not worried. A few weeks ago a new laptop running on Vista appeared and it seems to be working extremely well and quickly, no more waiting for half an hour for the old one to boot up.

Unfortunately I didn't make the ALL London half day conference on Sat 7th Feb due to icy roads after a day of heavy snow the day before. However nearly eighty participants were able to get there and the speakers have very kindly shared their powerpoint presentations at http:www.all-london.org Helen Myers announced the opening of the new Second Life site of ALL London and mfl-resources (see previous post).

ALL London's new virtual site

2009-01-15T21:47:00.014Z

The ALL London Branch now has a site on the virtual world Second Life. Helen Myers (aka Karelia Kondor), the President of ALL London, announced the new venture on January 15th at the BETT 09 Conference. We hope to start virtual monthly meetings using voice and text chat, to which all who are interested in language teaching are invited. If you already have an avatar in Second Life, why not pay us a visit? The site is on Edunation Island, and this link will teleport you directly there. Send an IM to me, and we can give you more details. In Second Life I am known as Gizmo Latte! You can also email me (Peta in 'real life') through the Profile page of this blog if you have any questions about how to get into Second Life, or just click on the Second Life link above.

This is a screenshot of the first opening of the site, with Helen, me and Carol (an ICT consultant and trainer) appearing as our SL avatars !

Starting to furnish the site with some beanbags and plants..

New Year's edtech resolutions....

2008-12-31T16:50:00.008Z

I've just read José Picardo´s latest blog post 'Thoughts about futurity´ which is published in full here . With the New Year just hours away it's good to take stock of the future direction of the way that we will be teaching in the future, in whatever sector of education. José Picardo writes from the perspective of teaching students who are already 'digital natives'. Our adult learners are at the moment mostly 'digital immigrants' but let's not dismiss what he has to say... remember, today's secondary school pupils will hopefully be tomorrow's Lifelong Learners. If we want them to be we will have to keep up with the times!

So here is an excerpt from the aforementioned blog post -

"So what steps can ordinary teachers take to ensure teaching and learning in their classroom more closely reflect the needs, expectations and experience of their students?

1) Get your own digital identity, complete with your unique avatar. You can establish a web presence by starting your own blog or wiki or by joining some of the various and varied social networking sites. This helps you establish yourself as a digital citizen and acts as a passport to the digital world your students and a growing number of your colleagues inhabit when they are not in school. Watch this video about why you should consider starting your own classroom or subject blog and see how easy it is to get started.

2) Join online personal networks - Twitter or Ning, for example, are a good start. This will contribute to your ongoing professional development as you share best practice with other teachers and self-reflect. As a reflective teacher you can talk to other teachers about what you do and read about what other teachers are doing. It’s always healthy to keep in mind that nobody - not even you - knows everything and there is always something new you can learn…. always!

3) Don’t be afraid to use web 2.0 tools. Or indeed any new tool. Even if you’re not sure, the chances are that your students will know how to use them, even if you don’t, and could teach you for a change. Experimenting is good. Remember we all learn by doing - you learn when you get things right but you still learn when you get it wrong. Using different tools now and then throughout the term make your lessons varied and fun, as well as help you exploit your students’ creativity. Integrating technology in your teaching also helps you differentiate more effectively, as there is a tool out there to suit every learning style.

4) Improve the way you communicate with your students, but not in a creepy way. Don’t abuse their trust by requesting to be their friend on Facebook , keep play and work separate - if, however, they ask you and you think it appropriate given their age, for example, that is then a different matter and is down to your own personal or professional judgement. Your students are prolific users of instant messaging and social networks, so make the most of that by creating your own social networks, using Ning or Edmodo, for example, with a clearly defined educational purpose. This way your students know what to expect when they log on to your network and will not think it to be some sort of creepy tree house where you, their teacher, pretend to be something you are not.

5) Publish podcasts: you can podcast bite size lessons, you can podcast with your students, your students can podcast projects you set them… the possibilities are literally endless and it has never been easier to get your own regular subject or class podcast going given the resources which are freely available out there. Watch this video to find out more about how you can start your own podcast very, very easily.

6) Use rich media more often in your lessons - videos, music, music videos… the choice is yours …or theirs. Your students are quickly becoming the creators of their own content, they film and publish their own videos, they are no longer passive consumers of media, they create their own. YouTube has triumphed over TV as far as teenagers are concerned.

7)Use technology to its fullest - not just Interactive Whiteborads or DVDs - use mp3 players, mobile phones, computers… Make the most of whatever technology your students are already using. They are much more likely to learn more about, say, the Romans if you they have your podcast in their mp3 players, the video project they filmed about it is on YouTube and a their own work is published in the class blog."

Quite a few ideas here that I've never tried. Thanks, José, and to all those bloggers who have inspired me in the last few months!

A Very Happy New Year to you all!

Next year's Santander course and this year's video

2008-12-19T18:01:00.006Z

Information about the next Santander course, the “Curso de actualización para profesores de español de la UE: el uso de las nuevas tecnologías en la clase de español” has just come out. It will take place from the 3rd till the 14th of August 2009. Grants are available from Comenius and Grundtvig. Highly recommended - I went last August and started off blog writing there!

For more information see the Consejería de Educación website

This is a video taken during the 2008 course by one of our tutors, Ester.

A term's worth of Moodle

2008-12-18T14:44:00.010Z

Those of you involved in primary and secondary school education will probably have been using interactive whiteboards and Learning Platforms for some years now. However, in Adult Learning in this area of the UK these technologies are still relatively 'new'. We have only had IAWBs since November, and I have only started using the Learning Platform to support the work of my adult learner groups since September 2008. So, after a term of using our Moodle Learning Platform, I thought it was time to reflect on the purpose of this tool in our adult learning situation, the impact it has had on learning and on what I hope to see developing in the future.

My intention for the learning platform was that it would be used by the learners as a virtual learning environment which would also help to reinforce the language-learning- community aspect of each group. Although Moodle offers a wealth of test setting, grading and assessment applications I felt this was not appropriate for our adult groups. I wanted it to be an assessment-free zone, where learners could take out whatever material they felt to be useful to them, without obligation.

I try to put the material for the next week's class up in advance so that learners know basically what will be covered. I provide web links to other exercises, for example... a couple of links chosen at random
mapa de España, e información sobre las regiones de España
Glogster (look at this excellent glog of Cádiz)and Animoto have a big appeal to adults too.

The investment of time required in preparing the pages for the learning platform is substantial. It is more difficult to incorporate visual material onto the Moodle than onto a blog. I still am unable to embed a video onto the page and just have to put up a link to it, whereas in a blog it is relatively easy. It requires a lot of ongoing effort on behalf of the tutor to 'plug' the forums and the wider community aspect of the Learning Platform. As with any 'virtual' learning environment, the tutor needs to give more feedback, more and perhaps a bit larger than life 'reward'.. even just for participation. ( with acknowledgements to Gavin Dudeney who spoke at the London Language Show on teaching in virtual worlds)

I enjoy preparing the material, I wouldn't have taken it on otherwise - there is no obligation for a tutor to use the Learning Platform, as it is entirely voluntary. And so also with the learners, I can't force them to use it, only keep encouraging them to do so and hope that they will find the stuff on there interesting and useful enough to want to go back again. Naturally there are learners who have difficulty in accessing the site for various reasons, and for those I copy the material and send it to them by email or print it out, so that no one gets left out. I also need to address the possibility that there may be learners that do not want me or any other group member to see when they have logged into the site, as Moodle allows us to do. As adults, that is their right. There are learners who have told me that they only ever access the site as guests, and it may be for that reason. At the beginning of next year I shall inform learners that they may choose to use this guest access facility. However, if they do that they will not be able to contribute to the Forum, and that would be a pity!

What would I like to use the Learning Platform for in the future - a WIKI! I'd love to do a class collaborative storytelling project for the year 3 learners.

A very yummy food website

2008-11-25T11:12:00.004Z

One of the brilliant things about teaching languages to adults is that they are so interested in the culture of the country. They are motivated to learn a language by many more varied factors than those that influence young people.

Some materials on the web produced with younger people in mind are suitable for use with adults but not all. What adult learners seem to be most interested in and most grabs their attention is what we used to call 'realia' when I was in secondary school teaching. Realia of course has gone way beyond supermarket leaflets, menus and wine bottles brought back from a trip abroad, with the advent of the web. With a beginner's class, yes, I have still used the supermarket leaflets but - just take a look at this Barcelona cake makers and restauranteurs website. The design of the site is extremely impressive and imaginative, showcasing their elaborate cake creations and also a seafood restaurant, with recipes, a video and plenty of food vocabulary with lovely images.
All found by searching for 'pastelería´ in google.es.

South America on the map

2008-11-20T22:14:00.009Z

A bit of geography today on the Interactive whiteboard....

I used this free source downloadable Smartboard file activity. Follow secondary > languages > geography. It's a map of South America where you have to move the country shapes, their names and capitals into the correct locations. The activity was popular with all levels of my adult learners -with learning outcomes varying from the use of ser and estar, compass points, prepositions, colours, commands to the learner from the class, through to revision of the preterite tense. I took this set of photos in a third year class.

What we need now is a similar activity for Spain, to locate the Comunidades Autónomas and identify their regional capitals.

the whiteboard is loaded!

2008-11-13T09:55:00.008Z

Yesterday was the first time we had used the interactive whiteboard in our classes, with just the basic Notebook 10 software downloaded - no extra material as yet. Here's a picture I took of four learners playing a board game, using the interactive dice (die?) on the whiteboard. You might ask, why not real dice? Well, I have dice which count up to 20, verb persons dice, tenses dice, question words dice.. but could I find ordinary six sided dice at home, or even purchase any?..... So yes, I was glad to find a selection on the whiteboard. For a beginner's class I 'cloned' three dice and we used them for number work - adding, subtracting and multiplying. Learners also had fun doing a basic word game, having a go on the board using big squidgy letters with the creative drawing tool.

If you want to have a go at the basic whiteboard stuff at home, free, try Twiddla -
http://www.twiddla.com/49547

The London Language Show

2008-11-06T21:37:00.004Z

Still rather jet lagged after returning from half term in New York hearing Spanish spoken by every other person,so it seemed, I got myself up to London last Sunday for the annual Language Show. Actually it wasn't as bad as all that- my husband drove me all the way up and back door to door!

It's the third time I have attended the show and this was the best one yet in my opinion. For Hispanists, many different regions of Spain were represented, and also the Spanish languages. Basque, Galician and Catalan were all there (www.parla.cat offers free online Catalan courses - if only there were more than 24 hours in a day!). However, as usual, there were rather too many stalls offering Spanish language immersion courses which tend to be of little interest to my adult students.
This year I picked up a good crop of freebies, including some nicely produced booklets from the EU publications office, written for young people but which could be very useful for students of all ages. I saw versions in French, Spanish( Vamos a explorar Europa), German and Italian.

Two of my friends from Second Life presented seminars on Sunday. Second Life is an online virtual world where one appears as an avatar, and can move around, create virtual 3D objects, interact with others, attend conferences, language classes.. The possibilities are endless and I guess we will be hearing much more about the educational uses of virtual worlds in the future. Gavin Dudeney (Dudeney Ge in SL) from the training organisation Consultants-E in Barcelona spoke about the qualities and additional skill set that an online language teacher needs to have. I don't teach online in Adult Education but we do have a Learning platform to supplement learning, and the points that Gavin made are equally as relevant to the issues that I find when trying to encourage learners to contribute to the Platform. A subject for another blog post perhaps..

Helen Myers (Karelia Kondor in SL) gave us a lightning tour of the wealth of IT resources she has discovered and ones she is investigating, looking to the future of language teaching. She gave us a comprehensive list of websites,at which I must have a good look this weekend. Our interactive whiteboard at Adult Education is now operational, so I'm going to need some technogical inspiration....

Moodle in MFL

2008-10-05T22:06:00.006+01:00

just published ... this video is about how Moodle can be used in secondary schools, but shows just how many possibilities there are on the Moodle (Learning Platform).

Revision, revision

2008-10-05T21:49:00.001+01:00

Plenty of revision of the basics is needed at the beginning of the year.
Students from my second year class have found these PowerPoints useful. Scroll down the page and you'll find presentations on time, calendar, interrogatives, and others.
The loudspeakers have now arrived for the Interactive Whiteboard!

Lorena's PowerPoint

2008-09-28T15:05:00.004+01:00

It's six weeks now since the end of the Santander course and we still haven't received the CD with the class projects. So some of us have been sharing projects via email. This is a PowerPoint slideshow by Lorena from Italy, who has given permission to share it with everybody. It has arrived just in time for the beginning of the Adult Education year, and introduces some of the basic classroom vocabulary. The slideshow uses animation effects, a technique that I have still to master. I just about managed to introduce sound into my slides, and to record my voice, but I'll leave that for another post.

At first I couldn't figure out how to embed a slideshow from my own library onto this blog, or indeed onto the Learning platform. I was advised to try

AuthorStream or

SlideRocket

AuthorStream turned out to be the best choice as it is the only one that supports animations. It's easy to do, upload your PowerPoint presentation and then cut and paste the 'embed' code, which is a bit further down the page on the right hand side.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by pollyglott

Classes started last Wednesday. There's an Interactive Whiteboard and projector installed in the classroom, not yet operational, but, a promise of good things to come!

Courses starting

2008-09-24T12:48:00.008+01:00

Just leaving in a moment for the first day of my new courses. Lots of resources on the Learning Platform.. now to try and encourage the students to use it!
These are the general links I put on the LP for my Year 3 course

map of Spain and information about the regions

Language exchanges via Skype

Spanish - English Dictionary (Google gadget)

asi se hace

BBC magazine El Mensual

Spanish Grammar - written exercises

Brightening up the Learning Platform

2008-09-19T18:01:00.010+01:00

This afternoon I've been putting some images into the main body of the weekly course entries on the Learning Platform, (Moodle). Just some maps and flags, of Spain and of Chile (which is where my language assistant, Isabel, comes from). The way I did it was to copy, then paste, from Google Images. It was a bit difficult to move the maps around on the edit page, however.This doesn't work with copying maps or pictures from websites (watch for copyright!) To do that on the Learning platform you have to add a link, to 'resources'.

Interactive Whiteboards - now in Adult Education!

2008-09-16T15:49:00.005+01:00

I saw the evidence last Friday, at the tutors' meeting! A Smartboard in its cardboard box, destined for a language classroom ....

This is a photo taken at a practical session on the Santander course, when some of the students volunteered to take part in an interactive numbers game. Most teachers on the course were already very familiar with interactive whiteboards, but three of us, adult education tutors, had never used one. So we were given an extra tutorial on the basics. We learned how to use some of the functions and each had fun with our own interpretations of Picasso and Miró using the creative drawing tools. However, the absolutely basic thing is that you must turn the projector on before turning on the computer - otherwise the projector tends to go on strike!

Embedding a You Tube Video

2008-09-10T11:35:00.010+01:00

I have to say that as yet I have not managed to edit DVDs and make film clips to show in class, although we had a session on this in the course. This is a bit further down the line for me, and you need special software to be able to do it. However, we were also shown how to embed You Tube videos, and that is really easy. Just click on 'embed' and then copy and paste the HTML address.

I've embedded a lovely 3 minute video (with sound) of the architecture of Buenos Aires, which I found at the Rojas Spanish community site.
http://www.rojasspanishcommunity.com

(Do check out this site and also listen to Luis Rojas' excellent Spanish podcasts -taking in Latin American culture, music,and the process of language learning. His wife Joan is also writing a fascinating blog (in English) about her experiences of learning Spanish and the cultural and emotional implications for her.)

La Alhambra - take your learners there!

2008-09-07T23:03:00.006+01:00

Adult learners are incredibly interested in the culture of the country/ies of the language they are studying. And what more useful way is there to teach a language than to constantly link it up with the people and culture of the country? For example, even at beginner level, learners are fascinated and often surprised to know how many words in Spanish come from Arabic roots - including food names such as naranja, arroz, albaricoque, azúcar. And of course the architecture.. eight centuries of influence from the Moors of that time have left an indelible mark.

Learners can take a virtual tour round parts of the Alhambra of Granada on this site

http://www.arsvirtual.com/p_espagnol/visitas_virtuales/otros_monumentos/alhambra/alhambra01.jsp

see the homepage http://www.arsvirtual.com/ for a whole long list of other places in Spain (and some in Latin America) that can be visited virtually (no, this is not Second Life !)

Música Tradicional - un recurso de Internet

2008-09-06T20:01:00.006+01:00

For all of you who are interested in Spanish regional music, here's an amazing new link that we were given on the course.

http://ares.cnice.mec.es/folclore/

Click onto a region of Spain on the map of Spain and you will hear an excerpt of music and song from that region. You can even download and print the score of the music! There's also plenty of other information about music and dance.

Also from the same stable (el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia) - for those who like computer games, there's a lovely game for children which is set out like a Web Quest. The idea is to teach children about the different styles of flamenco using a mystery game, in which you have to free four people from a magic spell by asking the right questions and solving some musical puzzles (believe me, these are no doddle, even if you are musical - flamenco rhythms can be quite complicated). It would take too long to use in class but the Spanish is extremely clear, and the text written as well as spoken, so 'intermediate plus' third or fourth year learners could really enjoy it as an additional fun resource.

http://ares.cnice.mec.es/flamenco/

(the game is under 'la aventura', preparation for the game is under 'entrenamiento')

Wordle!

2008-09-04T20:32:00.005+01:00

Whilst reading José Picardo's excellent blog , Box of Tricks http://www.boxoftricks.net
I came across Wordle http://wordle.net
All you have to do to create a Wordle is copy in some text, click 'create Wordle' and hey presto! You can edit the Wordle using different fonts, colours and layouts and save it. Below is an example using a few pages from this blog.
For a more advanced language class you could put in the text of an article, short story or poem, and make a Wordle. As a preview exercise, ask learners what they think the article is going to be about, or get learners to make up their own story/poem before looking at the original.

double click on the Wordle to see the detail.

A project idea- personalised Google page

2008-09-02T17:21:00.009+01:00

Try this out, it has been tested from the UK, so should work! I made one in Spain as an end of course project. It looks impressive but is actually quite easy to do. I managed to copy a link to the first page onto a USB stick but haven't yet been able to copy the link onto this page. If I can , I will add it later.

To make a personalised Google search page with gadgets (see previous post in August) in the target language, in this case Spanish,

enter google.es in your search engine
then igoogle
Igoogle will come up with some searches. Click on ' igoogle -personalizar tu página principal de Google´

That will bring you to a page where it will ask you what you are interested in. There are categories such as noticias, ocio, viaje, deportes. Select the ones you are most interested in.

The page will then appear with some gadgets, you will see a few of the same ones that appear on this blog. Then comes the interesting bit...
Click on añadir más on the extreme right and it will give you the list of gadgets that you can add. My favourite is the cookery videos gadget. You can make new tabs for different categories of gadget, and also change the background of each page.

If you find that the whole lot starts appearing in English, click on preferencias and select the target language.

Creating a page like this is a 'real task', to use the 'in' terminology, and there are many possible learning outcomes. Students could have a go at creating one at home after demonstration in the class with laptop and projector/screen (language objectives- use of imperatives?) and they could add to their page throughout the year, especially when new topics are covered.

Web 2.0 - sharing and collaboration

2008-09-01T20:48:00.006+01:00

Web 1.0 was about receiving information that was put on the internet by others, a more passive experience. Web 2.0 is about adding to what's already there, collaborating to produce something new, like Wikipedia (wikipedia.uk wikipedia.es), and sharing resources in social networks, amongst many other things.

Here's an example of one kind of social networking tool, del.icio.us, where members share their favourite, most interesting or most useful websites with others on the site.

Mine are mostly Spanish teaching or learning sites. Click on blogs , for example, and you will see some excellent ones by leaders in the field of educational technology blogging. Favourite sites can also be added as resources to the Learning Platform.
Send me your favourite sites or share them on del.icio.us too, and add me to your list.

short history of this blog page

2008-08-31T20:59:00.003+01:00

It's about time I spelt out why I'm writing this blog!

From 28 July till 08 August I attended a course at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santander which focused on the use of new technologies in the classroom, such as the use of the Internet, interactive whiteboards, Powerpoint and DVD editing. The course also included lectures on cultural topics and a strand called 'Lengua y Creatividad', not forgetting excursions to the lovely countryside of Cantabria (see the previous blog entry for pictures). There were 29 of us, from different EU countries, native and non native speakers. Three of us worked in Adult Education and the others in secondary schools.

A lot of the course was hands-on, and one of the first things we did was to set up our own blog. The first two entries were done in Spain. When I returned from the course I decided that instead of doing the usual written evaluation of the course I would produce something which would show what I had learnt and would hopefully encourage other tutors to have a go too. I first thought about doing a web page but the way that we were shown on the course, via Google Sites, turned out to be much more difficult than I had expected. So I emailed the tutor, who advised me to use a blog and add other elements, like photos and gadgets. The result is roughly the same and is more manageable for a complete beginner like me.

I'm writing the blog entries in English as I would like this to be accessible to a wider readership.

Please feel free to add any comments and ask any questions. Thanks for reading!

Santander y Cantabria - fotos

2008-08-29T20:37:00.002+01:00

I've finally embedded the slideshow!(embed - incrustar) It took a few attempts because I hadn't copied the whole link into the blog, only part of it. Using Picasa, I first selected the photos I wanted and made a 'web album'. With this album selected, I clicked on to 'embed slideshow' and cut and pasted the (whole!) link onto the HTML edit page of the new entry in my blog.

I hope you enjoy the photos of the wonderful Cantabrian scenery.
There are also some photos of local Cantabrian products with names, restaurant menu boards, amusing Spanish sayings..the sort of photos which only language teachers take.. Please feel free to copy and use any of them, perhaps in a Powerpoint presentation. In a later blog I'll talk about Powerpoint more, and show you some examples that we made on the Santander course.

downloading photo from Picasa

2008-08-27T12:06:00.003+01:00

Finally managed to download this photo taken at last year's language tutors get together at la Mamma restaurant in Christchurch
That's me on the right, with Marie - Claude
Thanks to Maria for sending me the photo.

starting to make this web page

2008-08-25T23:30:00.002+01:00

Hola a todos y bienvenidos a mi página web

I have found that the easiest way to make a web page is to create a simple 'blog',

www.blogger.com

and then start adding other elements. So far I have added 'gadgets', such as weather , news and a dictionary function. If you want gadgets in another language you can search for them or, for Spanish gadgets, click on the link which I added in my previous blog entry.

Later I intend to embed a Picasa photo album with some of my Santander photos, and hopefully also a video which was taken on the course.

Añadir gadgets a tu página principal

2008-08-25T23:26:00.000+01:00

Añadir gadgets a tu página principal

2008-07-29T14:12:00.000+01:00

y, a continuación...
os digo que no es muy difícil....

creando un blog

2008-07-29T14:08:00.000+01:00

¡ya lo he conseguido por fin!