Weekly Whiteboard Workout 3 – Spinning the World

Here we got for the next installment as part of the IWB Challenge. this week has been a little bit insane and I’ve barely been in the classroom. Monday was my only full day this week (with a strike day, China program meeting day and project planning day) and so I have not spent much time with the SMART Board. I still have got two things to report on though, so let’s get to it:

1. As I mentioned last week, I introduced my students to Google Earth via the SMART Board. On Tuesday afternoon I had grade 2 and seeing as half of them (there are only 12 in the class – fabulous) got to have a go at ’spinning to world’ last week, the other half wanted to have their turn. So, that’s what we did, and here is a video of some of our tour. We started off at our school which you can see if you look closely enough The kids love getting up close to the earth and they love ‘throwing it’ as you can see them doing here:

So far we have just been feeling our way around Google Earth and even though we have checked out some key places in China, we haven’t really used it as an integral part of a learning activity, so I’m keeping it in mind to do that.

2. The second way I used the board this week was not by getting the kids to produce something, but by using the SMART Recorder to make two videos to introduce the characters for ‘you’ and ‘me’ to the students. I have put these videos on the Video Lessons page of technoChinese, our class blog and the kids can watch them, and then create a recording of their own so I can see their attempt at writing characters. Some of my students watched these videos on the SMART Board itself, while others watched on the PCs in the classroom. SMART Notebook software is installed on all of the computers in my room, so my students could create their recordings without having to use the SMART Board itself. Here is one of the videos I made. Watch here to learn how to read and write the Chinese character for ‘you.’

Next week I’d really like to use SMART Video Player to its full potential and create some interactive activities that promote deeper thinking about Chinese characters. I want to model these activities and then get the students to create their own interactive lessons for other classes.

Weekly Whiteboard Workout 2

Wednesday Whiteboard Workout

SMART Board Ideas Videos

The Great IWB Challenge – it’s on!

Me, a SMART Board, and some language teaching – a commitment

technoChinese Eurovision is Coming!

Yes, you read it correctly. technoChinese Eurovision is on its way. I have joined the Alternative Eurovision Song Contest for Schools which is a fabulous idea and now and ning network created by the one and only Jo Rhys-Jones. Jo also runs the Talkabout Primay MFL ning which is a great network to be part of.

For the Alternative Eurovision contest a new task is set each week and each participating class represents a different country – we’ve chosen China – and submits their completed task. Whatever the tasks are, I’m sure there will lots of music, singing and daggy costumes involved. I have never really paid much attention to Eurovision before, but I do know what it is, and this could all get very very very silly – which I think is brilliant! Can’t wait to see what the first task will be.

My iPod and its Voice Recorder in My Classroom

Here are two short videos that I made yesterday (recorded with a digital camera) that show how I use my iPod with its voice recorder in my class as a tool for recording students spoken work. Well, I really should say how my students use my iPod with its recorder, because even though I changed the display language to Chinese, they still want to get their hands all over it.

The voice recorder I bought to go with the iPod is an XtremeMac Micromemo for around $60.

This first one is me giving a brief explanation of how it works:

and this second one is of one of my students using it to record himself saying ‘My name is…’ in Chinese.

The great thing is that once the students have completed their recordings, I have it on my iPod and can listen to it later (or on the spot with the built in speaker) and quickly put the recordings onto my computer without having to save it to the right network drive and having trouble with saving. All that can be dealt with after class, making it a really easy and tidy way to grab a recording quickly in class.

My trusty iPod and its fabulous accessory which has quickly become one of my favourites as a language teacher, also accompanies me each Friday lunch time as I head out on yard duty to ask the kids the Friday Vox Pop question of the week.

iPod, mLearn, oCool!

iGo, uGo, weGo – Mogopop your iPod and 5 other mLearning ideas

technoLOTE Wiki

The technoLOTE wiki is now up and running! A wiki is a website that anyone can edit, which makes it a great tool for collecting resources and collaborative projects. Here is a short video from the Common Craft Show that explains exactly what wikis are:

I used Wikispaces for the technoLOTE wiki. Other free wiki sites are Wetpaint and PBWiki. I find Wikispaces easy to use and very well supported. Wetpaint are also great and very user-friendly. I have never used PBWiki.

The aims of the technoLOTE wiki are for it to be a place where technoLOTE readers can share project ideas and files and anything else you like, and for those of you who are interested to have a go at using an existing wiki. You can create a new page or add a link to an existing page. It would be a great place to put your unit ideas etc if that’s what you want to share. I’ve made a page for IWB Ideas and files and will put my SMART Notebook files there for you all to download.

Follow this link to find some short tutorial videos on how to use Wikispaces.

You can get to the wiki by clicking on the ‘Wiki’ page tab at the top of the page. It will take you straight to it. Have a look, leave something for all of us, and let me know what you think. If you need some help using it, please let me know.

Don’t forget that as part of the technoLOTE community you can share videos, bookmarks, images and conversation. Check out this post that tells you where you can do all those things:

Year 8 and Their Phones – A Friday Afternoon Class

I usually dread having Year 8 for Period 5 on Friday, but not this time and maybe never again. On Thursday morning at the end of their class that day, I told them to bring their mobile phones to class next time. I’m not sure they thought I was serious. At that precise moment I didn’t really have a clue as to what I was going to do with them, but knowing they were bringing them along would make me plan something, rather than saying “Ah yes, I will get around to doing that!”

So, sometime on Friday morning I was sitting at my desk wondering exactly what we were going to do with these phones. I sent a quick message out to my Twitter network:

and got these replies:

This is how the class went:

Video and Audio Recording: Not everyone had phones, so the kids worked in groups of three or four. That seemed to be ok. The first activity was to make a short video or audio recording introducing themselves in Chinese – just ‘Hello, I’m … and I’m … years old.’ This went quite well and one student even sent his file to the SMART Board computer by bluetooth. Hopefully I can get more of that happening – a great way for kids to hand in work!

I went around to each group and listened to or watched the little videos they made. Some of them made quite an effort and tried to get it right a couple of times, which is not something these particular boys tend to do!

Changing the display language: After that, I got them to check out how they could change the language of their phone. I was tempted to get them to change it to Chinese, but thought it might take a bit too much time to get it back to English if they got too confused, so I just wanted to see that they knew how to change the language.

Text message races: Our next activity was text races, as @kolson29 had suggested. I asked the class for three sentences that related to a video they had watched the class before and wrote them up on the whiteboard. Then the races started. I called out a sentence number, and whoever it was who had the phone in the group for that round had to write the sentence out in a text message – accurate punctuation and spelling expected. Whoever was finished first had to stand up. Well, there was yelling and jumping out of seats. These kids are quick! The sentences were in English this time, but next time I might have to get them to write in pinyin – romanisation of the sounds of Chinese characters.

Another idea I just had for text races, or even just a text message activity – give the students a sentence and get them to write it in SMS language – the more creative the better!

Quiz: The final activity was a quiz. Each phone was used like a quiz buzzer. I held up a flashcard and asked a question about it. Whoever hit their ‘buzzer’ first got to answer the question. There were some interesting sounds going on around the room, and the kids had some fun testing out different ones for a few minutes before. Here is a short sound clip of what that was like. The phones aren’t all that loud (I recorded this with the class digital camera which is also why it sounds NOTHING like me), but you can pick them out:

[display_podcast]

Overall, I would say this lesson was a great success! The kids were keen, and they participated in all the activities enthusiastically. They even listened when I spoke, which is a great leap forward for some of this lot! The biggest problem was the kids who didn’t have phones. One of the groups was too big and there were a couple of students who pretty much missed out entirely. I made sure that everyone had a go at something during the class, but we really needed a few more phones to make sure that everyone was as involved as they could be. I thought kids playing with phones and not listening when I needed them to might be a problem, but it really wasn’t. They were keen to listen and move on to the next activity. Especially seeing as I said that if they didn’t listen, then we wouldn’t be doing this again.

So, I am definitely going to get them to bring their phones again. Maybe a few more will remember theirs next time! We’ll discover all sorts of other things we can use them for and I’ll get the kids to think of some activities. Here are some ideas I’ve got at the moment:

Using the video and audio functions to assess students spoken language
Get students to peer assess each others videos.
Students can record or video themselves at home and then email me the files, or bluetooth it to the SMART board when they come in to class.
Use of writing text messages to practice sentence structure and to familiarise themselves with different words.

I have not given the students my mobile phone number, nor do I intend to. I won’t ask them to text me or anyone else so they will not have to spend any money. Their phones are fabulous little tools though and stay tuned to see how else we use them…

They’ve Got ‘em, Let’s use ‘em