UK ICT in Languages Joe Dale visits Australia - April 2012

Here is a super opportunity for language teachers. 

Joe Dale, a language-teacher-turned-consultant from the UK, will be in Australia for most of April 2012 and is available to travel pretty much anywhere to work with you! (Particularly good news if you're in regional Australia!) 

I chatted with Joe over Skype for a good hour the other day and was excited to hear his plans. 

Don't know Joe? Read more about him here: http://joedale.typepad.com/about.html and his general website here: http://joedale.typepad.com/ Listen to an interview on the Australian Edtech Crew podcast here. You'll see immediately that he is all about serving colleagues with ideas, information and news, with an eye for practicalities and particularly extensive experience with ICT for language learning.  He is gentle and encouraging. 

Invite him to your school for a day: he'll inject confidence, creativity and energy! Contact him here.

Conference Notes: Teaching French and Technology

I'm mainly blogging this for attendees of a French languge teaching conference. The notes below won't make much sense otherwise, but there are some links worth clicking!

Language Learning with Technology

www.happysteve.com

www.twitter.com/steve_collis

Do, then think. NEVER ask permission. Stuff blows up all the time, don’t worry!

NEVER ASK PERMISSION!  

Get infinite ideas with Twitter and the notion of a ‘PLN’.  Recommended hashtags: #flteach #langchat #mfl

Provide social networking spaces with your students:

-        www.ning.com  ($3 a month!)  Sign up with Steve to get grant funded project in 2012. It's like Facebook but shared between your students and students in the target country.

-        www.edmodo.com – like Facebook, but without Farmville, and with control mechanisms.

-        Create a Facebook group!  Don’t have to ‘friend’ students to share a group.

-        www.beyondborders.edu.au for e-Twinning, which I run, but I feel it is too locked down.  

Reframe the class as a stage:

www.realaudienceproject.com

www.youtube.com/frenchfm

http://frenchonlinelittleprince.wordpress.com

http://nbcs-french-2011.tumblr.com/

Create websites with: www.edublogs.org , http://wordpress.com (I have a manual I can email you), www.tumblr.com, or www.kidblog.com

Create a digital landscape, and frame it with a narrative, then let the students go explore.

(can do this without tech, aka ‘Matrix’ learning with pen and paper)

-        Paradigm shift. We use Moodle but could use a blog, wikispaces.com, etc

-        Map your images with Snag It or with a website like http://www.image-maps.com/

Creating Resources Quickly

-        Video/audio, esp. with iPhone or camera pointed at a piece of paper.

-        Pay students to digitalise materials. Get prac teachers.

And Finally Invitation to attend:

Workshop: Effective Teaching, Effecting Change: A Day With Steve Collis Friday 11 Nov, 2011. www.scil.com.au/pd