I'm really aware that I have a backlog of posts awaiting publication.
All a bit topsy turvy I guess, reporting on a course I ran on Tuesday after a presentation I did today but heigh ho!
Humber Bridge light reflections, originally uploaded by David Locke1. Just spent a lovely day in Hull at their primary language conference. The sun shone, the trees were very autumnal and it was far from ‘grim’ About 90 delegates attended the day which focussed on Using ICT in Primary Language teaching, attending workshops on film in education by Mark Reid of BFI, the use of animation for improved speaking and listening in language learning led by Oscar Stringer, using school networks to support language learning led by Dorolyn Parker and cross curricular collaboration, led by me. I’m becoming more used to presenting seminars now and, whilst the adrenalin rushes and I have butterflies, it is not as frightening as it once was. However, Hull presented a new challenge as I’d been invited as keynote speaker as well - a first! Anyone who has been following my tweets this week may have sensed the growing anxiety I experienced as the ‘big day’ approached; that was but nothing compared to my state this morning. However, once I’d cracked a joke and got everyone doing a ridiculous warm up dance, I felt much better and, despite one or two issues with projector not wanting to talk to my Mac and then the Internet failing to connect, I think the session went well. I even think my use of a Fernando Torres clip (a mere four days after he scored a hattrick in the 6-1 defeat of Hull City by Liverpool) may have been forgiven by 95% of the delegates. My Keynote was entitled Inspiring Creative Teaching in the Primary Language Classroom and centred on what ICT can do to enhance and support language teaching and learning. As Ewan McIntosh said - it’s not about the tech, it’s about the teach. My seminar was entitled Don’t be mad, get cross curricular with ICT and PLL and focussed on embedding and entwining language learning into the existing school curriculum, making links and collaborating, and tools that might help in this. We talked eTwinning, eLanguages and it was also pleasing to see that schools are working collaborativel on a local level in clusters to support one another. Below I’ve posted my presentations - pop back over the next couple of days to see the screencast with audio. I’ll also post both sessions on Lisibo talks! as soon as I have a spare moment! Any queries, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me directly - my details are at the end of the slideshow. A couple of things I mentioned that weren’t in the handout (also below) The wiki sites I mentioned were Wikispaces, Wetpaint and PBWiki. For ways of using Youtube, and/or downloading clips where it is blocked, have a look at a previous presentation You and Youtube where I mention RealPlayer, Zamzar, MediaConverter and Firefox widgets. You can obtain Take Ten en français or en español from Devon Education Services or from Little Linguist. And finally, check out this post for details of tutorials for some of the tools I mentioned today. Thanks for a great day Hull! You’ve definitely made an impression on me! 
Today I took part in a Primary Language workshop at Plantsbrook School.
My contribution to the day was called You and Youtube and addressed the use of video and slideshows to facilitate and enhance primary language learning. Below is my presentation. If you click on the videos or the titles, they are all hyperlinked to their source. I've added a few of the clips I used as well.
Having never been to Stoke on Trent previously, I was there twice in three days! This time I'd been invited to speak at a 'Creative Spanish' afternoon for Primary Language teachers, organised jointly by Lorna Harvey from Staffordshire and Helen Thomas from Stoke on Trent. I really enjoyed the presentation on using Art by Shirley Kliment-Temple and was sorry to miss the salsa and skipping!
My presentation was a repeat of the one I did at the Primary Language Show in Liverpool about the QCA unit based on SaintSaens Carnival of the Animals, and I have posted the slidecast from that event below so that you can listen and watch the slides! If yu want any of the resources, they are in this post.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
It was great to be asked by Helen Thomas to talk to some teachers from Stoke about International Dimension and especially eTwinning a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry that it's taken me this long to upload my presentation.
As promised, here is the presentation (it's the same presentation but from a previous date - nd you get it with sound!) and the case study from my school below it. If you have any questions, please get in touch with me or with the eTwinning team at the British Council. The West Midlands contact is Isabel Lalsingh who is lovely and very helpful.
Jayne Jackson, one of the delegates who attended the Next Steps in ICT for the Primary Languages Classroom (And active member of Talkabout Primary MFL) has made the following in response to the course. She tried to embed it as a comment on the blog post but unfortunately the comment feature in Blogger is limited in its use of html code so I've posted it here.
Jayne also let me know that she's started a wiki for her school following on from the course.
It's always good to know what happens 'after the event'.
PS I'm in the middle of making all the Slideshares of my presentations into Slidecasts - it is taking some time but the first session is done!
I had the pleasure of delivering the Next steps in ICT for the Primary Language Classroom at University of Cumbria in Lancaster on Tuesday. I had delivered the same in Cambridge last month, and whilst the presentations were identical, the days were quite different with the delegates taking a greater lead this time in guiding where we went. That always keeps you on your toes!
Below are my presentations from the day - you can also find these on the event wiki which was set up for us to 'play around'.
Thank you to my 6 'victims' as I referred to them on Twitter; to my Tweetmates who responded to my request to say hello; and to CILT for giving me this opportunity to share my enthusiasm for ICT and Primary Languages with others.
Having spent all day in London animating, I leapt onto a train to Birmingham, then home where I picked up my car and drove rapidly (but within the speed limit!) to the NCSL in Nottingham for TeachMeetMidlands09.
I'd been looking forward to this for ages and it was unfortunate that I arrived too late to hear the presentations by likes of Dan Needlestone (@nstone) and Ian Usher (@iusher).
I did catch lots of great presentations though and you too can see them by going to the Flashmeeting replay. You can also see my presentation about what's been going on at my school, showing examples of the sorts of things I've been using with pupils - Voki, Voicethread, Twitter, Slideshare - all saved on our new wiki.
And I had a lovely time chatting to friends old and new, having my Macbook customised with green Post-its and glacier mints, and leading the way in making the most of the provisions ;o)
Looking forward to the next TeachMeet I can attend - I've heard talk of TeachMeetGran Canaria......
I was really touched to read the latest post on Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom in which Joe Dale talks about my podcast Lisibo talks!
His opening sentence - 'Primary language teacher and MFL blogger Lisa Stevens is an inspiration to many thanks to her indefatigable enthusiasm and willingness to experiment with new technologies' - made me blush furiously as did many of the other kind things Joe said. However, I really do hope that those who read the post choose to watch the video clip from Teachmeet at BETT09 as I really want to encourage people to have a go and experiment with technology and new ideas. And I've added the video here too.
PS Just posted a new episode of Lisibo talks! from the eTwinning Spanish links meeting in Manchester last Tuesday.
I spent this afternoon taking part in an eTwinning event at the British Council in Manchester, delivering a case study and explaining a bit about eTwinning.
Below is my presentation (soon to have sound added to it so you can listen and look!):
Following on from my post on Thursday about Teachmeet ASN-SEN, I have now extracted the audio from my very brief presentation using Audacity and Soundflower, levelled it with the Levelator, edited it to remove the numerous 'ums' and published as episode 5 of my podcast - )Lisibo talks!
Feeling very proud of myself (and I can now recognise the wave pattern of an 'um'!
Make sure you catch the replay of the whole meeting though as it is well worth listening to the other presenters who were brilliant! See for yourself below - and watch here.
Thanks to Alex Blagona and Joe Dale who recorded and edited the audio, here's the Slidecast of my recent presentation at Language World in Leicester.
And if you want to listen on your mp3 player, you can download my podcast Lisibo talks!
On Tuesday I made my way to Cambridge for the second time in four days to deliver a day's training on behalf of CILT at Anglia Ruskin University.
The course was entitled NEXT STEPS IN ICT FOR THE PRIMARY LANGUAGE CLASSROOM and promised to address collaborative working, whole class ICT, digital voicerecording and assessment amongst other things.
I had a lovely day with the delegates and hope that they all went away with one or to things to try out in their classrooms - there was great enthusiasm for wikis and Voki, and TTS should expect a few orders for their sound recording products in the near future - especially as I need a new Easispeak as I seem to have left mine behind :O(
I made a wiki for the event on which I've put all my presentations and also as a place for the delegates to 'play around' with using wikis. I did record the sessions - mostly!- but in the afternoon we went off at a tangent and the audio won't fit my presentations so i won't be making slidecasts of everything. However, I have put the presentations below as they are full of hyperlinks to useful resources.
Hope you find it useful!
And if you want to go on the course, it is repeated in Lancaster on 19th May. Contact CILT for more details!
NB the first slideshow actually starts on slide 18 as slide 22 was triggered to the first 20 slides as examples!
I was lucky enough to be asked to present this year at Language World, the annual conference of the Association for Language Learning (ALL), which took place at University of Leicester on 3rd and 4th April.
My presentation was entitled Absorbing Language Learning and offered ideas to engage enthuse and stimulate language learners, particularly focusing on the Primary Language Learning context although the ideas are all transferable.
I was really glad to be on the programme near the beginning of the conference as I was then able to relax and enjoy the rest of it. And I was also really chuffed that my session was so full - we only just had enough chairs!
As promised, here is the presentation with links to all the resources. The battery on my iRiver sadly gave up midway through the session, but the lovely Joe Dale had given the equally lovely Alex Blagona an iRiver to record me too so I will shortly add the audio to the Slideshare and then you'll be able to hear me too!
Links to sites and resources can also be found in my delicious bookmarks under lw09
A quick update on the presentations from the Primary Language Show in Liverpool. Last week I published my presentations Join El Carnaval de los Animales and You and Youtube via Slideshare, and embedded them on my blog with other resources from the talks.
I recorded the sessions on my trusty 'Toblerone' aka my iRiver, and, as I was off work with a sick son this Thursday, I had time to edit the audio using Audacity and the Levelator. I then linked the audio to my Slideshare, synched it to the presentation and published it on Slideshare as a Slidecast. So if you now go to the blogposts, or to my Slideshare page, you will get the audio too! Magic!
One of the sessions I attended at the PLS was all about using Fairytales and Fables in PLL and employing children's thinking skills. It was led by Louise Harty from Northumberland, and spoke to the wonderful resources available on the NGfL - particularly Riccioliodoro and Les souris courageuses
As I admitted to Louise when I saw here later, I've used the resources on the NGfL, specifically Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish, and have made use of some of the activities discussed during the session without really grasping the full power of them. So it was good to discover the thinking and theory behind it all.
This has implications for thinking skills - Louise opened by reflecting that learning should be active, meaningful, challenging, collaborative, mediated and reflective. She talked about Lev Vygotsky and his zones of proximal development. Vygotsky felt that it is children's interaction with others through language that most strongly influences the levels of conceptual understanding they can reach. He also believed that we can learn from others, both the same age and of a higher age and developmental level - learning is a social activity and thinking skills could be the road to better language learning.
The progression of learning in PMFL was said to be
king at the activity Map from memory, a visual, walking dictation type of activity in which we were communicating the position of items in a picture from memory wthout touching. The key was - How did we tackle the task? Were we methodical and divide the picture into sections? Did we look for likely places to put words? Did we match adjectives in advance of instructions?
Today I was supposed to be in Leicester speaking about eTwinning and the potential of using Voki, Voicethread and Audacity in projects. However, the snow got in the way so I'm not there but at home. I sent my presentation and notes to Jenny from the British Council so those brave souls that made it could have a look at what I might have said.
Below you will find all that I would have presented today given the chance.
Notes for Madrid - Free Legal Forms
Madrid - Free Legal Forms
And here's the slideshare related to Whitehouse Common's awardwinning project - if you want to see examples of the sort of things we did, leave me a message and I'll upload some of those too.
