It really feels like autumn now, doesn't it! A great opportunity to explore ways of working on-line - especially with schools in warmer climes!
The Education Guardian had a good 'how to' article about forging links with schools overseas this Tuesday:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/sep/24/overseas-school-partnerships
The e-Twinning EU Project is mentioned there, but here's their link separately:
http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm
Both the e-Twinning Project and the British Council (linked via the Guardian article) have some really good suggestions for how to get collaboration with a school outside Sweden underway.
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Skolverket have also recently published another Commentary document about the new syllabus for English, this time focussing on how to grade pupils' performance:
http://www.skolverket.se/prov-och-bedomning/ovrigt-bedomningsstod/grundskoleutbildning/7-9/2.6248/engelska-1.106058
They're very careful to describe the limitations of this document in great detail (!), and it really only takes up examples of written performance, but at least it's something!
David
Thursday 27 September 2012
Friday 14 September 2012
ePortfolios for language learning
Since 2001 and the publication of the guidelines for the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), there has been a great deal of interest in the use of portfolios in language learning and teaching. The main initiative here has been the European Language Portfolio, a product of the Council of Europe. A Swedish language guide to the Portfolio was released some 5 years ago, produced by the Department of In-service Training at Uppsala University.
The idea is to help pupils in their language learning through the documentation of their developing language skills in accordance with the CEFR levels (A1- C2). The language portfolio has three main parts:
* the language passport (where pupils document their knowledge of foreign languages
* the language biography (where pupils can reflect on their language learning and knowledge of foreign language cultures in accordance with a checklist related to the CEFR levels)
* the language dossier (where pupils can collect samples of their performance in various spoken and written language tasks).
A more recent initiative is to digitalise the portfolio enabling documentation of pupils' work in terms of computer files and materials which can be stored on a server or computer hard drive.
If you have a spare minute, you might like to explore eportfolios for language learning by downloading the software available from the following page:
http://www.eelp.org/eportfolio/index.html
Have a good weekend!
Chris
The idea is to help pupils in their language learning through the documentation of their developing language skills in accordance with the CEFR levels (A1- C2). The language portfolio has three main parts:
* the language passport (where pupils document their knowledge of foreign languages
* the language biography (where pupils can reflect on their language learning and knowledge of foreign language cultures in accordance with a checklist related to the CEFR levels)
* the language dossier (where pupils can collect samples of their performance in various spoken and written language tasks).
A more recent initiative is to digitalise the portfolio enabling documentation of pupils' work in terms of computer files and materials which can be stored on a server or computer hard drive.
If you have a spare minute, you might like to explore eportfolios for language learning by downloading the software available from the following page:
http://www.eelp.org/eportfolio/index.html
Have a good weekend!
Chris
Wednesday 5 September 2012
A bit more about Macs - and comics!
If you're new to a Mac, there'll be lots of things you might not know are even there. The F3 key on your keyboard is a good one, for example. You'll see that there's a sort of icon made up of little rectangles on it. If you press that key, you go over to a view called Mission Control (at least in English!). You'll usually see the icon in your Dock too (or you can find it in your Applications folder).
In Mission Control you can see a thumbnail version of every window that's currently open on your Mac. If you then click on one of those thumbnails, you jump straight to that window. You tend to have a lot of windows open when you use a Mac (it's so easy to jump back and forth between programs), so this is a great way of not forgetting what you've got open!
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Another of these 'hidden' functions is the spacebar! If you, say, get a mail with an attached document, click once on the document to select it and then hit the spacebar. You get an instant view of what the document contains without having to open the program it was produced in. If you just want to check a detail in the document, this saves a lot of time. Or if you're cleaning up your desktop and you can't remember what a particular document is, you can find out … and then either save it somewhere or trash it.
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You may know that Chris and I went to the EUROCALL conference in Gothenburg at the end of August (EUROCALL = the European Association of Computer-Assisted Language Learning - a great bunch of people) … so I decided to make a comic out of it!
In Mission Control you can see a thumbnail version of every window that's currently open on your Mac. If you then click on one of those thumbnails, you jump straight to that window. You tend to have a lot of windows open when you use a Mac (it's so easy to jump back and forth between programs), so this is a great way of not forgetting what you've got open!
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Another of these 'hidden' functions is the spacebar! If you, say, get a mail with an attached document, click once on the document to select it and then hit the spacebar. You get an instant view of what the document contains without having to open the program it was produced in. If you just want to check a detail in the document, this saves a lot of time. Or if you're cleaning up your desktop and you can't remember what a particular document is, you can find out … and then either save it somewhere or trash it.
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You may know that Chris and I went to the EUROCALL conference in Gothenburg at the end of August (EUROCALL = the European Association of Computer-Assisted Language Learning - a great bunch of people) … so I decided to make a comic out of it!
This is made in a program called Comic Life 2 (http://comiclife.com). It's one of those programs that's free to try out, but you have to buy the full version (for 229 kronor from the Mac App Store - when you buy things from the App Store, btw, they're both installed automatically and updated regularly) if you want to avoid a watermark over your comics after 30 days.
What I've done here is use one of the templates in the program, then drag photos I took with my iPhone and drop them into frames where they were re-sized automatically. Naturally you can adjust the layouts, etc. As you can see, the program automatically 'comic-izes' the pictures. Imagine what you could do with a bunch of pupils and a digital camera!
In fact, I'm exploring an idea with someone we met in Gothenburg. He teaches English in Tokyo and we were discussing how to get reserved Japanese students to really take part in the lessons … and we started thinking of a business English course, where he takes pictures in Tokyo and we turn them into a business English comic …
You can read more about the EUROCALL Conference here: http://www.eurocall2012.eu
It's going to be in Portugal next year …
Tuesday 4 September 2012
Giving feedback on pupils' essays with Jing
Just thought I would draw your attention to an interesting tool called Jing which you can download free-of-charge by following the link here:
Jing enables you to capture screenshots of say, a pupil's written work and record spoken comments at various points throughout the text. For example you could comment on specific spelling errors, word order problems or 'swenglishy expressions' as you go through their writing.
Another good aspect of Jing is that you can create short animations if you wanted to show a pupil how to go about doing something specific with the computer. The animation you create will show your mouse pointing and moving as you go talk them through the specific steps involved. Obviously you would need a headset / microphone to record your voice.
You can watch demo tutorials on the Jing website which will give you a better idea of what this tool can do for you.
So instead of scribbling comments in the margins you can provide a maximum of 5 minutes' spoken commentary with the free version of Jing. This length of time is extended if you pay for the licence.
Some of you may have used Jing in your teaching in which case we would like to hear your comments to this blog posting!
Feel free to use Swedish if you prefer when responding to the postings.
Chris
Jing enables you to capture screenshots of say, a pupil's written work and record spoken comments at various points throughout the text. For example you could comment on specific spelling errors, word order problems or 'swenglishy expressions' as you go through their writing.
Another good aspect of Jing is that you can create short animations if you wanted to show a pupil how to go about doing something specific with the computer. The animation you create will show your mouse pointing and moving as you go talk them through the specific steps involved. Obviously you would need a headset / microphone to record your voice.
You can watch demo tutorials on the Jing website which will give you a better idea of what this tool can do for you.
So instead of scribbling comments in the margins you can provide a maximum of 5 minutes' spoken commentary with the free version of Jing. This length of time is extended if you pay for the licence.
Some of you may have used Jing in your teaching in which case we would like to hear your comments to this blog posting!
Feel free to use Swedish if you prefer when responding to the postings.
Chris
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