Lynne Horn

I read about these wonderful clocks on a language forum this week and have tried them out with a couple of classes.  They are  made using powerpoint and there are instructions on how to make your own, but they are already there in 4 languages (hoping to have one made in Gaelic soon).

http://www.sunderlandschools.org/mfl-sunderland/countdown.htm

More useful bits and pieces including another countdown clock and some great quiz templates, a set of traffic lights and a bingo ball generator can be found here, http://www.sandfields.co.uk/

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Staying for de Bono meant a night in Oban and straight into S2 filming their fashion show (straight in means they were there waiting for me!). 

A chaotic lesson at the best of times, it’s not something I would normally leave to anyone else even for 10 minutes.  I was expecting chaos, but they were organised, had got themselves changed into mini-skirts, bras and stilletos (yes that was just the boys), had the music they needed (as they now all carry iPods/mp3 players/mobile phones with mp3 players with them we can have music on demand for all occasions).  I approached the cameras with some trepidation, would they be charged?  The first was dead as someone had left it switched on, the second has just enough power to film. 

All in all the class were a good example of the 4 capacities of a curriculum for excellence of which I had heard so much about at SETT, responsible citizens able to organise themselves in a group situation and have all the equipment necessary with them, successful learners showing able to demonstrate what they had learned and able to use new technologies, effective communicators getting their message across both on camera and to each other, and confident individuals as they either performed or read aloud and encouraged each other.  We’re now looking forward to next week and seeing the final product.

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I enjoyed my first time at SETT.  I saw a bewildering amount of hardware and software and heard some interesting talks.  Edward de Bono’s talk was interesting - I’ve seen the hats in use so it was good to hear the thinking behind it, and what a presentation style - I was thinking of adopting it, but not sure the Faculty budget could afford the amount of OHP transparencies I would need every hour!

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Our website for the European Day of Languages is looking good thanks to the efforts of Catherine our librarian.  However we hit a problem, all the sound files loaded and played with no problems except for one.  After much coming and going, resaving the file in lots of different ways, the problem was solved this morning - there was an apostrophe in the title of the file.  Obviously the computer didn’t appreciate our good grammar…

Hopefully the page will be live for September 26th which is the European Day of Languages.

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Audacity is a free downloadable resource which allows you to import and edit sound files.  I used it for the first time tonight and easily managed to edit a sound file within seconds of importing it, yes it was that easy.  You can then export as either a .wav file or an mp3 file.  In fact the mp3 file was slightly trickier than it first appeared as you need to download a plug in, but once this was done it was quite straightforward.

I’m in the process of editing soundfiles to go on our webpage for the European Day of Languages, I haven’t yet worked out how to join files together, but I’m sure there must be an easy way.

Audacity can be downloaded from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

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Apart from charging the cameras, the biggest filming challenge has nothing to do with the technology, it’s noise.  Filming gives us a chance to get out of the classroom, whether just in school or out and about in Tobermory and today we’ve managed to do both.

With one class we filmed and recorded an interview on the beach which is part of Tobermory’s front - here we’d to contend with the coop lorry reversing and several cars which chose that moment to drive past.  Having said that the sound quality on the MP3 player we used is such that our interviewee’s voice can be heard very clearly - more information about it can be found on our class blog (http://tobermorylanguages.edublogs.org)

Back in school with S3 it was the builders on the roof hammering as we filmed underneath.

It’s worth it though and fantastic that technology can get you out and about rather than classroom bound.

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Being blessed with lots of technology I hate having it doing nothing!  I wouldn’t normally use all of it everyday, but it’s certainly all been in use today.

Period 1, Higher French class used online websites to practise the Perfect Tense.

Period 2, Vocational language class used video camera, stills camera and mp3 recorders to interview some people living locally from Tibet and Switzerland.

Period 3, the non-kayaking part of S3 filmed bits of the school to make into a film to send to Japan.

Period 4, S4 recorded conversations, one girl on her phone and the others onto mp3 recorders and listened to them on the class iPods in order to learn them.

Period 5, Printer has just gone into overdrive printing PC Passport materials for Vocational Class

Period 6, S1 are on their way and are to do what S1 love best - cut and stick with scissors and glue!

All this and I find out that the battery in iBook which has sat innocently in class for a couple of years might explode!

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