My fondest memories of school are of the occasions on which I made stuff. When I think about what other aspects of my learning I enjoyed most, I always come back to the basic principle of creativity. Getting me involved in creative tasks that result in tangible outcomes was one of the ways my teachers ensured that I remained engaged and enjoyed the process of learning.

Working on a model of the solar system was a sure way of getting me to remember the planets (9 in those days) and our place in the universe. I was never naturally good at maths or physics, but making tracks and ramps down which to throw ball bearings gave me a much better understanding of Newtonian physics than any number of equations you might want to throw at me.

Technology today gives us the tools and the possibility to enjoy making stuff and exercise our pupil’s creativity in new ways: Now you can make stuff virtually as well as actually.

My classes and I exploit these new possibilities by regularly embarking on projects which require exercising creative skills and, in so doing, going far beyond the confines of the curriculum.

Late in the Spring Term, the boys in my Year 8 class (12 and 13 year olds) decided to write an electronic book in Spanish using a web-based tool called Storybird that allows children to create and publish their own books electronically.

The objective was to put to practice all the language we had been learning in the preceding sequence of lessons, trying to use where possible more complex structures and a greater variety of vocabulary, thus consolidating existing knowledge, which is arguably the most important step to acquiring new knowledge. Their excellent work can be seen here.

Engaging in activities which pupils see as having a concrete and practical outcome, such as writing electronic books, allows the pupils to be creators of something unique, of which they have ownership. It also facilitates the transition from teacher-centred, class-based learning to one in which the pupil begins to acquire individual responsibility.

Because the work is carried out and published online, new, previously inconceivable possibilities of peer- and self-assessment emerge in which pupils cease to be limited by what they could learn by themselves and start learning via interaction with others through our subject blog, creating an environment in which pupils can learn from each other. I have described this process in more detail here and here. See examples below.

As you can see, pupils engaged in open epistemological discussions regarding the quality of the Spanish language they had used in their electronic books and had learnt from each other and from the result of our conversations, both in the classroom and online via the subject blog, about the use of more complex sentence structures in the target language and the importance of demonstrating knowledge of a wider range of vocabulary.

On this occasion, however, the extended writing exercise became a competition to find the best electronic book which would, as a prize, be turned into an actual book which would then be added to the School Library.

My pupils immediately became enthused and motivated at the prospect of being listed in our library’s author search. It has been firmly established that pupilsʼ motivation bears tremendous influence in the process of language learning and acquisition. It follows then, in my opinion, that motivation and encouragement should, per se, be an objective to be sought through the use of technological tools with which our our pupils are already familiar.

The competition was won by Mukul and Harry, above, whose work was deemed to be exceptionally good and, through Storybird, was published, not only online, but also as real books. Not bad for a tangible outcome. Their first book in a library. Hopefully the first of many.

Pupils had been engaged throughout the task and, although their familiarity with technology was used initially as a motivating factor, perhaps not surprisingly, the most powerful motivator for continued learning and engagement turned out to be the growth of my pupilsʼ confidence in their ability to speak Spanish.

Jux is a stunning image-based alternative to what you might call ordinary blogging and allows the user to make impactful statements and delightful slideshows using their six different posting styles – slideshow, photo, block quote, photo, video, article and countdown.

Pictures can be uploaded from your own hard-drive or sourced from services such as Facebook, Flickr or Instagram.

Jux can be used by teachers to introduce or reinforce topics or, even better, by the students themselves as the culmination of a research or creative writing project.

Currently, as far as I can see, Jux only allows one Jux per user. It would be fantastic if students and teachers could have different Juxes for different topics or projects under the same main account. It would also be fabulous if individual pages from Jux could be printed out to form part of classroom displays. I wonder if Jux is listening…

Anyway, here is a Jux I made earlier using the block quote format in Jux, using quotations from my personal blog Socially Networked.

Go, play and enjoy.

This post takes you through my humble first attempt at making my first iBook using iBooks Author. The gallery below contains screen captures of all the aspects I will cover in this review:

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First Impressions

When Apple announced the new iBooks Author app, my first reaction was to say about time! The iPad was clearly a powerful tool for content delivery in schools but, prior to the announcement, content creation and sharing was very much the realm of the professionals, which I was clearly not. Yes, you could use Pages to create multimedia documents which you could then export as ePub files, but the results look positively amateurish compared with what iBooks Author can deliver.

Using iBooks Author

iBooks looks very much like a cross between Pages and Keynote (Apple’s answer to Word and Powerpoint respectively). As a regular user of both, I felt I knew my way around iBooks Author instinctively from the word go. Even if you are not familiar with other native Mac applications, the ready-made templates and the intuitive tools and layout allow you to start writing your iBooks straight away.

An important aspect for someone, like me, who has lots of older word documents already saved in my hard drive, is that importing into iBooks author is as easy as dragging a word document into the application. It then automatically creates an iBook with it with the correct titles, chapters and sections. The same process applies to images, video and sound clips. This is a massive time-saver.

Publishing the iBook is a very straight forward affair too. I was first taken aback when the Publish button took me directly to a sign-up screen to become an iTunes Producer, as it made me think that the only way to distribute the content was through iTunes (thereby having to sign up to Apple iTunes’ rather restrictive producer agreement which essentially says: we own you!). I then realised that you could export the iBook as an ibook file, which can be distributed as you would any file and then be synced to any iPad using iTunes.

Interactivity

This is where the iBook’s real advantage over ordinary textbooks. Videos, sound clips and animations play within the iBooks itself, bringing the subject to life in front of our eyes. This is incredibly engaging for the user – at least for now, while this technology is fairly new and exciting.

In addition to multimedia galleries and 3-D animations, the application makes it very simple to add multiple choice questionnaires and drag and drop exercises using its widgets option. In the gallery, above, you can see what these activities look like. I’ve added a number of activities at the end of each section in my iBook that test the reader’s comprehension of the topic before they move on to the next. This is a real big plus for teachers.

Readers can also add personal highlights and annotations to the iBook, as you would in any exercise book. This is particularly useful to people, like me, who need to annotate their thoughts straightaway, otherwise they are gone… forever!

As a languages teacher, I have found the ability to add a glossary of terms and vocabulary especially advantageous and practical. Once a given word is added to the glossary, it is highlighted in bold in the main iBook, allowing the reader to tap on it to access further information, such as usage or meaning.

With it being my first iBook, I have not added any 3D animations (mainly because I could not get hold of appropriate ones, the process itself is as easy as adding a picture), Keynote presentations, galleries or extra HTML code (an RRS feed for example) or interactive images, all of which are widget options within iBooks Author. The result is nevertheless still a stunning interactive book which I hope, will help me deliver content to my students in an engaging, effective and, above all, pedagogically sound way.

Drawbacks

For many the main drawback will be the fact that it is an Apple only product. You need both an Apple Mac computer and an iPad to create and preview any iBook. The outcome of your labour of love then can only be read by an iPad (and not by any other tablet, like Android based tablets or Kindle tablets). This is quite restrictive, especially given the fact that Apple products tend to be considerably more expensive than the alternatives. I remain hopeful that, as this technology matures, common file formats and compatibility will emerge that would open up iBooks or eBooks to a wider audience.

Many have pointed out how an electronic version of a textbook is not really that big a deal in terms of the evolution of education. They are, in my view, right to a degree: iBooks do exploit and, to a certain extent, perpetuate the one-to-many, sage-at-the front model of education, but the fact that we are exploring new ways of creating and delivering content that can be created and shared by anyone (teachers or learners) with the right tools has to be, in my view, a step in the right direction.

It has been also said that the technology that iBooks uses is old (it is, after all, HTML based – the same as any webpage on the internet) and therefore an iBook really offers nothing new. I disagree. iBooks Author makes it incredibly simple to create and distribute an iBook. You can do it. Your students can do it. Even if it’s currently tied up with a particular platform, you do not need to be an internet expert or a web wizard to publish your content. Secondly, many have criticised iBooks and eBooks in general for being a glorified offline web-page. In my view, and in a world where wi-fi is not always accessible (I’m talking about our schools, not the third world!), the fact that it is offline is a definite plus, not a drawback, as users do not depend on a flaky wifi or an unreliable internet connection to access the content.

That’s all I can think of. I hope this review is useful to you and do let me know what you think. My first attempt at an iBook, still a work in progress, can be downloaded here.

However, in order to assess whether learning socially online can truly have a transformative and positive impact on learning outcomes and curriculum delivery as accurately as possible, it is important to moderate any inherent positivity and open up the field of study to all viewpoints², discarding any preconceived notions that may bias the conclusions of this case study and taking care not to avoid any evidence that may be counter to those notions³.

A small case study was formulated for this purpose, taking great care to accurately reflect teacher and learner attitudes to the use of social media and, therefore, to ascertain whether the school wide implementation of this kind of technology, beyond the MFL Department, can become a viable prospect in the foreseeable future.

The case study describes the use of blogging together with Web 2.0 applications in the teaching and learning of languages in Years 8, 9 and 10. The blog was established by installing WordPress.org, which is a self-hosted, open-source based blogging platform and Content Management System (CMS). The two Web 2.0 applications used as the basis for this case study were Domo.goanimate.com – a tool that allows users to create their own short cartoon-style animations – and Storybird.com – an application that allows students to write stories which can be published in ebook format. Crucially, both applications provide embed codes that allow students’ work to be assembled, published and shared using the WordPress.org blog.

Although I started using web applications relatively early in my teaching career, their use initially played an relatively minor, teacher-centred, enhancing role, mainly supporting the introduction of new vocabulary or grammatical structures as part of classroom based, teacher-centred pedagogy.

However, after observing the positive reception granted by my students to the application of these tools, I started to encourage the student-centred use by setting tasks and project which would involve their use by the students in an augmentative role, that is to say, using these tools to provide a functional improvement to already existing practice.

It was later on, with the addition of the WordPress self-publishing platform, that the transformative potential brought about by the combination of these tools became apparent, for not only could we do what we already did better, but we could do other things we were not able to do before, harnessing the social aspect of our blog’s comment functionality to allow students to learn from one another and peer-assess.

As outlined in a previous post, the combined use of these tools is carefully planned in advance and exploited during a sequence of three lessons, generally following this structure:

• The first lesson focuses on introducing the appropriate vocabulary and grammatical structures using standard classroom resources, such as flashcards, video projections, sound recordings and the interactive whiteboard. At the end of the lesson, I set a homework writing task (as is policy in my school), designed to reinforce the new grammar or vocabulary. Students are made aware at this stage that their aim is to increase the range and complexity of their Spanish and that their work is ultimately going to be published on the WordPress departmental blog. The technology used as this stage is merely enhancing existing practice and it is not transformative.
• The second lesson in this sequence takes place in a classroom fitted with computers, such as ICT Laboratory or a Languages Laboratory, after the homework set in the first lesson has been handed in and after corrections have been added by the teacher and a temporary grade has been assigned. Students are then informed that a final grade will be assigned when their work is improved using the chosen web application so that each student’s work can the be published and shared. In my experience, students readily understand the benefits of sharing their work with one another in order to improve attainment in general. At this stage, I ensure that I give my students clear instructions as to what their task involves and that they realise that there is a tangible outcome.
  In short, the teacher needs to explain clearly what the purpose of the activity is⁴ and that, despite students’ own non-academic perceptions of the internet and Web 2.0, the task is indeed real work and not just a game⁵. Students are then allowed to work on their own or in groups, using their computers to access any website or programme at their disposal. As this lesson becomes student-centred, the added advantage of being able to spend time individually with those students who need extra help or stretching is gained. Technology, used in this way, therefore allows the teacher to plan student-centred lessons, in which an environment is created that allows pupils to learn from one another⁶.
• Finally, just before or during the third lesson, the teacher assembles and publishes the completed work on the blog, which is then displayed to all students using a projector or using computer suite. Alternatively, students could complete this last task at home or in their spare time if access to the internet is available to them). Now a process of peer review and assessment begins as people are asked to evaluate each other’s work in turn. Students are encouraged to share their findings with the other students verbally and to take notes. At this point, the lesson tends to become less formal and, as students start to give each other constructive feedback, they begin to learn from one another in an efficient and enjoyable manner, making the sort of contributions which are normally the reserve of the teacher.

What begins during this third lesson is the beginning of a peer review and assessment process that culminates with the exploiting of the blog’s comment functionality. The transformative potential of the this combination of Web 2.0 applications therefore becomes apparent as students, who might have lacked the courage to participate in class or to speak their minds, are encouraged to peer assess by leaving constructive comments for one another and to learn from each other’s successes and mistakes.

So, did the use of technology bestow in all students a wish to participate⁷? Did the promise of a large audience on the world wide web become a motivating factor⁸? And, what evidence is there that the use of these Web 2.0 applications has produced better learning outcomes than standard teaching practice⁹? In order to answer these questions, we need to study how students reacted to the tasks, what the quality of the work produced by the students was, and whether the peer assessment element impacted positively on learning outcomes.

This case study was completed with the help of my colleague, Mr. B, and his Year 8 German (24 students) and Year 9 French (18 students) classes, as well as my own Year 8 German (24 students) and two Year 10 (28 students) Spanish classes – a total of 5 groups comprising 94 students altogether. Both the Year 8 groups used the blog and Domo.goanimate.com for their tasks, whereas the Year 9 and 10 groups used the blog and Storybird.com.

Both Mr. B and I followed the scheme of work and sequence of lessons outlined above. We found that students did generally respond very well to the introduction of this kind of technology to spice up their lessons, however, we also noted that a small but vociferous minority of students, some of whom were very academically able and not the usual trouble makers, remained disengaged. I clearly remember one boy saying loudly: “not another website!” when the task was outlined to one of the Year 10 classes.

We therefore quickly discovered that not all our students were engaged by the use of Web 2.0 applications. The extent of this disengagement is illustrated by the fact that some students did not hand in the task at all, despite its compulsory nature. Although the table above shows clearly that the vast majority of students (86%) complied with the teachers’ instructions, it also demonstrates that not all pupils were engaged or enthused by the prospects of using Wen 2.0 applications (14%), a finding that is compounded by the fact that an unknown number of students may have completed the tasks simply because they were under compulsion to do so. However, the most interesting part of this exercise for me was to ascertain whether students could successfully peer-assess each other. The table below shows the numbers of comments left on each of the blog entries by individual students:

It becomes clear again that, despite the presence compulsion and threat of sanctions, a significant number of students (30%) did not assign the required level of significance to the task, although the majority (70%) did comment as instructed. In fact, compulsion may be emerge as decisive factor in this case study, although, unfortunately, we were not able to devise a reliable way to accurately measure its incidence. Whether the students wished to comply or whether they were forced to go along with the task remains, therefore, a matter of judgement.

However, if, rather than looking at the quantity of the peer-assessment comments left by the students, we look at their quality and divide them into categories, it is possible ascertain whether these comments played a significant role in the assessment of the tasks. The comments were divided into categories according to whether they were deemed to be good, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, as typified by the actual examples shown below:

Therefore, a good comment is that which provides detailed and specific feedback and many include examples and corrections. A satisfactory comment is that which provides specific detail, but may lack detail. An unsatisfactory comment is that which is not specific or detailed and does not inform the reader. When we look a the numbers of comments in each of these categories, as shown in the table below, we must bear in mind that all students were given specific instructions to provide good comments:

This table confirms that a pleasing 68% correctly formulated comments under the good category, with 94% of the comments left by students deemed either good or satisfactory and only 6% classed as unsatisfactory. In my view, this has considerable repercussions in the assessment of whether the learning outcomes were improved by this exercise because, despite the initial reluctance displayed by some of the students (ironically, the comment chosen to typify the good category was left by the student who shouted “not another website!”), the learning outcome, comprising the initial writing task and the subsequent peer assessment comments, was visibly improved by the employment of these Web 2.0 applications and by the students’ engagement in open epistemological discussions regarding the quality of the target language used. This fact was acknowledged in the school inspection report by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, which stated “excellent use of peer assessment was observed in Modern Foreign Languages, where pupils used technology to comment on each other’s oral and written work”¹⁰.

The effectiveness of the application of technology is heavily dependent on how it is put to use¹¹. In this case study, the academic improvement delivered by this application of technology is beyond question in the teachers’ minds but also in the students’, who acknowledged when asked that they had a better grasp of the language and a clearer understanding of what was expected and required to attain highly. They were also able to demonstrate this in subsequent pieces of work.

This case study has shown that not all students are enthused or engaged by a more frequent use of Web 2.0 applications, but a vast majority are. However, the most important aspect it has thrown to light is that, regardless of students’ attitudes, whenever technology is used effectively, learning outcomes do improve.

The use of blogging in conjunction with selected Web 2.0 applications were unanimously deemed to have been a success by students, teachers and external school inspectors. The written tasks produced by students using Web 2.0 applications after a process of cooperative learning and peer assessment facilitated by the use of social media were found to be of higher quality than would have otherwise been the case. Furthermore, most students were clearly engaged in this process, which is an essential component of successful learning¹².

However, it would be disingenuous to assert that this engagement was provided solely by the technology. In my view, innovative pedagogy which was transformed by the use of technology was instead responsible. With the appropriate use of technology, learning can be made more active, social, and learner centred—but the uses of information technology are driven by pedagogy, not technology¹³.

The blog and tasks featured in this case study can be found here. Here is an example.

Technology in the MFL classroom is the Marmite of many MFL teachers, who either love it or loathe it. Funny thing really, given how much ICT has helped not just to enhance, but to transform the MFL classroom for the better.

The ICT and Languages Conference takes place on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th February 2012 and is, as Joe Dale – one of the plenary speakers – has already pointed out, the must attend event of the year for teachers who are seeking to exploit the possibilities new technologies afford both teaching and learning.

Whether you’re a complete beginner or a self confessed geek, the ICT and Languages Conference is the place to go to meet and learn from other MFL teachers in an informal and supportive atmosphere. If last year’s conference is anything to go by, this year’s promises to become the best CPD event of the year.

I too am one of the plenary speakers and will be talking about how to harness social media and social networking to help us transform the way we teach and learn… for the better!

Go to to the Languages Southeast website to find out more.

Triptico is an excellent resource for teachers to use in conjunction with their interactive whiteboards that currently contains around 20 different interactive resources – all of which can be easily edited, adapted and saved for later use.

Because Triptico is an application that runs in your computer (it runs on Adobe Air, so it’s compatible with both Macs and PCs), it can be used with any make and model of interactive whiteboard. This and the fact that it is free makes Triptico an absolute must have for every teacher wishing to make better use of technology in the classroom to engage students and foster classroom participation.

Once you have installed and launched the application, you can explore the different activities available by scrolling from left to right in the main screen or simply by clicking on favourites, which returns an very handy navigation pane.

From there you can easily navigate to any of the different interactive activity makers and you can then customise your own activities to suit your subject and lesson. As you can see, the resources on offer are often game-show inspired and range from (relatively) simple timers, image spinners and student selectors to games, quizzes and text analysis tools. The screenshots below give you an idea of the plethora of classroom-based interactive activities available:

Team Scorer

Student Selector

What's the Question?

What's in the Box?

Student Grouping

Flip Timer

Image Spinner

Find Ten

Word Magnets

The brains behind the Triptico resources is a very talented chap named David Riley, a teacher himself who aims to provide “inspiration for imaginative teachers”. If you think that these resources are a must have – and why wouldn’t you – then consider following David’s work on Twitter or subscribing to his blog.

What do you think about these resources?

Many of us look at schools in which there is 1:1 iPad or Netbook implementation and drool with envy. “If only our schools were as innovative” or, let’s face it, “as rich, as these other schools” we think to ourselves.

However, the other side of the coin is that many teachers also see iPads as nothing more than overrated books that glow. Is there no middle ground?

I think there is. Our department is currently assessing the potential impact of iPads in the classroom and, in order to do that, we have bought one. Just the one. For now. See how it goes.

You see, we feel that iPads are a great idea but we think that we need to develop pedagogically sound strategies and good practice before we consider buying any  more. Our only iPad is currently used as part of teacher-centred activities (boring, I know, but there’s more: read on) and as part of a carousel of activities in which students work in groups through a number of activities, one of which includes the use of our iPad.

The comic above, for example, was created in one of these activities using Comic Life, a fantastic and very reasonably priced iPad app.

It’s still very early days and our iPad’s use is obviously limited by its uniqueness, as we only have the one tablet. However it is already showing great promise, not only being used in lessons, but also in allowing us to explore and develop different and innovative ways to provide our students with relevant content.

The screenshots below were taken from a e-book (i-book?) we are working on that contains bespoke material to help our students learn about Transition to Democracy in Spain. The material was written using Pages (Apple’s answer to Word), which, in turn, allows document export in ePub format – the format you need to read it on an e-book reader.

If the e-book reader happens to be an iPad, then the export process also allows you to embed sound and video clips as well as pictures and text, bringing the subject to life in front of our very eyes.

Front Cover

Video with transcript and added note

So, the iPad certainly glows. And it is a book of sorts. However, it is also much more than a book that glows. I cannot wait to continue exploring its possibilities in my classroom.

What do you think? Do you or do you not iPad?

Cover photo by Leondel

On this occasion I will be using a video shot with our Flip Camera HD and hosted at Vimeo and  a plug in called Quizzin that allows you to create quizzes, that is to say, self-marking exercises within your blog posts.

Step 1 – Record the video

Devise an activity that elicits speaking. In this case my students are answering a set of pre-prepared questions. A dialogue or a more complex scene with acting and props works equally well.

Step 2 – Edit and upload the video

Once you have edited the video (don’t spend ages doing it!) upload it to a video hosting site. YouTube is good but is blocked by many schools, so I tend to use Vimeo for this purpose.

Step 3 – Quiz away

Install Quizzin (or similar plug-in) and save the required number of questions and answers. Then add the quiz and embed the video to your blog post.

That is it! The quiz can now be used by current and future students alike and the video provides an outcome – a final product – that your pupils can own and feel proud of at the end of the process.

The screen captures below show you the quiz as it looks in our school blog. To see and take the real quiz, head over this way.

Before

After

Is this something you think you can do with your classes? Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions.

Voki has featured in my teaching for several years now, having proven itself a very valuable tool to encourage speaking in the foreign languages classroom.

Many other teachers have also realised that Voki can be very valuable, not only to encourage and motivate reluctant learners, but also as an assessment tool. As a result, the people at Voki, in consultation with their users and with specially designated Voki Ambassadors, are building a tool that is specifically designed for use in the classroom: Voki Classroom.

The main features of Voki Classroom will be:

• Teachers have complete control of students’ Voki assignments.
• Teachers will issue students individual logins (no student email or registration required), which means students of any age can now use Voki! This also means that no time is required to walk students through registering.
• Teachers can easily add students, classes, and lessons to their Voki Classroom site.
• Each lesson comes with its own Web page (to showcase the Vokis created), which can be set to private.
• Voki Classroom comes with unlimited online support.

Voki assures us that the Voki we all know and love will remain unchanged in terms of features and cost, i.e. free. However, the new Voki Classroom will me a paid service with a -we are told- small annual subscription.

Although I would have preferred a free basic Voki Classroom with premium features, I remain hopeful and excited about the possibilities that Voki Classroom will afford us.

What do you think? Are you willing or, indeed, able to pay for an annual subscription? Or would you rather continue using Voki as you have always done?

I am really interested to hear your thoughts. Please do not hesitate to comment below.

For more information about Voki Classroom, head over to the Voki Blog where you can read about using Voki in the foreign languages classroom and about the forthcoming release of the new service.

It was a real privilege to be invited once again by Macmillan to deliver the keynote speech and a seminar at the Alicante Teachers’ Day on Saturday 21st May, where I was delighted to be able to address and meet so many committed teachers of English who were giving up their Saturday morning to keep up with the latest ideas and innovations in the field of language learning.

The keynote speech was titled The Case for Social Networking in Education was largely based on the research I have been carrying out for my MA in ICT in Education. A summary of the keynote speech can be found here.

Above are the slides the seminar titled Using ICT to Enhance Language Teaching and Learning. Links to all the tools mentioned in these slides can be found in the resources section of this blog and examples of the tools in action can be found by browsing this blog and my school blog.

If you attended the Teachers’ Day – or even if you didn’t! – and have any questions about the seminar or keynote speeches, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Visit www.josepicardo.com for a list of forthcoming speaking engagements.