To start off my new placement, I really wanted to set up a social networking system for students in the school to use. Many of the students come from a deprived area, but all seem to have access to the internet. So where they may not bring writing utensils to class, they always bring their phone. They also are not usually allowed to take their exercise books home, so therefore don't usually have anything to study while at home either.

I thought adding a social networking aspect to the lessons might help them take more of an interest in French, be more inclined to complete homework since it would be a little different than usual and they might be online anyway, and they would have French at their fingertips in the event they did want to spend extra time with it.

My first self-imposed task was to create a screencast. I had first heard about screencasts while working at the IB. I had never made one myself, but was always intrigued by the idea. I have made a screencast about the pronoun 'y' in French. It is very simple, but in the future, I would like to add my own videos and other interactive media, once I have learned how. Here it is. Let me know what you think!

What a day! I had been looking forward to this day all week. I was taking the top set year 9s to the computer room. When I began working with them, I explained that the next 8 weeks would be based on them being members of a company in Wales expanding to French-speaking countries and that they were going to have to get to know their countries (which they picked out of an envelope on the first day) and give a presentation on them. They would later on also make travel arrangements to these countries and make brochures and itineraries in order to allow for company directors to be able to travel to these countries.

It was all going so well. I had planned thoroughly. I prepared sample worksheets and presentations, I had prepared useful language pages and set everything up on Edmodo, the site I am using for this experiment as well links to English and French speaking websites. I explained and went over everything before going to the computer room, students knew the objectives for the hour.

We arrive in the computer room, students sit down, log onto Edmodo, and surprise, surprise - nothing works! The students can at least log in, which I can't do on the teacher's computers, but none of the links work, the documents are in the new format instead of the old, and all they can really do is google and put pictures on PowerPoint presentations.

I was gutted! I had prepared everything!

It's such a shame that some of the neediest kids don't have available to them even the most basic of technology. I would be using sites such as edmodo and quizlet much more in class and thereby giving the students an idea of how they could be using technology at home for themselves to help themselves improve. Videos and student blogs would be much more of an option, as well as students making their own blogs and video blogs.But if I can't even demonstrate it in class, then what is going to motivate them to use these tools at home as well? We are supposed to be teaching students to be able to function in today's society, yet, they aren't provided to tools to do so.

I have not been posting since I started this blog, mainly because the PGCE is very full-on! But also because I have been working hard to get my head around all I need to know to become a great teacher. I have really been enjoying the PGCE and now I am coming up to my last 8 weeks! These 8 weeks look like they're going to be really interesting. I will be teaching in a school in a deprived area and hopefully will learn about motivating students who seem to not really want to be in school. I know this will be challenging, especially for a languages teacher, but I am looking forward to it - to the learning experience and the lessons it will teach me.

What is also going to make this placement interesting is the case-study I am going to carry out. I have not pinned down the exact research question, but it will focus on using digital media to make learning more accessible, and hopefully also more fun. I am in the research phase, but want to look into the effect on incorportating digital media such as Twitter and Edmodo into lessons. Whether students will be able to use this technology to discuss things with each other, respond to messages using French, etc. I also want to try to put videos and demonstrations of difficult concepts online, so that if a student doesn't understand something in class, they can go home and look at it online. It will be interesting to see how these tools are received by the students and whether they will be motivated to work on French outside of school. In anycase, I am sure at least a few students will be interested and hopefully it will help them on their path to learning French! Now I just need to figure out the technology! How best to video language concepts for the students!

Discovering Twitter

Sometimes it takes me a long time to catch onto things in life. For example, it took me a long time to realise I was good at French. I had to complete a French degree, live in France for four years and get a 'licence' (equivalent to a BA) in linguistics in France before I could concede perhaps I had semi-mastered the language. And I still feel the need to attend a class every once and a while!

It also took me a long time to realise I wanted to teach. I was a French assistant in France for three years and an ESL teacher in the Czech Republic for a year. I then spent 3 years in the educational organization International Baccalaureate. Throughout all I was convinced I never wanted to be a teacher. It took an insightful manager to point out to me what I couldn't see myself. This July, after my first two week needs analysis placement for my French PGCE I couldn't believe it had taken me so long to sign up to this course. Why hadn't I been doing this my whole life?!

It also took me a long time to cotton on to Twitter. I had an account for years, attended a seminar on how to use Twitter, and admired all those I knew using Twitter effectively, but still remained BAFFLED. All these hashtags and @ signs. How do you find groups? But this week I feel I finally broke through the barrier. With a new goal in mind and a clear idea about what I would like to get from Twitter (and hopefully share on Twitter) I have now made a few adjustments. Firstly I changed my profile on my account to give me new focus. Then I tentatively sent out a few messages to my friends on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. In doing so I used my first hashtag and retweeted for the first time. I even got retweeted and mentioned a few times!

I know I still have a lot to learn. But I can't wait to meet a few more new people, read a few more new articles and find out about exciting websites that will help me on my path to being an effective teacher.

If anyone has any stories about their first forays into the realm of Twitter I would love to hear them or if you have any tips, please let me know.

This is the first step for me in embracing technology, and I very much look forward to learning as much as I can about how to use technology in the classroom and how to motivate and inspire children to learn, especially foreign languages. I suppose this will be a great year to try a few new things out.

See to the right for some of my Tweets!