Technology in

Modern Foreign Languages

A practitioner’s perspective

Edited by José Picardo

 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Contents
Acknowledgements 3
Foreword 4
I Using Images in the MFL classroom 5
Alice Ayel
II Videoconferencing in the classroom 7
Suzi Bewell
III Collaborate, facilitate Educate 9
Alex Blagona
IV Tools to get pupils talking 11
Helena Butterfield
V German: OFF the curriculum but ON the VLE 14
Mary Cooch
VI The power of RSS for 21st century educators 16
Joe Dale
VII A word or two about Wordle 19
Saira Ghani
VIII Resources: keeping them real and keeping them together 20
Andrea Henderson
IX Google Maps in the MFL classroom 23
Simon Howells
X Supporting assessment for learning 25
Isabelle Jones
XI Simple but effective 26
Samantha Lunn
XII Mobile phones in the MFL classroom 29
Dominic McGladdery
XIII Mrs Perkins’s journey into the WWW 31
Marie-France Perkins
XIV Microblogging: making the case for social networking in education 32
José Picardo
XV Looking back and moving forward 36
Amanda Salt
XVI Really understanding culture 38
Clare Seccombe
XVII Enhancing learning in the MFL Classroom 40
Lisa Stevens
Contributors 43

2
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Acknowledgments

My most sincere thanks go to each of the contributors to this collection of articles who have
selflessly taken time out from their busy teaching jobs to collaborate in this project and share
their experiences in using technology in the modern foreign languages classroom.

All photographs are either our own or have been used under a Creative Commons licence, in
which case they have been attributed accordingly. The cover photo is courtesy of Erica
Marshall of muddyboots.org.

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 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Foreword

Originally published as a series of blog posts titled Technology in Modern Foreign Languages,
this collection of articles explores how teachers are successfully incorporating the use of new
technologies into their classroom practice with a focus on enhancing teaching and learning.

Technologies such as blogging, microblogging, web 2.0, wikis, sound recording and
videoconferencing have all found their way into our classrooms and harnessing them
effectively is at the heart of 21st century pedagogy.

The original articles can be read at Boxoftricks.net

4

Using images in the MFL classroom
MFL teachers have always used
images to teach their students new
items of vocabulary. However, it
can be very time consuming when
planning a lesson to find the right
picture matching the word we want
to teach. Nowadays, the internet is
there to help us save time:
Flickr
I was introduced to Flickr in
January 2009 by attending a free
online course on exploring images
in the 21st Century Classroom
organized by EVO. Flickr is a
website where you can store, sort,
search and share your photos
online. It is free to up to 2 videos
and 100MB worth of photos each
calendar month. You can edit your
photos and make them look nicer,
add comments and captions using
Picnik. You can also search
pictures taken by other members
of Flickr by entering keywords.
In addition, you can join different
groups where people share similar
interests. I joined two groups:
Images4Education and Great
Quotes about Lear ning and
Change and then it occurred to me
to create a group for language
teachers called Images to Teach
Languages to share or use photos
or videos to teach either a word, a
conversation or a grammar point.
Instead of looking in the entire
web, all the pictures are in one one
place tagged (i.e. catalogued using
key words) according to topics –
animals, places in town, shops,
etc. Teachers can then copy and
paste the pictures into their
presentations, or download them,
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
print them or use them as by Alice Ayel
flashcards.
Already 52 members have joined
this group and you can find
pictures from different countries
such as shops in France, Spain or
Germany so that pupils can
actually see what shops are like in
different countries. To make the
search even easier and quicker,
teachers looking for a specific
topic can add a post in Discussion
with what they are looking for and
other group members will help
them in their search.
Big Huge Labs
Big Huge Labs is a free website
where you can create posters,
puzzles, albums, covers, games
and more using photos from your
computer or photos from your
Flickr or Facebook account. For
example, the aim of a Year 8
French lesson was to introduce
different food from different
countries and to create a nice
menu which would include the
words students had learnt during
the lesson. First I looked for
pictures of different types of
restaurants and then of different
types of food and I favourited them
on my Flickr account. Then I
created two mosaics with the two
sets of photos using Mosaic Maker
on Big Huge Labs. In less than 15
minutes, I ended up with on one
hand  8 photos of 8 different
restaurants and on the other hand
a set of  16 different types of food.
My students were teamed up into
groups of 3 or 4 and were tasked
with looking at the mosaics  in
5

order to decide the type of
restaurant (French, Chinese,
Mexican….) and then the
nationality of each type of food and
whether it was a starter, main
course or dessert. In teams, they
then created their own menus. The
photos were “real”, they were not
clip-arts and this helped to engage
the students in useful discussions
about the topic at hand.
PHRASR
PHRASR is an interactive web-
based application that uses Flickr
images to illustrate the phrases
that users submit. It is part of
Pimpampum, a website with other
applications which make the most
of Flickr. PHRASR allows you to
create a slideshow from words or
sentences, although, unfortunately,
currently only in English.
You type a word or a sentence in a
box, PHRASR then browses
through the pictures on Flickr and
finds a set of pictures matching the
word or sentence you typed. You
then just choose the best picture. I
still managed to make relevant use
of this fantastic web tool when I
introduced European countries to
my year 8 class. I entered the
names of European countries in
E n g l i s h : A u s t r i a , G e r m a n y,
Ireland…. and I had a slideshow
with amazing pictures from Flickr
made in a matter of minutes. I
showed the slideshow to my class
and asked them to translate the
countries into French.
It was the starting point of a
discussion about each country:
where it was on the map, what the
official language was, what you
could visit and since we had learnt
previously about food, we also
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
talked about the food specialities in
each country. Students had a grid
to fill in and then had to create a ID
card about a country of their
choice.
S i n c e I c o u l d n ’t p a u s e t h e
slideshow to focus on each
picture, I favourited each picture on
my Flickr account so we could
have a closer look at them.
Students were engaged, they
especially liked talking about the
countries they visited like Spain or
where they had family like Ireland.
It helped me show the rest of
Europe to my students in a
different, perhaps more positive
light.
BOOKR
BOOKR is another web-based
application from Pimpampum and
it allows you to create photo books
using Flickr images. It is very
straightforward to use because
students don’t have to sign in or
register, so they can start straight
away. There are no fancy designs,
backgrounds, sounds, you just
add pictures and captions. Some
might argue it could become
boring but I found students didn’t
get too distracted by those effects
and could really focus on the task,
which was to create a photo book
in another language.
In order to find and add pictures,
students enter keywords or tags in
the tag box at the bottom of the
screen, they can then choose a
picture from Flickr. Finally, when
students finished their photo
books, they published it by
sending me an email. I then got a
link in my mailbox to their photo
books and I could either copy and
paste the code to the school
website, for example, or save their
url links. I used this fantastic tool
with a mixed ability group in year 9
and obtained fantastic results.
They had to create a photo book
about their last holidays. First, I
showed them a photo book I
created and explained to them
how it worked. Then, students
went into the ICT room and
created their photo books. At the
end of the lesson, I asked them to
send their work to my email
address. At the end of the day, my
mailbox was full of BOOKR
messages!
I then embedded the best photo
books on the school blog.
Students were on task throughout
the lesson very busy creating their
photo album and at the end they
were very pleased with themselves
because they had some ICT work
to view and show off. All of these
tools were big time savers for me
and helped me delivered
successful lessons where students
were engaged.
Of course, I came across all those
fantastic tools thanks to my
Personal Learning Network thanks
to whom I have become a better
teacher as well as learner!
Photo credits:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliceayel/
3360407169/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisibo/
2941451176/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliceayel/
3363137854/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisibo/
2628760814/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisibo/
3016286128/
6
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Video conferencing in the classroom

Back in early January 2009 I was by Suzi Bewell
contacted by Sophie Herblot, a
young French headmistress who had
stumbled upon my French teaching
and learning blog. She got the feeling
that I was quite technically aware (not
quite true back then) and wanted to
know if there was the possibility of
starting up a partnership with a
special focus on video conferencing.
The French government are currently
ploughing quite a lot of money into
technology and web conferencing in
particular. Sophie is lucky enough to
teach in one of the 3 pilot
organisations in her region.
Madame Herblot teaches in a
Primary school in Bantouzelle near
Cambrai, in Northern France, and The next week I set about Friday the 20th March 2009 was a
over the next few weeks we spent downloading Skype onto the most memorable day because we
a lot of time on MSN and email Primary school’s laptop and managed to connect with our
getting to know more about each despite warnings about firewalls French friends and I experienced
other and, more importantly, and   LEA internet security, Sophie the best French lesson of my
sorting out the finer details of our a n d I m a n a g e d t o c o n n e c t career to date. A light bulb
“projet visioconférence”. Within a classroom to classroom which was moment when learning takes place
few days, we had both installed  even more exciting and meant that for a real purpose, in front of a real
Skype and discussed ideas for a plan was coming together. audience and where pupils are fully
what we might explore in class Our first lesson was planned for engaged and excited about the
(with a focus on speaking) and Friday 13th March – pupils would lesson, quite unaware that learning
were all ready for our first “essai”. spend the lesson introducing each is actually taking place because
We were both keen to have a try in other and using their knowledge of they are having so much fun – and
class as soon as possible. numbers and the alphabet in real French kids are clapping at
In early February I bought a French and English to fill out them and implying that their French
webcam ready for the big day and p e r s o n a l d e t a i l s . S a d l y, f o r is actually not bad! Awesome.
the following day we set about technical reasons beyond our A few weeks later, still extremely
trying to connect from my home in control, Skype failed to work and excited by the first successful live
York to Sophie at school in France. a l l c o n c e r n e d w e r e v e r y hook up, we took the topic of
We were both very nervous and disappointed and frustrated… but clothes and colours as our focus.
extremely excited as you will hear if not deterred in the slightest! The French pupils had posted us
you have a listen to the short audio Sophie and I were determined to cardboard cut outs of Pierre and
clip. try again the very next week. Marie along with clothes in a
variety of colours.

7

We had to listen to their
descriptions in French and show
our understanding by dressing the
dolls appropriately. Much fun was
had by all.
We were then treated to a rendition
of “Hello it’s me!” an English
version of a song they had viewed
on our blog called “Bonjour, c’est
moi!” (all about parts of the body).
Much to our surprise, they had
translated it into English and
performed it to us “en live” and
with actions. My pupils were full of
praise and also amazed at how
great the pupils’ English was.
Again there was lots of cheering
and clapping – what better
motivator for learning a foreign
language! This is what Sophie had
to say:
Once more, it was wonderful
today!!! Pupils were very happy
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
and proud. Our English teaching
adviser was here and filmed it all.
He said it was a very good
example of preparation and
organisation and he congratulated
both of us for our work!! Waouh!!
The summer term was quite hectic
and sadly we didn’t get chance to
connect again so in June we
decided to write letters to keep the
contact going and to focus on
reading some basic English /
French.
In September the Year 6 class had
moved onto secondary school and
I took over teaching a Year 5 class
at the same school. On December
4th they had their first taste of web
conferencing and absolutely loved
it! We sang the alphabet in French
to the tune of ten green bottles and
spent most of the lesson focusing
on cognates and phonetic
awareness. The grand finale to the
lesson was a bilingual Christmas
medley of “Vive le vent” and “Jingle
Bells”. This is what Sophie had to
say:
“Je suis super contente de ce
qu’on a fait vendredi! Les enfants
sont emballés, Ils ont a-do-ré.”
At a recent MFL Show and Tell
event in London, I stated that I
would encourage anyone to try out
web conferencing as it is by far the
best thing that has happened to
my teaching in the last 11 years.
Photo Credit:
Courtesy of Sophie Herblot
8

Collaborate, facilitate, educate
Whether we care to accept it or
not, a great part of our job as
teachers is the performance in the
classroom. I’m not talking about
‘performance’ in the sense of
performance management, but
more the performance in an almost
show-business sense of the word.
The students are our audience,
and schools now have to be ever
more responsive to their views.
Education and lear ning can
actually be entertaining, and
teachers are under increasing
pressure to deliver lessons that
engage students, as well bringing
a smile to their faces. Lessons that
are fun and that tap into the
interests of students are more
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
successful, and certainly more
memorable.
My main use of ICT in the last
couple of years has involved the
use of  wikis to allow students to
collaborate with each other and to
make them clearer on learning,
targets and to make them feel
active participants in their learning.
We are, without doubt, working
and living in an age where
technology is king, and where
virtually all our students have
created an online presence for
themselves.
Social networks are now de rigeur
for the 21st century youngster, and
teachers have had to become
rapidly aware of how to harness
by Alex Blagona
the advantages that this form of
interaction now presents. Students
who spend seemingly endless
amounts of time online are going to
be attracted by learning that
matches up with their interests,
that they see as accessible, that
they can relate to, and which can
also be fun.
To that end I set up a wiki, using
wikispaces.com – there are other
wiki providers out there – firstly for
A Level students to help them with
creative writing, essay preparation
and speaking test practice, and
also for my GCSE students to
prepare them for their oral exams
and to enable them to monitor their
own progress towards the exam.
9

Like all things that are considered
‘different’, I was confident in how it
worked and benefited the learners,
and had support from pupils, and
many of my teaching colleagues. In
May of last year, however, we got
the dreaded call from  Ofsted,
telling us that we would be
inspected not as a whole school,
but just our department, with a
special focus on our use of ICT in
teaching languages. This was the
litmus test for what we had been
doing, and to see if our methods
and innovations matched the
thinking of the inspectors.
When the inspection report came
back, we were vindicated:
How well is ICT used by
teachers and students to
improve language learning?
This is outstanding…the wiki
system enables students to
store their work online and staff
to check and mark it. It also
enables students to
communicate rapidly with staff
about language learning.
Ofsted Report, May 2009.
I set up a couple of lessons for the
inspector to observe, both using
the technology of wikis to have an
impact on the learning of the
students. The first was an A Level
French lesson with Year 13, who
were in the middle of preparing for
their speaking tests.
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
Using stimulus cards which were
freely available online, we worked
in a carousel, where one student
answered the stimulus card
q u e s t i o n s , a n o t h e r w ro t e a
selection of follow up questions,
another student prepared and
recorded spoken answers using  and it has served to create an
Audacity, and another student
reviewed the performance of the
spoken answer. Although the
logistics scared me, it all worked to
plan, and every student ended up
completing each task, with all
results on the wiki, so that each
student could see what every other
student had done.
The second lesson involved Year
10, who were having a go at telling
the story of a dream holiday. We
had worked on a writing frame in
the previous lesson, and they had
just completed their introductions
on their individual pages. I was
able to provide individual targeted
feedback on each student’s work,
and also ensure that pupils set
themselves three achievable
targets for themselves to
complete. I gave each pupil a wiki-
buddy, another member of the
class of a similar ability who would
compare targets, and would review
outcomes at the end of the lesson.
This helped the pupils to spot
common errors in their work, to
avoid setting unreachable targets,
and to remain challenged by the
task at hand.
Wikis have really engaged the
students with whom we have used
them. They have been allowed to
personalise their pages, and after
two years of using them, they have
become accustomed to leaving
comments on each other’s pages,
atmosphere of trust and
confidence amongst the class. The
sites have been impeccably self-
policed and because the nature of
the wiki means that I can check
who has done what and at what
time, the participants have not
been tempted to vandalise anyone
else’s work.
Our school, as a  Specialist
Language College, is also
responsible for managing the
Gifted and Talented Linguists’
project for the county of Suffolk.
Bringing together fifty Year 11
students in what is a very rural
county is a tough task, and
creating a wiki for the project has
enabled the participants to share
ideas and language, and to be
imaginative irrespective of their
geographical location.
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/irievibrations/
3675852330/
10

Tools to get pupils talking
I am a keen user of new
technologies in my teaching, in
particular of giving my pupils the
opportunity to create with new
tools, as I find it a truly motivating
experience for them and me.
Them, because they can see their
high-quality work immediately and
me because I am always amazed
at what they can produce in such a
short space of time and how easily
they manage using what I consider
to be such advanced technology.
The skill that I am particularly keen
on developing with my pupils is
speaking. Such an essential skill,
when learning a language but one
that pupils really seem to struggle
with in terms of having the
opportunity to do it and having the
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
confidence to go ahead and give it
a try.
With this in mind, I find that new
technologies provide an ideal
opportunity for pupils to practice
speaking the language they are
learning without the feeling that
they are doing it in front of the
whole class, whilst also giving
them the chance to reflect on what
they hear and think about how
they can improve and move onto
the next level.
In addition having recordings of
themselves speaking means that
they can then put themselves onto
their iPods, Mp3 Players or
mobiles and truly have a mobile
learning experience – obviously
whilst pretending to listen to cool
by Helena Butterfield
music with nobody knowing what’s
really going on.
With this in mind I’d like to write
a b o u t m y To p To o l s f o r
encouraging pupils to talk. I did a
short presentation on this topic at
TeachMeetNE09-02 a couple of
weeks ago and this post gives me
the opportunity to talk in more
detail about some of the tools and
how I use them. I will give
examples of how I have used them
with my classes – not all wonderful
examples – but I think they give a
flavour of what you could do and
hopeful you will see ways in which
you could do better!
Firstly, and most importantly you
need to know what you need in
order to record your pupils. There
11

are several things you could use.
When I record my classes
chanting / practising in a group I
use a  USB microphone connected
to my computer and record using
the free Audacity program. If I want
small groups to record one another
I use an EasiSpeak microphone
which is really easy to use (even I
can use it!) and records straight
away into  .mp3 format. I’ve also
recently been given a digital voice
recorder which can do the same
thing.
In addition, still in my classroom, if
I’d like individuals to record
themselves, I’ve asked them to use
the voice recorders on their
mobiles. This can prove particularly
useful to develop listening skills, as
we recorded ourselves and then
gave the recording to a partner for
them to listen to and note the main
points.
If I’m lucky enough to be in the ICT
suite, I use the traditional
headphones with microphones
attached and ask pupils to record
themselves using Audacity, which
is straight forward (although you
might need to give them a quick
lesson in how to do this.)
So, what are my top tools to get
pupils talking?
Voki
Voki – This is a lovely site where
pupils can create talking avatars.
It’s really easy to use and pupils
can add their own voices either by
recording in Audacity and
uploading the sound file, can
record directly from the site or even
phone and leave a recording.
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
Having learnt from experience I
would advise that pupils record
themselves first and only then let
them play on the Voki website…
otherwise they don’t get the
important language bit done. Once
complete, pupils can then email
you the Voki so that you can then
display them on a blog or wiki.
Here is an example of how my
pupils used Voki in an   eTwinning
Project: Let’s Blog.
Voicethread
Voicethread – This is a fantastic
site to get pupils talking
spontaneously. You can upload a
photo or a document and then
others can comment on it. They
can either type or then can record
their comments. This is great to
get pupils preparing for their
presentations for GCSE Speaking
Assessments.
I used Voicethread to encourage
pupils to talk about a picture of a
house, giving adjectives, opinions
etc. Here is our Voicethread.
Songsmith
Songsmith – This is my current
favourite. It’s a great program that
adds a backing track to what you
record. You can choose the style of
the track and it picks up the
rhythm of the words you say. It’s
fantastic for getting pupils to make
up raps and rhymes to help
remember vocabulary or verbs. I
got my Year 8 group to make up
Haben raps. I put my laptop at the
back of my room, gave them a
quick tutorial and then let groups
do the recordings while we did a
carousel activity in the main
classroom. It’s amazing how easily
they picked up how to do
everything – even exporting the
files as .wav files. I told each group
to nominate a techie who was
responsible for the computer side
of things and it worked really well.
They recorded a wonderful rap,
explaining about Haben: ich,
du,er…
Make a podcast
Make a podcast - A key feature of
getting pupils to be able to speak a
language is getting them to listen
to it as much as possible. This can
help them improve their accents
and give them the confidence to
try it too. A really good way to do
this is to create a podcast so that
they can download sound files that
you create and put them onto their
Mp3 Players or iPods so that they
can take their language work
wherever they go. I’ve also
recorded my classes doing some
choral repetition and turned that
into a podcast. You could really do
anything as a podcast: chants,
raps, vocabulary for tests,
grammar explanations… they’re
particularly good for the auditory
learners! To publish my podcasts I
use Podomatic, a free podcasting
platform. I currently run two
podcasts that have been
particularly useful for my Year 7s:
Langwitch Radio (German) and
Radio Langwitch (French).
Make a slidecast
Make a slidecast – The next step
on from a podcast really, is a
slidecast. To make a slidecast, I
12

use Slideshare, which is really
simple and it gives you step-by-
step instructions. This is essentially
a slideshow with sound. So, for
example if you introduce some
new language with a PowerPoint in
class you could have you class
doing the repetition and turn it into
a slidecast so that they can re-visit
it at home. I envisage my classes
going home and having the whole
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
family sat round the computer
practising new language that has
been learnt…truly involving
everyone in the learning! This has
worked particularly well with some
phonics work that I did  with my
Year 7s earlier this year : Les Jolly
Phoniques.
My final pieces of advice would be
to start small and simple and then
see where it takes you. Once you
begin, you’ll find all kinds of
amazing ways to encourage your
pupils to develop their speaking
skills. These are just a few,
relatively straight forward ways of
getting pupils talking… if I can do
it, anyone can!
Photo Credit:
José Picardo
13

German: OFF the curriculum but ON
the VLE
My degree is actually in French
with Norwegian. Mindful that there
isn’t much call for Norwegian
teachers in the North West of
England, I did my PGCE in French
and German. When I was offered a
job at my current school (the only
job I’ve ever had) I was asked if I
would mind, in a full timetable of
French, just teaching one hour a
week German as a favour. I
agreed, and somehow during the
ensuing 24 years I ended up in
charge of German despite myself.
In recent years it’s become even
harder than normal to motivate
most students to learn German or
opt for it at  GCSE. When the only
other Germanist in the department
retired and two keen new MFL  the activities there in the days
NQTs arrived with Spanish as their
specialism, it seemed a good time
to change departmental policy: we
would offer Spanish alongside
French in the main curriculum, with
German as an added extra.
Rather than bemoan the loss of a
language I never actually intended
to teach, or worry that those few
students showing an interest in
German would suffer as a
consequence, I saw it as a great
opportunity to use our   VLE –  while the pupils thought they were
Moodle – as a vehicle for delivering
the bulk of the learning.
In Key Stage 3 we offered a one
hour a week after school German
club to Years 8 and 9 – the only
face to face experience of German
the children would have. We
focused on oral work with a great
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
emphasis on games (it was a club,
after all!). The only requirement to
join was that the children accessed
our club page on the VLE and did
between meetings.
I set up the page (Moodle calls
them “courses”) in weekly sections
with the resources we’d used in
class; practice tasks to consolidate
the grammar, and home works
which they had to send in to me to
mark online before the next club
session. We used so-called  independence would stand two of
SCORM compliant games from
Contentgenerator and
Linguascope which meant that
playing games, the VLE was saving
their scores.
Club members used Audacity to
record themselves having
conversations and then used Crazy
Talk to put funny faces to the
voices – then I embedded the
videos on our Moodle club page.
by Mary Cooch
We also tried a bit of blue
screening – well, ok; it was a blue
sheet I stuck to my whiteboard
with blu-tak but it worked!
Moviemaker has a plugin to enable
you to bluescreen, which is OK but
not great, so we ended up using
Serif Movie X3 from the school
network – very cheap and highly
recommended.
The onus was very much on them
to take their learning further – and,
in fact, developing their
the pupils in good stead the
following year when they opted to
do German GSCE. Two pupils and
one teacher was considered not
economically viable to run in
school time – so, once more, I
turned to Moodle.
I taught two girls GSCE German
for one hour after school every
week, using another Moodle
course to keep us in touch
between times. They asked me
14

questions via a private discussion
forum; they kept their own notes in
personal wikis on the course page;
I uploaded sample speaking test
presentations as .mp3; they
uploaded their efforts to me as
assignments .
Vocabulary and grammar were
tested by the –now totally free –
Hotpotatoes and Moodle’s inbuilt
Quiz module. Both these allow you
to include video, sound and
images to brighten up the
exercises. They will mark the work
for you and record the grades in
Moodle ‘s mark book- a win-win
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
situation! Despite that, I still worried
last summer on results day. Could
we really get good grades on one
hour a week plus Moodle? I
seriously misjudged the girls and
feel very bad about it. I predicted a
B and a C. They got an A* and a B
respectively…
This year I’ve passed the German
mantle onto a colleague, as I’m
focusing pretty much full time on
Moodle. However, I’m involved in
Primary Liaison and Year 5s from
our feeder schools have been
visiting us for a “fun session using
our VLE” All they know when they
arrive is that they will be playing
some games on our Moodle for an
hour and that they will leave having
learned something they never
knew before. As it’s billed as a
“Mystery Moodle” session, I
obviously cannot tell you what they
do and what they then rush home
to continue with on our VLE… But
isn’t it fortunate how German has
so many cognates to build
confidence in young learners?
Photo Credit:
José Picardo
15

The power of RSS for 21st century
educators
I’ve always believed that ICT
should not be used for the sake of
it, but only when it enhances
traditional methodology. One of the
highlights of the noughties for me
was the discovery of RSS and how
it can be used in so many ways to
nurture one’s personal learning
network. RSS stands for Really
Simple Syndication, which is
basically a delivery mechanism for
subscribing to frequently updated
content on Web 2.0 tools such as
blogs, podcasts and wikis, etc.
In simpler terms this means that
instead of remembering to visit
your favourite websites to find out
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
the latest news, the information
can come to you and be read all in
the same place through an RSS
reader. This seems to save a lot of
time and improve productivity as a
result.
However, RSS can do so much
more than just that. Below, I plan
to share with you some of the
gems I have discovered by reading
my feeds in the last few years and I
encourage you to try some of the
ideas out for yourself.
The first idea is a site called
Podcast Pickle and if you have got
your own podcast you can create
a player which you can then put on
by Joe Dale
your blog. Basically, you take the
audio podcast RSS feed which you
could get from say a website like
Podomatic, which gives you
500MB of space for free and you
can just upload your podcasts on
to there. That will then generate
the embed code that you need to
post the player on your website.
Essentially, this will allow others to
listen to all of your episodes in the
same place on your blog rather
than having to subscribe to the
information. They can just go to
your blog and press play on the
individual episode and every time
you update a new episode it will
16

appear on the blog. That’s the
great thing about RSS, it’s
dynamic.
Another idea I have come across
with RSS is Feedburner and in
particular Feedburner chicklets,
which are the little bits of code that
you put on your blog which then
tell other people how many people
are reading or have subscribed to
the RSS feed that you’ve created.
This is great because you know
how many of your blog’s readers
are subscribing. You don’t actually
know how many people are just
going to the website because
they’ve just found it using a search
engine or what have you, but you
can actually quantify how many
people have subscribed.
Now when I say subscribed, that
doesn’t cost any money at all.
Sometimes when I talk about this
sort of thing at conferences etc
people get the impression that you
have to pay. Well, it’s absolutely
free and I think in the present sort
of climate, certainly in England, in
which teachers are finding it more
and more difficult to get out of
school because of the Rarely
Cover issue, I think that RSS and
taking control of your own CPD.
Your own continuing professional
development is really important.
Another thing about Feedburner is
if you’ve created let’s say your RSS
feed through a website like
Podomatic then Feedburrner will
allow you to, if you like, create
another version which means that
if you then change the host feed
that you have, the original feed
you’ve set up and create another
feed, but use the same Feedburner
feed, then your content will not be
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
changed which is a fantastic tip I
found out from a great podcast
called Podcasters’ Emporium.
Episode 17, which is called
Feeding your audience, has great
information not just about
Feedburner, but RSS feeds in
general.
Another tip I would give about RSS
feeds is in relation to YouTube.
Searching for content on YouTube
can be very time-consuming.
However, it is possible to create an
RSS feed to display any recent clip
which has been tagged with a
certain keyword. For example, I
used to be a languages teacher so
I might be interested in  Key Stage
3 topics, say the family. By putting
in “famille”, the French word for
family into the RSS feed that I
create, it would mean that anyone
who has tagged a clip with the
word “famille” will then appear in
my Google Reader, which is a
really great way of finding content.
In addition, you can subscribe to
someone’s YouTube channel by
creating your own RSS feed which
in YouTube itself is not actually
possible. You can subscribe to
somebody’s YouTube channel, but
you can’t generate an RSS feed
which will then go into Google
Reader.
Another way of using RSS for
researching is using Google Alerts
which is fantastic for finding about
topics of interest or individuals who
are writing interesting blog posts
etc and by going to Google Alerts
and setting up an account you can
either choose to subscribe via RSS
or via email and if you have a
Google Reader account already
you’ll automatically send that feed
to Google Reader. So it makes it
easier to find useful links online for
topics you’re interested in and it’s a
fantastic way of researching for up
to date information which comes
to you instead of you having to go
to it, as it were to find it which
saves a lot of time.
RSS feeds are also a great way to
keep in touch with the core group
of people that you follow onfpr
example, Twitter. Twitter is a great
way of creating your own personal
learning network. The
disadvantage is that, if you are
following 1500 people let’s say,
there’s no way that you can read
every single tweet that they make,
every single message that they
send.
Therefore if you want to follow a
core group, what you can do is go
to the Twitter Search website, put
in the username for the person you
want to follow or track and then
create an RSS feed for that
username. Put that into Google
Reader and as a result, you can
see anything that they send as
long as their tweets are not
protected and also anyone who
replies to them. So that’s really
good. It’s also a great way of
meeting like-minded colleagues as
well.
Finally, I discovered a few days ago
I could create an RSS feed for my
friends’ updates on Facebook,
which has been possible in the
past, but Facebook tend to
change their security settings from
time to time, which sometimes
makes this not possible, although it
is possible at the moment. So,
hopefully, that will continue for a
while and it means you don’t have
17
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
to log in to the site. You can just So, to finish off with, the challenge Photo Credit:
find out what your friends are up to now is to spread the news about http://www.flickr.com/photos/jintan/
on Facebook by having the RSS the power of RSS and to show 363837160/

feed straight into Google Reader or how effective it can be for

straight into your RSS reader. enhancing learning in the 21st
century.

18

A word or two about Wordle
A year ago I would have described
myself as a technophobe, an MFL
teacher who thought using
Powerpoint as a teaching tool, as
well as allowing pupils to create
their own Powerpoint
presentations, was more or less
the limit of using ICT in Modern
Foreign Languages lessons, along
with CDs and the odd DVD. How
wrong I was!
Last January I discovered Twitter,
and the myriad of enthusiastic and
supportive teachers that go with it.
My Personal Learning Letwork
(PLN) broadened rapidly. Having
such fantastic support,
encouragement and advice on
hand almost 24 hours a day gave
me the confidence to begin trying
out new ideas and web 2.0 tools
both as an aid to teaching and as
a creative tool for my pupils to use
when practising and consolidating
new language. Tools such as
Edmodo, Voki, Wallwisher, Go!
Animate, Xtranormal, Animoto and
Wordle have all become part of the
armoury of resources used in my
day to day teaching.
Wordle is one particular tool that I
have used in a number of ways. It
really is easy to create a Wordle!
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
by Saira Ghani
are so keen to produce a top
quality Wordle that they are very
happy to draft and re-draft their
work in Word, thus contributing to
their learning.
Also, the knowledge that their work
might be displayed for the whole
world to see on our department
blog drives them to produce a
quality piece of work (you can see
You input a piece of text, or a list of
some examples here). From a
words, click go and your text
slightly negative point of view,
becomes a Wordle, a word cloud
pupils could become bogged
in which the most frequently used
d o w n i n fi d d l i n g w i t h t h e
words are displayed in a larger
appearance of their Wordle once
font.
they have inputted their text. I have
Inspired by posts written by
to admit, however, that I haven’t
Samantha Lunn and Tom Barrett
found that to be an
about ways in which Wordles can
unsurmountable problem.
be used I decided to take the
Reflecting back on the past year, I
plunge and give it a go.
have gained confidence and am no
In terms of my own teaching, I
longer afraid to try out new ideas
have used Wordles as starter
with classes, even if they don’t
activities. As classes enter the
always work the first time around.
room, I have my Wordle displayed
Remember the old saying “If at first
on my projector. Pupils then look at
you don’t succeed, try and try
it and guess the topic they are
again”? I feel it’s just as important
going to be learning. Another way I
for us as teachers to be taken out
have used them is as a vocabulary
of our comfort zone from time to
classifying exercise, which has
time as it is for our pupils.
proven to be a big hit with pupils
My PLN has given me the
arguing over how they have
opportunity to reflect much more
classified it.
on my own practice and to work
I have also allowed pupils to create
more collaboratively with my pupils
their own Wordles when they have
themselves, as their feedback is
been in an ICT room. Year 7 and 8
invaluable in terms of tweaking
classes have typed sentences on
future lessons and tasks. More
various topics in a Word
importantly, from a purely selfish
document, before copying and
point of view I have gained a new
pasting them into Wordle. At first I
enthusiasm for teaching and my
was a bit sceptical about the
pupils are becoming more
worthiness of this in terms of
enthusiastic language learners!
language learning, but the pupils
19

Resources: keeping them real and
keeping them together
There has never been a better
time to be a world language
teacher. Every day there is new
information to make teaching even
more exciting. My PLN (Personal
Learning Network) on Twitter has
been a wonderful source of new
ideas and resources and this has
made me grow in ways I had not
imagined.
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
by Andrea Henderson
The American Council on Teaching
of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
created national standards for
language learning which focus on
the areas of Communication,
Cultures, Comparisons,
Connections, and Communities.I
realized that even with a clear
understanding of what I needed to
However, there are so many tools, teach, I still needed to create a
gadgets, websites, and
applications to choose from that it
can be difficult to know exactly
where to begin. To best take
advantage of this new technology,
it is a good idea to create a filter
so that you know exactly which
information you can use of right
away and which information you
can file away for later.
20

clear focus for my own classroom
based on these standards, my
philosophy of language acquisition
and my students’ needs.
When I changed schools four years
ago, I created a mission statement
that not only allowed me to focus
on what was most important in the
classroom but also to focus on
which technological tools would
best suit my purpose. An excellent
tutorial for creating a mission
statement can be found at Cedar
Rapids Community Schools.
My mission, which is a component
of my full classroom plan, is to
transform students into
francophone Francophiles who are
self-motivated lifelong learners and
world citizens. My main goals are:
• to bring real world language
experiences to my students by
using authentic resources
• to encourage my students to be
autonomous learners
• to create formative assessments
of and for learning
• to incorporate developmentally
appropriate learning strategies
Additionally, I need to maintain an
efficient storage and retrieval
system to keep everything
together. In this post I will
concentrate on the use of
authentic sources and how to
organize said resources.
Real World Language Resources
As a teacher of French in Texas, it
is not always easy for students to
realize that French is a global
l a n g u a g e s p o k e n o n fi v e
continents. In addition to having
my students communicate in
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
French, I must also show them that
French does actually exist outside
of my classroom and is spoken by
real people! Using authentic
resources brings the francophone
world into my classroom and
students understand that French is
indeed a global language.
Some of my favorite authentic
resources are:
• L’Internaute is an extremely rich
French resource with everything
from restaurant reviews to the
analysis of names. There are also
wonderful short videos that give
instructions on how to make a
Tarte Tatin as well as how to tie
Windsor knot (the boys really
appreciated this one).
L’Internaute distributes several
newsletters which highlight
various articles. I recently found a
wonderful article on the first jobs
of the heads of state around the
world. My French IV/V class has
been studying education in
France and we were amazed to
find that one world leader once
worked as a street vendor selling
peanuts. Keeping L’Internaute as
my home page gives me
constant exposure to every-day
French life.
• Lodgis is a real estate site where
one can sublet apartments in
Paris. You can select the
quartier, price range, and
amenities you would like in your
apartment. There are wonderful
pictures of all of the rooms of the
apartment as well as a written
description of the contents of the
apartment and the name of the
closest metro stop. There is even
a list of the stores and other
conveniences near the
apartment. Although the
apartments are in Paris, the
language can be changed into
Chinese, German, Italian,
Japanese, Portuguese, Russian
and Spanish. After studying the
various arrondissements in Paris,
my advanced students get to
choose an apartment to live in.
They love this, and I also have
my dream apartment which I
have printed out in color and
placed in the front cover of one
of my planning notebooks. These
visuals provide a constant source
of descriptions, comparisons,
and narration.
• Houra provides the ultimate
online shopping experience. Not
o n l y a re s t u d e n t s a b l e t o
compare French and American
products but they also are able
to augment their vocabularies
with the rich descriptive words
that are present in the ads.
Although I have mentioned many
times that the French use
decimal points where we use
commas it becomes real to them
when they actually see this
system in use. I also have the
students convert the euros to
dollars at XE when you access
the Houra site, you must put in a
zip code. I use 75007; the
arrondissement of La Tour Eiffel.
Here is the lesson I created using
Houra.
• Wordle has been invaluable
recently for providing pre-reading
and pre-listening exercises for
news stories of the earthquake in
Haiti. I teach French levels 1-V
and Wordle allowed me to
provide comprehensible input for
all of students.
21
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

I paste the text of a French news I play film trailers, and music each level. I can easily create a
article from France 24 and allow videos. The students love this collection of listening exercises
Wordle to create the word cloud. and often tell me that they have organized by theme so that I can
I then change the color to black included these francophone find them when I need them.
and white, select alphabetical artists in their own music Creating the playlists makes it
order, and set the maximum collections. much easier to monitor the class
words to 20-30. I then display during assessments because I’m
Organizing resources
the Worlde on my TV screen so not chained to the CD player
Keeping all of your ever-growing
that the students can see the trying to find the track I need.
number of resource together can
words as they come into class. iTunes also allows me to add
b e a c h a l l e n g e . T h e re a re ,
We first find the words they do podcasts to the playlists which
however, there are many tools that
know and find meanings to the provide move opportunity for
can help you organize your
words they don’t know. The listening experiences.
resources. My favorites are:
students then make predictions • One of the challenges of working
• Netvibes allows me to keep my
of what they think the article will on multiple computers is
websites and other accounts all
be about. Finally, when I play organizing your multiple
in one place. With Netvibes you
video of the news story, even the bookmarks. Delicious and Diigo
to have a private page and a
beginning the students are able allow me to organize my
public page. My private page
to understand the gist of the bookmarks so that I can find and
keeps my email accounts, Flickr,
story. For the more advanced share them easily. I started using
my bookmarking sites, and blogs
students, I print out the article Delicious because I liked the
I read together as well as
and I may additionally target a aspect of being able to be part of
allowing me to see updates of
certain grammatical structure. a bookmarking network. Many
the blogs in one place. I started
Here is an example of a Worlde I members of my PLN use Diigo
Netvibes when I took several
have used recently with every and I created an account there
online courses and had to
level. as well. Diigo allows me to be a
organize the many online
• Commercials, movie trailers, and member of groups so I use it
resources we used for the
music videos have been another most often. Fortunately, my
courses. I had multiple logins,
great way of bringing Delicious bookmarks can be
wikis, and blogs to manage at
francophone culture into my updated simultaneously from
once and Netvibes helped me
classroom. Every Monday, as the Diigo which makes keeping
keep my sanity! I was able to
students are coming into the everything updated simple .
create a tab for each course I
room, I have videos of
was taking as well as the
commercials playing on my TV. Using technology can be
courses teach. These tabs are a
Allociné provides movie trailers intimidating unless you have a
lifesaver when I take students to
so that students can see what is focus. Many teachers become
the computer lab (we go about
playing in France. I also use it for overwhelmed at the number of
every two weeks) because all of
students to post their film resources that are available and do
the resources are in one place.
reviews we write in class. The not know where to begin. If you
Here is a link to my public
students take their writing much begin by creating a mission, setting
Netvibes page.
more seriously when they realize goals, and focusing on a limited
• iTunes allows me create playlists
that it will be posted for the number of areas, you will be able
of all of the audio I use for my
francophone world to see! Le to tame the information jungle.
various levels without having to
Top 50 at MCM keeps me aware
dig through a mound of CDs.
of what the most popular songs
Teaching multiple levels means
and artists in France. On Fridays,
that I have quite a few CDs for

22
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
Google Maps in the MFL classroom
If this term has proved anything to
me, it’s that the use of Web 2.0 in
M o d e r n F o re i g n L a n g u a g e s
teaching is a wholly worthwhile and
effective enterprise. Even the most
intransigent class can genuinely
learn and show real motivation if
some of the great applications
available to us online these days
are harnessed in the right way.
My journey with using ICT in MFL
teaching began properly this year
with the discovery of a wonderful
online community of practitioners
enthusiastic to share their
excellence. Twitter has been an
incredible education for me and
has had a direct impact on
classroom teaching as a non-stop
source of ideas and support. As
we all know, new ideas can be
slow to take root in any institution,
and schools are no different. But
the MFL Twitterati have been
invaluable to me in reminding me
that it ain’t about how fast I get
there…
To cut to the chase, one of the
web applications I had targeted for
use this term was Google Maps.
Over the summer, I had produced
a YouTube tutorial on this topic.
Figuring it was about time I took
my own advice, I determined that I
would have a go at it with my Year
1 0 g ro u p , w h o a re n o t a l l
enthusiastic linguists and can be
less than focused at times. As it
happened, this series of lessons
was key in turning their attitude
around.
by Simon Howells
The project in brief:
• Students to produce an account
of a journey in the past tense
using Google Maps and its
“Street View” function
• Students to produce this on
PowerPoint for display on the 
VLE and and on the classroom
wall
Things I was worried about before
doing this project:
• It would take me ages and I
would fall behind in the Schemes
of Work
• They would just mess about and
get nothing done
• It would be too complicated to
explain
• They would use technology as
an excuse not to do the work
• They would not actually learn
anything!
In order to address some of these
worries I took steps to ensure the
smooth running of the lessons. I
produced a step-by-step guide
including screenshots for the
students, which I left on the school
network and on our VLE; I planned
a destination for each pupil to save
time.
I set minimum targets to be
achieved in each of the three
lessons; and, of course, I was on
hand to help. This might seem like
a lot of work, but I now have a
great resource to use in future
years.
As I had previously delivered a
lesson on Montpellier, where I
spent a year abroad in the dim and
23

distant past, it seemed appropriate
to use destinations around that
town, to further “bring alive” the
place they’re always hearing me
mention!
These three lessons turned out to
be probably the most enjoyable of
the term. Pupils less conversant
with technology realised they could
follow instructions and produce
something that looked great.
Others got inspired and produced
incredibly detailed instructions. The
editing process really hammered
home the past tense, and this was
perhaps the thing that pleased me
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
the most – I felt that using it
practically made them really learn
the past tense. We went from a
class who hated grammar and
failed tests to one that saw the
passé composé as… a bit passé!
So how do I know for sure that it
was a success? Much of the
answer to that question is
necessarily anecdotal. My group’s
writing, though, has already shown
a marked improvement. The secret
pride I detected in our classroom
display, and the satisfaction they
got from seeing work appear on
my blog and on the VLE, hinted at
a changed attitude.
They feel like they can “do” French
all of a sudden. They have seen a
practical application for it. They
have taken pride in producing
accurate work, spurred on by the
knowledge that it will be on public
view. They are ceasing to see
French as a difficult bore and
starting to believe in themselves.
They are still far from perfect
linguists – aren’t we all? – but the
challenge now is to keep that
going… it’s the climb!
24
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Supporting assessment for learning

Pixetell is an “on-demand software by Isabelle Jones
that enables you to quickly add
voice, screen recordings and video
to email and other electronic
documents”. The twist is that Pixetell
supports visual communication but
also allows collaboration through
sharing multimedia messages -called
pixetells- and allowing discussions to
take place around them.
My vision of how it could be used
relies on the need for teachers to
develop a more structured approach
to verbal feedback to students and
links directly with assessment for
learning.So, I decided to test it out
giving feedback to a first year
student-11 years old on a
Powerpoint she had produced to • praise personalised answer to their own
learn basic animal words in • suggestions for improvement work. Very powerful!
Spanish. After trying out different • next steps (target-setting) If used for feedback, Pixetell would
microphones, it seems that a Used at the end of a short project, work great with private student/
headset produced the best result. applications such as Pixetell would teacher platforms like Edmodo for
What struck me the most was how be a way to ensure that due praise responses to individual projects,
uncomfortable I felt at first giving is given to all the students that but used tactfully, example of
feedback that way. We always have put in the effort. I also feel students’ work could also be
respond to other people’s body that the impact on the student’s presented on a class   wiki/   VLE
l a n g u a g e a n d l o o k o u t f o r self-image as a learner would also page with oral comments included.
paralinguistic clues when we are be stronger than a well done note Examples of coursework at
giving feedback in order to assess on paper. In addition, the students different grades from real or
its impact. In many respects, who feel that they are “too cool to imaginary students could also be
feedback given through a Pixetell be praised” could still get their pat included for discussion.
can be seen as fairer but I suspect on the back in private. There are other tools like Jing,
some training would be needed in For the specific purpose of GoView or Camtasia who offer
order to ensure that it still feels teaching languages, the benefit of some of the features of Pixetell, so
personal. Saying the student’s i n c l u d i n g a u d i o i n t e a c h e r this very useful comparison chart
name, using different turns of feedback is obvious. Students then helps the potential user to assess
phrases for praising and offering have a model that they can use whether this is the right tool for
positive and constructive criticism and replicate if needed. It is also them as well as to find free
are all essential. not an impersonal sound file that alternatives for specific features.
The structure of the feedback is they have to listen to in its entirety
roughly as follows: before they reach the bit that Photo credit:
• description of good points/ applies to them, but it supports a http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaggypaul/

criteria for assessment 624190252/

25
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Simple but effective

by Samantha Lunn

There is a phenomenal range of make my resources stimulating completely if it is conjugated,

technological resources available and engaging: otherwise I just colour the
to MFL teachers to enhance our • Colour – I believe there is no ending.
pupils’ skills in the classroom. point in creating a resource using I do not explicitly explain to
However, it is inevitable that either a variety of colours, fonts and/or pupils my colour coding;
resources or an ICT room are not images unless they have a however, as my classes develop
always available in order for every purpose – after all, you do not I encourage them to begin to talk
pupil to be able to produce want to distract the reader, so I about what they recognise using
something they can be proud of, colour-code language: feminine the target language, eg. “Es azul
therefore, at the moment I find that nouns are red and masculine porque es masculino” which can
I am the person using the nouns are blue (if I wish to then build up to “es azul porque
technology the most in the emphasize plurals – in French, es masculino y termina en o”.
classroom – although my new for example, I use green). This metalanguage can develop
year’s resolution is to get the pupils Spanish verbs are coloured to an advanced level by the time
using more! green, purple or orange they have studied the language
This post will therefore look at the according to whether it is an - for a few years, however it does
elements I use the most in my AR, -ER or IR verb respectively (I require a bit of planning in order
classroom when teaching, and use a slight variation for French), to develop it beyond the basic.
what technology I use in order to and I only tend to colour the verb What tools are required?

26

Not much is required except a
colour palette in Word,
PowerPoint or equivalent
application. Simple, but effective.
• Image – I will not add a variety of
images to a slide or a Word
document unless they are
n e e d e d . W h e n c re a t i n g a
resource to introduce vocabulary
I will always have on every
screen the question that we are
working on from the scheme of
work. I never introduce
vocabulary without a structure
which stems from a
Contextualising Question and the
re l e v a n t a n s w e r s t e m , f o r many more…
example: Where are you from? I
am from…France/Germany/
England/Spain etc.
Before introducing to pupils the
item of vocabulary that they will
be learning I try to get them to
tell me what it is through using a
variety of techniques such as
paraphrasing in the target
language or showing an image,
h o w e v e r, r a t h e r t h a n j u s t such as PowerPoint or, more
showing the image directly I
make use of a variety of tools to
reveal an item very slowly,
enabling the pupils to think about
what it could be before learning
the word.
In PowerPoint the animation tool
is an effective way of slowly
making an object dissolve on to
the screen and I like the • Audio – I rarely use a textbook in
interactivity of the trigger tool
(which allows an item that you
have clicked on to be animated,
rather than being animated in a
s p e c i fi c o r d e r w h i c h i s
predefined in the PowerPoint).
In an  ActivStudio Flipchart I can
replicate these techniques using
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
rub and reveal, placing a shape
over the image and moving it
away bit by bit or placing items
over a word or image and
deleting them in order to see
what is underneath . By
displaying an image, and then
showing the word in the target
language, I make a conscious
effort to move away from linking
vocabulary back to English
words and the images are then a
useful tool to practise language
later on, through activities such
as  Kim’s game, quick flash, slow
reveal, through the keyhole and
When I first trained to teach in
2005, we created resources on
acetate to display on the
overhead projector. Even though
these resources were made in
Word, transferring the
pedagogical reasoning behind
the methods of introducing and
practising vocabulary in this
manner to presentation tools
recently, Prezi, took a lot of work,
and is now an essential part of
my teaching, and nearly every
resource I make is displayed
electronically on the interactive
whiteboard. You can download
examples of this type of
resources from my website
LanguagesResources.co.uk.
the classroom as I prefer to
create my own materials which
are tailored to my teaching needs
and my pupils’ learning needs.
You will find that I use more
regularly the audio that comes
with the textbooks, however, I
also enjoy creating my own
listening material for example,
through recording my voice in
Audacity (sometimes changing
my voice by using effects) and
uploading the sound file to a
Voki.
I use also regularly use songs in
the classroom in order to drill
language, and if the class
produce a particularly good
rendition, then we create a Voki
(described in the target
language, of course) and the
audio of their version is added
before I publish it online.
More recently, I have begun to
use LingtLanguage to create
activities for students, and I will
be using the department’s
recently acquired EasiSpeak
microphones and  Flip digital
cameras in order for the pupils to
create audio and video to
practise their speaking skills
further. Of course, I cannot forget
to mention all of the video
resources that are available to us
through the internet on sites
s u c h a s Yo u Tu b e a n d
TeacherTube which are an
excellent source of authentic
materials.
• Sharing – The most essential
element of creating resources,
for me comes from the sharing of
good practice. Within my
department we share nearly
everything that we create –
which includes flash games and
audio files – through a well-
organised shared network area,
which led to the creation of my
website.
I also rely on the many kind people
27

who make their resources available
online, such as through
AsiSeHace.net, MFL Sunderland,
MFL Resources and the TES
resource bank. I have come across
so many phenomenal online
resources that I have found that
the best way of ‘saving’ all of them
is through using the  Delicious
bookmarking site.
I cannot end this article without
mentioning how I come across so
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
many excellent resources. The
MFL TES forum, Twitter, Yahoo
MFL Resources group and the
reading of a variety of blogs (and
writing one!) are all essential means
of communication for me now, and
as I look back over 2009 I realise
that I would not be aware of half of
the things that I know without the
Personal Learning Network that I
have developed around me. The
MFL Flashmeetings, MFL Show &
Tell and TeachMeet NW have been
part of this year’s highlights and I
look forward to enhancing my
knowledge in 2010 through the
continued use of ICT both in the
classroom and beyond.
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
twoacresphotography/3936235776/
28
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Mobile phones in the MFL

classroom by Dominic McGladdery

As long ago as 2001, the UK
government asked the Stewart
Inquiry to set guidelines on a
minimum age for mobile telephone
users. It didn’t, but that didn’t stop
the government from issuing a
circular to all schools in England
discouraging non-essential use of
mobile telephones among students
under the age of 15.
Since then, things have changed.
Children used mobiles and didn’t
grow the tumours the government
warned them about, and the
technology has become so
advanced that most children I
teach have a mobile telephone in
their pocket which is considerably
better and faster than the desktop
PC in my study.
Much has been written about how
students can use their telephones
as lear ning tools. However,
officially, mobiles are still banned in
many schools.
I have been using them with my
KS4 students with some success
and here are some ways in which
we have used them:
• Voice recording - The students
record themselves speaking in
the target language using the
mobile phone’s in-built voice
recorder. They then play it back,
listening to their work. Instant self
assessment and possible peer
assessment. What did they do
wrong? How could they
improve?
• Video recording - Using the video
recording function, one student
records two others performing a
dialogue in the target language.

29

This is great for practising GCSE
Role Play activities and also for
improving pronunciation. We
have also done this using the
school’s video cameras but, for
some reason, the students prefer
to use their mobiles. The fact
that they don’t need to be taught
to use them saves valuable time
in class too.
The finished work can then be
sent to my laptop via  Bluetooth
and shared with the group.
• Sending files via - Bluetooth
For the last couple of years the
students have recorded their
Presentations for their GCSE
speaking exams using Audacity. I
edited them taking out long
pauses and erms, saved them as  • Using the web - I recently had a
.mp3 files and bluetoothed them
to each student. They then
listened to them on their mobiles
or copied them to their Mp3
Players. We found this an
excellent way to revise. Your
friends don’t need to know that
you are revising for your German
exam, do they?
I also used Xtranormal with Year
9 students to create movies
which I embedded into my
department’s  wiki. I downloaded
them using RealPlayer and sent
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
them to students’ phones using
Bluetooth. They were really
proud of what they had done
and achieved.
We have used Bluetooth to
revise grammar points too. I
converted some grammar
PowerPoint files I made into
movies with  Movie Maker and
bluetoothed them to the
students.
• Downloading - I made some
Crazytalk movies with some of
the students and uploaded them
to a YouTube account I created
for the department. The students
then downloaded the files to their
mobiles to show their friends and
families.
student use her mobile phone in
my class to look up the meaning
of a word on WordReference
because she couldn’t find it in
the dictionary. I have also allowed
students to use Wikipedia to find
information on certain topics in
the target language.
If you work in a school which
allows students to use their
mobiles responsibly, I would
definitely recommend that you try
out some of the ideas listed above.
So what are my future plans?
Well, next term I hope to get the
students to use their phones
actively in lessons. Ideally, I want
them to use their phones to
answer questions by text
message. I’d already heard of one
site, SMSPoll and, after reading
Mark Cunningham’s blog about his
recent experiences, another called
PollEverywhere. Both these sites
allow students to answer multiple
choice questions and give realtime
answers which can be put straight
into PowerPoint presentations,
which would be ideal for starters
and plenaries in the classroom.
PollEverywhere also allows you to
create free text polls where
students can respond with their
own answers and allows answers
via Twitter, too. This would be ideal
for feedback and gathering
information in languages lessons.
I’m aware that not all students will
have their mobiles in school and
that not all of them will be able to
send  SMS for free, but I hope to
find a way around this. When I do,
I’ll let you know.
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leonardlow/
1142365603/
30

Mrs Perkins’s journey into the w w w
I started teaching languages in the
mid-eighties (last century). Our use
of technology in the MFL faculty
was limited to using a  reel to reel
tape-recorder and showing films
from the film strips projector. With
the introduction of the tape-
recorder, our life became easier as
locating the right track was less
time consuming.
My first encounter with a computer
was a   BBC acorn. At first, I did
not see how computers could be
u s e d i n M F L . H o w e v e r, I
discovered a game called Granville.
I started taking classes into the
then very basic computer-room to
play the game. The students
enjoyed playing the game which
involved visiting the town of
Granville and spending holiday
money. I started seeing the
potential of computers and how
students could control their own
learning.
I have been in my present school
since 1992 and I have seen
technology evolved at such a
speed that the mind boggles. My
teaching has changed so much in
the 21st century! My favourite tool
in the classroom is the Interactive
Whiteboard, but, for me, access to
the Internet in the classroom has
been the greatest breakthrough.
Finished are the days of collecting
newspapers, magazines or leaflets
and filling up my car boot with
realia to enhance my teaching. I
still use some but students can
now be exposed to the latest
news, up-to-date prices, products
etc. They can explore towns,
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
shopping precincts, visit museums
and so much more in the
francophone world.
Search engines have helped me
access these resources. Listening
exercises are more appropriate to
the students; all our bought
textbook recordings are accessible
on the school’s   Intranet. I like to
challenge students with the news
from Mon jt quotidien, songs from
YouTube, their own recordings
using Audacity or the Easispeak
microphones.
Reading skills are enhanced by
texts which are more relevant to
their lives. Students have read
about their favourite actors by
searching information online. Often
the learning does not stop at
school, research is also done at
home as independent study.
I also use the Internet to create
and host my own games. I use Hot
Potatoes, Quia and Linguascope
to promote new vocabulary. Every
day I discover new tools and
by Marie-France Perkins
interesting websites which I know
will make my lessons more
interesting and will bring the world
to my classroom!
 Twitter, online Languages fora and
flashmeetings have given me
access to resources that I would
not have imagined possible at the
beginning of this century.
My tape-recorder and my
overhead projector are still in a
corner in my classroom…
gathering dust!!
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digger-
c64/745817175/
31

Microblogging: making the case for
social networking in education
According to   W ikipedia,
m i c ro b l o g g i n g i s a f o r m o f
multimedia blogging that allows
users to send short text updates or
micromedia such as photos, video
or audio clips and publish them,
either to be viewed by anyone or
by a restricted group which can be
chosen by the user. The fact that
these updates can be sent to a
restricted group is an essential
consideration in the context of
education and online safety.
Essentially, microblogging is the
purpose for which the vast majority
of students use social networking
sites such as Facebook, MySpace
or, increasingly, microblogging
services such as Twitter.
In the absence of an institutional  opposed to its earlier, more static
Virtual Learning Environment (VLE),
social networking online can be
used as an extension to classroom
teaching and as a tool to
encourage communication and
inquisitiveness among students,
with the overarching objective of
enhancing teaching and learning of
by improving both teacher-student
and student-student
communication, and, in so doing,
bridging the home-school divide.
The advent of what we adults call  Social networking is, after all, what
Web 2.0 -I say this because, to our
students, Web 2.0 is the web- has
brought us a myriad of tools with
considerable educational potential
that the education establishment
would be unwise to overlook or
disparage. Old fashioned ICT -
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
word processing, powerpoint by José Picardo
presentations and desktop
applications in general- has often
been demonstrated to motivate
students.
However, the bright, colourful,
engaging and intuitive world of
Web 2.0 has opened new
possibilities to encourage creativity
(photo and video sharing and
editing sites), promote participation
(social networking sites) and
improve access to information
(social book-marking sites) in ways
which we are only beginning to
understand. Sharing and
collaborating can be redefined as
the main characteristics of the
whole Web 2.0 phenomenon, as
incarnation.
There is no doubt that, although
my students might be blissfully
unaware of the term Web 2.0, they
are all familiar with the concept
behind it: creating content, sharing,
collaborating and networking
online. In fact, social networking
online has rapidly become the
principal means of communication
for the current generation of
teenagers.
they do on their mobile phones
and other hand-held devices under
their desks when we teachers are
not looking. This is what they do as
soon as they get home from
school.
Many will argue that most students
32

are just wasting their time and
gossiping online but, whatever
anyone’s opinion on the benefits or
dangers of social networking is, it
cannot be denied that they are all
sharing, collaborating and
networking and they are doing so
in a way which they enjoy and find
engaging, otherwise they simply
would not do it.
More and more people, not just
our students, are becoming aware
of the power of belonging to a
network: each individual member
contributes a small part, so that
the resulting body of knowledge is
much greater than that which any
individual member could have
amassed on their own. This is why
the social internet has become so
successful: groups of people have
clumped together forming
networks, generally because of
some sort of affinity or shared
interest, and have started
communicating and passing on
information that matters to them.
Social and Personal networks,
fora, blogs and microblogs have
become the narrow end of the
funnel through which a seemingly
chaotic maelstrom of voices is
poured, resulting in a steady flow
o f m e a n i n g f u l a n d re l e v a n t
information.
My pupils may well not be
consciously aware of this or
f a m i l i a r w i t h t h e w o rd t h a t
describes the activity in which they
love to engage: microblogging.
However, they are extremely well
versed with the concept the word
microblogging encapsulates: brief
updates, photo and video sharing,
tagging and poking.
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
They are communicating with each
other on an unprecedented scale,
spending more and more time in
front of a computer screen with
multi-player games, email, the
Internet and instant messaging
becoming an ever more integral
part of their lives. The rising
importance and availability of
online social networks and their
popularity among young people in
particular cannot be dismissed,
putting the use of ICT at the heart
of 21st century interconnectivity in
all areas of society, not just
education.
Pedagogy, in my opinion, needs to
reflect these social changes and
conform to the needs and
expectations of today’s students
and, if we teach them in a way that
mirrors how they live their lives
when they are not in school, if we
help to ensure that the gap
between their school life and real
life is minimised, we then become
better able to guarantee the
commitment and engagement of
the vast majority of our students.
Motivation and engagement are
often seen as the holy grail of
language teaching. Lack of
motivation resulting in
disengagement continues to be a
big problem for language teachers,
which helps to explain, in my view,
why they have traditionally been
early adopters of new
technologies: first tapes and
overhead projectors, then CDs,
DVDs and digital data projectors.
More recently, widely available
internet access has heralded the
arrival of the next logical stage in
the evolution of the language
teacher: the connected teacher.
My challenge was therefore to
provide my students with the
means to communicate with their
teachers and with each other in a
way which they would find both
attractive and natural, fitting in with
their technological expectations
and making use of the skills they
already possessed whilst, at the
same, time adding value to their
education.
Using a microblogging service
which looked and felt like those
already in use by my students
would, in theory, allow teachers to
enter their territory and continue to
bring education to them wherever
they happened to be through their
computers and portable devices. I
felt it was important to bring
access to language learning
opportunities from home and,
therefore, started to look for a way
in which I could bridge the gap
between school and home (by
home I really mean not school) by
tapping into the potential offered
by social networking in terms of
catalysing student’s interest,
therefore making the most of the
positive attitudes my students
displayed towards Computer
Mediated Communication (CMC).
Using ICT with a focus on the C for
Communication is, in my view, the
next logical step and would allow
us to bring the learning online and
to blend the use of traditional tools
such as textbooks or dictionaries
with more up-to-date, relevant and
authentic multimedia materials
from the web. Microblogging
would provide teachers and
students with a platform in which
they could interact beyond the
constraints of the school walls, and
33

with which the teacher could
provide further personalised
feedback and support.
Effective use of ICT in education is,
in my view, the key to personalised
learning: it increases learners’
access to resources and support
and helps to motivate the most
reluctant learners to practise
complex skills and achieve more
than they would have done
through other, more traditional
means, thus benefiting those who
do not generally do well in formal
contexts.
Being able to contact the teacher
electronically and in private to ask
for help or clarification without fear
of peer pressure or ridicule would
help engage the hard-to-reach
students and leaves the door wide
open to new ways of personalising
and differentiating tuition. On the
other hand, those students who
are engaged and doing well would
relish the opportunity to obtain
extension materials, designed to
stretch the more able, delivered
directly to their own social network
wall in their computer screen.
After having considered using
Facebook groups and Twitter, I
opted for a specialist
microblogging service named
Edmodo, which had been
designed to be used specifically in
an educational context. Twitter was
discarded on the grounds that it
offered a very limited service of 140
character long messages sent to a
group of users, called tweets, or
direct messages of equal length
sent to individual users. Facebook
was rejected after consulting our
students and arriving at the
conclusion that they might see our
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
use of Facebook for educational
purposes as an intrusion into their
privacy, therefore negating any
possible benefits obtained by using
this medium. I got the distinct
feeling that our students wanted to
keep work and play separate.
Edmodo, on the other hand, was
clearly for school work, an aspect
which appealed greatly to my
students. However, it still looked
and felt like their beloved
Facebook. Upon signing up to the
service students and teachers are
told what the purpose of Edmodo
is: ‘A private social platform for
teachers and students to share
i d e a s , fi l e s , e v e n t s a n d
assignments’.
A distinction is also made upon
signing up between students and
teachers. Teachers are able to set
up classes and groups (for which
Edmodo generates a unique alpha-
numerical code) set and collect
assignments, send alerts, link to
online resources, attach
documents and embed audio
visual material. When students log
on to Edmodo for the first time,
they are prompted to enter the
unique code generated for their
class and thus both teacher and
student accounts become linked
and the can begin communication
privately and safely.
My students immediately
understood the purpose of
Edmodo and embraced its
simplicity, and ease of use. As it is
often pointed out, a website should
not make the user think as far as
usability is concerned. However,
the feedback we kept receiving
again and again from students was
that Edmodo was just such a
convenient service. Convenience,
rather than ease of use, turned out
to be the key to the adoption of
Edmodo by my students as their
preferred means of keeping track
of assignment deadlines and
communication with their teacher.
Students, by and large, embraced
Edmodo as a useful, time saving
tool which helped them keep on
top of their work and communicate
with teachers when their help was
most needed, that is, when they
were away from the classroom and
were attempting to put the theory
learnt in the lessons into practice in
their homework. In fact, being able
to assess their work and answer
their questions informally
demonstrably increased their
confidence in the subject and
helped to secure their knowledge.
Two further aspects I would like to
mention are the democratisation
and personalisation of the learning
experience. Firstly, through the use
of a microblogging platform such
as Edmodo, all students are given
the opportunity to interact with the
teacher outside any perceived
pressures and constraints which
may be present in the classroom.
This levelled the playing field for
those students who were less
ready to shout out in lessons,
feared ridicule or were, simply, less
willing to participate in the open
forum of a classroom.
Secondly, using microblogging in
this way resulted in a more
personalised experience for
students, who felt individually
supported by their teacher and, on
occasion, also their peers.
Personalisation also came in the
form of being able to receive
34

updates, reminders and notices
from the classroom in their own
computers or mobile devices
which could be addressed to the
group or to individual students.
Te a c h i n g a n d l e a r n i n g t h u s
became connected beyond the
constrains of the school timetable.
Despite these apparent
advantages, I often detect a strong
sense of scepticism among some
of my colleagues who see the
implementation of tools such as
Edmodo as a capitulation to what
t h e y p e rc e i v e a s a l a c k o f
discipline, absence of self-control
and preference for immediacy
among the current generation of
students. Students want
everything now, instantly.
Upon further consideration,
however, this appears hardly
surprising, particularly given that on
the internet, for better or for worse,
everything is just a click away,
allowing them to follow links where
their interest takes them, pursuing
m u l t i d i m e n s i o n a l t h re a d s o f
information, often leading to
learning outcomes that bear little
resemblance to the original
objectives, that is, the reason for
the first click.
This, which is often perceived as a
lack of focus rather than a new,
perhaps better way to synthesise
information and therefore acquire
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
knowledge, does go some way to
explain why our generation of
students struggle to write essays
under controlled conditions using
pens and paper. It simply is not
how they do things anymore, yet
we still insist on assessing their
work as ours was assessed and
teaching them how we were
taught. Understanding this might
l e a d t o t h e re a l i s a t i o n t h a t
classroom pedagogy needs to be
transformed and that we cannot
continue teaching the way we want
to teach, but rather the way our
students want to learn.
My own view is that educators
need to wake up to the needs and
expectations of our students and
reach a mutually acceptable
compromise which would exploit
the skills our students already
possess whilst safeguarding our
pedagogical principles, without
caving into a teenager’s natural
propensity to instant gratification
and superficiality. These are traits,
lest we forget, that have been
found in teenagers since time
immemorial, and not just among
the current, often unfavourably
portrayed and unfairly
misrepresented generation.
Perhaps what is familiar to our
students feels threatening to
teachers, given that we prefer to
stay in control and we do not like
our students being one step ahead
of us. Perhaps we fear that we
would not be able to control them
in their territory: online.
Yet we cannot deny that the
internet has undergone a revolution
in terms of the services and
possibilities it offers. It is no longer
a static repository of information, in
which information flowed one way
from the source to the recipient.
Information nowadays flows both
ways, as more and more websites
encourage or even rely on two-way
communication and the creation
and sharing of content.
It is clear that better
communication between school
and home, between teachers and
students is, not only desirable, but
also essential in a world in which
technology is continually
discovering and developing new,
exciting and useful ways of
improving communication between
people. In a sense, our students
have tasted the proverbial honey
and the move towards this type of
social interaction in the field of
e d u c a t i o n i s , i n m y v i e w,
inexorable. Educators would be
unwise not to take advantage of
their students’ willingness to
communicate and their desire to
participate via this medium.
35

Looking back and moving forward
I suppose it is normal to reflect
back on the year as Christmas
approaches and the new year
looms, and even more so when it
comes to writing a guest post. I
feel that I am often a ‘Jack of all
trades, master of none’, yet I
suppose that I am hard on myself,
given how far I have progressed in
a relatively short space of time.
And it leads me to consider: how
did I get to this point? Well, it all
started with a trip to the Building
Learning Communities conference
in Boston, in the summer of 2008,
closely followed by a jaunt to the
Isle of Wight to an MFL conference
organised by Joe Dale. I came
away from both conferences totally
inspired, and set about
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
establishing my own Personal
Learning Network (PLN) primarily
through contacts I had made at
said conferences, as well as Twitter
and the MFL Resources Yahoo
group.
There is so much I could talk about
but the main aim of this blog is to
share practical examples, so I am
going to focus on Edmodo and our
departmental wiki. It was José
Picardo who first mentioned
Edmodo, and this interested me as
I had issues with the current   VLE
in school and plans to change it
were slow to come to fruition.
Edmodo is free and has an
appealing style, similar to
Facebook which many pupils are
obviously familiar with.
by Amanda Salt
It proved extremely easy to set up
an account for myself at
www.edmodo.com, and equally so
to establish group accounts for
each of my classes. Pupils were
given the group code and told to
set up an account. My tip to
encourage this would be to set a
homework on Edmodo and tell
them it is only available there!
Within Edmodo, there is a poll
facility which is useful, as well as
the possibility of posting
comments and replies. I use
Edmodo to set assignments for
pupils of all ages; they like it as
they can access the site at home
and download any relevant files I
have uploaded, as well as see the
due date. They can also submit
36

the work electronically, which
saves a lot of time in class, instead
of using memory sticks, and it is
more contained than email. You
can grade the work on Edmodo or
download it to Word and use track
changes before uploading it again.
I also set optional ICT tasks such
as creative websites like Image
Chef or Toondoo, whereby pupils
gain stars for the star chart if they
choose to complete the task.
Pupils are embracing the
opportunity to use their language in
a more creative way and are keen
to show their end product off to a
wider audience.
And this leads me on to my
second focus: our departmental
wiki.  I set up the wiki primarily as a
means of displaying the pupils’
work and they love looking at the
Clustrmap on the home page to
see how many visitors we have
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
had, and where they come from.
Each class has their own page,
and those who are confident in ICT
or keen to learn are encouraged to
upload or embed their work
themselves, otherwise they can
email the code or file to me and I
do it for them, at this stage.
So far this year, we have Toondoo,
Go!Animate and puppet dialogues
recorded using our new   FLIP
camera. This encourages peer
assessment on a formal or informal
basis, and pupils are enthusiastic
about this display of their work.
Other pages include a list of useful
websites, study skills and audio
files, amongst others. I find the wiki
so handy from this regard, as
pupils invariably lost the pages
produced in the past with this kind
of information, or paid no attention
to them. Putting them on the wiki
means that we are talking their
language, through a medium they
understand and value.
There is no doubt in my mind that
my teaching has changed
dramatically for the better. At this
stage, the results are not
necessarily different, but the buzz
in our department and the uptake
figures tell their own tale. Teachers
in other departments come to us
for advice and to borrow some of
the equipment pupils have told
them we are using in lessons.
And, as a department, we are keen
to share and learn from others, and
go into 2010 with an enthusiasm
for the benefits technology brings
to our pupils and ourselves.
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/
2318269286/
37

Really understanding culture
I’m sure that quite a few of my
students over the years have
thought that French and Spanish
are languages that I have made up
deliberately to confuse and
bewilder them. Their immediate
reaction to the hard work and
thinking involved in the subject is
often “Everyone should speak
English”, “France is stupid” or “I’m
never going to Spain”. I’ve needed
to have in my repertoire something
else to tempt them with,
something else that will help them
to have a deeper understanding of
what the languages they are
studying are all about.
Community cohesion is one of the
big things at the moment, and the
Global Dimension is now an
integral part of the KS3 curriculum.
As teachers of MFL we are ideally
placed to address these issues; we
are fortunate to be teaching a
subject where different cultures
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
and ways of life are the essence of
our work. We deal with other
countries on a daily basis. By
bringing aspects of culture into our
lessons we not only enrich and
enliven them, but we also enable
our students to see and
understand that their culture and
way of life are not the only ones
and are not necessarily the right
ones. It is imperative that students
understand that foreign is not
synonymous with wrong or bad.
We are very fortunate in 2010 that
we have the KS2 Framework with
its Intercultural Understanding
strand, of which I am a big fan,
and the new KS3 Framework ,
which also has an Intercultural
Understanding strand, to point us
in the right direction. It is also the
year when we have the World Cup
in South Africa to facilitate work of
an intercultural nature, not to
mention the Winter Olympics in
by Clare Seccombe
Va n c o u v e r a n d o n g o i n g
preparations for London 2012.
When I started along the road of
international education in 1997, the
internet was really still in its infancy.
There was some information out
there, but it was hard to find, and
then we did not have the facility to
view it in the classroom. No
i n t e r a c t i v e w h i t e b o a rd s , n o
computer suites. And, if one ICT
class was using the internet in
those days, it became intolerably
slow for everyone else. So the
cultural input relied on the FLAs,
photographs that I had taken on
holiday, brochures, magazines, and
of course the huge piles of realia
which I collected while abroad and
which are the scourge of the
spouses of MFL teachers
everywhere.
Bringing the world into your
classroom these days is so easy,
thanks to technology. If you’re
studying weather, bring it alive by
looking at some webcams.  If
you’re teaching “school”, have a
look at the websites of some
schools in one of the countries
where the language is spoken. For
example, have a look at the
subjects that the students at this
Spanish school learn. Do your
students know all the vocabulary ?
What is  Euskara?
If it’s French you’re doing, you
could show them pictures of
schools in France, but Martinique
is much more interesting! There are
some superb video clips available
now.
38

There are also countless video
clips, audio recordings and
photographs which are readily
available to MFL teachers via the
internet, not to mention the
numerous websites themselves
with which it is easy to supplement
the driest text book.
The internet is omnipresent in the
lives of today’s young people. They
are able to access all kinds of
things, things which will help them
to form their opinions. Some of
these things will touch on other
cultures, on other peoples, and the
opinions that they begin to form
may not be those of tolerance,
understanding and interest that we
w o u l d h o p e f o r. C u l t u r a l
stereotypes are everywhere in their
lives: in the toys that they play with,
the books that they read, the
television programmes that they
watch and the music that they
listen to. What we need to do is to
try to prod them in the right
direction, to show them the
difference between stereotype and
reality.
Again, technology comes to our
rescue and enables us to do this
with ease. I love showing   this
video clip from YouTube, which
gives us some stereotypical views
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
of France and the French. We all
have a good laugh at it. Then I
s h o w  t h i s o n e , t h e E n g l i s h
equivalent. We know that this is
not an accurate depiction of
England and being English, so we
have to ask how accurate the
French one is.
Modern technology allows us easy,
quick and, most importantly, free
access to materials which will help
us in our endeavours to increase
our students’ tolerance and
understanding of other countries
and cultures. But nothing will
achieve that aim more than
personal contact between our
students and their counterparts
overseas. In “the olden days” of
the late 1990s, all we could
manage was hand-written letters,
some cassette recordings of
students speaking, and, if we were
really lucky, some videos that we
had made using a camera the size
of a small suitcase. And of course
it all had to be sent via snail mail or
faxed.
While we can still not
underestimate the impact of a
personal letter arriving in the post,
there are so many other ways to
correspond and work
collaboratively now. There is 
etwinning, where schools can find
European partners and then work
and correspond with them within a
secure environment. And the
correspondence is almost instant –
no waiting three weeks for replies
to letters to arrive – thus
maintaining the impetus and
interest.
Audio and video recordings, which
are so much easier to make these
days, can be shared via email, or
on shared spaces such as wikis
and blogs, as well as the more
traditional methods. And there are
the numerous online authoring
tools which are well-documented
in Box of Tricks and which can be
used to great effect in
communication with partner
schools and friends in other
countries.
So the ball is in our court. We have
the ways and the means. Let’s use
technology to ensure that our
students really understand culture.
Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcostin/
2906131566/
39

Enhancing learning in the MFL
Classroom
I love technology. I haven’t always
loved it but over the last few years
I’ve fallen in love with all things
geekie and become a bit of a
technochick, as I’m called at
school. It’s true that ‘shiny things’
appeal to me but it’s more than
that. I’ve become increasingly
convinced of the importance of
using technology in everyday life
and, as an educator, that means in
my job too.
I have many roles: mother (very
important!), Spanish teacher in a
primary school, Language Coach
for my local authority,  eTwinning
A m b a s s a d o r f o r t h e  B r i t i s h
Council, Apple Distinguished
Educator, consultant and speaker
– and in all of these I have seen the
power of technology to make my
job easier, better and more fun! For
me, it’s not about using technology
for the sake of it – there has to be
a good reason.
As I was thinking about this, I
thought back to a blog post I wrote
last year about one unit of the Key
Stage 2 Spanish  QCA scheme of
work and how we’d done it in our
classroom. You can read the
original post here.
In a six week period we used
technology every week to enhance
our learning. Without it we’d have
met the objectives of the Unit –
that’s true. However, it wouldn’t
have been the same and I doubt
that the pupils would have gained
as much as they did from using all
the tools we utilised.
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
So, what did we do and what did
we use?
Websites – The unit was based
on / inspired by Saint-Saens’
Carnival of the Animals, and I
found a wonderful Spanish website
which featured clips of each of the
animals’ themes and also gave
information about Saint Saens, the
piece and the musical instruments
used. This meant that I was
informed as the teacher but the
pupils could also have a look,
surprising themselves as to how
much they understood despite it
being in Spanish!
• YouTube - One lesson was
based on the sounds animals
make, and this I introduced with
a clip from YouTube of a
traditional Spanish song,  Los
pollitos dicen. This captured
attention and set the pupils a
challenge. What was our learning
objective for the lesson? I might
have just written it on the board
and got on with the lesson but in
this way, pupils were actively
by Lisa Stevens
involved in their learning and
engaged from the start. Plus
there was much singing along. I
use YouTube all the time and we
are fortunate that it is not
blocked in our LA – however,
there was a time when it was,
and then I just downloaded the
clips using Zamzar or the widget
on my Firefox browser for use in
the classroom.
• Sound recording – Linking with
the cross curricular element of
the topic, we made a
‘symphony’ – some may say
‘cacophony’ – using the rhythm
of the animal names in Spanish
and clapping. We recorded
ourselves using Audacity on the
classroom PC. This enabled us
to listen back and assess our
work. It also gave me evidence
of what we’d been doing. And
the pupils loved it! We used
sound recording later in the unit
too, with individual pupils
recording themselves personal
40

information as if they were
animals. On that occasion we
used Audacity on a laptop and a
headset microphone.
Nowadays – how time flies!- we
use Easispeak microphones
about which I could rave for
hours and frequently do. These
are much easier to use in terms
of portability, background noise
and storage. Recording
themselves was a novelty for the
pupils (less so now that we do it
often in Spanish) and had the
benefit of allowing pupils privacy
to speak without an audience to
intimidate them, and also of
motivating the more reluctant
learners to have a go. They had • Build your Wild Self / Avatars –
pride in their achievement that I
would suggest they would not
have felt if I had simply asked
them questions in class.
• Podomatic – Recording the
pupils proved to be not only
practical but motivational . And
we took it a step further. Using
Podomatic, a free podcasting
site, I made a school podcast
channel – WCPS Spanish – on
which we published the resultant
s o u n d fi l e s . H e r e ’s t h e
‘symphony’ and some of the
sound files – you can scroll
forwards for more examples, all
entitled Soy un animal (name).
Using Podomatic meant we
could publish on the school
website and also meant that we
had a presence on iTunes – a big
thrill for the pupils who were full
of it and wanted to check on
downloads!
• Interactive Whiteboards /
Animated Powerpoint – Using
technology isn’t just using
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
spangly tools and hardware, it’s
about using what you’ve been
given effectively. And using your
interactive whiteboard is one way
of using technology all the time.
Flipcharts allow pupils to be
active in the lesson – rather than
passively looking at the board,
they can move items, group
them, play games, find out if they
are right or wrong using graphics
and so much more. And using
Powerpoint animations is another
way of engaging interest. I used
it in telling the story Querido Zoo
– much easier to see than a
book, with the animations
replacing the flaps in the book.
Build your Wild Self is a
wonderful site from the Bronx
Zoo that allows you to make an
avatar that is a hybrid animal. I’d
discovered it before, but it really
came into its own here. Pupils
made their avatars then
described them. They had the
possibility of talking about body
parts, animals, giving
descriptions, talking about the
noise their animal might make,
where it might live and what it
might like to eat. The pupils’
were less complicated!! Again,
we might have drawn the
animals by hand but this is time
consuming and the objective of
the lesson was description and
links to adaption and habitat, so
the tool allowed us to have fun
whilst getting on to the crux of
the task.
• Animation – Each unit of the
QCA schemes of work ends with
a ‘celebration of learning’ and for
this unit, inspired by Oscar
Stringer, I decided to try some
animation. Brave as I had 30 kids
in the class and no support you
might think, but using technology
in my experience brings out the
best in pupils who revel in the
responsibility you give them to
look after equipment and work
together sensibly. Good job as
we used my 3 day old MacBook
about which I was extremely
precious! I split the group into
pairs, gave them a couple of
farm animals and tasked them
with getting their animals from
one side of the ‘stage’ to
another.
The resulting footage was then
put into iMovie and each pair
voiced their animals. The
resulting film may not be the best
animation ever – it’s very dark as
we used the iSight camera on
the MacBook and was filmed
over two weeks so the scenery
shifts half way through. However,
the pupils were pleased with
their efforts. Everyone
participated. They’d cooperated,
spoken Spanish and shown
creativity as well as learned a
new skill. And they’d done it with
minimal input from me. Posting it
to YouTube made them even
happier, and they still check now
for the number of times their
work has been hit.
So, that was just one unit – six
weeks of work. For me, the use of
technology made perfect sense on
each occasion. It made sense to
the pupils too. From feedback I
received informally as I welcomed
and dismissed classes, it was
41
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

welcomed by parents who had
heard about and seen what we’d
done from their excited children.
And, although it took time, it
provoked questions from other
members of staff who wanted to
know what we’d been doing as the
pupils had been enthusing about
their tasks.
Perhaps we don’t use technology
that often in every unit but it is now
quite normal to record speaking
activities, or make Voki, or use
Voicethread or Wallwisher to
collaborate and show what we’ve
learned. And so it should be.

42

Contributors
Alice Ayel teaches Spanish and French at Thuringia
International school in Weimar, Germany.
Alice blogs at http://aliceayel.posterous.com
Twitter:  @aliceayel
Suzi Bewell is a secondary teacher of French and
German at All Saints Language College in York.  School, near Reading.
She also works for the  SSAT as a Lead Practitioner
for Languages.
Suzi blogs at http://
www.allsainslanguagesblog.typepad.co.uk
Twitter:  @suzibewell
Alex Blagona is Head of Language College at
Northgate High School in Ipswich, where he
teaches French and German.
His websites are http://www.northgatemfl.co.uk
and http://www.alexblagona.blogspot.com
Twitter:  @blagona
Helena Butterfield is International Schools Co-
ordinator and an MFL Teacher at Ian Ramsey C of E
School in Stockton-on-Tees, where she teaches
French, German, Spanish and ICT.
Helena blogs at http://helenabutterfield.net
Twitter:  @langwitch
Mary Cooch has taught Languages and
Geography at Our Lady’s Catholic High School in
Preston. Mary is the author of Moodle 1.9 for
Teaching 7-14 Year Olds, as well as a VLE trainer
specialising in Moodle.
Mary’s websites are listed at
http://www.marycooch.com/
Twitter:  @moodlefairy
Joe Dale is a CILT Language Teaching Adviser,
BBC Languages consultant, Links into Languages
trainer, eTwinning Ambassador, host of the TES
MFL forum, former SSAT Languages Lead
Practitioner, regular conference speaker and
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
recognised expert on technology and language
learning.
Joe blogs at http://www.joedale.typepad.com
Twitter:  @joedale
Saira Ghani is Head of French at Chiltern Edge
Saira blogs at
http://www.chilternedgemfl.typepad.com
Twitter:  @sghani
Andrea Henderson teaches French at Elkins High
School in Missouri City (a suburb of Houston),
Texas at Fort Bend Independent School District.
Andrea blogs at
http://mmehenderson.typepad.com and
http://www.mmehenderson.typepad.com/
francophile/
Twitter:  @mme_henderson
Simon Howells is Modern Foreign Languages ICT
Coordinator at Cheadle Hulme School in Cheshire,
where he teaches French, German and Italian.
Simon blogs at
http://simonhowells.typepad.com/my-blog/
Twitter:  @simonhowells
Isabelle Jones is a qualified translator/ interpreter
with 16 years of experience teaching French and
Spanish. Head of MFL since 2002 and involved in
PMFL since 2003.
Isabelle is a keen ed-tech enthusiast who blogs at
http://isabellejones.blogspot.com/
Twitter  @icpjones
Samantha Lunn is Head of Modern Foreign
Languages at Arnold School in Blackpool, where
she teaches Spanish and French. Samantha runs
the  LanguagesResources.co.uk website.
Samantha blogs at
http://www.languagesresources.wordpress.com
Twitter:  @spanishsam
43

Contributors
Dominic McGladdery is Head of Modern Foreign
Languages at Roseberry Sports College in Chester
le Street, where he teaches French and German.
He blogs at
http://www.domsmflpage.blogspot.com
Twitter:  @dominic_mcg
Marie-France Perkins is Head of MFL at the
Oldfield School in Bath, where she teaches mostly
French and some German.
Marie-France blogs at  and blogs at http://changing-phase.blogspot.com
http://mmeperkins.typepad.com
Twitter:  @MarieFrance
José Picardo is Head of Modern Foreign
Languages at Nottingham High School. He is also a
consultant and speaker on the effective use of
technology in education.
José blogs at http://www.boxoftricks.net
Twitter: @josepicardo
Technology in Modern Foreign Languages
Amanda Salt is Head of Spanish at Grosvenor
Grammar School in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Amanda blogs at http://amandasalt.blogspot.com/
Twitter:  @amandasalt
Clare Seccombe is Sunderland Local Authority
Support Teacher for Primary Languages and the
International Dimension.
Clare has an MFL website http://
www.sunderlandschools.org/estrellas
Twitter:  @valleseco
Lisa Stevens is a primary teacher and PLL and
International Coordinator at Whitehouse Common
Primary School, eTwinning Ambassador, Apple
Distinguished Educator, Language Coach for her
Local Authority, consultant and speaker.
Lisa blogs at http://lisibo.blogspot.com/
Twitter:  @lisibo
44
 Technology in Modern Foreign Languages

Except where otherwise noted, the content in this book is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence

45