Technology and Education

Posted by José Picardo on June 13, 2009

This presentation, delivered to a group of Heads of Modern Foreign Language and titled The Effective use of Internet Resources, was meant to demystify the use of internet tools, so-called Web 2.0, in the classroom context.

Many teachers think/fear that they are going to be out of their depths and/or that it’s going to be require an inordinate amount of effort on their parts. With this presentation, I set out to demonstrate:

a) that the enrichment of MFL teaching and learning through the effective use of ICT is both desirable and, indeed, recommended by both the New Secondary Curriculum in the UK and the new specifications for GCSE in MFL;

b) how, given our pupils’ natural predisposition to use ICT, using internet tools can effectively improve the the teaching and learning of MFL by increasing motivation, engagement and, therefore, achievement;

c) how the work is mainly carried out by students on their home or school computers, releasing the teacher to facilitate and oversee the process, as well as to assess the results.

I felt it was important not to simply list cool websites, but, instead, to actually demonstrate how we had used these websites in our department. The presentation was interspersed with examples of pupil’s work, but you can emulate the way it was delivered by following the links in each of the slides or by following the links below.

The sites we demonstrated were:

Animoto – examples of pupils’ work
Glogster – examples of pupils’ work
Go!Animate – examples of pupils’ work
Voki - example’s of pupils’ work
Diigo – examples of teacher use
SlideRocket – examples of teacher use
Wordle – examples of teacher use
Lingro – Online dictionary which supports independent study with word games.
Posterous – examples of teacher use
Twitter – demonstrated as powerful CPD tool among MFL teachers
Edmodo – presentation includes video of pupils’ opinions regarding their use of this tool

A version of this presentation is also available in Slideshare and a slightly more in-depth post about these tools and some more can be found following this link.

A non-comprehensive but extensive list of websites which could potentially be used in education can be found in the Internet Resources page.

José Picardo

José is Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Nottingham High School, a secondary school in England, and is interested in the way technology can be used to enhance and transform teaching and learning. José has been curating Box of Tricks since 2007 and holds a MA in ICT and Education.