It all started with a laugh...

What you get out of sitting with Priscilla, while listening to Prof. Rod Ellis, is a big dollop of sharp humor, a great dose of a fast thinking mind and a fun and creative approach to concepts!
Priscilla caught on the way Pr. Ellis stressed the word "Chunks" several times,  as he introduced the first of the now 11 Principles for instructed second Language acquisition. It was quickly decided that it could be made into a TShirt that got quickly sketched on a phone sketching app!
Then our inner rockchicks thought that the Principles could be listed on the back, just like the Concert Dates! But when you consider that even the Digest for the 10 Original Principles span over five pages, the idea was soon abandoned!
Far from backing down our newly dreamt money making venture, attention moved from TShirt to the more cost effective yet effective message bearer that badges are! Not the Open Badge variety that I am currently falling head over heels for, but the Badge Badge, the one you pin on your lapel or pencil case or iPad sleeve!

So here they are, those badges,  ready for mass production for a huge potential market of Language teachers and learners!

ToolSprint!

Something really cool happened on Saturday: a full house of Language Teachers ready to learn, listen and network at UofA for the revived Auckland Langsem! Aaron Nolan, newly elected NZALT President for the Auckland region supported by an enthusiastic Conference committee did make it happen and the classic conference programme was full of the Best Practice people. (Programme here)

Prof Rod Ellis rocked the lecture theatre with his 11 principles to start the day!). I have read some of his publications, watched many youtube clips taken from participants at his conferences, but it was the first time ever I listened to him live. Was worth it, made the principles come live and inspired me to think about the following: 6 years on, and Prof Ellis who was commissioned by the MoE for the NZC still presents on these principles on which rest the Languages curriculum to Language teachers, and keeps it fairly fresh. I can feel another blog post coming up soon (and will link here!) here!

The unavoidable focus on NCEA standards,  with an example of bad texts and bad questions, presented by the NAF, drew in a crowd...  Felt for the presenters scheduled on the same slot though.

Ass Prof Martin East presented on his research on the adoption of the "Interaction" standard after the "Conversation" standard has been abandoned. He has gathered teachers' voice ( a v. interesting concept which in itself would need a lot more attention paid to by education researchers, don't you think?) and in a nutshell, and I hope not to "interpret' too much, he found that while teachers agree that interaction is more authentic they are finding it very hard to manage to capture evidence of it in a meaningful setting and in practical way, thus are either not offering it or only as an option for their student. There is thus a tension between the pedagogy and way to assess the product of the learning. Would NZQA at any stage engage with language teachers, in the light of this research and Pr East's subsequent one, to discuss/review the interact standard? It got me thinking: interaction would maybe better to importantly underpin all that happens in/outside the language classroom (as suggested in the Principles)  and evidence of progress could be captured, reflected upon by the learner and used for formative assessment by the teacher BUT could be summatively assessed for standard purposes in a different manner (see DELF, IELTS, IBac etc.)

Anyway it will be interesting to see what Pr East, now President of the NZALT will use his research to leverage opportunities for conversation between practitioners and NZQA. I asked him if his findings had been published yet but no. This is Uni stuff with all the protocole, it ain't a blog post! :-)
So that takes me you know where: this format of Professional Learning does provide ideas and stimulation to participants but the rush from one session to another, the variety of input, and styles of presenters always leave the participant a little hazy eye by the end.
It would be interesting to see these formal settings at least provide an opportunity for participantsto share what they have gathered in their kete from the experience before they leave, to allow them to connect the dots between each presentation. Because they do exist of course, the connections, and they contribute to drawing the big picture!

Can you tell the space type I was in from this pic?

An example of this was the invigorating conversation I had with Liz Scally over lunch. She saw a bit of my session where I go over what I have called "Digital Citizen: 10 Desirable Competencies . We connected that the vocabulary used for these competences is quite similar to the one used to describe the Languages standards, and relate to Learning.

These are just raw chunks of thoughts arising.  I would need to refine all of this a great deal more, nothing better than a conversation around any of this would help me move my understanding forward!

Here is the ToolSprint presentation I gave. I love tools. That is if we start using them with the "Why?" !

Watery inspiration

Welcome home à ma co-bloggeuse!
I'ts been a bit quiet on the BTTDB front as, in St George mode, I try to fend off a variety of fire-breathing dragons. Survival first......
Still, my daily wallow in the bath gave rise this week to a bit of inspiration. We had been discussing in a Year 10 class how we might best make a joint presentation, à la Powerpoint.

There was talk of adding a slide and airdropping the presentation to the next student, which seemed a long and drawn out solution.

We first decided to gather/create the info and images on individual word docs which would be sent to me to compile into a powerpoint. Not a brilliant solution as I end up doing too much of the work and management of documentation.

So after a couple of classic BTTDB 'false' starts (I prefer to see them as an essential part of the learning process, and far from a waste of time) I suddenly thought of Google docs and the 'presentation' function which seemed to be a slightly simplified clone of Powerpoint.

The task was to make a slide illustrating your favourite animal and why you liked it. The task required the students to incorporate direct object pronouns (Je les aime parce que.......) and allowed for differentiation as there was a minimum requirement but those that chose to could add as much as they liked.


I started a 'presentation' Google doc and shared it with all the students. They very quickly got onto it and began working on their slide. It was interesting to observe the motivating factor of being able to see what everyone else was doing. Of course this quickly led to the realisation that they could not only 'chat' while they were doing it but also edit each other's slides. This gave rise to some sabotage initially before the novelty wore off. Some students realised that if they made their slide from a screen shot they'd made from Powerpoint, then the content couldn't be edited by others. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage as the language can't be added to or modified once we go through the slides together to look at them critically.

The only drawback to using this Google 'presentation' doc is that, unlike Powerpoint, there doesn't seem to be a voice recording function. I would like everyone to have included a soundfile of themself reading their text aloud. That would've been fun and made it an even better task. I guess they can record themselves in some other way and insert the sound file but it's much easier if it's a one-click operation.

Here's the link to the presentation. Hope it works. It's a work in progress as we haven't reviewed it yet and some students are yet to finish.

Now for a weekend of culture. There's so much happening here with films (Film Fest) and concerts that I'll have a hard time deciding what to go to.........
Vivement ta visite!!