Apr 16 2007
Working with the MFL Department – Initial Ideas…
This is definitely turning into a challenging and interesting assignment for my Masters. As usually most of the initiatives that I have undertaken have been driven by me usually within departments that use ICT to some extent or not. And so for example introducing the VLE – Moodle has expanded within the school to those departments that are interested. I suppose in almost a viral way. It was very similar with even such a basic use of ICT by the teachers, by getting email setup for all to use this year. Slowly uptake improved, until there was shall I use the trendy phrase ‘tipping point’ ( See Mr Gladwell and also check out his TED presentation for more information) and within six months everyone apaprt from a few stragglers are using email as a form of communication.
With this module as the use of ICT within language learning was outside of my realm , I have had to go to a department that although they have shown interest in ICT are reticent about its use. This is an interesting challenge – and probably a much more REAL challenge. How do I implement the use of ICT within their teachign and learning in such a way that it fulfills the objectives within their eyes. I would presume their objectives would be something like this:
- The initiative must be easy to use
- It must not detract from the teaching of the language in question – French
- It must fulfill or improve on the existing way of teaching that element of their lesson – be it listening, writing, speaking…etc
- The ICT must be transparent e.g. the students must see that French is the objective not the ICT (Hmm or maybe the opposite?)
- The technical side of using the technology – must not impinge on their lessons
- The technology should not impinge on how the students behave
- It is coming to the end of the term, so it must require little planning
These are my guesses, but obviously I cannot base my initiative on this, so yet again my awful questionnaire skills have come out of the closet. I like the idea of initially giving teachers a questionnaire before a meeting, so that ideas can start to be thought through. The other weird thing is that I really want to try out a Social Network idea using NING, but I have a feeling that the MFL department will think that this is not a good idea. I have already setup a basic network to try the system out and feel, with its flexibility and obvious social network phenomenon appeal that it could work and really add to the learning of French within the school.
Anyway here is my initial draft of my questionnaire – QuestTeachersMFL, and four ideas that I will propose to the MFL department. Will report back in a week, with findings.
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