This week has been crazy in more ways than one. I travelled around 2400 miles to work with students in junior secondary, Head Teachers and international trip facilitators in London and teachers from around the EU in Edinburgh. I ended up in Fort William, up in the Highlands, talking to educators there about the advnatages of registering at the MFLE. This week, my ScottishDailyPhoto site and Flickr photo stream are really worth a look. The scenery has been breathtaking all week long.
The podcasts that made it onto to the blog here are well worth a listen, especially when you consider that not one of the people involved had ever made a podcast before. They learnt what it was, how to find free music, record using computers and iRivers, edit using Audacity, convert to MP3 using LAME and podcast their files with Typepad in just one and a half hours. Incredible.
The German podcast students did the same and wrote a 12 minute podcast entirely auf Deutsch in just two and a half hours. The atmosphere in the classroom was more like the recording studio atmosphere that Clarence describes: intense, not restricted by time, students wanting to work more and for longer periods of time. Since when have kids wanted to do that with 'normal' classwork? I seriously reckon the digital divide between our digital natives and digital immigrants is beginning to reduce in terms of technical ease. After listening to their work would you agree? More importantly, if it's easier for all concerned can this become the 'normal' classwork our students crave?
Pictures: The Scottish Borders (1), on the way to London (2) and then up North to the Highlands and Fort William (3): 2400miles.
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My Greek colleagues Barbara started blogging last November as part of the ECML Blogs Project. Having known nothing about blogging she is now an ardent blogger and moblogger (she journalled the school trip to Holland) and is even talking about it at a TESOL conference in Greece. She has seen the light.
