eLearning Laura

I made my first ever Infographic today. I used the online tool Piktochart.com and was very impressed! Here it is:  

I wish I could travel back in time to the era when children in school stopped writing on slates and started writing on paper and in exercise books. It must have been the most tremendous shift: students could accumulate a bank of their own written work and it no longer had to be carried entirely [...]

On my iPad I have developed a folder of tools I use in the classroom I have called ‘accelerators’. They don’t necessarily add huge value when used alone, but as part of a workflow they have quickly become firm favourites. There are literally hundreds of apps that perform functions like these so finding something that [...]

iPads are fantastic for creating what we could call ‘digital output’, ie. a product of learning that is more engaging, dynamic or sophisticated than putting old fashioned pen to paper. I firmly believe that allowing students scope to create a product which is more tangible than just evidence, eg. the answers to an exercise, is [...]

Getting students writing isn’t always easy, especially in a foreign language. My search for writing apps for the iPad has been focussed on clean, unfussy experience and an emphasis on productivity without frills that distract in the classroom. Here are the results of our roadtests in MFL classrooms. Here’s my pick of the best writing [...]

My Year 10 boys did what they love best today. They managed to take our lesson about French regions off on a complete tangent and we got talking about our iPad project in MFL. The animation and excitement in their entire demeanour when talking about the iPads was an absolute pleasure to see: they literally [...]

This week I have been reading a lot about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). It offers a solution to the fact that schools have been spending a fortune on hardware for far too long (be afraid, RM, be very afraid) and perhaps it’s time to invest in connectivity and network architecture instead. Given that most schools’ tech [...]

This document, ‘21 steps to 1-1 success‘ really helps to get to grips with the process of equipping students in classrooms with 1-1 devices. It charts the entire process in a practical, reasoned and evaluative way. Goodbye headline-friendly fluff, hello substance! Thanks to Victoria State Government for publishing it.   Related PostsMicrosoft Surface – I’ll [...]

I really enjoyed this TED talk from Patricia Kuhl about breakthrough scientific studies of how language is acquired by babies. The broad theories were one of the background reasons why the Labour government decided to develop foreign language teaching in primary schools, as younger children’s brains are more receptive to second language learning, especially before [...]