As any number of blog posts will tell you, iPads are great educational devices. They are also great fun to play with, but for now the majority of teachers across the UK haven't been able to test-run iPads and associated apps in languages classrooms. The expertise  on what you actually do with them, week-in, week-out in classes is limited. What absolutely can't happen is that we all stop work, get the iPads out and play for a lesson or two before getting back to the serious stuff. I want the serious stuff to happen on the iPads too, but perhaps by stealth!

Big thanks have to go to the #mfltwitterati who have already shared lots of information about applications for iPads. Joe Dale in particular has set up a superb posterous blog to collect and sort new apps that may be helpful for Language study.

Accepting then that there will be a fair trial-and-error flavour to this, I decided to use a learning-led approach in finding my suite of applications to launch with my iPads, and have categorised them below. Apps have to come out of my Departmental budget so I am only paying for apps I know will deliver. If I can find a high-performing free alternative, all the better!

Skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening

Easy to find were applications to practice reading and listening. Add to that a variety of tools for hand writing and word processing, presentations, audio recording and video work and it becomes instantly easy to take quick activities out of the textbook and work on the iPad instead of in an exercise book. I need easy solutions for my team that can make 'normal' lessons with a listening and a speaking activity digital as well as all the whizz-bang stuff.

The apps:

•  Apple Pages and Keynote £
• Voice reader text to speech - £
• Writepad German edition £
• Writepad Spanish edition £
• Writepad French edition £
• Audioboo - free

Creativity and engagement

To move students and teachers beyond simply digitalising the work they might have done previously, I wanted to add another layer to our application offering.

Apps which encourage drafting, honing, screencasting, editing and collaboration all featured in my wishlist and I found a few which I hope will help move these very 21st century skills on.

The apps:

• Garageband £
• Comicstrip - £
• Storykit -  free
• Storybird  - free
• Our Story - free
• Toontastic  -free
• Comic life £
• Fotopedia Heritgage - free
• Zapd - free
• iVocaudio £

Reference

This is a growing category and one which deserves a blog post of its own. There is an explosion of fairly mediocre reference apps for Language-learning on iTunes and trawling through it to find the gems is a long job. Whilst I keep looking I have chosen to put a wordreference.com link front and centre. I haven't yet found a more accessible free language reference tool which works as well.

The apps:

• Wordreference.com - free
• Lonely Planet guides

Authentic materials

I am really looking forward to using some authentic news materials from the large number of resources providing 'real' content I have chosen. Enabling students to browse, follow their own interest and curiosity and engage with authentic material without the teacher acting as middle-man will be very interesting. I am especially keen to make space for this lower down the school where the learning experience can be short of real-world material.

The apps:

• 20minutes.fr - free
• 20minutos.es - free
• 20minuten online.ch - free
• 20 minuten kino - free
• Tele 7 Programme TV - free
• Turbo.fr - free
• RTVE Noticias Deportes - free
• RNE Radio Nacional de Espana - free
• RTVE Clan -free
• El pais - free
• Mundo deportivo - free
• Libros clasicos - free
• Elmundo.es for ipad - free
• ARD Tagesschau - free
• ZDF Mediathek - free
• ZEIT online for ipad plus - free
• Die Welt for ipad
• Der Spiegel - free
• Lemonde.fr - free
• Libération - free
• Radio France
• France Inter- free
• FIP - free
• France Info - free
• France culture - free
• TF1 vision - free
• ARTE radio - free

Youth interest

This is a category I hope to expand. Increasingly, magazine titles are creating applications for their youth content and it is a great way to engage young people linguistically via topics they enjoy.

The apps:

• Zite - free
• Brigitte.de -free
• M6 par M6 web - free
• Petra - free
• Energy.de radio - free

Productivity

I have included apps like Evernote, Dropbox and Goodreader because I can no longer imagine my iPad life without them. It will be interesting to see whether we can manage their use effectively on a shared basis!

The apps:

Evernote - free

• Dropbox - free
• Goodreader £
• Dragon dictation-free

Learning to learn

This category is another area where I expect iPad use to make a big difference. Memorisation skills, seeing and applying patterns, revision note-taking and mind mapping are all so important. Getting apps like this in front of students will, I hope, build confidence and ownership.

The apps:

• Songify -  free
• Bamboo - free
• Vocab Battle - free
• Free flashcards study helper
• Soundnote  - free

Utilities

The Safari browser will be hugely important as I fully expect a lot of our work to be web-based, including through our Google learning platform. However, I also wanted something that can view Flash elements like Cloudbrowser or Puffin to add to the mix. We'll look at the Diigo Chrome offering as a possibility too.

The next batch...

I expect to review and update the list after a month or so, and will be keeping an eye out for new developments.  In your view, are there other must-have applications I have missed? What are the best reference materials out there? Already in my plans are a QR-code reader and Skype.

As we have begun Year 11 with our second cohort of students who will negotiate the hopefully shortlived scenario of controlled assessment, we are now in the position to be able to learn from last year and reflect on how to get the best work out of our students.

Controlled Assessment in MFL, most particularly in writing, is as much a test of memorisation and work ethic as skill, talent or linguistic flair. To be successful, students put together and learn by heart 300 words of higher-tier level crafted text following work in class and preparation at home (best case scenario). Or on the bus on the way to school. Or they turn up with a nervous smile and a tatty vocab list and hope for the best.

Hours are spent by teachers scaffolding adaptable high-scoring phrases, demonstrating snazzy compound-clause sentences and gleefully recounting how yes, if you write this it will *definitely* help you get an A*.

So, we ask ourselves with our heads in our hands, why do too many our students wilfully ignore all our advice, refuse to use the phrases they have been given and strike out wildly on their own with only the dictionary and a highly questionable grasp of the perfect tense to help them through? Especially the ones who most need our help?

Reflection #1

Students are fundamentally uneasy about adapting language we as teachers give them for an assessed piece. There is a problem of ownership. Some even seem to think it might almost be cheating to just 'use stuff off the vocab sheet'. Aiming to please but misguidedly thinking they have to somehow go back to the beginning to do so, they start their preparation with their books closed and hope for the best. Rare is the student who without prompting will properly and thoroughly use resources, books and reference materials to even half their fullest potential to produce a high level piece of work. Why?

Reflection #2

Controlled assessment, despite its attempts at becoming a normal part of classroom routine, is highly stressful for a lot of students. When under pressure, many students will revert to their linguistic comfort zone, which for many is about the mid-point of Year 8 before life got too complicated and full of tenses and agreements. This becomes very obvious if the focus of CA is something like school or holidays: topics they have revisited ad nauseam since early KS3. In adversity, students will instinctively rootle around in their memories for old trusted basics rather than be brave and use the relatively new language they built onto the topic when it was revisited in KS4.

We see strong evidence of this the minute we give students a CA task using material that they didn't study at KS3 at all. Performance in CA on the Environment last year was consistently higher from our students than on more supposedly accessible topics because the candidates didn't have a Year 8 comfort zone to refer to: they had never covered the topic before. They really used a significant number of higher level constructions and many had a much more impressive range of vocabulary and structures than in their other pieces.

What now?

I am pushing this year for us to take this approach to all CA tasks in the department. We do the students a disservice by making the bullet points too apparently straightforward as the natural response doesn't build in enough of the higher-level language they need to perform at the top level. If we push them hard in the bullet points to write maturely and with complexity rather than sink into the comfortable illusion that simplicity is the safe option, I believe we will see a much stronger performance across the board.

It's no secret with my students that I like it when they use digital media to make learning more interesting. Anything that helps grammar rules to stick is a good idea in my view, so I was really pleased when one of my Year 10 students made this video about the Perfect Tense in French.

http://youtu.be/CyAuW0pPOhM

I love this video produced by one of our Year 10 boys here at Berkhamsted. He's clearly put a lot of thought and effort into planning it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=637J02z-Rxo

If you enjoyed that, you'll love our Year 12 French student Alison's animation about the film 'Romuald et Juliette':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYdkEvV26BQ

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 the age of 7.

I am very interested to read of any upcoming research which demonstrates the difference that this political strategy has made to language learning in the UK. Has it helped? Has the impact been positive? Or is it too early to tell?

Am I late to the party on this? That's the way it seems looking at blog posts and videos from nearly a year ago trumpeting the importance of the iPad as it arrived on the market. The pace of change is so fast in this field that you can blink and miss a major new development. Looking back on the hype, you might have assumed that within a few short months schools would be full of iPads and we'd now be looking back nostalgically at all those desktops, wondering how we used to cope.

Not so. The cost of change in schools' ICT strategy is huge, and to change budgetary direction in this way is like steering a ship. It's not going to happen fast.

Making Plans

In reality, a year is nothing in the grand scheme of things. The digital ephemera quickly evaporates and leaves behind the kit and the tools that really matter. What is important about that time for me is that instead of an instant leap onto the iPad-adoring bandwagon (which has never been a challenge for me, I am a self-confessed enthusiast of all things Apple) this is a very considered and definitive step.

I am working hard at the moment on shaping the vision of learning in the classroom in my department at school. Being a firm believer in principle-led change, I've been spending the past few months developing the basis on which to move forwards.

IT Rooms and Languages

I am absolutely convinced that learning in Languages should be facing forwards, looking upwards and collaborative. Too often, the school IT room experience isolates students with headphones and keyboards into a virtual space where they only engage with the screen in front of them; probably facing a wall or the back of someone else's head. The teacher, having set the students off on their digital tasks, will mill around the room dealing with dysfunctional headphones and misbehaving mice rather than facilitating learning in any meaningful way. At the end of the lesson, the students disengage from their virtual world; often leaving the product of their learning behind them, only to be revisted on their next visit to the IT room if the file-naming pixies haven't whisked their work off to some dark abyss on the shared area, never to be seen again.

I don't want that. Outstanding languages lessons need more real interaction between students and teachers than this set up allows. Stretch, challenge, support and experience all matter. Multiple-choice fling the teacher is not a substitute for 'proper' learning. We know that great language acquisition happens in classrooms with students looking up, taking part and engaging with their teacher and their classmates. Follow that with individual and small group practice with a focus on the students being productive with language and their teacher giving meaningful feedback to help them improve. That's what progress looks like. Of course, learning platforms have improved the join between classroom, IT room and home, but we aren't there yet.

My students still use an exercise book as their main working space. It's 2011.

What next?

So let's assume my classroom isn't going to change. Let's assume my lessons are short and my aspirations are high. Let's also assume my school community will support saying goodbye to the exercise books as the main evidence base for learning.

I want a device that will get my students working and playing with language. I want a device that brings a world of authentic cultural material as well as tailored learning resources into their hands. I want the flexibility to move from paper resources to digital ones seamlessly, all on one desk. I want simplicity of function and speed of operation. I don't want to have to shape the learning to fit the limitations of the technology. How many starters have I had to 'stretch' as we are still waiting for everyone to be logged on in the IT room? I want a device that makes kids, parents and teachers say 'Wow'.

It has to be an iPad.

Yes, there are other devices, other platforms and other developments that are moving in the right direction but I haven't held anything in my hand that has come even close to the iPad and what it will deliver in my classroom.

Vive la revolution!

This post officially marks the beginning of what I hope will be a really great journey. My own iPad will be arriving within the next few days. I've made a formal request to the leadership at my school that what we want isn't another suite of computers but class sets of iPads. The response so far has been positive and it might just happen. All my fingers and toes are crossed. I am working to build a programme of learning that won't just bolt on to my schemes of work, for when we've finished the 'proper' learning. I want these devices to jump right to the heart of what we do.

I can't wait!

I enjoyed a lovely moment today when one of my colleagues ushered me into his classroom, gesturing for me to be quiet.

I walked in to find his class of Year 7 boys reading.

Not doing an exercise. Not writing. Not talking.

Just reading.

In French.

It was wonderful.

I've been thinking a lot about role models for staff lately, especially in the context of staff development. Sometimes it's a lonely job being Head of Department, and it's through the work of role models and support in school and beyond that I find guidance, benchmarks and a context for my own practice.

I'm increasingly aware how much difference it makes to have opened the window of Twitter wide to share in the tremendous wisdom and experience of my PLN. I feel like the gurus of MFL who have been influential in my work, such as Joe Dale,  Rachel Hawkes and Jose Picardo (and the list goes on far beyond that) are almost household names. They lead, experiment, inspire and share. I hope one day to be confident enough to do the same.

Leaders and followers are nothing new. The cautious watch with curiosity as the innovators and new adopters plough furrows they wouldn't be brave enough to attempt.

"She's just trying to be like X..."

I caught myself feeling slighted this week when it was suggested that I was trying to emulate a universally esteemed colleague  in a successful school.

Yes. I am.

What's wrong with that?

Perhaps unsurprisingly that left me somewhat perplexed. How can it be a bad thing to look at excellent practice and say "I am going to learn from their experience and adapt that for my context." The wise early majority benefit in exactly that way and can be reassured in their decision-making yet still remain ahead of the masses, perhaps adding a layer of innovation of their own as they go.

So is it reasonable to criticise thinking if it is based on others' inspirational practice? Does every idea have to be a new idea to be good? I don't think so. It smacks of 'not invented here' syndrome, or the laggard's cowardice...!

I've made three videos this week to show at our GCSE options evening on Tuesday. We asked our Year 10 students to tell us about why they chose Languages and what's important about them.

Here's what they said:

It's Year 9 options season.  The sleeves are rolled up and we're out to win the hearts and minds of the unconvinced and unenthused over MFL to recruit as many of them as we can for our GCSE courses.

This is only the second year for us that Languages have been optional and we are very keen to see how the numbers shape up.

In preparation I'm running a session tomorrow for my team called 'Motivation and Uptake'. I want to encourage my MFL teachers to reflect about how we talk to students about our subjects. Decades of being compulsory mean that being optional all of a sudden is a bit of a leap!

I've attached the resource I'm using to this post. I've made cakes too. Carrot and stick, and all that...!

Motivation and Uptake handout