I am always extolling the virtues of online social networking and the many advantages it can bring to education, so it was only about time I finally got round to setting up a Facebook page for Box of Tricks. You can already subscribe to Box of Tricks via RSS (want to know what RSS is? click here), via email or if you follow me @josepicardo on Twitter. However, if Facebook is the tool you use most frequently, now you can like the new Box of Tricks page to keep up to date with everything that is posted on this website but also to share resources and participate in discussions regarding the effective use of new and emerging technologies in education. I hope you like it.

Well, the time has come to give away a brand new Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z high performance desktop computer with a 23 inch multitouch screen. Given that my fellow promoters have the Americas pretty much covered, I thought it would be nice if I restricted this competition to teachers based in the UK. So what do you have to do to win? Simple. You need to be a teacher, live and teach in the UK and suggest an online resource that could be used with a touch screen such as that of the Lenovo computer you might well win. The winner will be announced on 26th April 2011 and shortly afterwards he or she will be receiving a brand new computer all the way from Austin, Texas. In order to enter the competition follow the instructions below and answer all the questions:

A couple of months months ago I was fortunate to be contacted by Ivy Worldwide acting on behalf of Lenovo. They sent me a brand new Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z for evaluation purposes and agreed to send another computer to one of Box of Tricks’ readers. The only instructions given to me were to devise and stage a competition on this website. Well, the competition, in which participants had to suggest a web application ideally suited in their view for use with a multitouch screen, has now come to a close and the lucky winner, selected at random with this tool, is… Vanessa Burns Vanessa has already been contacted and a brand new machine is being shipped as we speak directly from the USA. My most sincere congratulations to Vanessa and I wish her and her new Lenovo all the happiness in the world! I’ll put together a compilation of the tools suggested by the all the entrants in a new post in the near future and I will also add them to Box of Tricks’ internet resources page. Many, many thanks to all of those who participated in this competition and tweeted and re-tweeted about it.

Being able to create and share content is one of the main advantages Web 2.0 technologies offer educators and learners alike. Pen.io is a writing tool that simplifies this process and allows you and your students to create and maintain a work portfolio that can be published and shared on the web. My 6th Form (17 year olds) Spanish students and I were looking for a way in which they could build a portfolio of research on one of the main topics of the A2 course (the final school year before University) that they could then publish, share and, importantly in my view, own. Having considered other very useful tools for this purpose such as Google Docs, we decided to use Pen.io because of its simplicity: it employs a basic, clutter free interface which results in a simple web page which is content-focused, free of the usual internet distractions. As was already mention above, ownership of the content was an important consideration for us. Pen.io allows users to customise their own URL (web address) to reflect either the author’s name, the topic about which they are writing or indeed anything at all. My students were really proud that they were able to create their own web pages to showcase their work. The task I tasked my students with researching, writing and publishing three essays on the Transition to Democracy period in Spain’s recent history. My students shared their passwords with me so that I could add corrections and AfL commentary. On this occasion the students did not share passwords with one another, although you can easily see how this could have easily been used as a collaborative writing tool if they had. The collaboration in our specific task stems from the fact that my students could all see what each other had written. When students learn from one another, I often find, is one of the deepest forms of learning. We also projected draft essays in Pen.io on the interactive whiteboard, highlighting corrections to be made and further exploiting grammatical structures and vocabulary. The final product, having researched the required topics, studied the necessary grammatical structures and perfected the vocabulary necessary to turn ideas into a sophisticated piece of writing in Spanish, is a simple yet compelling web page that can be shared, not only with current students, but also with future ones. Here are some examples of the work my students produced: http://jamieestudiohistorico.pen.io/ http://richardestudiohistorico.pen.io/ http://harryestudiohistorico.pen.io/ What do you think of Pen.io? How would you use it? Your comment is always very much appreciated.

It was a real privilege to be invited once again by Macmillan to deliver the keynote speech and a seminar at the Alicante Teachers’ Day on Saturday 21st May, where I was delighted to be able to address and meet so many committed teachers of English who were giving up their Saturday morning to keep up with the latest ideas and innovations in the field of language learning. The keynote speech was titled The Case for Social Networking in Education was largely based on the research I have been carrying out for my MA in ICT in Education. A summary of the keynote speech can be found here. Above are the slides the seminar titled Using ICT to Enhance Language Teaching and Learning. Links to all the tools mentioned in these slides can be found in the resources section of this blog and examples of the tools in action can be found by browsing this blog and my school blog. If you attended the Teachers’ Day - or even if you didn’t! - and have any questions about the seminar or keynote speeches, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Visit www.josepicardo.com for a list of forthcoming speaking engagements.

Voki has featured in my teaching for several years now, having proven itself a very valuable tool to encourage speaking in the foreign languages classroom. Many other teachers have also realised that Voki can be very valuable, not only to encourage and motivate reluctant learners, but also as an assessment tool. As a result, the people at Voki, in consultation with their users and with specially designated Voki Ambassadors, are building a tool that is specifically designed for use in the classroom: Voki Classroom. The main features of Voki Classroom will be: Teachers have complete control of students’ Voki assignments. Teachers will issue students individual logins (no student email or registration required), which means students of any age can now use Voki! This also means that no time is required to walk students through registering. Teachers can easily add students, classes, and lessons to their Voki Classroom site. Each lesson comes with its own Web page (to showcase the Vokis created), which can be set to private. Voki Classroom comes with unlimited online support. Voki assures us that the Voki we all know and love will remain unchanged in terms of features and cost, i.e. free. However, the new Voki Classroom will me a paid service with a -we are told- small annual subscription. Although I would have preferred a free basic Voki Classroom with premium features, I remain hopeful and excited about the possibilities that Voki Classroom will afford us. What do you think? Are you willing or, indeed, able to pay for an annual subscription? Or would you rather continue using Voki as you have always done? I am really interested to hear your thoughts. Please do not hesitate to comment below. For more information about Voki Classroom, head over to the Voki Blog where you can read about using Voki in the foreign languages classroom and about the forthcoming release of the new service.

I am a real fan of WordPress, which is, in my opinion, the most flexible and reliable of all self-hosted blogging platforms (hosted WordPress is also available). One of the reasons why WordPress is so flexible is that there are thousands of plug-ins offering additional functionality. On this occasion I will be using a video shot with our Flip Camera HD and hosted at Vimeo and  a plug in called Quizzin that allows you to create quizzes, that is to say, self-marking exercises within your blog posts. Step 1 - Record the video Devise an activity that elicits speaking. In this case my students are answering a set of pre-prepared questions. A dialogue or a more complex scene with acting and props works equally well. Step 2 - Edit and upload the video Once you have edited the video (don’t spend ages doing it!) upload it to a video hosting site. YouTube is good but is blocked by many schools, so I tend to use Vimeo for this purpose. Step 3 - Quiz away Install Quizzin (or similar plug-in) and save the required number of questions and answers. Then add the quiz and embed the video to your blog post. That is it! The quiz can now be used by current and future students alike and the video provides an outcome - a final product - that your pupils can own and feel proud of at the end of the process. The screen captures below show you the quiz as it looks in our school blog. To see and take the real quiz, head over this way. Before After   Is this something you think you can do with your classes? Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions.

Many of us look at schools in which there is 1:1 iPad or Netbook implementation and drool with envy. "If only our schools were as innovative" or, let’s face it, "as rich, as these other schools" we think to ourselves. However, the other side of the coin is that many teachers also see iPads as nothing more than overrated books that glow. Is there no middle ground? I think there is. Our department is currently assessing the potential impact of iPads in the classroom and, in order to do that, we have bought one. Just the one. For now. See how it goes. You see, we feel that iPads are a great idea but we think that we need to develop pedagogically sound strategies and good practice before we consider buying any  more. Our only iPad is currently used as part of teacher-centred activities (boring, I know, but there’s more: read on) and as part of a carousel of activities in which students work in groups through a number of activities, one of which includes the use of our iPad. The comic above, for example, was created in one of these activities using Comic Life, a fantastic and very reasonably priced iPad app. It’s still very early days and our iPad’s use is obviously limited by its uniqueness, as we only have the one tablet. However it is already showing great promise, not only being used in lessons, but also in allowing us to explore and develop different and innovative ways to provide our students with relevant content. The screenshots below were taken from a e-book (i-book?) we are working on that contains bespoke material to help our students learn about Transition to Democracy in Spain. The material was written using Pages (Apple’s answer to Word), which, in turn, allows document export in ePub format - the format you need to read it on an e-book reader. If the e-book reader happens to be an iPad, then the export process also allows you to embed sound and video clips as well as pictures and text, bringing the subject to life in front of our very eyes.   Front Cover   Video with transcript and added note So, the iPad certainly glows. And it is a book of sorts. However, it is also much more than a book that glows. I cannot wait to continue exploring its possibilities in my classroom. What do you think? Do you or do you not iPad? Cover photo by Leondel

Triptico is an excellent resource for teachers to use in conjunction with their interactive whiteboards that currently contains around 20 different interactive resources - all of which can be easily edited, adapted and saved for later use. Because Triptico is an application that runs in your computer (it runs on Adobe Air, so it’s compatible with both Macs and PCs), it can be used with any make and model of interactive whiteboard. This and the fact that it is free makes Triptico an absolute must have for every teacher wishing to make better use of technology in the classroom to engage students and foster classroom participation. Once you have installed and launched the application, you can explore the different activities available by scrolling from left to right in the main screen or simply by clicking on favourites, which returns an very handy navigation pane. From there you can easily navigate to any of the different interactive activity makers and you can then customise your own activities to suit your subject and lesson. As you can see, the resources on offer are often game-show inspired and range from (relatively) simple timers, image spinners and student selectors to games, quizzes and text analysis tools. The screenshots below give you an idea of the plethora of classroom-based interactive activities available: Team Scorer Student Selector What’s the Question? What’s in the Box? Student Grouping Flip Timer Image Spinner Find Ten Word Magnets   The brains behind the Triptico resources is a very talented chap named David Riley, a teacher himself who aims to provide "inspiration for imaginative teachers". If you think that these resources are a must have - and why wouldn’t you - then consider following David’s work on Twitter or subscribing to his blog. What do you think about these resources?

Technology in the MFL classroom is the Marmite of many MFL teachers, who either love it or loathe it. Funny thing really, given how much ICT has helped not just to enhance, but to transform the MFL classroom for the better. The ICT and Languages Conference takes place on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th February 2012 and is, as Joe Dale - one of the plenary speakers - has already pointed out, the must attend event of the year for teachers who are seeking to exploit the possibilities new technologies afford both teaching and learning. Whether you’re a complete beginner or a self confessed geek, the ICT and Languages Conference is the place to go to meet and learn from other MFL teachers in an informal and supportive atmosphere. If last year’s conference is anything to go by, this year’s promises to become the best CPD event of the year. I too am one of the plenary speakers and will be talking about how to harness social media and social networking to help us transform the way we teach and learn… for the better! Go to to the Languages Southeast website to find out more.