Some of the issues addressed by Diana are already familiar to us. Thanks to our colleague Bart Verswijvel for instance, students are supporting teachers during small training sessions  since more than 5 years now. Most of the teachers are very eager to learn to work with all kind of tools and apps. We don’t dispose of enough tablets yet, but thanks to wireless connectivity in the whole school area, pupils can use their own devices during lessons. Actually we have been experimenting a lot with smartphones lately.

1.  DREAM
Our village has several giants. Maybe villages in other countries have giants or legendary figures too. A ‘little giant’ could unite our schools and we could learn foreign languages together.

2.  EXPLORE
Looking for other schools to create an eTwinning project together. Who can help us with the coordination of the project. Which project activities could we plan together to learn French.

3.  MAP
Primary School Children found a Secondary School Group for tutoring activities. The students will help to plan the project activities for the children, with http://learningapps.org and http://quizlet.com for instance. They will organise a videoconference for and with the Primary Schools. They promise to keep a multilingual blog so teachers, children and parents stay informed.

4.  MAKE Children create posters, glogsters, videos to present themselves, the school and their country. Secondary students create learning activities in French Foreign Language.

5.  ASK Children comment their creations, make online exercises in basic French, etc.

6.  REMAKE
Secondary Students evaluate how the children progress in French Foreign Language Learning and announce creations in blog posts in French.

7.  SHOW
During a videoconference students and children present project contributions. The Secondary Students organize an online quiz with tablets based on http://getkahoot.com . Children have little conversations in French Foreign Language during a Skype session.

Planning two or more group activities during one lesson offers an interesting possibility. For the first activity pupils from the same group get a small card of the same color. For the second activity groups have to be composed of pupils with different cards. 

Finally TeamUp is a great tool to form groups.

I have organised an Art lesson in French Foreign Language (CLIL) based on the ‘expert’s method’. A) Introduction, objectives, organization – 10 minutes – B) Working in 4 workshop areas – Subjects, assignments, material – 20 minutes – C) Useful structures for speaking – D) Listening to and working with experts – 10 minutes – E) Control, administration, evaluation – 10 minutes 

All students were enthusiastic to contribute. In phase A teacher and pupils organised themselves and time limits were set. In phase B they worked together in workshop areas to become ‘experts’. In phase D pupils changed groups and shared information.

‘Le petit géant’, an eTwinning project in French Foreign Language, was a tutoring project. Pupils from Secondary School (age 15 to 18) were helping Primary School children from different countries to learn French. You can find the different stages of the project in this Learning Diary ‘M2.01 Learning Scenarios’. In all stages of the project pupils and children were collaborating. In the show stage (n° 7), secondary students organised a video conference with several components: an online presentation, an online quiz and a virtual round table. Children were communicating and played the online quiz with tablets. You can find pictures, reports and recordings by clicking on this link http://twinblog.etwinning.net/60370/

To assess group work I always focus on the process and on the final product. Both process and product are generally evaluated by the teacher and by the student. To reward the pupils for good work in the self-assessment stage, 2nd (or 3d) versions of the product (texts, professional letters, review articles, presentations… in French Foreign Language) are evaluated with a score too. Students keep the results of bigger tasks in a portfolio/learning diary, which they comment at their oral exam.

The most difficult part of the self-assessment and peer-assessment is defining and elaborating the accurate rubrics and criteria for every kind of group work.

For school to school collaboration and eTwinning projects we use also Twinspaces and http://etwinning.net, Facebook Groups, Skype, http://issuu.com,  http://padlet.com, http://educaplay.com, http://getkahoot.com, http://learningapps.org/ …

My students use workbooks but I often want to offer additional information or related videos. Thanks to eTwinning Learning Events I learned how to use Aurasma, Layar and QR-codes to add links to illustrations. My pupils just have to scan the images or codes with their smartphones or tablets to have access to complementary information.

We also use padlet to gather information and online exercises, on a grammar subject f.i.. so pupils can choose which way they want to improve their French Foreign Language level according to their personal learning style.

Some of my students  with dyslexia and dysorthographia prefer to use the digital version of my course on tablets before, during and after the lessons. In the era of reforms and challenges of inclusive education they even became my personal advisors for the creation of a more user friendly version of my syllabus and my website!

Flipped Classroom is a very activating method. My pupils prepare 40 % of my lessons at home to be able to ask me questions, to ask for help and to work individually or with peers during class. I’m using this method since almost 10 years, but I didn’t use instruction videos from the beginning of course. I still don’t use tablets for all the assignments, but my pupils are always using computers and the internet. Since this school year they also can use smartphones for some tasks.

My pupils dispose of a list of more or less 40 assignments in French Foreign Language they have to fulfill during school year. When I first started experimenting with this method, pupils were free to choose when they completed which task, but that system was too complex for me to keep my administration. Also some pupils had problems to keep on track, so I add deadlines for each assignment or for different stages of assignments now.

I’m convinced the Flipped Classroom model is very useful and motivating, but obviously there are some challenges and conditions. These aspects seem important to me. 

1) Teachers should work in teams and share material as much as possible. Creating instruction videos takes a lot of your spare time.

2) My experience with pupils working in a personalized way taught me clear instructions and deadlines are fundamental.

3) Don’t panic as a teacher if at the beginning pupils have the impression they don’t really learn something and because of that feeling study less. Little by little they realize that they have to study, to rehearse (with quizlet for example), to reflect and to remake to deliver good work. They get the hang of it and at the end – in my case after two years with pupils aged 16 to 18 – they really love it and enjoy it. Finally graduates often come to see me to tell they really learned to work independently thanks to Flipped Classroom, which is a good preparation for their future learning experiences and for their future in general.

Layar is an interesting app to add ‘augmented reality’ information to pages of the pupil’s workbook. When my pupils point at a picture with their smartphone or tablet, they are linked to a youtube video for instance.

I also use Socrative to create tests. Pupils use their smartphone or tablet to do the test. It may seem incredible, but pupils love being tested this way. The teacher doesn’t have to spend time marking as he gets the results in a downloadable form immediately.

The Lesson Plan has been created with http://learningdesigner.org . 

The subject is '6 genius artists - 6 masterpieces - 6 emotions'.

You will find learning diaries from teachers sharing examples and reflexions about how to use Tablets in the classroom.