ALL Essex & East Anglian Day - May 2008

Short account from Helen Myers.

It was lovely to meet people I knew again ...new faces .. and to put familiar names to faces ...at the ALL Essex day on Saturday 10th May. Many thanks to Avril and the Essex & East Anglian Committee for inviting me to talk .. it was very brave of you to give me two whole hours!

It was a real 'bonus' for me to have the chance to hear excellent speakers before I had to take slightly early leave of you for my homeward journey to get to a quiz (which incidentally we lost!), to see the beautiful surroundings of Woodbridge School (wow!), to share in a delicious meal, and to have a chance to get to hear about how everything is progressing at the Branch. The 'Have your Say' competition which Val has overseen seems to have gone really well, and seems to be a 'model' which Language Colleges / LAs could take on, as well as ALL branches. Hopefully I can publish your idea on this page .. Val is going to put together a few words on it.

Meanwhile .. here are a couple of pictures (sorry I forgot to ask to take a picture of the group there) + downloads + follow up tips.

	Woodbridge School (Click on photo right for more on the Sculpture Garden right) nice to meet members of the school's Language department, including Graham, the ALL stalwart!
Avril - Chair of Essex & East Anglian Branch - great to meet you again Avril.		Download the references I gave in my talk here. They tend to be French-orientated (reflecting my practice!) .. please feel free to mail me with any other you recommend. (You're in there José!) Carol recommends Klar for German resources and Elizabeth recommends Create mii and Arcade Games,
	Speakers I heard .. excellent ideas! Sarah Connelly (picture please!) , from St Bernard's Westcliffe-on-Sea, talking about using the Smartboard. I learnt loads .. not just about the software but also about some great tricks for organisation, lesson planning and lessons. (e.g. colour coding tenses, saving whole lesson sequences in notepad and sharing with colleagues, using Ppt + spotlight with the shade pulled down to start & some gallery things I hadn't noticed before.
	Alex Blagona (picture courtesy Joe Dale - hope that's OK!) & Dominic Wade from Northgate, talking enthusiastically and convincingly about wikis + blogs, and guiding us to create our own wiki using wikispaces. The key is to select 'K-12 education' in order to qualify for a free upgrade which 'secures' the wiki for a school context. Great advice - thanks! See their fantastic school blog here and a sample of their school wiki here. They generously offer to take their 'road show' to other schools & I hope they'll be able to talk at a London Event.	piccie of Dominic to go here hopefully.