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Promoting Multilingualism: Using MYLO & Vokis
Many teachers are interested in finding innovative ways of teaching a language and exciting the interest and curiosity of their pupils. This, of course, is an excellent reason for joining eTwinning, as partner schools may be able to help each other. Even then, teachers will look for exciting projects to do which will help their pupils learn alongside each other. There are many websites which can help multilingualism but many hours could be spent exploring a website only to find it doesn’t suit the need of the teacher. The following websites ‘overviews’ of MYLO & VOKI not only give some background to the sites but also give reasons and some possible ideas why and how a teacher may find the sites useful within eTwinning partnerships. MYLO & Vokis Website Introductions MYLO (http://mylo.dcsf.gov.uk/) is designed to engage young people in learning languages, to raise their competence, and to encourage them to continue studying languages. The activities are designed into a series of challenges and each challenge is designed to offer a fully-rounded and self-contained learning experience, promoting language learning through creativity, problem-solving, decision-making and enquiry. Vokis (www.Voki.com) - Vokis are very easy to make and can help retain anonymity of pupils therefore helping them to feel less inhibited if they are concerned with their speaking ability in a foreign language.
Challenges are structured to include:
Background knowledge required:
Technical requirements:
Plan: 1) Partner teachers must collaborate to choose the language they will promote to their pupils – this could be the same language for both or they could each choose each other’s language, depending on their geographical location. 2) Teachers then choose the topic (e.g., from MYLO, they can choose from among many topics including the following): • Greetings and goodbyes • Names • Age and birthday • Nationality and origins • Days and months • Time • Numbers 3) Teachers initially introduce their whole class to the MYLO site and the chosen topic, showing how there are short activities to complete and that at each stage, pupils can click on the ‘speaker’ icon to HEAR the phrase. 4) Pupils work individually or in pairs to go through the activities. This can continue over a few lessons, but before each lesson ends, pupils should be given some time to BLOG or post a message within the TwinSpace (e.g., they can say how far they reached in the activity and what they have learned to say, and then comment/reply to other pupils’ blogs/posts). 5) As soon as pupils feel able, encourage them to make a Voki of the phrase they have learned. They can include a link to their Voki in their blog, and other pupils can listen to the Voki and ‘guess’ what it means – this will encourage pupils to ‘speak’ and record. 6) Teachers and/or pupils can choose to vote for the Vokis they would like to have embedded in the TwinSpace – either the teacher or a pupil administrator can then complete this task. Hints: If a teacher is using Vokis for the first time, it may be helpful to set up a ‘school’ account so that pupils can all save their Vokis within the same account. This is not essential though! Outcomes:
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