Clilstore is at the International Meeting on Languages, Applied Linguistics and Translation

At International Meeting on Languages, Applied Linguistics and Translation, which took place at University of Évora, between the 6th and the 7th of December, the Portuguese team gave a small workshop to teachers interested in Clilstore ideas. Previous presentations had focused on the lack of materials that CLIL still endures. Teachers have to create their own material, and that is hard and time-consuming. When Clilstore was presented, reactions appeared. “That’s a great tool!” Some suspicion was shown around the room: “Are you sure it’s for free?” and “Can we really use those units that you are showing us?” The answer was YES for both questions. After demonstrating how easily anyone can create a unit, we finished our presentation challenging those teacher to try and use Clilstore in order to create their own materials. I think the challenge was accepted: http://alturl.com/p74yf

Clilstore warmly received at University of Evora

Portuguese as a Foreign Language is a very popular subject amongst Erasmus students, taking their degree in Évora, Portugal. During the first semester of 2012/2013 more than 40 students choose Portuguese as a foreign language. These were A2 level students and as a mother tongue, they had Spanish and Italian.

Last 12^th of December some of them were invited to try Clilstore Units. They got acquainted with A2 level units on Portuguese:

Amor de estudante: http://alturl.com/z9qx2

O quarto de uma estudante universitária: http://alturl.com/bcrk5

They were very happy to try Clilstore! They were completly engaged in the units and when our class time finished, they still wanted to continue.

A warm embrace that saves lives

This was a unit created for nursing students. You can find it in the link: http://alturl.com/ysc8r

Fourteen nursing students tried clilstore. Their reaction was very positive, as they’ve realized how easier is was to read and understand the text. Our lesson plan had the following steps:

1. Watching the video (full screen)

2. Discussing the main ideas of the video

3. Watching the video, but this time, with the text

4. Check out the words in multidict

Discuss the content of the video

5. Hotpotatoes exercises: vocabulary and sentence structure

TOOLS in EfVET conference 2012

More VET teachers will use Clilstore after Tools project was presented to delegates of EfVET annual conference in Palma de Mallorca on the 24-27^th of October, 2012. EfVET (www.efvet.org ) is an NGO unifying about 300 VET providers’ institutions all over Europe and each October it holds its annual conferences. The conferences with more than 220 delegates has a special part in the agenda, called Round table sessions where coordinators of project under various sections of LLP programme can present their product to a big number of VET providers across Europe. Tools project this year received a lot of appraisals not only from European teachers, but from such non-EU countries as Azerbaijan,   Hong Kong, Bahrain, Turkey, and Montenegro. Tools was also presented as an example of good practices at schools, using IT to deliver certain subjects in the classroom and was one of the most popular among the delegates. It was agreed that the Clilstore can be used for various purposes, not only as a tools for language teaching or a CLIL.

This year the conference received exceptional attention from the EU Commission, as it was attended by Director General of the DG EAC Mr. Ian Truszczynski, who also made a presentation on the 2^nd day of the conference.

Audio Podcasts on Island Voices

Ipadio audio clips can be used very flexibly. As we know already, you can embed them in a Clilstore unit. Or you can post the links in your Facebook or Twitter accounts. You can also make podcasts of them, and even place them in iTunes! That’s the latest development in Sabhal Mòr Ostaig’s Island Voices project.

Although the core of the Island Voices materials archive remains the YouTube video collections, regular visitors will be aware that there is a large amount of audio material on the Island Voices Ipadio channel as well. And as more and more local participants start recording themselves there are more and more Ipadio channels starting up!

As of this month the original Island Voices audio channel has been linked into iTunes. This means that you can download the latest audio clips on that channel as podcasts, for repeated listening on your iPad, iPhone, or other preferred device – with or without an Internet connection. If you search for “Island Voices” in iTunes podcasts you will find the channel in the Education category (subcategory “Language Courses”), or you can click on the graphic or this link. You can also subscribe directly to the podcast page. Happy listening!