eLanguages Project Toolkit

Section 9: Learning from the experience and knowing what to do next

Hopefully, once you have completed your project you’ll want to do another one, maybe with different partners, different pupils or at a higher level. If so, at the planning stage and afterwards, take into account the following considerations.

• Replicability of project
• Can the project be repeated with another partner or another class?
  • If not, what would you have to change? Perhaps with an older more advanced class you might change the target language focus but retain the same topic, theme and outcomes. For example, a topic about families with young pupils might operate on the level of naming family members and giving a brief description of them. The same topic with advanced pupils might focus on past tenses as family history is explored, and photographs might be complemented with historical timelines of events during the lives of family members, all with links to relevant Internet sites.
• Publication /distribution/potential for sharing
  • Will the project be turned into a wall display, or will it be placed on the school intranet or on a DVD to be shared with partners or parents?
• Cross curricular potential
  • Can the project be adapted for work with other departments? For example, a family project with more advanced pupils might be linked to work in the History department.
• Action Research potential
  • Would your project form part of an action research project where you and your partners explore the impact of the ICT used and the project model on teaching and learning.
• Effects on learning and teaching
  • Do you plan to focus on the impact of your project on the way you teach and your pupils learn?
  • Do you have a clear idea of what you expect will happen? For example, are you interested to see if the freedom to work creatively makes pupils more independent and less reliant on the teacher for ideas? Perhaps you would like to see if pupils extend their range in the target language? If partner pupils are in contact with each other on project matters, will they spontaneously make more contact in their free time?
• Use of innovative technologies
  • If your project uses common software and hardware, would you be interested in a more adventurous use of technology?
  • Would you use mobile phones for texting, video, photos, voice recording?
  • Web 2.0 technology enables podcasts and social networking in which pupils create their own pages. If they are members of Facebook, Bebo or something similar they will be familiar with the technology and its potential for collaboration and creativity