No need for techno-fear... Try these simple ideas

ICT is now such an integral part of language learning in primary. It can bring variety and interaction to the classroom, offers opportunities to create professional resources and forms a gateway to the wider global community.

Plus, it is a highly motivating tool for children, as Laura Le Claire from Broadway School in Birmingham found out: 'I asked my pupils to give me key words about ICT and languages. They think it’s: fun, exciting, challenging, modern, cool, different and wicked!'

Many children are now quite expert in using ICT – for them it is quite a natural way of working. But for those of us who are looking for some support in getting started, here are some simple ideas to try out with your class...

The internet

Websites bring immediacy and add that authentic touch to learning the new language. They can offer you the means of exploring lovely places, art and culture on a global scale. 

You can gain insights into everyday life in other countries in many different ways, with websites including:

• City webcams, for example in Germany, Valencia, Croatia.
• Weather reports from around the world.
• Sports clubs such as Team Cofidis (France, cycling), Zenit Saint Petersburg (Russia, football), Federazione Italiana Rugby (Italy, rugby).
• Online catalogues such as Fnac (France) Toys R Us Japan - for finding out about toys popular with children in other countries. 
• Authentic music and songs – visit Teaching and Learning for links to songs in French, Spanish and German and from around the world.
• Recipes for traditional foods – try potato recipes from all over the world.
• eTwinning and other websites supporting school links - find out in person about life and language in other countries.

Teachers and children can also enjoy a range of free online language games, stories and videos, many of which can be accessed at home:

• Such as the French games on the Astérix website.
• The BBC Primary French website has cultural aspects with authentic snippets of interactive language for children to enjoy and emulate.
• Or for German, the Voyage Kids website has language activities, stories, songs and insights into life and culture.
• The BBC Learning Zone features short stories and videos in languages including Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Spanish, with teacher’s notes and key vocabulary. Why not take a look at Anansi and the Turtle?

There are many more authentic websites to discover - find them using search engines for different countries. Commonly-used search engines include www.altavista.co.uk, www.lycos.co.uk, www.google.co.uk and www.yahoo.co.uk. Simply replace the ‘.co.uk’ with ‘.fr’ (France) ‘.de’ (Germany) and ‘.es’ (Spain), or for a full list of country codes see the IANA website.

Show your children tourist web pages from other countries and get them to send e-postcards from the site - this is also a great activity for intercultural understanding. Example e-cards: Discover Hong Kong, Spain Info, Berlin Tourist Information, Kerala Tourism

The interactive whiteboard

With just some very basic techniques, the interactive whiteboard can be used for a wide range of enjoyable and challenging activities: The children (and I) enjoy moving words, sentences and pictures around the board for labelling pictures or to construct sentences. Such fun! (Cathy O'Brien, Leading Practitioner from Abbotts Primary, Collyhurst Manchester).

Try using the interactive whiteboard to highlight linguistic features in different colours. This simple idea is ideal for use when encouraging children to develop their knowledge about language. 

Invite the children to the interactive whiteboard to 'make' a pizza - this activity also presents good opportunities to talk about weights and quantities with the support of images. Follow these steps:

• Display a range of pictures of different toppings and large pizza base on the whiteboard.
• Following your instructions, children come to the board to move different toppings onto the base to create their own pizza, pronouncing the names of the toppings they have chosen. 
• The children could then ask classmates to come up with a name for their pizza or to suggest other toppings that they would prefer.
• This could lead into a class discussion around which foods the children like and healthy eating. Together you could conduct a survey of opinions to display as a graph or chart on the whiteboard.
• Children could go on to make real pizzas in pairs or small groups, using digital cameras to take photos of the preparation. These images could then be included in a Powerpoint presentation with simple instructions showing how it was made... and eaten!

Making links

ICT has a huge role to play in helping you to forge cross curricular links.  Numeracy, literacy, investigative skills, design technology, art and music can all be combined with languages using ICT. Working across a range of subject areas, children can use equipment such as digital cameras and camcorders, and hone their skills using programmes such as PowerPoint, Excel and Word.

For instance, this video clip of work around the artist Kandinsky on the Training Zone shows a class exploring the links between art, shapes and language. For further examples of opportunities for cross-curricular links, visit primary languages ezine issue 6.

Ask children to research the weather in Mallorca, Hamburg and Nice using the internet - this could lead to a presentation about weather in different parts of Europe, perhaps with weather charts imported into a simple PowerPoint presentation.

So, why not use ICT to bring your language classes alive? The world really is only a click away…

All the 'top tips' on this page are adapted from We have the technology! (Young Pathfinder 14) by Therese Comfort and Dan Tierney, CILT 2007.