Open School for Languages : Department for Children Schools and Families

What makes MYLO different?

Languages Work asked the wonderful Year 7 and Year 8 students at Weald of Kent Grammar School why they like using MYLO and we got some great responses...

“Because you have to run past people or squirt them with water balloons when you get something right or they squirt you back when you get something wrong.” - year 7 student

“At the end you get to play games and to recap all the activities you have just done.” - year 7 student

“Because you get to dress up your avatar. You want to get points so you want to do more French to get points.” - ‘doug’

“It’s better than other online sites as it looks more grown up.” - ‘fish224’

“Good drop down menus on activities to choose what you do.” - 'emmie27'

“It is a fun interactive way of learning.” - 'freckles'

“There are dictionaries to help you.” - 'redsmurf'

“If you don’t get the answer right you can try again.” - 'lizzy_x'

“It’s easy to learn through playing games.” - 'shann_x'

“You are learning by playing games so you do not actually realise that you are learning.” - 'babs'

“It makes learning languages fun and easy.” - 'annaRJ'

“It’s good to earn points and work up the league table.” - 'smiley8'

“It is fun going against friends and playing at the same time.” - 'liliP'

“You use listening, reading and writing skills.” - 'emilyK_X'

“It has your full attention.” - ‘fluff’

“There is a helpful bar with phrases at the bottom.” - 'zacquisha'

“Having your own avatar and your own points display drives you to get more.” - 'emmz'

 

Next, we asked some of the students what they would say to people who think language learning is boring...

“Languages are fun if you do it on the computer so it encourages you to learn.” - year 7 pupil

“To go on MYLO and do the games.” - year 7 pupil

“Use MYLO – because it makes learning fun.”  - bigtitch123

“Mylo would change your mind as it tests your skills through fun activities.” - 'bubblemaster13'

“Use MYLO because you can play with friends." - 'french-fries'

"Learning languages is useful everywhere and MYLO helps with that.” - 'gleegirl'

"Most people think that learning languages is boring. MYLO makes it really fun."  - 'smiley8'

MYLO challenges

MYLO is structured as Challenges and Basics activities.  In this post I'm going to talk about the Challenges. Challenges allow learners to practice their productive skills by preparing a response in the target language to a request for help. Responses can be either written or spoken.

When we started developing MYLO we spoke to lots of language learners. Two messages came through clearly, that learners wanted to be creative with their language and that they wanted activities based around topics they felt were interesting and relevant to them.  As we came up with ideas we took them out to schools and asked pupils if they liked them.  Any that didn't resonate were scratched, or re-worked.  We re-tested amended concepts to check that learners liked them.  

How are challenges structured?

Each Challenge starts with an introduction from your contact, the person who explains why your language skills are needed to help them.  Below is the intro from Swiss Bliss - a challenge that is currently under development and will be available on the site soon.    

  

To support learners in developing the language skills they need to complete the task, each 'Challenge' is accompanied by a series of preparation activities. The 'Get ready' activities introduce new language and concepts. The 'Jump in' activities show the key language being used in audio and written materials. The 'Use it' activities provide learners with an opportunity to manipulate the key language for themselves.

At the end of each block of preparation activities is a 'Compete Activity' re-enforcing the learning covered in the preparation activities.  In order to succeed in the 'Compete Activity' learners must answer questions correctly against the clock.  Kudos points are awarded for both successfully completing the preparation activities and doing well in the competitive game.    

Learners can now move onto preparing their response.  To do this they use 'MYLO Create' - MYLO's creative tool that we discussed in detail in this post.  Within MYLO Create learners are given more detail of what is needed in the task and can study audio, text or video relevant to the task.  

Support

Support is available from every screen, links at the bottom of the screen provide access to a 'Dictionary', 'Phrase Book' and cultural notes.  Learners can search the whole Dictionary or Phrase Book or browse the sections relevant to the current challenge.  In the 'Insight' section are links to learning to learn videos that illustrate key skills useful to responding to that particular Challenge. 

Reviewing work

When learners are working in a school group they can submit their responses to their teacher for review.  These will appear on the teacher's group home page when they login and the teacher can provide feedback to the learners.  Teachers can also choose to publish this work to the wider MYLO community.  Teachers can assign Challenges to learners too, learners are notified by email and the Challenge will then appear on the group home page. 

 
Useful links

Directory of MYLO Challenges.

What are Challenges? 

How are Challenges structured?

How do I manage groups? 

 

MYLO is live

We've released MYLO and you can access it at http://mylo.dcsf.gov.uk.   There are modules available in French, German, Spanish and Mandarin.  MYLO is free and you don't need to register to use MYLO and all of the content is available on open access.  However if you do wish to register you will be able to save your work and personalise your use of MYLO.  Anyone can register as a learner, but UK schools can create special accounts that allow them to create groups of their pupils so they can work together and get feedback from their teacher or peers.  Our eGuide provides lots of information about registering and getting started. If you are a teacher please click here for an overview for teachers.

 

Pre-registered schools

Over 600 schools have pre-registered with MYLO.  We're now processing pre-registered schools and a form for your Head Teacher to sign will be with you shortly.  Why do we send a form for signing?  Schools can create groups to allow their pupils to work together.  This is the only way two learners can work together and so to make sure our learners are safe online we write directly to schools.   

 

We're looking for teachers to get involved in trialling new content

We're looking for schools to get involved in the rollout of MYLO by providing feedback on our new challenges when they are ready.  This will involve completing a survey about the challenge.   If you'd like to get involved in this process, please contact us at [email protected] once your school is activated.  

 

 

 

MYLO ambassadors day

Joe Dale and CILT organised a MYLO Ambassadors Day  on 8^th Feb.   The Ambassadors are practicing MFL teachers from across the country.  The purpose of the day was two fold, first to provide some teachers with information about MYLO so they can help other teachers when we launch and second to present MYLO and get feedback to help us in the development of the service and content.  

The reason we have identified this specialist group of ambassadors is to ensure that teachers across the country have all the support and advice they need to incorporate MYLO into their own teaching and can feel confident using it with their students. Each of our ambassadors will be assigned to a specific region, and teachers in that region will be able to direct any questions to them via email or through their blogs. We will provide these contact details once MYLO is up and running. Ambassadors might hold twilight training sessions in particular areas, and will direct any feedback teachers have to the MYLO team, so that we can continue to develop the resource in line with teachers’ needs. 

 

The Ambassadors group is one of a number of ways of making sure we get teacher feedback whilst we develop the service.   CILT also convene an Advisory Group to help steer development and we pilot content and technology in schools.  At the Ambassadors Day we were able to show the latest development version of the software with some sample content and listen to the teacher’s reactions.     We also asked the Ambassadors to review some manuscripts of content the authoring team are working on.  The feedback was invaluable and we’re already working on some of the recommendations that emerged, we’ll post more information about these changes as we develop them. 

You can read what some of our Ambassadors have already said on Chris Fuller's blog, Simon Howell's blog and Isabelle Jones's blog.

 
 

Pupils give the thumbs up

We’re trying to get as much input as we can from students and teachers in the development of MYLO. We welcome your feedback and we’re always happy to answer any questions you may have. A number of schools have been involved in the initial testing of the activities and we’ve had some really great feedback so far.

Students at a school in Bradford had lots of positive things to say about some of the MYLO challenges:

 “It is very different to anything that we do in language lessons and I really like the idea.”
“I think this sounds fun and I’d love to do it in my French lesson.”
“I think this is a good way to learn other languages.”
“I think this is a great module to help students get motivated and inspired.”
“I think this is a good idea because it appeals to teenagers. It looks fun and interesting.”

In general, students seemed to be really engaged with the activities MYLO offered, with many of them emphasising how much they liked the way it enabled them to learn languages in ways that were related to ‘real life’.