User:PascaleHP

'''Bonjour!  Je m'appelle Pascale Hyboud-Peron'''. I am a French national who has been living in Tauranga New Zealand since 1999. While I go back to France regularly for visits I call New Zealand home now. I just love my life in NZ: all is human size and slightly less complicated than in my home country! The personal and professional opportunities I have come across since arriving in this beautiful country have just been amazing!

Professional background
After teaching in the UK for nearly 10 years (at the Thomas Aveling School Rochester, Kent) a mixed secondary where I taught French and some German, and developed an after school homework programme, I took up the TeachNZ opportunity to come over to New Zealand. I initially came over for a year's LTR at Tauranga Girls College The LTR contract became permanent upon NZQA recognising my foreigh teaching qualifications as suitable. Tauranga Girls College has a well established and well resourced Languages Department. I met plenty of motivating and inspiring people while working there and got involved in the College life at large, by working on the timetable, being a Dean for five years, then working on a Junior Assessment programme for 2 before being appointed Director of Gifted and Talented Programme. Nine years of excitement and lots of learning!

I left TGC in December 2006 and went to spend a year in France with Peter. Upon coming back, I started redeveloping and redesigning www.french.ac.nz, a website created to support the teaching of French in New Zealand schools, as well as getting progressively more involved in associative work. I became treasurer for the New Zealand French Teachers Association and currently take care of its 380 member strong forum. It looks that I will be doing this for a little while longer! I am very fortunate to have established great relationships with a range of Teachers of French in a range of schools around the country. I really enjoy e-collaboration in all its form, but I relish opportunities to actually meet people in the flesh!

It is crunch time for Languages in NZ schools: recognised as a full part of the Curriculum (eventually!) implementation at years 7 to 10 remains patchy, with some Intermediate students lagging behind in exposure to a language through lack of teachers (and funding!). Making Languages available to all and supporting and promoting the teaching of French in particular are two of my daily concerns. These goals, combined with a big interest in anything ICT to help support good teaching and learning, a wonderful PLN from which I learn everyday, and an interest in WikiEducator and OER, contribute to keep me enthusiastic and positive about the possible outcome: that Languages are equal to any other area in the NZC!

Since 2010 I have grown my interest in and understanding of ePortfolios. I started reading about and playing with Googlesites and Mahara. The initial "call" came from the Internal Assessment Standards for Languages which had been aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum and requested a portfolio of evidence. This was a new beginning for language teaching and learning. It has provided me with the opportunity to combine my developing digital skills with making sense of what is necessary to ensure a shift in practice happens to achieve this in the Learning Languages area. In 2011 I had the brilliant opportunity to help Language teachers around New Zealand discover MyPortfolio (a cloud instance of Mahara supported by the Ministry of Education) and joined the MyPortfolio team as a Facilitator.

I believe in the potential of ePortfolios to support learners ability to track and make sense of their learning, alongisde their potential to contribute to the development of sound digital citizenship skills and of key competencies so that learners know how they are learning and continue to learn. As a way of being, all life long.

Education
I went to school in France, and passed the Baccaleauréat in 1986 (!!) at the Lyçée Champollion (follow the link, I've just discovered it features on Wikipedia! ) otherwise called Champo, in Grenoble(a mid to largish size city located 100 kms south east of Lyon. Grenoble is the main city in the French Alps, so I got to do a lot of skiing back then! And it also has a large University campus). After a failure at Science Po and a great deal of hesitation, I attended Grenoble III where I obtained a degree in English Language and Litterature. I then went on to attend the University of Hull, UK, where, after getting over the immense culture shock and finally mastering English as a second language, I graduated with an MA Hons in European Politics. Considering this degree was not converting rapidly into a $$ (or rather £!) I took on a job as a teacher of French in a newly opened school in Kent. I started as "unqualified" but soon aquired the taste for it and went on to qualify as a teacher following a training scheme set up by the local County and the University of Canterbury. That was the end of my formal education. And the beginning of a lifelong taste for learning!

Professional

 * Languages Teaching & Learning
 * Role of ICTs to enhance the learning experience
 * Inquiry Learning theories and tools
 * Learning Languages Pedagogy
 * The best possible combination of the above to create but also to facilitate the production of quality relevant teaching material.

Personal

 * Spending time with family and friends
 * Running
 * Keeping fit
 * Cooking good food for the soul!
 * Reading blogs
 * Surfing the net
 * Chilling out!

A first contribution: How to edit a WikiSpaces page
I started a wikispaces wiki called Le Wiki Kiwi based on the theme "Bienvenue Chez Nous" (Welcome to our Country/Kia Ora) Its launched has corresponded with Francophonie Day (20 March, an event which takes place around the world every year to celebrate French speaking communities and cultures. This wiki is an interschool project through which learners of French at any levels in New Zealand schools can showcase their country and their daily life, through the medium of the French language. The WikiEducator activity I would like to share here is a step by step instruction guide for first time user of Wikispaces. I would then create a link from Le Wiki Kiwi to my user space on WE. But I am off for a long week end so I will have to come back to this a little later during the course! --PascaleHP 21:56, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Since I have had to create a "How to" on Le Wiki Kiwi to help potential contributors, here is the link to its How to Contribute page, where I have described the very first steps. --PascaleHP 07:35, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Comments from my WikiNeighbours

 * Thank you Patricia for kind message,looking forward to contributing more actively to the Wiki Community! --PascaleHP 02:33, 19 April 2010 (UTC)