Interview🎙️ Today, we want to inspire you with Marianne Grandjean, a modern languages teacher (English and Dutch) in secondary school and also a digital coordinator.
She explains how she easily gets her 6th-year secondary students (equivalent to our final year in France) to create websites using the Google Sites tool.
« Google Sites is very visual, and thus simple to use by secondary school students, » emphasizes Marianne.
The key to the approach is not wasting time explaining how to use the tool but rather focusing on producing and organizing the information gathered.
« The project that worked best with my students was the idea of having them create websites through group work. Each group chooses its theme and conducts research; they can use the Google Workspace tools available at the school to create their documents or media, and then they organize the information into pages and subpages, » explains Marianne.
It’s the result of their research work that is laid out on the website they will produce.
In fact, Marianne primarily wants to highlight a foreign language reading activity, where the content is showcased. « If they want to have something summarized by AI, that doesn’t bother me, because what I focus on in this activity is reading skills, » she adds.
They must also create a page that lists all their sources.
« Every year, I have a group that produces something great, which helps me improve my instructions, » she says.
The groups are, of course, « invited » to check out the websites created by others.
It’s the new version of Google Sites, which is very easy to use, that led Marianne to engage in this new activity with her students. Initially, she dove into it without really knowing what would come out of it, and over the years, she has refined her method through trial and error.
« My central goal is foreign language reading, since all their sources must be in a foreign language; the task also includes answering seven questions posed by the other groups on the chosen theme, » she explains.
Marianne dedicates a course sequence to this activity, which lasts about five weeks, including three hours of class time.
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