Having selected Dansk (da) from the language menu the result could look like below:


The next step could be to click on a unit title, e.g Handleplan mod børn og unges rygning, which will take the user to the page below:


The top of the page has some useful icons where a registered user can:
-share the unit on social media
-like a unit
-open the list of words the user has clicked on 

Clicking on Vocabulary opens the page below (for the user Lykke):

Lykke has been working with two languages (English and Danish), she can click the EN icon to switch to the list of words she clicked on in English units.

In the column "Clicked in unit" there are the unit numbers, clicking on one of those will take the user to that unit.

Language students can click on any word and look them up in online dictionaries. In the screen below Lykke has clicked on the word "uddannelse", the highlighted words are those clicked on in the unit:


The dictionary interface has several options:

The "Word" field may seem redundant, but can be used for typing in e.g. a preposition, if the user has clicked on "look" it is possible to add a preposition e.g. for, into, after, at, etc. And a user can type in any word she wants to look up. It is also possible to change the language, advanced learners would benefit from using monolingual dictionaries.

Most important of the features is that a user with a click can change the dictionary, in the example Lykke has used "Vertalen", but had the text been based on e.g. regulations then a better choice could be IATE, an EU dictionary used by many interpreters.

We are adding some new features to Clilstore:
-A portfolio system, where users can store information on the units they have worked on and keep track on learning progress.

-Improved loading of the menu with units. The current loading speed of the menu is between 10 seconds and a full minute.

-More language versions of the Clilstore interface. Currently the interface is available in Breton, Danish, English, French, Gaelic, Irish, Manx (Gaelg), Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish.

-A Help system where users can get help on all the Clilstore functions with videos in Danish, English, Irish, Italian, and Spanish:


A view of the work preparing the help files. Here a user has clicked "Show/Hide Columns" and a video demonstrates the use of that function.

The Italian team LSSEV from Milan has had an Email exchange and feedback with Agnese Leopardi M.I.U.R. Ufficio Scolastico Regionale per la Lombardia Ufficio X Ambito Territoriale di Milano Ufficio Supporto all'Autonomia Scolastica. The outcome of the contact has been 36 new units in the Lombard language.
 

Since the start of the POOLS projects the different partners have been involved in the Less Widely Used and Taught languages. At SMO Caoimhín O Donnaile has been working with the Manx language (Gaelg), this has resulted in 27 new units

Researchers at the University of the Highlands and Islands have expanded their range of languages now available online to support a variety of multilingual research projects.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, international collaborations focussed on local community recordings have continued in Ireland and India. Project descriptions are now available on the university website in Irish and Hindi, as well as English and Gaelic. It is a uniquely quadrilingual approach and a natural extension for the University of the Highlands and Islands, given its 20-year commitment to bilingual provision, and online teaching in a blended learning approach.

Gordon Wells, project manager for the Gaelic research network Soillse, headquartered at the University of the Highlands and Islands with an office at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig UHI, explained:

“The COVID crisis has given us another incentive to widen the application of islands-led technical innovation and share originally Gaelic-focused teaching and research methodologies used at the university. 

“One of the community-based projects we support, ‘Guthan nan Eilean/Island Voices’, is focused on language capture and curation.  It started as a bilingual project, in Gaelic and English, but now it includes fourteen other languages, from Basque to Japanese to Welsh, as other interested parties around the world have followed its development, and adopted and adapted the video materials and ‘Clilstore’ language learning software it uses. It’s a delight to see ideas initiated in the islands spreading so far and wide.”


Example of multilingual webpages

In September the COOL project had a "Train the Trainer" course in Malta with participation of the Danish, Maltese and Spanish teams. The teams from Italy, Northerns Ireland, and Scotland followed the course through Zoom seminars, but a new course is planned to take place in February for those teams who couldn't participate due to the Corona travel restrictions.

Attendees

Onsite: Ana Gimeno, Cristina Navarro Laboulais (UPV, Spain); Kent Andersen (FAZ, Denmark); Sandra Attard-Montalto (ETI, Malta).
Online: Caoimhín Ó Dónaill (UU, N. Ireland); Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle (SMO, Scotland); Rikke Vestergaard, Malene Hansen (KGS, Denmark); Albalisa Azzariti, Giuseppe Licata, Alessandro Pizzoccheri, Alessandra Tagliabue (LSSEV, Italy).


The course attendees went through the entire Clilstore system (clilstore.eu) to check functionality and internationalisation of the graphical user interface. Some instances were found were internationalisation still remained to be implemented. These were listed and screen captures saved for reference. Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle (SMO, Scotland), who connected via Zoom, will ensure that these instances are internationalised into all of the project languages.
 
After this, the course attendees reviewed the Helpdesk cases to be presented, addressing authors dos and don’ts when creating new Clilstore Units. A number of examples of frequent authoring issues that have to be included in the Helpdesk were listed (e.g. linking to docs that cannot be Wordlinked from TinyMCE and how to advise authors to implement a different solution.

The new Clilstore upload and linking facility was also checked for functionality and attendees made sure that they were able to explain to others how it works in order to address problems about this through the Helpdesk.

The Malta course attendees discussed how to advise CLIL teachers on how to add new content to Clilstore teaching units and how to show them how to prepare CLIL scaffolding using Clilstore and Multidict. It was agreed that this content will also be part of the Clilstore MOOC.
 
Course participants started working on Clilstore FAQs to be used for the Helpdesk. Many of the items arose from CLIL teacher training courses carried out at ETI (Malta) where Clilstore had been used as an example of a CLIL tool. A shared Dropbox document was created to enable all project partners to add items accordingly.

Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle (SMO, Scotland) demonstrated how the new ePortfolio function he has programmed into Clilstore works. All the participants praised his work. After checking its functionality some issues were pointed out that CÓD would address and solve before the next Zoom meeting on the Friday.
 
After the Zoom meeting, onsite participants went through the new TinyMCE editing and authoring utilities and discussed how to assist authors to edit the Clilstore content in the course

• Saving as a clone unit
• Ownership transfer of cloned unit
• Feedback to author

Course attendees also had a look at a number of Units that had been created in Clilstore that unfortunately had errors despite being useful materials for learners. Participants worked through a number of these cases  (units with errors) and discussed how to assist authors. Kent Andersen explained that whenever he detects one such case, he immediately e-mails the author to warn them and explain to them how to solve the error.


The topics discussed during the session above focused on how to advise authors about embedding web3 units from other sources (advantages and disadvantages) into their Clilstore Units; how to make the most of using social media to share their Units with students, and to distinguish the difference between the web address in the browser URL box and what we call the “the short URL”, which is a unique web address for every Clilstore Unit on the system and which is composed of the following elements: clilstore.eu/cs/UNIT NUMBER). The URL from the browser address box cannot be used because it contains the username of the author of the Unit and can therefore not be shared with a different user.
 
Kent Andersen walked the participants through the Help Videos and how to refer to these for teachers asking for advice. The new website where the videos will be embedded was illustrated and the mechanics of how they would work was shown. For instance, by going to http://languages.dk/help/en/, users would find the English version of the Help Videos. Each project language will have its own URL. Figure 2 illustrates how the “help items” would be highlighted and relevant information triggered. The actual videos will be hosted on YouTube and linked from there to the site.

Through Zoom, Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle (SMO, Scotland) demonstrated the new features he had programmed into the Clilstore ePortfolio. Learners can link to Clilstore Units, write what they have learnt, link to external sources, share their personal ePortfolio with their teacher, etc. In turn, a teacher can supervise his or her students’ ePortfolio and monitor their progress. This is an innovative feature that enhances the value and usability of Clilstore. The Helpdesk will include information on how to assist teachers enlisting students and general advice on using the ePortfolio.
 
After that, all participants went through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to ensure that every relevant item had been included. The questions have been grouped into topics to facilitate quick access and easy understanding. The list of FAQs is available for the helpdesk in a shared Drobox file, but after translations it'll be posted on the help pages

The Beauty of CLILStore …..
So… Great! There’s a new tool called CLILStore! CLIL … what???
Emmm …… what does it DO, actually?
CLILStore is very basically, at its simplest level, a PROP for Teaching and Learning.
Look up the word ‘prop’ in an English Thesaurus. That’s right, a THESAURUS, not just a dictionary. It’s the ‘idea’ of the word we want to look at, not the simplistic definitive meaning of the word ‘prop’.
For example, if I wanted to find the word for the seating in a church, and I thought of the words seat/chair/bench, and looked each of them up individually, I would get a simple explanation of what they are. Something to sit on. There would be NO indication of what the ‘something to sit on in a church’ would be! The word for that, which would crop up in a thesaurus if you are curious, is PEW.
Collins (and dictionary.com) provide a good online thesaurus:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus/prop
Here is a list of words related to ‘prop’, sometimes used in exactly the same way, and sometimes used in different circumstances, for completely different purposes – as the word ‘pew’ is…
You could look up any words you don’t know as a vocabulary exercise!
This is from the Collins Thesaurus:
2 (verb)  in the sense of support
Definition
to sustain or support
Plaster ceilings are propped with scaffolding.
Synonyms
support 
maintain 
sustain 
shore 
hold up 
brace 
uphold 
bolster 
truss 
buttress 
 
I suggested this above: ‘You could look up any words you don’t know as a vocabulary exercise!’
I would bet that most of you did not (look them up). Too much hassle!  Just as your students would NOT look up words. Too much trouble!
You’d have to take each word, look it up on an online dictionary tab, go back to the original page, etc etc etc! Aaaargh!
 
I agree – it IS too much hassle. And it takes up time. Lots of it!
 
If you found looking those words up individually in an online dictionary tedious, this is a problem CLILStore does away with entirely.
 
NOW …. IF this list were placed in a CLILStore Unit, you could have looked them up immediately, within the same webpage! Only a click away.
 
Check it out on CLILStore:
http://clilstore.eu/cs/8885
 
By clicking on each word you do not know, you can immediately check the meaning in a vast number of dictionaries on the right hand side of the page. And simply switch between one word or another.
 
In this way, CLILStore  becomes a REALLY important PROP in language teaching and learning.
 
The example sentence for prop given in Collins is this:
Plaster ceilings are propped with scaffolding.
 
Scaffolding is a term extensively used in construction, where a framework is built to provide support to a building until it is ready, and the scaffolding can then be taken down. Here’s an example picture of scaffolding.
 

(from https://medium.com/rettigs-notes/notes-on-scaffolding-and-constraints-in-complexity-59407f93be58)

Scaffolding is also a term used in Learning, when a learner needs similar support until they can use language confidently and it is internalised as part of their own language system. Scaffolding is what dedicated and conscientious teachers do to promote learning.
And when doing CLIL, the learner has to deal not only with subject content, but also the ‘additional language’ it is being taught in. We use the word ‘additional’ as certain learners, as a result of      migration, are dealing with their own L1– their native tongue, eg Turkish, the L2 of the country they are living in, eg Sweden, and a third language in CLIL lessons , eg English. CLIL tasks are not only difficult for learners but also for teachers teaching CLIL who have to explain key words and phrases, and often encounter mental blocks or misunderstandings.
The learner in the example above might be better informed if he checked the word in a Turkish dictionary, not a Swedish one. Such students need instant cross-lingual translations at a moment’s notice!
So … ENTER CLILSTORE! That is, at its heart, what CLILStore does. It acts as a prop, a crutch or support, for learners to navigate fluidly through texts in another language, while being able to quickly and easily look up words in any of the hundreds of dictionaries linked to it. It also helps teachers, who will not need to pre-teach so many words, since students have the facility to look them up – very quickly, at a click!
Think of a Flipped Classroom approach. Teachers can set a text for students to read in CLILStore BEFORE the lesson, so any new vocabulary has been checked out before.
Today’s world is a totally different one from the world even just 20 years ago. And I’m NOT talking about Coronavirus here! 😊
Everything in the last few years seems to have shrunk – small laptops or handheld devices have replaced whole desks and filing cabinets.
What looked like an unbelievable miracle - Mr Spock’s mobile walkie-talkie in StarTrek – is now a commonplace device – even my 89-year-old father uses one now! Not only can we phone people, but we can access infinitely MORE information than the Encyclopedia Brittanica, take photos, videos, use the internet, send and receive emails and messages via email, send and receive messages, photos and videos via Whatsapp and Messenger, upload our own videos via You Tube or Vimeo, have a diary, a voice recorder, take notes, switch on a torch, look up a wonderful interactive atlas (Google Earth) and even travel virtually (by dropping the little man on to Street View), and use a large variety of apps …. on a single, slim, sleek device which makes Captain Kirk and Mr Spock’s walkie-talkies look massive and clunky, and quite frankly, hopelessly out-dated.
All this at the press of a button. Immediate response.
This is the internet and technological environment our youngsters are used to.
And I have not even mentioned Instagram, Reddit, and the dubious Tik Tok.
My point?
Students these days are impatient and quick and want answers quickly.
I have also become impatient and quick when it comes to technology, and I’m 59 years old!!! (This is Sandra at ETI Malta 😊)
The click button creates a trigger-happy environment.
The new CLILStore is aimed to deal with the new youngster approach.
CLILStore can do many things, all on the same interface, in a very fast and quick way, on the same webpage. Learners do not have to reach for a paper dictionary (do they still sell these? I wonder) or on another online dictionary on another open webpage.
Instead, a few finger-trigger-happy clicks lead to learning.
When clicking, they can see the text and dictionary side by side when they open the Unit. Quick, sleek, and immediate answers!!!
Teachers can Create a Unit and insert texts, link CLILStore pages and other webpages and/or online exercises to the Unit page so that learners do not have lists of webpages to go to, scattered across several emails from their teachers, or on another online school Moodle.
If you are one of those teachers interested in creating online units, then sign up for our new CLILStore, sign up for the newsletter, AND FIND OUT ABOUT NEW CHANGES WHICH MAKE CLILStore A BETTER TOOL.
 
A Couple of Additional Uses of CLILStore:
Learners can choose to record words they have looked up in their Vocabulary Lists, so that they can recycle these words until they assimilate them into their longer-term memory and can use them well. Recycling is one of the most important things in learning Vocab. In this way, Vocab looked up will not be lost.
Learners can also create their own Portfolios, recording what they have done and what they see as their Can Dos, which their teacher can check and assess learning.
Enjoy the new CLILStore, and let us know how you are finding it.
Soon, we will be issuing a CLILStore GuideBook which will lead you through using CLILStore, creating units, etc.
More news about that in the next newsletter!
Sandra at ETI Malta