My first use of podcasts in the classroom would be podcasts made for students. The primary reason that I would initially seek to use podcasts in the classroom would be to expand the amount of authentic Spanish that my students hear. They become accustomed to my accent and pace and often need to have input from other sources, especially native speakers, in order to develop a better trained ear. An increase in the amount of authentic Spanish presented significantly enhances the students' listening skills. In my upper level classes the podcasts offer current events in Spanish. This synthesized audio content is real language that has not been reduced to the topic of a text chapter or the vocabulary of a specific story. Podcasts are current and not outdated as some of the textbook supplements may be. This unpredictable oral presentation triggers comprehension skills needed to understand native speakers in real life situations. Podcasts offer a tremendous boost to the development of listening skills in my Spanish language classroom.
Eventually, I would like to use podcasts made by my students. Currently, my students are required to present dialogs that accompany each chapter segment. These could be done in a podcast format. My upper level classes could make content review podcasts for my lower level students. Students could make podcasts about the artists, foods, cultures, countries, etc. that we study. I think the first podcast recording session that I would like to have would be autobiographical with the students describing themselves to me. It is hard to get to know all of the students in September. This could be one way to start to learn more about them. These autobiographical podcasts could be updated with the new vocabulary themes that we study.
I still need to learn quite a bit about how to have a class make and save podcasts but I work with some excellent staff members who are skilled in this technology at my school. I do not expect any pushback from my administration. Generally my administration values technology in the classroom. I found a few good resources (mentioned in Thing 14: www.coffeebreakspanish.com, www.NewsInSlowSpanish.com) but would need to search out more. Most of the Spanish sites on David Warlick's directory were not useful to me and some were not accessible. I anticipate that the highest interest would be students listening to other students that they know. Podcasts are a great match for listening and speaking skill development in a Spanish language classroom.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Thing 14 - Learn about Podcasting
Podcasting will be such a great asset to a Spanish language classroom. I found two great sites; one will work well for my upper level classes and the other will help my introductory level students.
The first site that I visited was recommended by a fellow teacher, www.coffeebreakspanish.com. This is a site of podcast lessons starting at the very beginning of conversation development and progressing through a variety of vocab themes and grammar topics. It is created in Scotland with Scottish speakers which confirms how important pronunciation is by any speaker of any dialect or language in order to be understood by native Spanish speakers. The preferred delivery of these podcasts is iTunes which I believe most of my students access for pleasure... and now for class! This seems like a great way to warm-up at the beginning of class, to supplement review at home, or to encourage advanced students to move ahead with audio guides of new content.
The second site that I visited was a gem although to fully access it would require a paid subscription. I think it would be worth the price to access all that they offer. As the title suggests,
www.NewsInSlowSpanish.com, offers current event news podcasts in a S-L-O-W(er) speaking format. This is a great idea as it provides authentic spoken Spanish delivered in a format that allows second language learners more time to process what they are hearing. The podcasts are presented by native speakers with authentic accents but with enough "think time" to aid comprehension. The site was an enhanced podcast that showed the scripts of what was said, offered grammar activities, flashcards of vocabulary used in the podcast, pronunciation practice, and cultural supplements. The demo only allowed access to a portion of each program but it was enough to entice me to consider the subscription. WOW! What a great idea and a great classroom teaching tool!
The first site that I visited was recommended by a fellow teacher, www.coffeebreakspanish.com. This is a site of podcast lessons starting at the very beginning of conversation development and progressing through a variety of vocab themes and grammar topics. It is created in Scotland with Scottish speakers which confirms how important pronunciation is by any speaker of any dialect or language in order to be understood by native Spanish speakers. The preferred delivery of these podcasts is iTunes which I believe most of my students access for pleasure... and now for class! This seems like a great way to warm-up at the beginning of class, to supplement review at home, or to encourage advanced students to move ahead with audio guides of new content.
The second site that I visited was a gem although to fully access it would require a paid subscription. I think it would be worth the price to access all that they offer. As the title suggests,
www.NewsInSlowSpanish.com, offers current event news podcasts in a S-L-O-W(er) speaking format. This is a great idea as it provides authentic spoken Spanish delivered in a format that allows second language learners more time to process what they are hearing. The podcasts are presented by native speakers with authentic accents but with enough "think time" to aid comprehension. The site was an enhanced podcast that showed the scripts of what was said, offered grammar activities, flashcards of vocabulary used in the podcast, pronunciation practice, and cultural supplements. The demo only allowed access to a portion of each program but it was enough to entice me to consider the subscription. WOW! What a great idea and a great classroom teaching tool!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Thing 13 - Sharing Your Vision
This is a YouTube video that provides an audio and visual interpretation of the poem that we read in Spanish 4, Oda al tomate by Pablo Neruda. I love this video; I hate that I can't access it from my school server because YouTube is blocked.
My real thrill with Thing 13 was how easy it was to embed the YouTube video using Slide. WOW! A simple copy of a wickedly long address and BAM! it was in my blog. YEAH! It worked like a dream and anything this easy and this useful surely has great potential in my classroom. The problem is that I still can't view this on my school site. UGHHH! I have found some gems on YouTube that would significantly enhance my classroom lessons but have so many limitations about accessing these during the school day. When I tried to view my blog through the school server, it said that I needed a plug-in to view my video clip and that I do not have permission to access the plug-in. Frustrating. On the upside, grandma who lives out of state will love accessing videos at one simple site.
I also made a slideshow using Empressr. I tried Empressr first because I was attracted to their self description as a storytelling tool and this seems like a perfect match for a Spanish language classroom. Making the slideshow was fairly simple even adding the photos right from their import options; I used Flickr. The master slide worked well but I didn't quite figure out how to make text be a part of the master formula. This is something to pursue. This was so much easier than what I have done in the past with PowerPoint which makes adding photos time consuming. I tried to add an audio clip but had no luck opening anything so this is another avenue to continue to practice. Overall, everything went very well with Empressr until I tried to embed it into this blog. I am working with 23 Things staff to resolve this hiccup. I look forward to using these in my classroom and these could be great visual prompts for students when they have to make their oral presentations. I have tried to eliminate "note cards" and instead require all visual prompts. This should be great especially if I fix my audio problem and they can record right onto their Empressr project. Hopefully, my Empressr slideshow will be up soon.
I liked what I saw on the Zoho site and noticed that many of the students in this class have used it. It offers more text, bubble, and clip art options than Empressr but I like the photo ease available with Empressr. Zoho looks like a useful tool and a definite step up from what I have done with PowerPoint. I did little with the 4th site Slideshare. The other 3 offered easier access to help/learn features and I found that Zoho, Empressr, and Slide met my needs for presentation programs.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thing 12 - Productivity Anywhere
Like a moth to the flame I visited Remember the Milk faster than I could click the mouse. My house is filled with "to do" lists. Although I love the focus and organization a "to do" list offers, rarely do I finish everything. Left-over lists reside all over the place. I can't throw them away until I compile the tasks onto a new list. I can't always remember where I put my list. I do not always work from a computer list because the file isn't portable unless I print it (and then I probably leave it somewhere). It is an imprecise solution. Remember the Milk is a pretty handy way to organize, reference, and refer to a perpetual but single list. It has subcategories for different types of tasks: work, study, personal, etc. It has calendar and priority elements. It connects to my gmail account. I am happy to continue using this site as it seems to give me a central location for the things that I need to do. One more habit to pull into my routine that should be a shortcut from my current practices.
After playing with this for a while, it seemed to fill more of a personal need than a professional one. I visited all of the other blogs in our 23 Things class and liked what I read about bubbl.us so I created an account there as well. This has more immediate uses in my classroom and marries very well to the new textbook that we are adopting. I have used Inspiration software before for mind-mapping activities but it is definitely a single user piece of software and I've had difficulty formatting the printing to ensure a single page student document. I have had limited practice with Inspiration but find many of the features that I like are on the bubbl.us mapping tool. The sidebar that explains the symbols in each box is very helpful, the color coding is attractive, and the ease of organization is good. I liked that I could invite friends to collaborate. I have not tried printing yet but hope to see how that looks soon. As I stated this is a useful supplement to my new textbook. Each chapter's assessment speaking and writing activities encourage the students to start with a mind map in order to organize their ideas. This is a handy tool to assist in identifying that they have included all of the elements required by their rubric. I need to investigate more how easy it is to set up accounts for the students; my guess is as simple as it was for me. This could be a strong addition to the classroom for grammar summaries, creating thematic vocab units, and culture/country brainstorming images. If the export is manageable this could be a nice supplement to the wiki pages we create.
Questions:
1. On the bubbl.us site I clicked on the beta 2.0 version. What does beta mean?
2. It requested that I allow it to store 1 MB of content on my computer. Do users allow this? I have never seen that message before.
After playing with this for a while, it seemed to fill more of a personal need than a professional one. I visited all of the other blogs in our 23 Things class and liked what I read about bubbl.us so I created an account there as well. This has more immediate uses in my classroom and marries very well to the new textbook that we are adopting. I have used Inspiration software before for mind-mapping activities but it is definitely a single user piece of software and I've had difficulty formatting the printing to ensure a single page student document. I have had limited practice with Inspiration but find many of the features that I like are on the bubbl.us mapping tool. The sidebar that explains the symbols in each box is very helpful, the color coding is attractive, and the ease of organization is good. I liked that I could invite friends to collaborate. I have not tried printing yet but hope to see how that looks soon. As I stated this is a useful supplement to my new textbook. Each chapter's assessment speaking and writing activities encourage the students to start with a mind map in order to organize their ideas. This is a handy tool to assist in identifying that they have included all of the elements required by their rubric. I need to investigate more how easy it is to set up accounts for the students; my guess is as simple as it was for me. This could be a strong addition to the classroom for grammar summaries, creating thematic vocab units, and culture/country brainstorming images. If the export is manageable this could be a nice supplement to the wiki pages we create.
Questions:
1. On the bubbl.us site I clicked on the beta 2.0 version. What does beta mean?
2. It requested that I allow it to store 1 MB of content on my computer. Do users allow this? I have never seen that message before.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Thing 11 - Online Productivity Applications
Google Docs is yet another thing that I knew little about let alone that I had an account with Google Docs when I created my gmail account. The Google site is just loaded with all kinds of treasures. Thank you 23 Things for showing me so many great opportunities to improve my classroom!
Little did I know that I had already been using a Google Docs type of application when I saw that this feature includes the Google Calendar. My family did not buy a paper calendar for the first time ever this year because we all refer to the Google Calendar to be sure that we are all using the same updated version. It is a handy reference for multiple people. I imagine that I will find similar convenience and ease with the other Google Docs options. I see the word processing feature serving as a mini version of the wiki that I just created for the secondary level Spanish teachers in my district. Where the wiki will hold multiple resources edited by multiple users, this word processing option holds more singular content edited by multiple users. It eliminates the disorganized and sometimes hectic communications that occur with e-mails and attachments. There seems to be a strong opportunity to promote collaboration here yet protected enough for security because you can invite the collaborators who will work together. I frequently find that I have exceeded my allotted space on my district's share drive; this may be another option for sharing/collaborating with more access to memory space.
To date, I am very accustomed to MS Office and barely familiar with Google Docs so it is difficult to imagine MS Office being replaced. I do think that Google Docs will complete well with MS Office. I like the compatibility of working from different platforms. I like the collaboration right down to working together at the same time from remote sites. I like the accountability especially as it relates to students. It seems that if my students invite me to be a collaborator then all of the following are possible: I can give edit suggestions, I can view their work, we can avoid the delays that result from printers that didn't work or flash drives that get misplaced. Students can complete work at school even if they do not have a computer at home. Yet again... I am curious about another "thing" and anxious to play with it some more.
Little did I know that I had already been using a Google Docs type of application when I saw that this feature includes the Google Calendar. My family did not buy a paper calendar for the first time ever this year because we all refer to the Google Calendar to be sure that we are all using the same updated version. It is a handy reference for multiple people. I imagine that I will find similar convenience and ease with the other Google Docs options. I see the word processing feature serving as a mini version of the wiki that I just created for the secondary level Spanish teachers in my district. Where the wiki will hold multiple resources edited by multiple users, this word processing option holds more singular content edited by multiple users. It eliminates the disorganized and sometimes hectic communications that occur with e-mails and attachments. There seems to be a strong opportunity to promote collaboration here yet protected enough for security because you can invite the collaborators who will work together. I frequently find that I have exceeded my allotted space on my district's share drive; this may be another option for sharing/collaborating with more access to memory space.
To date, I am very accustomed to MS Office and barely familiar with Google Docs so it is difficult to imagine MS Office being replaced. I do think that Google Docs will complete well with MS Office. I like the compatibility of working from different platforms. I like the collaboration right down to working together at the same time from remote sites. I like the accountability especially as it relates to students. It seems that if my students invite me to be a collaborator then all of the following are possible: I can give edit suggestions, I can view their work, we can avoid the delays that result from printers that didn't work or flash drives that get misplaced. Students can complete work at school even if they do not have a computer at home. Yet again... I am curious about another "thing" and anxious to play with it some more.
Thing 10 - Create Your Own Wiki
I did it!
This "thing" that took me so long to work through is now a valid and useful tool ready to go. It took much longer for me to learn about wikis, their uses, read examples, etc. than it took to make my own. It was very easy to make a wiki. I am not sure how much time it takes to manage a wiki but making one was not hard at all. My district is adopting a new Spanish 1 textbook in the fall. I created a wiki for all secondary Spanish language staff in my district based on the new textbook. I organized the wiki with a page for each chapter, personalized the appearance, and invited all of the Spanish language teachers from the three high schools in my district. I created a private wiki. Ideally, we will use this site as our main contact for collaboration instead of trying to send e-mails to the 17 teachers involved. If all of the teachers can work through the learning curve that I am processing this wiki will:
This "thing" that took me so long to work through is now a valid and useful tool ready to go. It took much longer for me to learn about wikis, their uses, read examples, etc. than it took to make my own. It was very easy to make a wiki. I am not sure how much time it takes to manage a wiki but making one was not hard at all. My district is adopting a new Spanish 1 textbook in the fall. I created a wiki for all secondary Spanish language staff in my district based on the new textbook. I organized the wiki with a page for each chapter, personalized the appearance, and invited all of the Spanish language teachers from the three high schools in my district. I created a private wiki. Ideally, we will use this site as our main contact for collaboration instead of trying to send e-mails to the 17 teachers involved. If all of the teachers can work through the learning curve that I am processing this wiki will:
- Allow us to share our ideas for this new text
- Report on successes with its adoption
- Advise about any pitfalls we experience.
- Keep our best practices available to all Spanish teachers
- Eliminate isolation
- Ensure that the same education is available to all students in our district
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