Podcasts in the Classroom!

Podcasting is a new idea that I have recently come across. One of the most recent Podcasts that I have watched is Alt. Latino: The Show. This is a wonderful podcast that can be incorporated into the classroom because it is about Spanish music from around the world including Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, and Columbia. Not only do you get to hear parts of different songs, but they are also explained to you in English about their meanings, the type of music, and who the singer is and their background. This could be an excellent resource for my Spanish 1 students who don't have enough vocabulary to figure out the meanings themselves, but they are still getting a cultural lesson out of hearing the music. The students will enjoy listening to the different types of music and learn about different styles and singers at the same time!

ePaLs!

EPALS will help put your school and community on the map! You can take your school global in a safe and friendly environment. Students have the ability to create student email accounts and communicate with other children from around the world. There are more than 200 countries and terretories that participate with EPals. One of their motos is connect, share, and collaborate which is exactly what EPals lets you do with your students. One thing that I really interesting about this website is that you can select the country and even language that you want to communicate in. This is perfect for a foreign language class! The students can communicate in the target language with peers their same age in a Spanish speaking country. EPals is great for a project-based learning task and you can also incorporate many Web 2.0 tools like googledocs. Students can speak about different things happening in their lives, around the community, and learn about the world. On this website, one of the most useful resources that I found was that you would have access to National Geographic and the Smithsonian to use for different purposes. Lastly, if presenting this idea to your district or department, they say that these safe, collaborative experiences will save you money! Overall, EPals is a great resources for teachers and students to get them using technology in the classroom and interacting with news and people are the world.

Picture Books!

Try our slideshow creator at Animoto.

Digital Story/Picture books are a great way to bring in visuals inside the classroom. I chose to put together a short picture book of different cultural things that I found in Oaxaca, Mexico. All of the pictures are pictures that I brought back with me. What a great way to incorporate them into the classroom. This picture book was extremely easy to create and didn't take much time at all. There are so many different ways that you could use something like this from learning basic vocabulary to different cultural lessons. It is fun to put together and I'm sure all of the students will like it just as much as you!

My Own Digital Story

I decided to archive/recycle a digital story to try it out myself. What a neat idea! The digital story that I found was all about family. It had pictures of different family members on each slide. Underneath the pictures, I was able to change/type whatevery I wanted. In this instance, I kept it short and sweet and wrote the family vocabulary words in English on the left page and in Spanish on the right page. After searching through the archives on the pimpampum website, I thought of so many ways that Digital Storytelling could be incorporated into the classroom and different lessons. It can be used with any vocabulary lesson that you are teaching where it be nouns or verbs or adjectives. You can include a picture and type the correct vocabulary word underneath it. This is especially great for all of the visual learners. Another idea that I had was to do a cultural story. For example, students can create a story about their own culture meaning how they celebrate different holidays or even different foods they eat or activities they participate in in their own lives. We could compare these things with a Spanish country and see the similarities and differences between our own lives and theirs. My own digital story can be found at Spanish LAI 590 so that you can see how it works! This is a great tool for educators and I think that there are many ways that I can incorporate it into my Spanish class.

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling is exactly what it sounds like. It is a way of telling stories through digital media. You can use different images, sounds, interactive elements, and effects to tell a story. You may even add narration or music to the slides to go along with the story. They can be used for instructional or fun purposes. They can be applied to any subject and on any content that you would like. With the world wide web, you can find pictures on anything that you want these days, and start your own story with them. One of the largest storytelling projects is sponsered by BBC to capture stories from around the United Kingdom. Groups of students may collaborate on a project together, but this is mainly geared as an individual project assignment for each student to be creative and display their own knowledge. Digital Storytelling is a great way to incorporate technology into learning! More ideas can be found in the article 7 things you should know about Digital Storytelling.  

Microblogging on the Twitter World!

I have recently been exploring different social networking sites for teachers. I have learned that there are many ways to use microblogs for teaching and learning purposes.  From the best colleges online blog, I learned 28 creative ways that Twitter can be used for teachers. Some of the most fascinating ideas that I read were to share stories, make announcements, communicate with parents, vocab word of the day, review, or even a scavenger hunt.  Twitter can also be used to share links/information just like The Anatomy of a Tweet describes about some great resources and websites for teachers! In a simple tweet, we can get a big message such as a website or place to go for materials. Who doesn’t love FREE websites for teachers! I have found great power points, worksheets, and more that have definitely saved me some time while planning!!

Teacher Resources!!!

I have recently discovered a social media network for teachers that seems to be extremely useful and informative! It is called Teacher 2.0. It is a network of support for all educators no matter what age group you work with. I have read just a few of the posts including ideas about preventing plagiarism, incorporating technology into the classroom, and how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy.  You have to sign up for an account, but it is free to use!  If you have any questions, here is a link to their site J Enjoy!

Teachers of today

A teacher is like a dream. A dream of something we have designed in our heads and hope that when we wake up it is reality. A dream that we have created something new that is the coolest thing in our life that we can’t wait to talk about and show all of our friends. A teacher is a wide source of knowledge that can help any person reach their goals in life and become a star. A teacher is constantly changing and coming up with new ideas and inspirations that we think about and learn from.

A teacher is like a dream in so many ways. Teachers must continue to learn and teach in everyday life in order to keep up with the world today. I have recently read an article on connectivism, or the integration of new principles and theories into our lives.  This article said, “Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.” I don’t think that this could be better put another way. Technology is constantly changing and revolving around our lives. It is a teacher who trys to learn this technology and incorporate it into the classroom so that students can benefit most from it. We use technology more than we realize in life and this technology not only influences our thinking process, but it influences how we live our life and things that we do. Social Media has changed learning. “The knowledge in the technology field changed extremely quickly.” We connect to different networks as social media sites to find out what is happening around the world, we form opinions about it, and then represent these opinions in many different ways such as speech, dress, style, where we go, who we support, and everything else we take into consideration in everyday life.

Guessing in Foreign Language Class

I have recently read an article from a fellow blogger about promoting guessing in language learning. It talks about how to help students choose when and how to make better guesses. I really enjoyed reading this article because it not only talked about the statistics about how different guessing strategies can help our foreign language students, but it also talked about how to help your students choose good guesses. On top of the article was a picture of the game “Guess Who?” This was always one of my favorite games as a child and it hooked me right away! I thought back to how the game was played and have decided that this could be a great learning tool inside my Spanish classroom. In Spanish, there are two verbs that mean “to be” in very different circumstances. One of the verbs , SER, deals with characteristics of people. By using this game inside the classroom, the students could learn how to give and ask about different characteristics in a hands on, interactive learning activity. I’m not going to go out and buy 15 Guess Who games because board games are a racket these days, but what about creating your own boards? All you need is a set of pictures of people with different characteristics that you could probably find in clip art, laminate them so they last forever, put them together, and then start playing!

Discrimination because of ACCENTS

What is the US coming to? We have now found a new way to discriminate against people. The most recent article that I have read is about a teacher in Arizona who is currently being evaluated because she is a Mexican woman who has learned English as an adult and at times has a noticeable accent while doing things such as saying the pledge of allegiance with her class. Here is a link to my comment:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us/in-arizona-complaints-that-an-accent-can-hinder-a-teachers-career.html?sort=newest&offset=2

It says that comments are generally moderated and will be published if they are not abusive which mine is not so I hope that you can see it. I am going to post it here as well just incase you can't access it:

We have seen many flaws in the No Child Left Behind Act, but one thing we haven’t seen is discrimination because of someone’s accent. This teacher is a fluent English speaker and there is no reason that this should be a public problem. We are discriminating against Ms. Aguayo because she is a Mexican woman who dedicated herself to learn English so that she could do something valuable with her life by teaching children and relaying her knowledge to them. Something is wrong with this picture. We are lucky that she is trying her best and standing up at the front of the classroom being a role model for her students by saying our pledge of allegiance. In some public schools, they don’t even attempt to say the pledge of allegiance anymore because of personal opinions behind the meaning and idea of pledging to our flag. People around the United States have accents whether you go from Boston to New York to Georgia. It is funny Ms. Aguayo’s principal was the first one to question her accent. If anything was in question, then why did he hire her in the first place? What happened to thinking that she was highly qualified to teach the children and a fluent English speaker when he hired her? What caused him to think otherwise now? Is he pinpointing this accent to deal with another issue?

I think that this topic is something that should not even be public or blown way out of porportion as it has happened her. I agree that the teacher should work on her accent, but that it should not be up for a national discussion. I am sure that we have thousands of teachers around the United States with this same problem, but they are not being investigated. I personally think that something else has started this issue and this is now what we are focusing on instead of what the real problem is. I will be keeping up to date on this topic and send my best wishes to this teacher and any other teacher that could possibly be facing the same issue. I congratulate all of you for dedicating your time and life to learning English as a second language, and your energy and knowledge to become fantastic teachers in our wonderful school systems!

Pay Attention

I have recently watched a YouTube video called Pay Attention. This is one of the best videos that I have seen for teachers about incorporating technology into the classroom. It is real. The statistics are unbelievable and amazing to actually think about. I don't necesarily agree with the fact that we should have cell phones in the classroom, but if we did, what better way to use them then to assign projects and put them to practical use. I thought that the information was very realistic and interesting. It was a creative video to get into your mind and make you think about ways to incorporate different forms of technology into the classroom. Students are constantly using technology in their every day life. I think that we as teachers can show them different ways of using this technology to benefit their learning processes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw&feature=related

Computer Safety

Dear students,

There are many things that you need to be aware of while using the internet. One major term that keeps appearing especially throughout middle school students is cyber bullying. This is an extremely important topic that needs to be addressed. Please click on the link below to take a short quiz to see if you have ever taken a part in cyber bullying, and may not have even realized that you did something wrong.

http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/tweens/are_you_a_cyberbully.html

 At times we say things and do things because our friends or peers are doing them and we want to be included in the group even though we know deep down inside that they may not be the right thing to do. Here are some tips that will help you stay safe on the internet and protect yourself and your friends from being bullied:

1.      It's important to keep your personal information safe and secret.

2.      The Internet is a great way of keeping in touch with your friends and family. You might also find new friends online. However, you should never arrange to meet an online friend because it can be dangerous. No matter how well you think you know people, they might be pretending.

3.      Email is a really quick and easy way to send messages to people. However, sometimes people send you lots of junk mail called Spam which try to sell you things. You may also receive messages which make you feel uncomfortable. These messages can also come on your cell phone through a text message or file. If you are sent any messages like this, tell an adult that you trust and delete them. Don't reply to them!

4.      The Internet is full of friendly people and amazing information. However, sometimes the people, or the information, aren't reliable. People might say or write things which are untrue, so you should always think carefully before trusting what you see or hear. Sometimes you might see adverts telling you that you've won one million pounds or a free computer. These types of adverts are definitely not reliable and you shouldn't believe them!

5.      Most of the time that you are online, you will have lots of fun. However, if you see something that makes you feel uncomfortable or worried, make sure that you tell an adult who you trust.

(http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freetech4teachers.com%2F2011%2F01%2F11-resources-for-teaching-learning-web.html?tab=people&uname=anciana )

Sincerely,

Señorita

The students are not allowed to use the internet on the classroom computers in the school district that I work at. They take a special which is computer class, and are taught how to appropriately use the computers during that time and that time only. I am not sure what the computer teacher’s policy about security is, but I do know that there is a system so that some websites such as facebook are blocked so that students cannot access them.  

Three ways to use blogs in Spanish class

Blogs can be used in a Spanish classroom in many different ways. It is a good way to get students talking and using the language that you are encouraging and teaching them to learn. Students can be given input from their teacher and peers, and can all be working on a different blog or topic at the same time. One thing teachers can do is incorporate technology and culture into the classroom by having the student’s research different topics such as food, holidays, or celebrations. Students can create and display videos about what they have learned and compare/contrast the topic to something they celebrate.  Another reason you may use a blog is for a writing assignment to address different grammar topics.  Students will be engaged and interacting in the learning process. You can incorporate authentic text material or even leave the ending off of a sentence/paragraph and have students post about how they think it should be finished. A third reason that you may use a blog is to interact with students around the world who speak the L2. Students can use the blog like a pen-pal agreement instead of writing letters and sending them in the mail or through email. All of these things will get the students interacting and engaged in learning the second language.

Some of the national foreign language standards that you will address through these activities include communication, cultures, and comparisons.