Final Class Reflection blog

My final reflection for this class is that, first of all, I liked the class material very much. I think this is the heart of the classes about using technology to enhance my classroom, which is essentially why I enrolled in this program in the first place. I really enjoyed learning about all the different technologies in the classroom--and specifically, some things to have students do with technology. I enjoyed finding cool technological tools, I enjoyed (as much as one can enjoy research) researching copyright laws for my digital citizenship project. (Or at least I learned a lot about a topic I had wanted to know more about.) I thought the technology imlementation project was worthwhile--as far as requiring us to require our students to use technology. The textbook was ok--could have been a little better, but as far as the class itself, it has been one of the more enjoyable classes I've taken so far.
I think what I will take out of this class is the idea that it's not enough as a teacher to use technology in the classroom for our students--we really ought to teach and require them to use it as well. That LoTi Level survey we took helped me to realize that while I use technology, I don't require my students to as often as I could or should. I hope this makes me think more often about how to encourage and require my students to use technology more, and more effectively.

Digital Citizenship Projects

I thought all the digital citizenship project presentations were very cool, well thought-out and informative. I think my favorite of all had to be the social networking site one--not that I necessarily learned a whole lot--most of the stuff I already knew from experienc--but I thought it was very cute and creative how they made the background for their PowerPoint that had our pictures as their "friends" on facebook. I laughed out loud at that. Their presentation was good as well--if I were not already on facebook, I would have found it useful to learn about what it is like, what you can do with it, and what the pros and cons are of using it. It was also good they included information about being responsible with it and what can happen (especially to teachers) if they are not responsible with what they put on facebook.
My second favorite demonstration was the one Katy and Lance & Sarah did about netiquette. I mostly knew most of the information already, but I did think they presented it in a very creative and clever way. I thought it was a good idea to include that little quiz at the end and I thought the David Letterman style introduction was very well done.
Overall, I found all the projects informative and creative. I thought it was good to teach people about responsible uses of technology.

GaETC conference

On Thursday, I went to the GaETC conference for the first time. It was a very "new but old" experience--meaning that tough I've been to conferences before, they have been related to my subject matter--foreign language--and not technology. It was interesting to see teachers of all levels and fields rather than simply foreign language teachers. I really enjoyed the exhibit hall the most, I think, but some of the sessions were really informative as well. The sessions I went to included one about a guy who used FileMaker Pro to make a database to manage his students' projects and rubrics. I thought it was a very good and very useful idea--the one unfortunate thing is that he does not have the ability to give or sell this software yet, so it's useful for him, but not for others. I also went to a session about google applications, which was a very popular session. It was neat to find out about the google calendar and some of the other applications available through google. After lunch, I went to the exhibit hall for a bit, where I saw Chrissi. We went outside to chat for a bit about our digital citizenship project and when we went back, we attended a session that gave us some good insight about it--the session was about legal issues related to students' and teachers' use of technology in schools. It was very good because it was given by a guy who works in our system (Gwinnett) so it was very relevant. Finally, I went to a session about Photoshop elements, and that session made me really want to get that program! You can do all sorts of stuff much more easily in PSe than in Photoshop itself.
Overall, the conference was worthwhile to attend--I saw a lot of cool uses of technology in the classroom and I feel "in the loop" about what technologies we may see soon in the future at our schools.

Critical thinking

On the topic of critical thinking, I suppose I really don't do nearly as much with encouraging critical thinking as I should in my classroom. I suppose teaching a first and second year language course, I imply focus on the more verbal skills that is simply memorization and application of concepts rather than much with critical thinking. There are occasionally "categorizing" and higher level thinking skills like trying to group items into categories and figuring out what doesn't belong in the category, but other than those sorts of activities, I suppose there's not very much critical thinking. I think they are very important for students, and I guess I just think my subject matter doesn't lend itself to critical thinking as other subjects do. I'm sure that's probably false and I could do as much with it as any other subject could, but I can't think offhand of many ways to make it more critical-thinking based. Maybe I should have some peer revisions of written language paragraphs, which I do use on occasion, but I'm sure I could do more and I just don't. Any suggestions would be welcomed!

Cool Tools

Of all the cool tools I am citing, I know that I will use www.homeworknow.com the most. I use this literally every day to update homework assignments. I ask my students to check it for their homework and often include links on it to resources for them. It is much easier to maintain than posting to the school's web site (for which I have to ask our school's technology coordinator to update every time I make changes to my professional page). My school has an account with homeworknow.com and many of the other teachers use it, and so our students are familiar with the site. This is not, perhaps, the most creative or original use of technology to support the classroom, but it is very very useful and very very practical. It not only helps students who have been absent and want to check what work they missed, but it also is a place for the students to go if they forget what their homework is, or if they want a "one stop shop" for links to other online resources. I have lots of links from there to handouts, other helpful web sites, online review, etc. I definitely could NOT imagine not having that site. If your schools do not use it, I would strongly recommend you talk to your principals about getting a school account.

Revising Project

The project I have finally decided on is to have my Spanish 2 students make a movie, narrated PowerPoint, or printed picture book illustrating what they do during the day. This project is supposed to demonstrate their knowledge of reflexive verbs, and one of the requirements is they use at least 8 reflexive verbs. I have thought about ways to increase creativity with this, and have decided that with the three options of project possibilities, that might be enough wiggle room for creativity in and of itself. I would rather not decrease the amount of reflexive verbs used, to allow for more creativity: the reflexive verbs is the grammatical purpose of this project. I have told them they may use pictures they've taken themselves from their digital cameras, which hopefully many of them will do. We will be in the computer lab this coming Wednesday to work on the project, at which time I'll tell them how to use the narration feature of PowerPoint, and teach them how to make movies and/or record sounds. I will allow them (and encourage them) to actually use video from their digital cameras and will encourage them to add music to their videos if they chooses. Without having to teach them how to use Audacity, however (which I think would be superflous and not a good use of instructional time), I'm afraid their projects will be a little long (as they don't know how to "shorten" songs), and I will strongly encourage their narration to be at the beginning of the project ( so I can grade their pronunciation and content first, and then skim through the rest of the video.) I think with these options, there will be enough room for the students to be creative with it, but still accomplish the language goals of the project. I hope these turn out well: I have done this project many times in the past, but it was always just the print "Daily Routine" book and I'm glad I'm requiring more elements of technology this year. At a minimum their project must be typed, include digital photos or other computerized graphics (printed in color for more credit) and include a digital narration of their project. (Yes, this narration, which was not formerly part of the project, will add time to my grading it, but I will feel like they've gotten more speaking practice and will be ultimately a good idea, as I have a hard time implementing many speaking activities.)

Assessing student learning

I have a feeling this may be a somewhat contraversial topic: assessing student learning, especially with PBL. My personal thought is that PBL learning is much more time consuming to assess and that it can and should be used, but should probably be used sparingly, as it is so time consuming to assess. Creating real products are a great authentic idea, but take a lot longer to assess than a standard pen-and-paper test. In real life, teachers have lives outside of school and cannot grade every unit as a PBL--it's just not realistic. I think PBL is good to use (in my case as a high school teacher) once or maybe twice a semester. More than this and I think the teacher will get burned out having to grade assignments that require a lot of thought to score correctly. In an ideal situation, PBL would be a great method to use all the time, but given reality with time constraints and the reality of standardized testing, there's only so much time available for assessing PBL projects.

Project idea

Not sure what else to say for my project idea. I think I'll do what I have planned about having the kids make videos of themselves...I think they'll enjoy doing that project and I think they'll get a lot out of it. I'm looking forward to doing this project with them and seeing the cool videos they'll come up with. Now the only problem is, do the school's computers have windows movie maker on them so I can actually show them how to use it, or am I going to have to make handouts about it. And for kids with macs, how to tell them how to use imovie, because I don't think I will have time to let them do much of this project in class. Dilemma. I don't give this project until the end of the semester anyway, though, so I'll have time to work out those details, I guess.

Cool Tools/Project idea

Firstly, about the cool tools, as a foreign language teacher, many of the sites I frequent will not be relevant to teachers of other disciplines. My ideas that I might do are firstly, www.studyspanish.com mainly as it's a great site for reviewing very conjugations with a nice self-quiz option the students can do with correct feedback. I let my students practice verbs at this site as a good exercize that does not really "count" as a grade but they get extra practice. Another great site for all teachers (if no one mentions this one before I do) is www.puzzlemaker.com. I realize it is more of a site for teachers than a site for students, but it could be used for students if they have to create a crossword puzzle themselves for an assignment. The textbook I work with has a great online component, as well, but obviously that would only be useful to other teachers who use the realidades series textbooks. Another cool site is one that generates bingo cards automatically, but again this is a site for teachers more so than students. I do think the best one I know of without researching elsewhere is the textbook website. I suppose I'll have to look around a bit for other options.

As to the project idea, I do think I'm going to do an idea similar to many of the ones on the Apple Education site and have my Spanish 1 students make a video or narrated PowerPoint about themselves, telling me all the information they have learned throughtout the semester to make a mini autobiography of their lives. I'd like them to incorporate video if possible, but at least if they can make a movie that will require them to speak in Spanish and have text (close captioning) I will be content with that.

Random stuff

So, this blog is about random stuff related to this class. First, about my LoTi score: I was a little displeased that mine was only (what was it? a 2 or a 3?) anyway, I guess although I feel like I'm technologically competent and efficient, I suppose I don't encourage this as much as I should among my students. I feel like I should work on that. However, it's also like I said in class the other day: we've got to teach so much curriculum content (and have standardized final exams at the end of the semester to make sure all Gwinnett teachers cover the same amount of material by the end) that I kinda feel torn with trying to teach technological skills that are not part of the curriculum I'm already responsible for making sure my students learn. The time it would take to teach them how to use Movie Maker, for instance, would take away from the time it would take to teach them how to conjugate Spanish verbs, and my AKS and QCCs that I have to teach do not focus on technology as much as on core content. About my integration project, please see the post that will appear below this one (the one I did on Thursday) because it has my idea for that project. And as for Cool Demos, I'm a little stumped. My best online resources are the textbook website for the textbook that I use and one other website that is very helpful for Spanish teachers, but would not be relevant to many other disciplines. Anyway, that's about it.

Other project idea...

Huh. So after posting comments to other people's blogs, I think I was supposed to talk about the technology integration project rather than the digital citizenship one. Well, I have a couple ideas for that. The idea I would LOVE to do (but am not sure I can do, copyright-wise) is have the students get in groups of 3-4 and make a music video for a particular chapter of their textbook. The textbook comes with some neat hip hop songs (accessible and downloadable online) and I thought it would be fun to have the kids use Movie Maker or iMovie to make videos with pictures and/or videos to explain/present the vocabulary in the song. I would like them also to put the lyrics at the bottom of the screen, karaoke style. Ideally, I'd have them present them to each other in class and put them on youtube, but I doubt I could do the youtube thing because of copyright.
If that idea does not work out, I would expand a project I did last year with my Spanish 1 class and have a "fall semester comprehensive project" in which they tell me about their likes/dislikes, foods they like/dislike, their personality, their school info, and other stuff they learned from this semester in a movie or narrated powerpoint. Last year I did this project, but did not require it to be very rich in technology use. This year I would require it to be either narrated powerpoint, a movie, or a project in Photostory.

initial project ideas

My initial idea for my project would be something involving copyright. This issue has always confused me a bit and I'd like to find out what is and what is not within legal rights. I have an interest in this for several reasons, but the main reason I'm interested in this is because of something I would like to do with my students, but I doubt I would be legal in doing so. The textbook series we use in Spanish, Prentice Hall's Realidades series comes with these hip hop songs, which are found in the public domain on the internet and allowed to be downloaded for free. I thought it would be a really neat idea to teach my students how to make music videos with these songs, with the lyrics at the bottom in karaoke style. I think it would be a really fun project for them. However, being the technologically inclined and sharing teacher I am, I would like for other classes to have the use of the music videos and would like to put them on youtube. I feel like this would be a violation of copyright, and therefore I am hesitant to assign this as a project. Thus my interest in researching what sort of things do and don't violate copyright laws.

A second idea for a project on Digital Citizenship might be something involving netiquette. Having grown up in the digital age I am comfortable with electronic mediums of communication, but it does bother me when people either do not know or do not adhere to polite internet protocol. It is so easy to publicly post text that cannot be retrieved, either through email, message boards, blogs, Facebook posts, or other sources. It would interest me to research proper netiquette in order to spread awareness of these protocols. Similarly, internet safety as regards things such as social networking sites is also of interest to me. I do use facebook and I post regularly to online forums, not to mention the email aspect of netiquette, and I have often seen things that made me cringe and wish the sender/poster had a better sense of proper protocol.

I am not sure which of these ideas appeals to me most at present, but I think either has a huge realm of possibilities and would be of personal interest to me.

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