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.