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.
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Marrianne,
ReplyDeleteHave you had a chance to view Gwinnett County's MOCC site? It is great! It has vocabulary, ppt, lessons,, etc...I have been using it for a few years and used it with an ESOl group last year. Your school should have the sign in and password information. Let me know if you need any other info on that. Have your kids ever had pen pals form different spanish speaking countries?
I have noticed that it is more difficult to find tools for foreign languages. I don't teach any language but I was curious to see what was out there and it is much harder to find anything. I think the idea of cool tools for teachers is great because anything to help make our job a little easier is welcome. I like the idea of pen pals from other countries, maybe you could use the cool tool from last week that Sarah presented. At least your textbook has a good technology/online component.
ReplyDeleteI am very guilty of taking advantage of Puzzlemaker, and I know that many of my colleagues have frequented that site a good bit. So I don't know if that would be one day you you would want to present to the group, because it may not have a big wow factor if most of us already know about it. However, it is a great site. I like the idea for the Spanish language site. I left Gwinnett and now sub at a private school where students of every age go to I guess you could call it a Spanish "special" twice a a week. So, it could be pretty beneficial to every one of us in the class to get your review of a site like that despite the fact that we don't all teach the forgein language.
ReplyDeleteMarianne, here is a PBL for a ELL class, it may be something similair you have done before ,,but at least it is all there for you.
ReplyDeletehttp://cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/fellows/hintz/webquest/sdhindex.html
If you are having trouble finding what you want,, you can always go to crate your own webquest,, LOL with all your free time... yes I know,, but I am at that point where I have looked at so many and now I am ready to put one together that is more in line with what I want for my students to have in one place instead of bits and pieces here and there.