Horizon for ¡Nos encanta español!

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Technology not textbooks!

For teachers who were born in the pre-technology era, the textbook is a staple of learning. Today’s students are much more comfortable with a laptop or an Iphone, (Tapscott, 2010) and in order to enhance their learning, teachers need to make the leap into the world of technology. The creation of this website ¡Nos encanta español! is a way to connect with my students and to expand their knowledge of the language and culture of Spanish speaking countries. I want all of us to love Spanish – !Nos encanta español!

How can a website help students to learn? The 2011 Horizons Reports states that electronic books will be one of this year’s emerging trends that education should be using (Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, Haywood, 2011). Through my website, electronic copies can be made available to students of the textbooks or novels that we’re reading in class and I can have them blog about what they have read and problems they may have encountered. See the following link for an example: http://www.elmundo.es/quijote/  Spanish IV will be reading a new book in the Spring and I will try to find on-line versions to post for them to read at home or even on their smart phones.

Websites give students the opportunity to collaborate outside of school. Over the next few months, I want to present situations to the students where they have to use their Spanish and work together to come up with solutions or interpretations through blogging. Podcasts are an excellent way for students to collaborate while practice their listening skills and writing about their understanding.

Each level of Spanish class has its own page and I plan to incorporate game based learning that is appropriate for each level to help them learn by gaming. Here’s an animated grammar lesson that the kids can watch to help them understand the boring subject of verb conjugation. http://www.classzone.com/cz/books/avancemos_1/resources/applications/animations/L1U2Ls1_GR2.html  Midterms will be at the end of January and it will give me the opportunity to let students review online as well as in class.

Another goal for this website is to expand the horizons of the students by exposing them to other cultures and experiences through traveling abroad. Every other year we plan a trip to a Spanish speaking country and I believe that creating links to the tour company will excite and encourage them to travel with us. This is also a great way for parents to get the information they need to feel comfortable letting their children travel. http://www.eftours.com/  We will start planning our 2013 trip in January 2012, so over the next 2 months I will have all the information available for students and parents on this website so that they can see the specifics of the trip and enroll themselves.

By the beginning of the next school year, I will have established a routine for the students of checking into the website on a weekly basis to participate in a designated learning activity. There are activities I can set up now, but much of this will require some work in the Summer when school isn’t in session. (Who says teachers get the summers off?) I also want to create some new images for my site but due to my lack of proficiency, it will be a long range goal until I can really spend the time to learn.

So what is the horizon for Nos encanta español? It will be Technology not textbooks!  This website gives me the ability to create exciting activities for the students to enhance their learning and broaden their cultural horizons. I want my students to be able to make connections between what they learn in the classroom and their own world and to create relevance. Once they can see how Spanish can be useful to them, I hope they will embrace the language and culture and love Spanish as I do. ¡Nos encanta español!

Citations:

Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. (p. 5) Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report.pdf

Tapscott, D. (2009). Grown up digital-How the net generation is changing your world. (p. 122). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Learning to moodle

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The high school where I work has a website that I realize now is a moodle site, but I never would have known that before I took this class! Teachers can use the site to do all the things we’ve been learning about – posting assignments, on-line quizzes, etc. I never set up my own page because I didn’t know enough about it and I never had the time to learn and set it up. After this past week and all the time I’ve spent playing around with my moodle site, I’m confident that I can not only use the school’s web site, but also create my own effective site to help my students learn better.

One aspect of moodle that I find interesting is its ability to be collaborative. We’ve learned that this is a huge benefit of using technology in the classroom, (Tapscott, 2010) and I see our moodle sites as being an excellent way for students to work together in groups outside of school, and also to do some peer editing of each others work. Typically when I assign a group project, I have to schedule sufficient class time for the students to work together and complete the project in school. With moodle, I can require that they do some of the work at home through the site.  This link shows how to set up groups for collaboration and peer editing.  http://www.kassblog.com/2008/09/junior-english-as-moodle-site/

 

Another feature of moodle that I found helpful was the glossary section, but then I started thinking beyond just the vocabulary. I found that I can put a link to the on-line textbook that we use so that students can review vocab and grammar.

This is particularly helpful to me because my students don’t have their own book to take home and use, we just have books that stay in the classroom. I can update the links from unit to unit so that the information is current. No more excuses that they didn’t have a book to study from because all the information is right on my site!

We determined that technology can help our students become more independent learners, and with a moodle site, I can set up projects where students can work at their own pace according to their individual interests.  I can create an activity for my students, link the relevant sites, post a rubric, and show the timeline for completion using the calendar – all on moodle!

When I get this all up and running correctly, I can use moodle to accomplish many of the goals I have for incorporating technology into the classroom.

References:

Kassissieh, R. (2008, September 03). Junior english as moodle site. Retrieved from http://www.kassblog.com/2008/09/junior-english-as-moodle-site/

Tapscott, D. (2009). Grown up digital-How the net generation is changing your world. (p. 181). New York: McGraw-Hill.

 

Welcome to podcasts!

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One of the goals of this website is to use technology to help  students learn Spanish better.  To help do this, podcasts will be posted for students to listen to, and then respond to what they have heard as a blog posting.  What exactly is a podcast?  Podcasts are audio broadcasts that can be downloaded to a computer and then transferred to an iPod or any MP3 player for listening.  This is great for Spanish students who want to work on their pronunciation by hearing native speakers talk about culturally relevant topics.

A study by George Washington University determined that podcasts would not improve the learning of all students, but it helped improve quiz scores of some of the students who listened to podcasts of the readings rather than use the actual textbook.  The study also concluded that students who listened to podcasts found the presentation more enjoyable and preferable.  (Roscorla, 2010)  Podcasts are a great way to differentiate learning so that the information is presented in a manner that is better for the auditory learner.

Podcasts are available on line from many different sources, many of them free.  There are also RSS feeds to which you can subscribe just like a magazine and receive daily podcasts to your computer to be synced to your MP3 player.  Textbook companion websites even have downloadable podcasts so that students can listen to the audio portions of their textbook.  Check out the available podcasts for the Avancemos textbook at http://www.classzone.com  Just find the appropriate book, choose the unit of study, and click to download audio files.  This helps students reinforce the daily learning by repeated listening.  Even more beneficial for students will be the ability to listen to new information through podcasts that will improve their listening and comprehension capabilities.

A continuation of the technology link for the students will be the blogging that can follow a podcast activity.  Students will be instructed to listen to the following podcast and post a response in Spanish on the blog that follows.  In this way, students will be able to interpret what they have heard and collaborate with their classmates about the content of the podcast.

After listening, students will write a short summary of the main idea of the podcast, and their reaction to it.  As they read each others postings, more meaning can be constructed from the listening.

36 NIS Int 036 – Comer Fuera

References:

Roscorla, T. (2010, Nov 10). Do podcasts help students learn?                                              Retrieved from http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Podcasts-George-  Washington-University.html