Reflection #3 -

I am so glad that I spent the time to take this class. It really helped me keep current with technology. I am especially interested in changing the way I deliver some of the curriculum. For example, today I actually sat down and began putting together the cultural podcast project that I alluded to earlier in the course. I would not have thought about doing this assignment in this manner if I had not taken the time to learn about podcasting. I believe it is important to deliver instruction using a variety of methods. Students today enjoy using technology and are very good at it, better than most adults. Using technology gives students confidence and allows them to show off what they know. I also feel that using more traditional methods are good as well to add to the variety.



I would like to use more technology, for example, wikis, blogs, etc. with my department and my 7th grade team teachers. If using these resources can make our jobs easier, then I see the benefit in getting well versed in these techniques and saving time.

Assignment #11 - School 2.0

I am amazed at what I just read. School 2.0 is inventive and shows that there is a lot out there to help us all get more familiar with technology for ourselves and our students and best of all, we don't have to create the technology on our own all the time. I am especially impressed with all of the tools and resources available in this site. The idea that everyone can share is so important so not to keep inventing the wheel. Also, it was great to see a lot of ideas from the various subject areas , I actually found one on teaching LOTE classes from your home. I was too excited to think of anything at this time to take away from the site. I am sure if I was using it, I would see more that would need changing than I can at this time just browsing.

Assignment #10 Alan November w/Yong Zhao

As I listened to Yong Zhao, I really agreed with what he was saying and feel there is a great need for change. The greatest problem that I see is that there are not enough resources in the schools to keep up with the technology that our students need. I know many teachers want to do new technological projects with their students, but it is so difficult to get to the computers. There are too many teachers for the amount of resources available to our students. There are also some using the computers on a daily basis, they are the ones who sign up way in advance for the whole year. By the time you know when you can fit a project into your curriculum, it is too late. Also, I like his point about giving more power to the people up front.....the teachers. The board members are not in our classroom and do not know what it is we are trying to do for our students, yet they make the decisions about how much money we can spend. They don't understand our needs. Lastely, money is limited and travel is almost impossible. We need to visit other countries/states to see what they do and how they do it. This all fits into resources and the lack there of.

I want to conclude by saying that I feel our district does a good job of trying to supply us with all that it can afford. We are able to take these courses to learn how to help our students and I know many other districts are much less fortunate than ours. I do appreciate that and feel lucky.

Collaborative Project

I just finished listening to Kevin Honeycutt's podcast regarding - Building 21st Century Achievers. It is always so inspiring to listen to motivational speakers on the topic of education, especially at this time of the year. He inspired me to first think about what I already do to give students choice and what I do as a teacher to teach with technology. The list is short, but includes projects that involve movie maker, power point, audacity, and podcasts. I don't mean to say I do a lot of technology, but I am more than willing to use it in my classroom to keep student interest and to learn more about technology for myself. We all know that when you teach something you learn it best. As I think about creating a new project involving collaboration, I think I would like to have my students create a podcast on Spanish culture involving each of my 5 sections. It would require research on the internet with guided websites. It would also mean dividing up the various subtopics among each of the classes. When all done, it should be a podcast that involves the culture from all of the topics we study throughout the level 1 curriculum. For example, there would be info about the family, housing, education, weather, foods, jobs, clothing, music, etc. Each class would then go to the computer lab and listen to the podcast (or we could listen in our classroom) and have a discussion regarding the similarities and differences among our cultures.

Reflection 2 post

It was great to learn about the collaborating bookmarking tool - Delicious - I really believe that it could easily be used by any one of our departments to share resources with one another. I know that so often I receive emails from the different Spanish and French teachers in the LOTE department sharing different web sites that they find useful. Perhaps we could set up a social bookmarking tag on delicious for good LOTE websites that we could all turn to for ideas. I can see this being helpful to all in each of the departments.

Assignment #6 - Wikis

I really like the idea of using a wiki page with my team teachers. I am the new team leader this year and maybe having a team wiki would be a great tool for communication among the teachers. We sometimes have a difficult time finding enough time to meet. Sharing different ideas and thoughts on a wiki page would be very beneficial and time effective.

I still need time to think how I could use a wiki with my beginning level Spanish students. I would love to implement it at some point but also want it to be meaningful and useful.

Assignment #5 Reflection

I was excited to learn about NextVista.org and Teacher Tube. I will certainly share these sites with other educators as well as my students. I do believe I have heard of Teacher Tube in the past and maybe have look up a few videos as well. I like them both, but would feel it was appropriate to send a student on NextVista.org for help in any subject area on his/her own. I would probably research some of the videos ahead of time on Teacher Tube. I also like the organization of NextVista.org. It is organized in a very user friendly style. I feel I have to search a little bit harder on Teacher Tube, but not that bad. It is really exciting and very easy that we have all of these resources right in our hands. I need to push myself more to begin utilizing all of these wonderful sites for my students and with them.

Reflection on Blogging-Assignment #4

I am learning a lot about blogging. At first, I thought blogging was just about making comments. Since I have been doing the different assignments, I better understand the many uses. Including different links on your blog is very beneficial to know where to quickly go to find more information on your topic of interest. I am very interested in using blogging with my own students to communicate in the target language and learn more culture directly from the natives of each country that they will be able to connect to. I would love to have students make comments on a monthly basis and have a real audience to work with.

Learning to blog

New to blogging

I am setting up a blog for the first time. This is really great!