Thing 19- Podcasting

I had heard a lot about podcasting and was a bit underwhelmed with what I heard during the podcasts. It seemed very similar to using a tape recorder. I think the biggest convenience of this is that many students could download the files to access rather than one student or a small group listening to a tape player.

I think that it would be an interesting way to have students practice their listening skills, but the professional podcasts would mainly apply to higher-level students. It's really hard for beginners to listen to something that is not in context. When I can point at something, talk about the size and color, students get the idea. If they heard someone talking about news in French, they probably would recognize some things, but the majority would go over their heads.

One of the podcasts I listened to was about French grammar. I couldn't imagine trying to make any sense out of that without having visual cues. Of course, if I had a visually-impaired student, that would probably be a great resource.

I think this would be useful for recording some class discussions to share with parents, absent students, the administrators, etc. to show what we did in class. One of my major concerns is trying to keep absent kids caught up, so I could see using this resource occasionally.

I liked some ideas such as having students make a sample radio program. They could record an interview (with a "famous" person), give a weather report, tell the local news, etc. and then the class could listen to the whole cast.

Thing 23

I definitely got some new ideas and I'm just sad that I can't have more computers in my classroom so I can actually implement them. With all the budget cuts, we probably won't see much expansion for computer labs and classroom computers for several years. Some of the things we learned about, like Voicethreads, would be great for activities and a real time-saver in class. I loved some of the alternatives to PowerPoint shows due to their versatility and simplicity. I'll definitely continue using the embed feature to access videos, songs, etc that I can use in the classroom. That's a great way to get around the website blocks that restrict us from accessing these materials. I can see myself using Google Reader to keep up with current events in the French-speaking world and also PageFlakes. I liked how the flakes could access local radio stations, post international times, show the weather, and other fun functions. I liked these things the best and I think they could easily be used in my classroom. Some others, like podcasting, might not work out well since there's no video to "see" what they're listening to or talking about. Beginner language students need more support with visuals so they know the context and can guess at vocabulary they don't immediately recognize. Still, there weren't really any other Things that I saw that wouldn't be useful in some way! This was a great course!!!!

Thing 22

I decided to check out Busuu and I think some of the features would be ok. For example, a student would be able to find an online chat pal there and listen to the language being spoken. A lot of the features are "premium" features and that costs money. There are free sites that are just as good or better, so I wouldn't recommend this to my students.

Bamzooki doesn't have anything to do with French, but I thought it might be fun to have students describe their robots and maybe write about who won, describe the fight, etc. I don't think we could use this because it requires a download and that needs special permission. I have to admit that I had trouble figuring out what to do since the tools don't have any tutorials with them. My first attempt was an embarassment, so I'm not sharing that :) I had legs coming out all over the robot bug. I think students would probably like it, but they have to be under 15 to make an account (or say they're under 15). Some of the other robot-building sites may be better since this one didn't tell you how to do anything.

Thing 5d

I don't always want to be slamming other people's ideas about getting students motivated, but a lot of what I see are time-wasters being promoted instead of actually getting the child to produce something. In the real world, the boss tells you to write a report/email/introduction of a new concept/product, etc., then you'd better sit right down and get to it! I think that a lot of students think of using technology as "fun," but then they're missing the point of proofreading for mistakes and all when Word will do some of that for them.

From Google Reader, I was looking at Lesson Plans to Promote Writing by Dawn Dodson. I liked the idea of writing a story featuring a younger child by interviewing and then creating a story around that child's life. Not everyone has a younger brother/sister and we can't really take a field trip to the elementary school, so I guess interviewers would have to get creative about meeting the child for the initial interview. Her next idea is collecting information about a classmate and making graphics and other nonsense for an oral presentation, actually avoiding much of writing. This is ok if you're doing some kind of journalism unit, though. She doesn't actually say it's for studying journalistic writing or for speeches, although she does emphasize giving a speech at the end.

The next lesson isn't one of hers and it appears to have more building opportunities to actually get the kids writing an essay. Basically, take a picture, talk to the students about writing a hook/lead to get the readers' attention, then share what they wrote. There is more discussion with the students reading an intro with the lead taken out and creating new leads. Then, this goes to developing their own introduction paragraphs. Seems like a good building activity to get them to understand the concept. Good practice and opportunities for discussion before they have to do it on their own.

The last one is about persuasive writing using climate changes and environmental concerns. This could be changed to political issues depending on the students, imo. Some students will obviously want to write about things they feel strongly about not related to the environment. The problem with this particular lesson plan is that the writer did not consider students preferences and instead lists a lot of background resources for the teacher to become familiar with climate issues and share with the class. Otherwise, good ideas, but maybe have the students do their own research and then write a response based on current events they actually care about.

Thing 21

I liked Pageflakes and I can see how useful this would be as a one-stop resource for some of the lessons we cover. I added on a weather widget to show some places and that would correspond to our weather lesson, etc. I really liked the radio options once I got those working. We use things like the currency converter often because the students don't always remember the exchange rates. I found some links for real estate so the kids could look at French houses. It's really not much different than giving them websites to look at, but the convenience is that they're all on one page. I see there's an option to make that the homepage, so that might be a nice feature for the classroom computer. The French Word-a-Day flake is fun!

here is my page here

Thing 19

I've heard a lot about using podcasting, but I'd never really explored it since I don't have an Ipod. I know that one of our Spanish teachers uses Ipods for a music project. I wasn't too sure about having the kids just go out and download music because most of them were talking about illegal download services they knew about :)

So, having seen some of what was offered in the Grazr, I can see there is a large variety. I was concerned about using some of the audio-only programs, though, because literature firmly supports using pictures and simulations for foreign languages. From personal experience, I understand how easy it is to point to something and name it. Talking on a phone, for example, is difficult if the person strays into unfamiliar vocabulary. They can't just show you what they're talking about. So, I have to say that for beginner students, I was not impressed with Coffee Break French. I think that it might work with upper level students, but the grammar they were introducing was for beginners. Maybe this would work for the college crowd better, but I really can't see how this would be good for anyone really. I studied Japanese in a language lab like this and my experience was that I was constantly thinking "What are they talking about???" In the show, they were introducing "ce matin" and if the kids don't know what "matin" is, there is no support for them.

So, moving on to the History folder, I listened to HP01- The Only Atomic Bomb Ever Dropped on America. Well, this was like watching a history video without the music, interviews, and background scenes. Basically, it was a lecture. And we all know how often kids respond to lectures. Again, this wasn't a good choice in my opinion.

Ok, so maybe podcasts can be used in moderation with the kids making dialogues or their own newscasts or something, but it's not an impressive tool for introducing a lesson, expanding, etc. This seems like the best educational applications would be the kids making something and presenting.

Thing 17

• What was your first impression of Classroom 2.0?

I liked how the site seemed very active. I looked at a post by a Foreign Language teacher who asked about doing more vocabulary activities. I was a bit disappointed that the people who responded linked websites. My school doesn't have a lot of labs available, so I would rather have things to do in class. I saw some of the responses offered games they created through PowerPoint, so I'll have to check those out. I did like one of the sites that showed a LOT of short videos in different languages.

• Was it what you expected? How did it differ from your expectations?

I've been to other pages before where people would actually share lesson plans or activities by writing them out. This wasn't really answering the question about vocabulary activities. Some of the links were useful and others weren't. I was hoping to actually see people posting about favorite games, etc.

• Did you find any discussions or resources of value?

I bookmarked some of the suggested links and maybe can use them. That depends on how often I can reserve the computer lab.

• Would you benefit from participating in a Ning related to your professional practices?

I would go there if I wanted to find links to resources on the web. If I'm looking for different games in class, I might have to talk to teachers or buy books about games. The people posting were just linking sites and I didn't find that useful to answer the question about new activities to do with vocabulary.

• How could participating in a social network such as a Ning improve your instructional practices?

If I needed to find expert advice in the form of links, this was useful. As far as people posting and actually giving information, I think they weren't doing that enough. It seemed "lazy" and I've seen better sites.

• For those of you who teach older students (middle school and above), would you consider creating a Ning for your classroom? Do you have any ideas for how you could use it?

Think I liked wikis better. I didn't see how this was an advantage.

Microblogging

• What is your past experience with microblogging and sites like Twitter and Plurk?

Never used them before.

• Given the testimonials above from others who use microblogs as a part of their PLN, could you identify with any of their reasons?

Not really in a foreign language class. My emphasis is on getting kids to produce spoken language. You're not going to another country and writing to people. You're asking for directions, how much things cost, etc. orally. I didn't really see a use for Plurk.

• For those of you who teach older students (middle school and above), would you consider using a private microblog community such as Shout'emor Edmodo in your classroom? How could you use it?

Not really. There's better options out there, imo.

Thing 16

I've used Facebook a few times, but not often. My mother and sister wanted to share photos. My mother also wanted to keep up with extended family (her cousins, her aunts, etc.) My brother uses Facebook to talk to his friends and there are some games online associated with Facebook. So, I've never used this site professionally, but I can see how this would be used. You can invite as many people as you want to share information and connect to their sites.

I can see how PLNs can be enormous time-wasters, but they can also be good sources of information. I liked the idea of posting questions and inviting people to answer. I've seen sites before like that where people could post grammar questions, etc. and get answers from native speakers. As for time-wasters, there are surveys that are offered on Facebook like "What kind of wiper are you?" (questions about how you use toilet paper) Funny, but not something that I want to know about my students or my family members.

I'm not sure that I would really need "my own" PLN. As I mentioned, I found a site where people answer grammar questions, talk about culture, etc. I don't see that making a duplicate site would be beneficial. I think other sites are better for different applications. Some of these sites are "too social" and not professional in nature. They post advertisements. They post silly surveys and things that I would not want to share with my co-workers.

Thing 15

I took an after-school class about Google Docs, so I knew a little about it. I liked how you could be typing something and have other people collaborate. This might not work well for class assignments without a lot of caution. I'd be afraid of kids not saving work or erasing something someone else said. How do you give credit for something that's been erased? Our instructor gave examples in an English class setting where students could make comments and edit what someone wrote. The editing part is what made me worried about erasing. Since I teach French, I'd have to get all the kids cheat sheets for making the special accents. Typing in French is pretty easy, but the kids keeping up with them is a problem. The biggest concern over these is getting enough lab time. It's a great idea, but it seems easier to just do the activities in class on paper and use highlighters for editing. I'd rather use my lab time for projects and cultural instruction than word processing, etc.

I think it would be fun to use for something like organizing club activities and creating a scrapbook. You could show pictures with the slideshow, take surveys of what the students want to do during the month/year, and have places for them to write about their activities in the club. It's easy to use, so that wouldn't require much instruction to get the kids up and running.

Thing 5c

Free Technology for Teachers offered some ideas on Google Earth Flight Simulator. I've seen students using this before when I wanted them to check out city information or look at geography in the computer lab. What is neat is that you can be exact and check out a specific street or address. This makes the lesson come alive more than just talking about a typical French restaurant. They can actually see the restaurant and what it looks like in the neighborhood. The downside to the Google Earth site is that it's not updated very frequently. The pictures of my house are over a year old. So, this could be used in current events for the "before" pictures of disaster areas, for example.

Thing 14 YouTube

I've been to YouTube before, but since it was blocked at school, I didn't think I would be able to use the videos at school. One thing we don't get to examine much is the Tour de France since that ends before the students return to class. Getting these short videos would be a cool way to review the different stages of the race. I'm definitely a fan of embedding! I could make a wiki page to put these videos and have students check it out without having to visit YouTube.

Ok, I don't teach Spanish, but this is a must-see! There are some examples for French, but none are as well-done or as funny!!






I can learn how to change my oil filter! Of course this is easier learned in person or better yet, find someone to do it for you. So, YouTube might not be the best source of information for everything...



And here is something funny :)

Thing 13

Using VoiceThread was very easy and I like how it can replace boring dialogue presentations in class. I want to give my students lots of speaking opportunities, but omg, they just don't do a good job in front of an audience! Last year I had two students who absolutely would not present in front of the class. We had to go to the hallway for every single presentation. Others enjoyed presenting, but their peers often would still be working and ignoring the conversations. I tried lots of different things like having them grade the presenters, listen for errors for extra credit, etc. and nothing really worked. The majority refused to participate as an audience. They would usually spend a lot of time practicing, so I knew they were getting good experience, but they didn't want to share with others. I think this would be a great way to avoid the presentation anxiety by having them use a slideshow I pre-made or they could do their own with comments.

I could absolutely use this for testing options by having students doing storytelling, making presentations, comic dialogues, and other speaking opportunities. This is much much easier than using a hand-held recorder and rewinding (often over someone else's dialogue!)

Thing 12

I decided to check out Quizlet first. I made an example ESOL lesson that could be used with beginners. What I liked best about this is that there is voice recognition capability with some of the activities. There are better websites for making practice games, but I haven't found ones with good voice recognition. This way students who have to work on their speech will have to practice until the computer recognizes what they're saying. I tried mispronouncing words and the computer is very forgiving, unfortunately. Still, if their speech is super difficult, this might help. One downside to this is that there is no modeling for the kids. You can't click, hear the word, and try it yourself. Still, this is a decent site as you're practicing the vocabulary you need where on other sites, they may have voice recognition for words that don't relate to your vocab of the week.

I could use this for French, too, but the production would have to be in English. The program doesn't recognize spoken foreign words. Still, I could have students reading French and responding in English for initial practice to learn the vocab.

For social apects of Quizlet... you could have online chat or subscribe to a community. For example, you could set up a series of quizzes under Ms. Bathurst's French I. The kids would subscribe and be able to look at all the quizzes available. Now, say that Jimmy and Sean are on at the same time. They can use an instant messaging (IM) on the site and write to each other while they are logged in.

For my second tool, I decided to check out Timetoast. This site was ok if you have specific dates. I noticed that there is no option for a range of years and the site will plug in a day and month even if you don't want it to. For example, you want to say something happened throughout a certain year, it won't post just the year. Or there was an event from February to March, you can't have non-specific dates or show the range. I liked how you could upload pictures quickly and easily. You could label the pictures and be able to click for more information. One of the timeline examples was bilingual, so you could read in English, then click for more information in Spanish. So, you can add whatever description you want. You could also add links to the information on your timeline. You could link to articles, for example. The only real problem I saw with the site was the dates.

For social aspects, you could leave comments for the creaters. If there is a question or you want to point out errors or just say this looks great, you're able to do that.

One of the big projects I do with my French 2 classes is a timeline using past tense. Below is an example with Johnny Depp. Students have to choose one person and write out what the person did using passé composé. We tried doing this before with PowerPoints, but not everyone knew how to use the program or they turned out weird because the students tried to do too much with graphics, sounds, etc. This is nice, clean, and simple to use. From the description and examples, Dipity does more, but Timetoast would be great for those kids who aren't tech savvy. Offering both options would be a great way to accommodate for different types of learner abilities.

Thing 5b

Writing Lesson Plans... That Don't Rush the Writing by Debra Karr

Ok, this may not be a new idea, but I liked the different criteria she has listed here. I know my students don't always take group activities seriously, so the more structure (checklists) they have, the better. The more presenting/discussing, the better. I liked the enforced time limit idea. I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to take the time to make sure their friend's work doesn't have silly mistakes, but most of the time I see they're not really motivated. This makes me wonder about the people they call "friends." :) "Sure, man, I can look at your paper... for a whole 10 seconds... " When I taught English in Gwinnett, we had copies of Anchor papers. I'm not sure if Barrow uses these (or even calls them by the same name), but they're example papers that have comments and a score level (A, B, C, F) on them. I could see adapting that idea to French and working with Debra Karr's ideas in the hope that this next group of students will do better. Usually I don't ask my kids to do more than proofread, but I liked how they need to justify why they think this one is a good work sample, etc.

Thing 12

Whew, that was more difficult than I thought it would be. Actually, putting together the slideshow was the easy part. Embedding wasn't too bad either. Going back and checking the links to my pictures was the worst part. I found out that sometimes the http:// wasn't being dropped from the links on the sandbox page. I had to go back and manually delete the extra http://http:// a couple times. Hope that helps anyone else whose links aren't working right!

I admit I didn't check out the other two sites since the slideshows didn't look appealing. I liked the idea of pictures with music, so I had to visit RockYou!

Thing 11

Photo Sources:

1. Bedouin in Ivory Coast http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferdinandreus/485342170/
2. Ivory Coast http://www.flickr.com/photos/34865159@N06/3235461580/
3. Ivory Coast Dan Mask http://www.flickr.com/photos/32357038@N08/3167484523/
4. Abidjan, Ivory Coast http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaysha/3401588675/
5. Abidjan Plateau Panorama http://www.flickr.com/photos/slenelle/3169943229/

Thing 10

I found several neat pictures that I could use in a presentation about Africa. My French text highlights France this and France that throughout the book. There are a few mentions about Canada and other countries, but the majority is centered on France. The students get a warped view of the Francophone world and they don't appreciate just how diverse the speakers are. Since our text does not offer supplements to address culture outside of France, that is left up to the teacher. I got this picture from A Glimpse of the World at Flickr.

Thing 9

• Have you noticed the CC logo on any websites you visit? Did you wonder what it meant?

That logo is not something I was actually looking for, so I wasn't aware of it before now. Usually I check to see when the site was updated or when someone added a new post.

• Do you think CC will impact the way students learn and create projects? How?

I think that teachers will need to share this information before it has ANY impact on the kids. They typically think they can copy and paste with no repercussions. I tell my students to add works cited pages on their projects and they don't do it. They don't tell where they got direct quotes from. I don't think they understand how unfair it is for them to be using other people's works without permission. In their minds, it's so easy to copy, why should they do anything beyond that?

• Do you use digital images, audio or video clips from the web in your teaching (or professional practice)?

I use images (like the Eiffel Tower or other cultural images), but not audio or video clips. I do have some lesson plans including animal noises, but we listened to those directly from the original website.

• Do you ever share content on the web?

I've never had a website or blog, so no.

• Who owns your teaching materials?

The materials that I buy all say that they're for my personal classroom use and can be reproduced as many times as I would like. I'm just not supposed to share with other teachers and their classes. I check to make sure there are no other restrictions before I buy them. As for our textbooks, I'm sure the county paid licensing fees for our software so we have a site license for use at school. We have CDs for tutoring and copies of the text which are not licensed, but cannot be copied. We have permission to lend one to each student for use at home. The other materials say they are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part. So, the original authors and publishing company reserve those rights.

• What are some potential negatives for using CC?

I can see overuse by students. Instead of having good content, I think my students would load their projects with tons of pictures. I'm sure they would waste class time searching for the "perfect" music.

Thing 8

I just finished putting up my own wiki space on the Sandbox. It's pretty easy to use and fun to do, but I see there aren't many options for changing how it looks. I'm glad to see how to embed links now. I didn't know how to do that and my previous Blog posts looked bad because of that. Embedding really does make things look nicer than writing out the whole address. Easier on readers, too as they can just click and go instead of open a new tab, copy, and paste. On another note, I really had fun with the image generators. I was looking at what was available and had to go with the Lego people. I embedded the link with the picture, so you click on the pic and it takes you there. I didn't see anything about copyrighted images, so didn't know if I needed to add something there or not.

Thing 7

As I'm looking through Brittany's space I notice that the organization is not very good and that someone would have to be familiar with the specific classroom to be able to follow her information. Vicki Davis' student could have organized this better. Some of the tabs seem to go to vocabulary definitions while others comment about different things (symbols, people, events) from the story. Some of the definitions and comments are not clear. The students did not use page numbers. They had listed a range of chapters like 1-5. I think this would be very difficult to use as a study guide. How could you look up what they're talking about? There is a definite lack of good grammar. As an English teacher, I find that disturbing in an English class project...

From her link on the website about a virtual study hall, I see this lists the current homework and other assignments due. Cute idea, but this obviously does not list all the classes for all students. Maybe these were the only classes her group of students had, so it's not intended as a whole-school reference site? I clicked on biology to see what kinds of information the students posted and was extremely underwhelmed. There were a few definitions, but they were compiled of run-on sentences. Reading these was like reading gibberish! So, I looked at the Spanish tab to see if that was any better. These looked like my students' notes- useless. There was a list of verb endings, but no explanation to show how to apply those endings or when to use the verb forms (situations). I can see that teachers and parents would be excited about the "collaboration" factor, but bad notetaking is still useless and a waste of time to someone who really needs help. To make it better, the kids should be told they can't just copy definitions, but they must explain in their own words and/or give a real example.

When I think of struggling students looking for help on a website, I think back to my experiences with Algebra. Yes, I could do the equations, but they made no sense to me in real life. Then, my mother went back to school and had to take Algebra. Her text was about applying Algebra to real life! An entire text with real examples of how and when to apply all those equations! I would love to see student websites set up with that goal.

So, leaving CoolCatTeacher and not feeling very good about wikis, I decided to check out the Holocaust I only checked out one student post and was pretty impressed by that. The project is told as a story where students provide some background information with maps, pictures, etc. You see where the events were happening, read about your main character and his/her family. The report references facts but in a storytelling setting (the one I read was about a Jewish family living in Poland). Then, the reader is involved by choosing what the character should do. For example, stay or try to leave the country as the Nazis approach? When you choose, you get some results of what happened (you get arrested by the Nazis, etc). This was very cute and creative! Students had to know the background facts, but they were highly creative with what they presented at a more personalized level (what the experience might have been like for real people).

Feeling better about wikis, I decided to look at this website about storywriting. Showcasing student works is a great idea! I read through several stories and was pretty impressed with the variety and quality (and it's not just one school). These are not works in progress nor are they mediocre. This seems like a place to post the best available student works. I know we're encouraged to post in our classrooms and often we don't want to leave anyone out. I'm guilty of putting some of "those papers" up on the wall, too. While examining bad papers is a learning experience, there is a reason for posting good papers- they show the goals for which students should be aiming! The best part about this is that the works are available to a wider audience than just the students who enter the classroom or pass along that hallway.

The projects shown on the chemistry website seem to mostly be an alternative to PowerPoint presentations. What is nice here is that they projects can be reviewed again and again or shared with different classes easily. I had a little more trouble accessing this site because I would pull up instructions for the project and not know where to find the students' finished works, for example. More organization is needed and I liked the first sites use of tabs.

Thing 6

http://www.diigo.com/dashboard/cerika66 Here is my Diigo information or here is the quicklink.

I can see that this would be an easy resource for sending information to my students. Instead of having them copy out a web address and then going to the computer lab, I can have them log on to my Diigo page and then click from there. From personal experience, I know the kids don't always pay attention when they're typing and they're not likely to figure out they missed the _ or whatever character. This takes time away from instruction and exploration when they have to retype the web address 5x and then call me over to see what they missed.

I must admit that I didn't see adding tags as being very useful. I thought the description was a much more informative feature. Descriptions take up more space, but when I want a level 1 student to practice listening skills, I don't want to type in "listening" and send him to the advanced page by mistake. I would need to look at the description to see "beginner activities." Maybe tags are more useful if I had links to hundreds of websites, but at this point, it's not a problem to scroll through 10 or so looking for the exact one I want.

Thing 5a

I didn't have anything specific I wanted to research at the moment, but I always like checking out generic lesson plans. I started by looking for foreign language and geography plans, but didn't see anything too interesting. Some of the blogs that pulled up showed they didn't have many weekly updates so that seemed to me that they would be rather static.

Since I wanted to incorporate more art into French 2, I thought I would try "Les Impressionists." What pulled up wasn't even remotely related to the artists or the art movement; however, I did end up finding what I was looking for in the first place! This has links to generic lesson plans for cross-curricular ideas. When I started clicking on some links, I found this gem on African languages.

This lesson plan is about looking at African languages and the problems associated with having lots of local dialects. This would give students time to explore why this is a problem and why having a common language (French for example) would make life easier for people. While it's a good thing to preserve customs, history, and languages that make people unique, there is still an absolute need to be able to work with a common language.

The problem is that Reader came up with a website, not an actual blog, so I don't know how often this site would be updated. Anyway, the site is www.lessonplanet.com So, I learned a bit more about Reader: it doesn't necessarily look for a specific TYPE of article such as a blog. It pulls up all kinds of related or semi-related articles/blogs/websites/online newspapers, etc.

Thing 3

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/

My reader pulled up this website and I thought it looked interesting. Since I'm a French teacher, I want to emphasize to my students that MANY countries speak French. I haven't been able to check out everything related to France, French history, other French-speaking countries, etc. here, but the site looks promising. With limited funding and educational resources being soooo overpriced, I rely on the Internet often to address current events and culture. At this site, I should be able to pull up videos on historical figures, events, travel guides, etc. to supplement what we discuss in the classroom.

I like the idea of Reader. I think this is a convenient tool for keeping up to date and seeing what has changed on blogs or webpages without having to actually go flipping from site to site. It seems very easy to use, too.

Post 2 : Blog Readings

I started by looking at the blog about assigning homework by Mr. Meyer. One thing that I liked about his blog is that he included links to back up some of the things he was saying. For example, he mentioned "assessment reform" and had a link to the site he was referencing. This is better than reading a term paper where the students have works cited because with one click, you're there. Of course for books and other sources that are not on the web, there is no replacement for the works cited. Still, that saved a lot of time and guesswork. I clicked and read exactly what he was talking about. On the other hand, he used offensive language in some of his blogs and I found that unprofessional. The blog definitely had a "conversational" tone that detracted from his credibility. It's not that we're all saints who would never swear, but in a presentation, swearing is a turn-off. There are better ways to express frustration without making a negative impact.

The next site I visited was about brevity written by a student, Morgante Pell. I can sympathize with students to a degree here. Yes, writing a long paper is no fun and it's sometimes difficult to try to come up with more information if they haven't done their research. Finding more to say to fill up space is basically how the student viewed the work for the traditional paper. I liked the comment from this teacher about how testing constraints limit the students' creativity. In my own classroom, I find that students try to write too much and they lack the vocabulary at levels 1 & 2. I think the idea of brevity is definitely useful and should be practiced. Brevity cannot replace all assignments, but getting to the point is a valuable idea.

Joyce Valenza has good points. She doesn't have as much practical information as I'd like, so the posts are a valuable follow-up to her article. What she has here is more like an outline of a study without the particulars. I found the posts to have good comments about what they've seen in PowerPoints that made for good and bad presentations. This is definitely a good site to show students before doing a presentation.


Kris Bradburn wrote an interesting article. I noticed that there were a lot of short comments in the posts showing support, but little else. The responses were often without any real content such as links to other research or any real depth of thought. This would be a good site to show "blogging illiteracy." If I were giving grades for responses to the original post, I would have to give the majority of responses failing grades. There is no real sense in saying "nice job!" if that's all you have to say to an article. All that does is clutter up the site.

The Fischbowl was the last one I looked at. This was interesting because it does not include people's opinions on the blog. Responses may be looked at by clicking a link to the comments. This makes the site look clean and neat. When I clicked on 21cliteracy as a suggested label, I got a hodgepodge of unrelated articles. I don't see how this was helpful in finding more information about the original topic on tech illiteracy. I did like how he had links for other posts he made since if a person likes what the writer has to say, it's easy to see what other comments or original posts he has.

I think that blogs definitely have good social uses. I'm still not convinced about replacing classroom discussion in favor of blogs. Also, I do not support replacing papers with blog-style commentaries since our society is turning away from structured writing in disturbing ways. I've seen e-mails from my mom's work... they're scary. One of my former colleagues would print out e-mails from secretaries, other teachers, the principal, and others that he received and would share/ridicule them over lunch. That makes for a fun lunch, but I would not want my child anywhere near those people's classrooms. In sum, I can see benefits, but there are some definite drawbacks to the style of blog writing as well as the information itself. These examples were nice and from an educational website. Others can use blogs to perpetuate ignorance and intolerance. Like everything, you have to research before you read to see if your source is credible.

I think the most useful way to apply a blog for my classroom would be for tutoring. Many of my students say they would not be able to come in early (bus riders) or stay late (usually bus riders or they're just lazy). They realize they need help, but won't do anything about it. I'd bet a blog would be a good place for them to get help because I could have an original post about the grammar of the week and students could post their own explanations of how they learned the concept or share study techniques.

Thing 1-B : Web 2.0

I just finished reading about Web 2.0 and seeing the videos. Some of the ideas are pretty overwhelming for someone not raised in the culture of technology or who have only had limited access. I'm hesitant to use a lot of tech in the classroom because of these issues. With my ESOL students at my old school, if I took a survey, I'd say about 10% of my students have never used a computer at all (recent immigrants usually) and more than 50% had never done serious work with a computer. We used to take them once a week to the lab just to teach them how to log on, type, and do a search. The other 40% may have a computer at home for games or the occasional limited work because it belonged to a parent. My American students tended to have more experience so that was less frustrating for me, but I'd say there were still about 50% with no computer or no Internet service at home. Anyway, that school was a Title 1 school. Since AHS participates in Title 1 and has quite a few students on free/reduced lunches, I'm feeling that these students might be in similar home situations with the computers.

What that means to me is that if I assign work that a student might not be able to finish in class, this student may require extra time away from class to use a lab. That's not a good situation and that could be avoided by not using technology. As teachers, we have to keep things like this in mind since we're not trying to exclude students when we give assignments.

Now, on a more positive note, I haven't used podcasts before, but my old school had us post lesson plans to a shared server. I could check out what the other teachers planned to do for similar topics. An example: the clothing unit! So, I'm looking for something fresh to do with that and I check the Spanish teachers to see what kinds of things they do. One is organizing a "fashion show" and asking all her students to wear nice clothes, fancy clothes, or ugly, out of style clothing. Then, I check the other French teacher because she usually has interesting writing topics. I've done this kind of non-face-to-face collaboration before and it saves a LOT of time. As an added bonus, I get to avoid the situation of "yeah, sounds like that works well in your class, but I don't really like it/think it will work in mine...."

Outside of my personal example here, I can see that some of the tools have been helpful and some are absolutely hurtful to our students. Yes, they have a lot more information available and they can get that information quickly. Hurtful because in some situations, students need to know the FACTS and what they're reading are someone's OPINIONS. This leads to students getting the wrong information and then they think that information is correct because someone posted it on the web and that page gets a lot of hits. Their ideas of validity are completely different than ours and they don't always use good judgement or are unable to make good decisions yet. I attended the workshop on Cyberbullying last year. That is an excellent example of a good idea gone bad. The worst part about all these tools being available is that the potential for abuse is incredible and there is really no way to monitor everything the kids are doing or to correct/stop them when they get caught. Yes, I have seen pics of kids mooning their friends' camera phones...

As a sometimes English teacher, I was horrified at the thought of kids not discussing, but writing blogs about a reading assignment. So, what were they using the class time for if they were blogging their discussion outside of class? Or maybe they were using a lab and blogging during class? Typing takes more time than talking. Sounds like a waste of time, but they weren't clear in the article about how class time was being used. Also, there have been many times where I have had to write formal reports, letters, etc. in everyday life. I do not see a benefit of having students avoid the formal paper techniques just because writing a paper is boring. They still need to know how to do it! Also, they do not get enough practice using formal speech. Getting to college and not knowing how to write a paper is completely unacceptable. Writing correspondance to your boss like you're writing a casual e-mail to a friend is completely unacceptable. I can support teachers wanting more student involvement, but there is a limit and we cannot always go down to their level. Sometimes they have to be pushed to meet ours.

Another thing that disturbed me about the podcasts was the potential for community involvement. Yes, we want parents to be interested and to participate, but what happens if you've already told parents to tune in and your class discussion turned to a controversial topic that you didn't intend? That one incident may ruin your reputation as a competent teacher. I almost get the feeling of BigBrother invading the classroom. :) Again, there is a great potential for sharing, but we need personal space, too. I have parents sometimes asking why we're teaching this topic. There's not much I can do besides say "It's part of the curriculum and it's useful." I don't need parents making my job harder by challenging what we're doing in the classroom on a daily basis or asking why we're not doing a presentation some other way or using different teaching techniques or or or... I trust people in the community to know how to do their jobs, so they should respect that I know how to do mine. Unless there was a real concern about students failing or needing some kind of monitoring, I just find that podcast idea invasive. I can see students sharing projects with the community and parents saying their work is not to their standards when our teaching goals are very different from the parents' standards. Here's an example from a colleague: She was teaching a unit on houses in Mexico with the goals of basic vocabulary and colors. The bedroom is big and blue kind of stuff. One of the administrators walked in for an observation and later marked her down for not introducing more cultural aspects like discussing property taxes in Mexico. hehe We laughed about that one for weeks because it came from a person who is supposed to know what we're doing.

Personally, I think it would be great to use tech to correspond with keypals rather than waiting weeks for penpal letters to arrive. It's great to pull videos from different sources to enhance lessons. It's fun to make classroom videos and show those to friends/other classes. A thing to consider, though, is that sometimes the tech takes time out of classroom activities where students are spending too much time doing "setting up" work or just "making it pretty." This usually means a lot of monitoring on my part with encouragements of "hurry it up, we've got 2 minutes left!!!!" My favorite is "Omg, my project didn't save!"

Anyway, I can definitely see where Web 1.0 is still useful, but I realize that most of our students are into the interactive parts of the web. Blogs and other things are great for exchanging ideas, but we really need the 1.0 for things we don't want our children to find and change (like the report on the real Titanic where Captain Leonardo da Caprio went down with the ship, copied and pasted from Wikipedia). I'm not saying that's not a great tool, but too many cooks spoil the soup sometimes. Someone was messing around and changed a single line of the text to include Leonardo and of course my clueless (and lazy) ESOL student decided to write about that.

Thing 1-A : Post 1

Bienvenue! My name is Valerie and I teach French at AHS. This will be my second year there, but I have 10 years of experience from Meadowcreek HS in Norcross. Besides teaching, I will also be sponsoring a new club- The Foreign Language Club. My department colleagues and I wanted to promote our languages to students who are taking French or Spanish. We're hoping to find opportunities for students to experience culture and practice their language skills outside of the classroom. I've got some ideas for starter activities, but if you know of any upcoming events, great restaurants, etc. that students would love to see/visit/experience, let me know!

Now, why did I sign up for this course? Well, I like computers and technology. Unfortunately, we don't get much time in the computer lab. So, I'm hoping to find new ways for my students to access information quickly and meaningfully. I know that a lot of students are still intimidated by computers, so the more I know, the more I can help them. This course offers a lot of different ways to present and access information. Also, I'm sure the students know about these things and I certainly don't want to be left out of the information loop!