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.