Thing 21

I really loved this technology course!  I liked being able to do the tasks as I had time, in the comfort of my own home.  I think it was paced well, and I really liked the video tutorials.  I have found several things that I am now using for personal use/professional development and I look forward to using others this year in my classroom.  My favorite discoveries are RSS feeds, digital libraries and animoto.  What a great class!  Summed up in one sentence: In this class I've learned about several useful resources all from the comfort of home!  Thanks!

Thing 20 - Exploring additional tools

This week I explored wordle, letterpop, mebeam and aviary.

I actually had a lot of trouble with the Web 2.0 literacy tools links working.  A lot went to things that were no longer available.. but this is what I looked at.  Letterpop is a newsletter maker that makes it easy to share said newsletters, only problem is you have to get a subscription.  Mebeam is a way to video conference for free over the internet, but we've already learned about using skype for that.  Aviary is a photo editor available as an app or a widget.  I am choosing to go in depth with wordle.

Well, my plan would be to use Wordle to create a graphic that displays current vocab in my classroom, the samples I saw on the website were really cool, but after I typed in all the vocab (you can even keep phrases together by using "~" instead of a space between words), it wouldn't load.  I believe my java is up-to-date, but I guess I'm going to have to try it at school.  I would like to make one and post it on here.

Ideally this tool would serve as a graphic to maybe preview the vocab for a new chapter or to have as a bit of a cool-looking reminder (up until quiz day that is).  It's just nice to have material presented in a more visually pleasing way :).

UPDATE: I got it to work at school, so here is a wordle of my Spanish 2's current vocab.  I think it would be nice to have somewhere in the room (up until a test at least) as a nice visual.

Skype :)

So originally when I was thinking about using Skype in the classroom, I thought I could Skype back and forth with other Spanish classes at Branson, and I do still feel like that would be fun, but then I looked at Skype in Education.  I can search for and "expert" in Spanish and get pages and pages of possibilities to Skype with.  This would be a great alternative to "pen pals" although I'm not sure how I would get students to one-on-one skype with someone else until we get a new lab.  I think I may have to stick with the classroom as a whole for right now.  This would be great to help students get a better idea of different accents in different regions and allow them to better experience the culture.

There are also "language exchanges" available online where you can find native speakers to talk with for free via Skype, which is very similar to this.  It would be great if we had the devices for everyone, but it could also be something offered during pirate time to those who want extra practice.  It would be worth it just to let students know it's out there for them to grab hold of.

I also think Skype will be a great tool for our foreign language teachers and students to use during trips abroad.  This summer the high school is offering a trip to Costa Rica and next summer to Spain.  I think this would be a great way for teachers and students to touch base back home, assuming that they had a device with skype installed and were on wifi.  I am excited about the possibilities with it.