MACUL Conference

This past Friday, we went to the MACUL conference in Detroit. I was excited for a day to spend with my fellow teaching professionals to learn more about how to incorporate technology into the classroom. The biggest challenge was deciding which sessions to attend, since there were numerous options for each time slot. After deciding and attending four sessions, there were definitely two favorites for me.

One of my favorite sessions was a talk from Amy Eno about using technology to help communication in the foreign language classroom. One of the major struggles in a foreign language classroom is getting students to speak in Spanish, and insuring that everyone is actually using the time to practice speaking the language. Amy talked about different websites that we can use to help simulate a real conversation, and has the students record themselves so that we can view them later. One of the websites that I will definitely use is called MSU clear conversations. For this website, you record a video of yourself asking a question or prompt in Spanish. Then students go on the website and they can view the video that I made, and then they have a certain amount of time to record themselves responding in Spanish. I can then go back in and watch all of my students responses to the video. Not only does this simulate more of what a real conversation would feel like because students do not have time to practice ahead of time, but also it saves us time in the classroom. We don't have to call individual students up to our desk and listen to all of their responses, instead we can listen to them on our own time.

Another effective website for the foreign language classroom is called lingt language. On this website we can create assignments for our students to complete. When we create the assignment we can put in a clip of our voice asking a question or prompt, text, an image or a YouTube video. This gives us a lot of creativity and flexibility in terms of what we want our students to do. Also, students can respond with either a recording of their voice or text, depending on what we want them to do. I like the idea of using this website to do quick assignments during class because it is a super easy and efficient way to see if students are understanding the material, and it works on their written and speaking skills.

I was energized at the discovery of these new websites to try out in my classroom, and help my students with their Spanish skills. After these informative sessions, I attended my last session- the lightning talks. There were two speakers that struck me in particular. They both talked about the students that need us most, and why our job is so important to continually support those students. It was an excellent way to end the day and a great reminder of why we do what we do.

Technology Teach-In

When I was thinking about what kind of technology I wanted to infuse into my lesson plan, I was trying to think about how to improve speaking activities with technology. I am continually brain storming on how to improve speaking activities that will benefit my students in the future, and increase their proficiency in Spanish. The problem with many classroom speaking activities is that it is hard to insure that all students are speaking Spanish when the whole class is doing the activity at the same time. 

How can I be listening to all of the students' conversations at once?? 

Technology allows me to do this!! 

I will have students use their cell phones to record their conversations. 

In my lesson plan, first I will have all students find a partner. This solves the problem of not all students owning a smartphone because they will only need one smartphone per partnership. Students will be given a certain topic to talk about. They have to create a dialogue and then film themselves speaking the conversation. I am not exactly sure what the topic will be right now, but I think this method of having the students film themselves can be applicable to most units. 

I want to implement this type of speaking activity that uses smartphones because I want to insure that my students are practicing speaking Spanish. When we do normal speaking activities in the classroom, it is impossible (not impossible but very time consuming for one person) for me to go to each pair of students and listen to their conversation and give feedback. When students film their conversation, I know that they are practicing because I can listen to each individual conversation. Also, students will be motivated to speak Spanish, even when I am not directly next to them, because they will be turning in the video as an assignment. 

Lastly, students love to use their phones, so I might as well use them to improve their Spanish skills!

Zambombazo!- Great Resource for Spanish Teachers

I just spent a lot of time navigating Zachary Jone's blog  that you can check out here:
http://zachary-jones.com/zambombazo/
All I can say is... wow.
This blog has everything a beginning Spanish teacher could think of. There are specific examples of activities for units around current themes. For example there are activities centering around Halloween, since that is coming up this week. Also, there are links to possible purchases that teachers would want to make, like a book that when students conjugate the verb right, it makes a picture. He also has a ton of different tabs that link to music, videos, comics, art, internet resources, etc.

I think the strongest part of this blog is the resources that he provides for fellow Spanish teachers. This blog provides an excellent source for finding funny videos or comics in Spanish for our students. For example he has a comic that shows the difference between Castanyada and Halloween. After he provides the comic, he also analyzes it, and gives possible activities to use after the students have read it. He also provides more links to videos that will share more information about Castanyada. This is an excellent resource because not only is he providing a cool comic to show in class, but he also gives examples of how you can use it in a lesson. This is a great blog, to get fun activities to use for students.

Also, there is a tab that features possible units for the Spanish classroom. The units are divided into thematic and grammatical units. Under each division there are a ton of different topics that gives possible activities for each unit. For example if you click on the "El Tiempo" unit, it gives possible activities for students to do centered around learning about weather. Then below that it gives possible related units to weather. If that is not enough helpful information, he also provides links to possible units that you may be interested in. This is an extremely helpful portion of his blog because it gives a jumping off point for teachers to be able to look at his themes and activities he would do along with them.

Overall, I think that Zachary's blog is something to aspire to. He has so many awesome resources on his page and he plans really cool relevant lessons. I will definitely use his blog for inspiration for my future lessons. He provides a lot of examples of YouTube videos that you can use in the classroom, which is really helpful because it is hard to find appropriate videos. I think every Spanish teacher should keep his blog in mind because if nothing else it can help spark a new idea for a fun activity.

Socrative

This week in class, we learned about a really cool website called Socrative. On this website you can create online quizzes, Space Races, and exit tickets. All of these functions on the website come with three options of types of questions that include multiple choice, true or false, and short answer. While online quizzes and exit tickets are self explanatory, space races are not. Space races allow students to get into teams and answer a series of questions. Each time a person on a team gets an answer correct their rocket ship goes ahead in the race. It is a fun way to get students thinking!

I really like the idea of Socrative because it gives the teacher instant feedback on how the students did. Also, you can download a spreadsheet of the results, and see which questions were answered incorrectly the most frequently. This is an amazing tool for teachers because we can immediately respond to and review/reteach content to students that was unclear to them based on the results. This isn't as easy when tests are administered on paper. Also, by having the computer do the grading, teachers will save a ton of time not having to go through and correct quizzes by hand.

Even though Socrative has a lot of positive attributes, there is definitely a time and a place to use it. For example, the program grades the short answer questions word for word what the teacher writes down for the answer. This means that these kinds of questions would be good if the question for sure only had one answer. This function could not be used for free response questions. Also, this program would also we hard to use if it is difficult to obtain computers or other devices in a school. Not all schools have efficiently working computers, so it might not be worth the time trying to boot up the computers to have the students do a 5 minute quiz.

After looking at the pros and the cons of this application, I think it could be really useful in the Spanish classroom. I think doing a quick quiz on Socrative, for example on verb conjugations, would be a really good idea. This way I can get instant feedback and see where my students are so I can adjust my teaching accordingly. Also, the specificity of the short answer response would be helpful because spelling and accents are really important when learning Spanish. I am looking forward to using this in my classroom!

Tech in My Placement

I researched the technology that Lincoln High School has to offer, and overall it seems that the findings are pretty average in comparison to other high schools. At first, I thought that technology was lacking at the high school, but after researching the technology available, I realized there are a lot of options. There is a media center,  laptop carts, and smart boards in every classroom. There are schools with a lot more technology, and schools with a lot less.

The most important technology feature at Lincoln, I think, are the smart boards. They didn't have smart boards when I was in high school, so this was a whole new feature to me. I think it's awesome that teachers and students can interact with a touch screen in the classroom. Not only are there things projecting on the board, but it has the function of being interactive. I think this is a really useful tool in the Spanish classroom because there are game templates that come with the smart board software. I can put in Spanish words into the game template and then have my students play it, without having to manually make all the game components.

One thing about the technology at Lincoln that I find controversial, is that there is no wifi. On the one hand, I think that it is a good thing because this way students cannot go on the internet if they don't have data on their phone plan. Since there are so many problems with students using their phones during class, this lessens the phone use to an extent. That being said, this could rule out the potential to have students use their own devices during an activity in class. Phones could be a useful tool for using Spanish dictionary apps, but students will not be able to use them if they do not have wifi.

After our discussion in class about technology in other people's field placements, it seems that sometimes technology is not worth the struggle. At some high schools, they may have computers, but they are so old or the system is so complicated to log in, that students do not even have enough time to do the activity. Sometimes I realize that it is not conducive to a school's budget to update their technology, but it seems like there is no point in having technology if it isn't going to work efficiently. The whole point of using technology in the classroom is for efficiency sake, and it hosts other learning opportunities for students. However, when technology does not work properly, it should be left unused in schools.

David Theune

David Theune presented so many ideas that I would love to incorporate into my classroom. He seems like a really enthusiastic teacher that continually tries to think of ways to benefit his students. The thing that I liked most about Mr. Theune was that he is an innovator in the field of teaching. He doesn't stick to the classic playbook for teachers, and I appreciate that.

While Mr. Theune teaches English the core principals of teaching that he is trying to get across are relevant in all domains. He explains how students are more motivated when they have an audience. This makes sense because when students know that people will see their work then they will make it their best work. Also, he talks about having real life purposes for assignments helps the students get more involved in projects and assignments. I think these two ideas go hand in hand because a lot of times having an audience and a real life purposes are the same thing. When I think about this concept in terms of teaching Spanish, I think it would be really cool to have the students teach younger students in their district some Spanish. This way students have an audience and a real life purpose.

Another part of Mr. Theune's presentation that I loved was how he talked about community. I find it truly inspirational that he is taking real issues from the school and raising awareness about them. He also gets his students involved in this, like when he co-authored a book with one of his students about bullying. Not only is he raising awareness, but he is also getting students involved in the process. I would love to do something like this in my classroom as well. I could tie in culture and getting involved in the community, by doing a project that involves the Hispanic population in the community.

Overall, I liked the different approach to teaching that Mr. Theune uses. He thinks about what the students need first. He does not do the same thing year after year with his students, but adapts his lessons and projects to grow with his students.

Connections Across Disciplines

We had to create lesson plans around the debate of Bring Your Own Technology (BYOD) in the classroom. My group decided to make our lesson plan revolve around the students debating the issue in Spanish. We made the assignment very literal by bringing the prompt itself into the lesson plan, so it was interesting to read other groups lesson plans that had the same prompt, but very different objectives.

The lesson plan that I looked at mainly was made for a History class made by Jimmy, Paul, and Carl. They employed using many different types of technology including YouTube, Evernote, and Google blogs. I thought that this was really clever to show students how technology in the classroom could be really useful. I think the technology that they chose to use was practical and would not distract students in class. That being said, it might get difficult in school districts where not all students can afford a laptop or tablet to bring into class; the standards might have to be broadened to phones or other devices.

I thought a very interesting feature of their lesson plan was that they had students relate history to the present day. I think it is really important to do this in history classes, so I really appreciated this aspect. Also, I really enjoyed that they used activism in the 1920's and then had the students relate how they could use technology today to be an activist for their issue of choice. I think it is a wise ides to show students how the internet can be used for good, and this is a way to show students how they can express themselves on the internet in a productive way.

Something that would be a nice addition to this lesson plan, is just generally teaching the students how to be respectful on the internet. I think a major problem in society is that people abuse the internet, and use it to be hateful towards people anonymously. It would be nice, that while teaching content by using technology, we could also show students how to use it properly. It could be a great time to instill appropriate codes of ethics for using the internet.