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.

Using Technology to Organize your Life

This week we got the opportunity to explore three different websites that help organize your life.  was excited about this assignment because I love to organize things, just look at my planner!

The first website was Google drive, which most people at least know that it exists. While I have had a google powered email since my freshman year in college, I still learned a lot of new features about my google drive. I think Google docs are especially helpful for teachers for their collaborative nature. You can essentially make any type of document, presentation, and spreadsheet, and there is also the feature of being able to collaborate and share on it. Collaborating with colleagues is made easy by the accessibility and intuitive nature of Google docs.

We also looked at an application/website called Evernote. This tool mainly serves to organize your individual life into notebooks, with a variety of notes within each notebook. The function that I liked most about this application is that you can put to-do lists in each notebook. This way you can organize what you have to do by each class or however you choose to arrange your notebooks. Coming from an ultra organized person, this feature brings me a lot of happiness because now I can even organize my to-do lists by class!

Last but not least, we explored how to use Blendspace. This website helps teachers make lesson plans in five minutes by giving templates that teachers can drag and drop online resources into. You can get resources from a variety of places including YouTube, Google, and your very own Google drive :) Also, another important feature of this website is that you can share your lesson plan with others, and look at lesson plans that other teachers have already made.

I had to teach others how to use Blendspace, and I continued to learn about this website as I was telling others how to use it. I think it is really helpful to explain and be able to summarize about a topic in order to become fluent in it. I thought that I knew a lot about Blendspace before I taught about it, but I learned so much more about it based on people's questions. People asked questions about the website that I hadn't even thought to explore. This is something interesting to keep in mind in terms of teaching in a classroom, in that we are continuously going to learn about our content area. The questions of our students are going to force us (in a good way) to continually be doing research in our own field.

To do some research on educational games, I chose to play some games on SuperSaber.com. There were a variety of games that a student could choose to play. The website is for students whose native language is Spanish, not for students learning Spanish. There were a lot of cool things about this gaming site, like there were reoccurring characters in many of the games. Students could get attached the some of the characters like "El Visitante" or "Señor Pi". It also made for a more cohesive website, when students can see the characters in more than one game. The directions were also really easy to follow, and they popped up before every game was played.

However, there were a few things that I found not as helpful on this website. I didn't like that the games were so short. In most of the games there were only a few questions, so it could be that once a student gets used to the game, it is over. Also, it was not clear to me what the exact age range these games were meant for. Many of the games were pretty basic like "What do animals eat?". In this game a character encountered various animals and the gamer had to pick if they ate meat, plants or insects. However, there were also games with multiple digit addition and multiplication.

I think that overall the website is a fun place for younger students to play educational games. I think that it could be a productive tool, but at the same time I think the website needs to add more games or more dimensions to some of the games. I think students could play all of the games in like an hour, judging by the website now. It would be cool to see more levels added on to some of the games, and have each level increase in difficulty. Some of the games do this, but on the more basic games it would be cool to see more complexity in adding more levels. Overall this website is a lot more useful for younger students than students in high school.

While I do think this website should not be used for students that are native spanish speakers in high school, I do think this could be a fun website for high school students that are learning spanish. Students can practice their spanish because in order to know how to play the game, they have to read the instructions in spanish. Also, some of the games are simple enough content wise, that while they are working hard to understand the spanish, they don't have to work as hard to come up with the answer. It could be a really cool, interactive and more hands on way to practice spanish. Students wouldn't be consciously thinking that they are practicing spanish because they would be doing it through playing a computer game.

Smarter Balance Assessments- Technology in Testing

Through an activity that we did in class today it brought up many issues about standardized tests and how they are administered. In the activity, people had to write a short essay following a standardized test's prompt. Some people were given restrictions, like they could only type with one finger, and others had no restrictions. At first I thought the restrictions were just a metaphor for some students coming in better prepared for standardized tests than others. This is true and applicable because some students go to schools where they are given practice tests, and have better teachers, while others do not. Some students are going to go into these tests knowing the content better than others. So while what I was thinking was true, the restrictions are also literal examples of what some students might have difficulty with. Some students are coming into these tests not knowing how to use computers that well, let alone being able to type proficiently.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment is an online assessment tool that helps students gain proficiency in different content areas. Since it is solely based on the computer, as mentioned before it gives some students a head start compared to others.  The increasing amount of standardized tests being on the computer automatically gives students that are experienced with computers the upper hand. These students normally relate to students with good, reliable resources. The students that really do need help in gaining proficiencies, most likely do not have access to reliable computers or can competently navigate them. This is just perpetuating and increasing the gap between high performing schools and low performing schools. These assessments are assuming that using the computer is a basic skill, when for many students it is not.

This being said, there are definitely some positives to the Smarted Balanced Assessments. Since it works as a cumulative approach, it assesses students fairly and on the level of proficiency that they currently are. I think this is really amazing, in that these tests can personalize to the needs of every student. This is really helpful because it assess the student to provide them with challenges, but not so that the questions are impossible. Also, while the variety of ways to respond to the question can be challenging for some students, at the same time, it provides students with examples of what they may encounter. It helps students be prepared for different types of questions, and how they should respond. This variety, also helps students that think differently and are better at certain questions.

There is no answer to how much technology should be incorporated into testing. There are definitely positives, in that technology can provide many different types of questions, and assistance to many different levels of proficiency. I think there are many negatives as well because it just adds to the achievement gap between schools with resources and schools without. It is important to change with the times, and incorporate technology in the classroom, but not everything has to have a technological component. I think testing is one thing in the classroom that is better done on paper. I find it really hard to read off of split screens and go in between different windows in order to do a test. I think this requires a lot of mental effort, and so I can't spend as much mental energy on the actual questions. For me tests, including standardized assessments, are better done in the old-fashioned way- on paper.

John Dewey's Pedagogic Creed

I think that John Dewey's view on education is very applicable in today's society even though it was written over 100 years ago. Much of what is wrong today, is that public education is not seen as a good education. We are losing our faith in public education, so that we cannot see it is a vehicle for social change. Public education is at the very roots of democracy because in it's ideal form is an equalizer, but this is not the case in reality. Dewey does a good job in describing how school is more than just about schooling.

The school today is very content focused, as seen in the increased importance being put on standardized tests. Teachers can lose their jobs if their students do not perform well on these tests. I think with this, we lose the other side of education and teaching. We forget that educators are there to make whole, happy students, not just students who can do well on tests. In John Dewey's Pedagogic Creed, he emphasizes the importance of the social aspect in school. This is the main thing that jumped out at me because judging by the structure of schools, that aspect is not accentuated in today's public schools. When describing what a school is, Dewey focuses on forming future citizens and making them instrumental pieces in social change. During this section he doesn't focus on students being able to do algebra, but that they should have good morals and be able to function as a part of society. I think this is put in the foreground of our education system because it is so focused on learning content in terms of English, Math, Science, etc. Content is also very important, but it cannot be the only focus.

John Dewey says, "I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living". I think this statement is a radical thing to say at this time in our education system. Schools are so focused on getting students ready to take tests and college that they don't make school a part of their life. School is seen as a means to an end. You have to go to school so that you can get a good job, and support your family. While teaching students, that going to college is a great goal to have, it also needs to be clear that middle and high school are important parts of their lives as well.

Dewey sees school more as a place where children form their identities, and not just for schooling. Normally this is what happens regardless of whether or not this is emphasized, but students don't make it part of their current life. Schooling needs to become more of a part of the present, and not so much as a way to their future. It is almost like we are in constant preparation for our life to start. The attitude of living in the present should start in schools.

 "I believe that every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth" - John Dewey

He places the very huge responsibility of social change on the shoulders of educators and schools. He does place this enormous feat on educators, and at the same time he respects and admires the work that teachers do as well. Dewey puts the profession of teachers on a very high level; he sees teachers as being the instruments to help solve world problems. I agree with this. I think that we have public education as a way to equalize society in that anyone can be successful. While currently this is not the case, with education reform and the new movements to help urban schools, I think eventually it could ensure equity. We educate children so that they can make positive changes to society because they are our future.