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.