Here is a list of the Language Teacher Blogs/Sites that I chose to follow:
1. Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning
2. 3 RS 4 Teachers
3. Edutopia World Languages
4. Language Teachers' Cafe
5. Creative Language Class
Instead of talking about each of these individually, I will address them and their pluses as a whole. I personally like blogs that are to the point. I found all of these to be very clean and easy to read and navigate. All of them had something within their first few posts that drew me in. They all hooked me which is what an effective blog post should do. They were all full of helpful links and project ideas. I am very interested in following these blogs in the future to help me create to lessons and to improve upon what I am already doing in my classroom.
I have been using Feedly for years as a way of reading news online and thoroughly enjoy it. I have already added these blogs to my Feedly Feed. Now while enjoying my morning coffee, I will be able to read about the upcoming presidential election and new ideas in Tech and World Languages. I also like that Feedly has a very nice APP for my iPhone and iPad allowing me to access my feed no matter where I am.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
ACTFL, Connected Learning, and 21st Century Skills
The statement from ACTFL's Position on Tech that connects the most with me is: "However, because language is one of the most complex of all human activities and interactions ACTFL also recognizes the pivotal role of a qualified language teacher to incorporate and manage the implementation of technology so that it effectively supports the language learning experience." In all honesty, there was nothing in the statement that I would alter or add. I think that ACTFL states tech's role clearly for all parties involved. It addresses the role of tech for the teacher but also gives advice to administrators in how tech should be used. I am glad that they emphasized the importance of not allowing tech to be used solely in place of an educator. For me personally, I see tech as another tool for me to use in my classroom. The internet and sites like YouTube provide a wealth of current target language material. Being able to incorporate tools like these hopefully assist me in making what I am teaching relevant and applicable to my students. As I look to the future, another goal is to make the integration of tech a very smooth process into my everyday teaching.
Connected Learning is a new concept in how we view education. Taking the traditional American approach to teaching, according to Connected Learning, is no longer an effective way of preparing students for success and jobs in the 21st century. Through the implementation of Connected Learning, we can utilize all of the technology that is available in our world and combine it with the current culture, student interests, and academics. All four combined will/should make learning more applicable to students and combat apathy.
One thing that I do with my German 3 students at the beginning of the school year is that they create a biography "Etwas über mich" in the TL. Up until now, these have just been hand written or typed and then displayed in the classroom. Using ideas from Connected Learning, I could see them using tech to research something about their future potential careers in the TC or have them interview someone currently in that career and then translate some of the conversation into the TL. Finally, they could create digital projects which could be uploaded to a neutral site where other students in the class could then see and interact with each other about their projects.
21st Century Skills call upon the four major skills that students need to master in order to be successful in our global economy. They center on the 4 Cs of Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity. Addressing these four topics together in regards to instruction will hopefully make our students not only more productive but also push them into higher order thinking skills....which as many teachers know, are difficult to reach with many of our students.
In my German 5 class we look at the various dialects spoken throughout the German speaking world. We listen to examples of native dialect speakers and read various texts in those dialects. Students then choose one of the dialects to research further and in the end try to produce a short passage in that dialect. One new idea that recently came to me after reading some of this material is a definite way to introduce more tech into this unit. Given where we live in Pennsylvania, my students have access to native PA Dutch speakers. They could reach out to them to create audio/video recordings of them speaking in the dialect and create oral histories of how the dialect was used in their families and how it and its use has changed over the years. Online tools like Skype or FaceTime could be used to hold the interviews and iMovie could be used to create videos of their interviews. It is tough to say how long a project like this might take since it would depend on who we could get to participate with our class. Their availability would partially determine the length of the project. Given that I am a native dialect speaker, I can see my ability to connect students with other speakers as a positive. One issue I could also foresee is that some older speakers might not be the most interested in participating at first.
Connected Learning is a new concept in how we view education. Taking the traditional American approach to teaching, according to Connected Learning, is no longer an effective way of preparing students for success and jobs in the 21st century. Through the implementation of Connected Learning, we can utilize all of the technology that is available in our world and combine it with the current culture, student interests, and academics. All four combined will/should make learning more applicable to students and combat apathy.
One thing that I do with my German 3 students at the beginning of the school year is that they create a biography "Etwas über mich" in the TL. Up until now, these have just been hand written or typed and then displayed in the classroom. Using ideas from Connected Learning, I could see them using tech to research something about their future potential careers in the TC or have them interview someone currently in that career and then translate some of the conversation into the TL. Finally, they could create digital projects which could be uploaded to a neutral site where other students in the class could then see and interact with each other about their projects.
21st Century Skills call upon the four major skills that students need to master in order to be successful in our global economy. They center on the 4 Cs of Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity. Addressing these four topics together in regards to instruction will hopefully make our students not only more productive but also push them into higher order thinking skills....which as many teachers know, are difficult to reach with many of our students.
In my German 5 class we look at the various dialects spoken throughout the German speaking world. We listen to examples of native dialect speakers and read various texts in those dialects. Students then choose one of the dialects to research further and in the end try to produce a short passage in that dialect. One new idea that recently came to me after reading some of this material is a definite way to introduce more tech into this unit. Given where we live in Pennsylvania, my students have access to native PA Dutch speakers. They could reach out to them to create audio/video recordings of them speaking in the dialect and create oral histories of how the dialect was used in their families and how it and its use has changed over the years. Online tools like Skype or FaceTime could be used to hold the interviews and iMovie could be used to create videos of their interviews. It is tough to say how long a project like this might take since it would depend on who we could get to participate with our class. Their availability would partially determine the length of the project. Given that I am a native dialect speaker, I can see my ability to connect students with other speakers as a positive. One issue I could also foresee is that some older speakers might not be the most interested in participating at first.
Monday, February 8, 2016
Tech Assessment at My School
After talking with some "tech savvy" colleagues, I quickly realized that even though they think that they are utilizing tech effectively, they are only on rung 1 or 2 of the SAMR model! This is something that I thought given what I had heard from students of mine and how they were being asked to use tech in these classes. Both colleagues sung the praises of Schoology as a platform to use with their students. Schoology provided them a means to use tech to reach students no matter where the students were in the course or if there were physically in school or not. I really felt that after talking to these teachers, their lack of knowledge of the power of actual tech integration was holding them back. I must fault our district partially though. They do provide awesome tech tools to our staff but not the training necessary to know how to affectively utilize and integrate them.
Because of the teachers' lack of knowledge, I found that often the students are way ahead of the teachers in their use of tech. However, these students are often not ahead of the teachers in knowledge of the tech and its possibilities. I found that the teachers were also frustrated at their lack of professional development and feel that they are blindly figuring out how to use all of this tech. As one teacher said: "God bless YouTube tutorials!" That speaks volumes to the problem. How am I or my colleagues ever to reach that magic TPACK triangle consistently?!
We all agree that the infrastructure is in place for successful integration, and we are very lucky and grateful for it, but we lack the basic knowledge of how to use it. Another problem our faculty faces is that we are provided little to no time to collaborate with fellow faculty members. If there are staff members who do know how to effectively integrate tech, the rest of us never get the opportunity to learn from them. This is really a shame.
On another note, in regards to websites being blocked, the teachers that I interviewed and myself all feel that more sites need to be blocked instead of "whitelisted".
One final point that I find odd is that our district, despite the amount of tax dollars spent on tech, does not have a goal or list of goals for using tech in the classroom. I am not sure why that is, but it is. Maybe if we were given goals or directives, it might be helpful to the entire faculty and help facilitate the integration of tech into the curriculum.
Because of the teachers' lack of knowledge, I found that often the students are way ahead of the teachers in their use of tech. However, these students are often not ahead of the teachers in knowledge of the tech and its possibilities. I found that the teachers were also frustrated at their lack of professional development and feel that they are blindly figuring out how to use all of this tech. As one teacher said: "God bless YouTube tutorials!" That speaks volumes to the problem. How am I or my colleagues ever to reach that magic TPACK triangle consistently?!
We all agree that the infrastructure is in place for successful integration, and we are very lucky and grateful for it, but we lack the basic knowledge of how to use it. Another problem our faculty faces is that we are provided little to no time to collaborate with fellow faculty members. If there are staff members who do know how to effectively integrate tech, the rest of us never get the opportunity to learn from them. This is really a shame.
On another note, in regards to websites being blocked, the teachers that I interviewed and myself all feel that more sites need to be blocked instead of "whitelisted".
One final point that I find odd is that our district, despite the amount of tax dollars spent on tech, does not have a goal or list of goals for using tech in the classroom. I am not sure why that is, but it is. Maybe if we were given goals or directives, it might be helpful to the entire faculty and help facilitate the integration of tech into the curriculum.
SAMR vs TPACK
SAMR: a ladder for educators to use to evaluate where their use of technology falls on a scale. This scale can be used to figure out if the tech is helping to achieve higher order thinking skills. The scale can be easily applied to any use of tech and the teacher can quickly see just what role tech is playing in the lesson and the student's achievement. The four categories are neatly named to reflect just what role tech is playing.
TPACK: unlike SAMR, TPACK is an approach to tech integration that allows the teacher to see how their teaching style, content knowledge and tech intersect and overlap. TPACK allows for a much deeper understanding of how tech can make one a better teacher when one realizes how all three focus areas overlap and meet. This is not only true for the learner, but more importantly, for the educator.
For me personally, I find that TPACK is makes more sense. For someone who is just starting out integrating tech into their lessons, SAMR is definitely a great tool. It helps the educator evaluate just what role tech is serving. Since I have integrated tech before, I find that TPACK is geared more towards me. It allows me to not only evaluate the role of tech in my lesson but also just how tech is merging with my content knowledge and the knowledge of my class and students.
1. Currently I feel that there are some lessons/projects that I do that fall into that magic TPACK triangle and then there are some that don't. I would like to hit the triangle more consistently.
2. One thing that I could very quickly implement would be how I handle formal writings with my upper level students. I would like to start making my students each create and maintain a blog for all of their various formal writings throughout the year. Currently, the students do not always get to read what their peers are writing in the target language. Blogs are free and very user friendly, presenting no costs and something that can quickly be integrated into my classroom, especially since every student has a laptop. After posting new writings, I could make the students view each other's work and comment on their pieces. The major issue that I could foresee would be students not completing the comments or even their own formal writings. Possibly given the new tech and new approach to formal writings, students might be more engaged than I think. Attaching a grade to comments would be another avenue for me to hold students accountable for doing the work.
TPACK: unlike SAMR, TPACK is an approach to tech integration that allows the teacher to see how their teaching style, content knowledge and tech intersect and overlap. TPACK allows for a much deeper understanding of how tech can make one a better teacher when one realizes how all three focus areas overlap and meet. This is not only true for the learner, but more importantly, for the educator.
For me personally, I find that TPACK is makes more sense. For someone who is just starting out integrating tech into their lessons, SAMR is definitely a great tool. It helps the educator evaluate just what role tech is serving. Since I have integrated tech before, I find that TPACK is geared more towards me. It allows me to not only evaluate the role of tech in my lesson but also just how tech is merging with my content knowledge and the knowledge of my class and students.
1. Currently I feel that there are some lessons/projects that I do that fall into that magic TPACK triangle and then there are some that don't. I would like to hit the triangle more consistently.
2. One thing that I could very quickly implement would be how I handle formal writings with my upper level students. I would like to start making my students each create and maintain a blog for all of their various formal writings throughout the year. Currently, the students do not always get to read what their peers are writing in the target language. Blogs are free and very user friendly, presenting no costs and something that can quickly be integrated into my classroom, especially since every student has a laptop. After posting new writings, I could make the students view each other's work and comment on their pieces. The major issue that I could foresee would be students not completing the comments or even their own formal writings. Possibly given the new tech and new approach to formal writings, students might be more engaged than I think. Attaching a grade to comments would be another avenue for me to hold students accountable for doing the work.
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