Incorporating a Tech Tool

For my culminating project for the course, I chose two tech tools to incorporate into a lesson: YouTube and Blogs. I will admit upfront that I personally have used both of these tools in the past but have never married the two with students. Both tools are free to use and easily accessible for students to utilize.

The lesson objective was to have students watch videos in the Target Language (TL), interpret and understand what they are watching, and then to compose blog posts about what they watched. In their posts, they could write a brief summary of the video, their reaction to what they saw, and possibly a list of important vocabulary from the video viewed. These blog posts could then be shared with the class. YouTube has multiple German language channels publishing current video content from German speaking countries in Europe. I will introduce the students to two or three channels that I feel are great and have them subscribe to them for future reference.

Here is a link to the lesson plan covering this lesson.

I think that my lesson incorporates the TPACK philosophy. It combines Technical Knowledge through the introduction and use of YouTube and Blogs, Pedagogical Knowledge through my ability to introduce the lesson and create a setting where the students are able to successfully complete the task, and finally Content Knowledge of both the instructor and students. Students will hopefully quickly realize that by watching videos in the TL, that their TL understanding is better than what they thought. Also through the use of the writing reviews of the videos they will be able to demonstrate understanding and write/create a final product in the TL that will display their abilities.

The ACTFL standards that are addressed in my attached lesson plan are nicely incorporated into this lesson. Hitting three of the national standards in one lesson is a lofty goal, however I truly feel that students will be able to achieve the standards. They will definitely be able to achieve 1.2 and 2.2. With the use of their blog we will be able to address 5.1 and also have the ability to share their work with anyone in the world who has access to the internet. That definitely takes it beyond the school setting.

Here is a link to one of my German 4 student's BLOG. She has finished reviews of two TL videos already.

The lesson, I feel, went really well. This is an ongoing process. Since I chose two relatively user friendly tools, the students had no issues with the technology. They quickly were able to set up their blogs and most already had YouTube accounts. Once they were set up, they enjoyed the freedom of being able to choose the videos that they reported on. I think that there would have possibly been a different reaction if I had made them all do the same video. Most of the students really seemed to enjoy this. I do plan on making this a "thing" in all of my middle and upper level classes starting at the beginning of the next school year. I hope that the students will really appreciate the blogs as a digital portfolio of their work that they can check anytime throughout the year. One thought I had was at the end of the year when I do my end of the year interviews, they could pick their top three blog posts to review with me. They could tell me why they chose those three and discuss further.