I find it fascinating that the tools I rejected at the beginning of this module are now looking like fun and useful ways to curate resources! I skimmed past Pinterest because of my own prejudices as to its usefulness, but my colleagues have shown me some really useful ways to use it as a classroom tool. Now, I will have to go back to my classroom computer and find out if the site is blocked on our school's system!
As I mentioned in the discussion section, I had only considered Pinterest as a "fluff" site where people collected pretty pictures of food or decorating ideas. The fact that it might have some use in a classroom had not entered my mind, but then I followed the links to the Pinterest boards for Spanish tapas and The Great Gatsby, and my brain started producing its own visions of boards to use in my classes.
The tapas board in particular made me wonder why I had dismissed Pinterest so quickly. French = food, n'est-ce pas? The fact that my French 1 class just had a food day last week made it all the more ridiculous that I had dismissed Pinterest so quickly. We had discussed what is and is not French (francophone) food, and each student was responsible for bringing a specific dish to the food day. A Pinterest board would have made the discussion and the organization so much easier! This summer, I plan to begin experimenting with Pinterest and creating collections of food ideas by country/region - France (possibly broken down into regions of France), French-speaking Europe, North Africa, Caribbean, Polynesia, etc.
There are so many ideas that I can use for French and for English classes. Thanks to my colleagues for getting my past my dismissive attitude toward Pinterest!
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Saturday, May 18, 2013
There have been so many concepts shared in this course that I hardly know where to begin. I will choose a few of the ideas to show how the course will be brought into my classrooms.
Because I teach both French and English, I will apply the concepts mainly in my teaching. The tools I will use for each of my courses may differ, but the ideas behind the tools are similar. As noted in some of the readings, videos, and discussions, technology cannot be used with the idea that students will love it just because it is technology. In fact, I have found that some of my students resist technology and seem to be tired of teachers trying to incorporate its use into classrooms. The attitude goes back perhaps to the use of technology for technology's sake. Students are not impressed by using digital tools if they are not interesting. For example, one tool I can use with both French and English classes is Quizlet. I have started having my students do their vocabulary lists on Quizlet rather than as a handwritten list. Quizlet itself does not impress them (although some students do like playing the games to practice the vocabulary), but they do appreciate not being required to write out the words anymore. From my perspective, it is a trade-off. They do not get the "motor memory" of writing each word, but they do tend to use the flashcards and games to practice more than they would use the handwritten list for studying. Some of the tools we try work out and help the students, but some do not. The willingness to try new tools is important, but they must be carefully selected to fit the curriculum and to hold the students' interest long enough to make it an effective learning tool.
Another concept presented in the course which applies to my professional situation is Authentic Assessment, which we are now discussing. As a foreign language teacher, I want to have my students use the target language, not just memorize vocabulary lists and grammar rules. If you cannot put a sentence together and communicate, then you are not learning a language. Skill-based assessments are more time-consuming to grade, but they are a better indicator of whether the goals are being met. I will be re-evaluating my assessments and trying to find ways to incorporate more authentic assessments into my French courses. The use of a short video clip and a personal response (both in the target language), for example, will show whether the student understands the language and whether they can respond at a level appropriate to the course and/or lesson goals. The video can be shown to the whole class at once and played back more than once, but it is presently inconvenient to have the video available on individual computers. That fact will not rule out the use of authentic assessment, but it will require planning to use class time most efficiently without counting on one-to-one computers.
It will be harder for me to incorporate some of the concepts which involve whole-class participation on computers, at least for the time being. The use of student-response websites and online assessments is more difficult to include due to our limited computer capacity. Although I have a computer lab for my classroom, the server is currently unreliable for the volume needed to do many of the activities. The computers often freeze in the middle of online activities, so planning an assessment based on anything online is risky. With the limited time to teach and assess, it is difficult to give up class time to try a grade-based assessment activity which is likely to crash and be lost in the middle. We are scheduled to go to dual servers next year, though, so the risk of attempting an online assessment or whole-class response activity (such as Socrative) will decrease. I realize that the first few attempts to use any tool is time-consuming, with teacher and student learning curves, but the 50/50 chance of losing the activity/assessment is too much at this time. I look forward to trying some of the more "server-intensive" tools after the dual server is installed.
Overall, there are many concepts which will be useful in my class rooms. I would like to experiment with online language courses as well, although that project is in the future. For the present time, I will be applying many of the concepts from the course to my traditional classroom, using what tools are available and compatible with our current systems.
Because I teach both French and English, I will apply the concepts mainly in my teaching. The tools I will use for each of my courses may differ, but the ideas behind the tools are similar. As noted in some of the readings, videos, and discussions, technology cannot be used with the idea that students will love it just because it is technology. In fact, I have found that some of my students resist technology and seem to be tired of teachers trying to incorporate its use into classrooms. The attitude goes back perhaps to the use of technology for technology's sake. Students are not impressed by using digital tools if they are not interesting. For example, one tool I can use with both French and English classes is Quizlet. I have started having my students do their vocabulary lists on Quizlet rather than as a handwritten list. Quizlet itself does not impress them (although some students do like playing the games to practice the vocabulary), but they do appreciate not being required to write out the words anymore. From my perspective, it is a trade-off. They do not get the "motor memory" of writing each word, but they do tend to use the flashcards and games to practice more than they would use the handwritten list for studying. Some of the tools we try work out and help the students, but some do not. The willingness to try new tools is important, but they must be carefully selected to fit the curriculum and to hold the students' interest long enough to make it an effective learning tool.
Another concept presented in the course which applies to my professional situation is Authentic Assessment, which we are now discussing. As a foreign language teacher, I want to have my students use the target language, not just memorize vocabulary lists and grammar rules. If you cannot put a sentence together and communicate, then you are not learning a language. Skill-based assessments are more time-consuming to grade, but they are a better indicator of whether the goals are being met. I will be re-evaluating my assessments and trying to find ways to incorporate more authentic assessments into my French courses. The use of a short video clip and a personal response (both in the target language), for example, will show whether the student understands the language and whether they can respond at a level appropriate to the course and/or lesson goals. The video can be shown to the whole class at once and played back more than once, but it is presently inconvenient to have the video available on individual computers. That fact will not rule out the use of authentic assessment, but it will require planning to use class time most efficiently without counting on one-to-one computers.
It will be harder for me to incorporate some of the concepts which involve whole-class participation on computers, at least for the time being. The use of student-response websites and online assessments is more difficult to include due to our limited computer capacity. Although I have a computer lab for my classroom, the server is currently unreliable for the volume needed to do many of the activities. The computers often freeze in the middle of online activities, so planning an assessment based on anything online is risky. With the limited time to teach and assess, it is difficult to give up class time to try a grade-based assessment activity which is likely to crash and be lost in the middle. We are scheduled to go to dual servers next year, though, so the risk of attempting an online assessment or whole-class response activity (such as Socrative) will decrease. I realize that the first few attempts to use any tool is time-consuming, with teacher and student learning curves, but the 50/50 chance of losing the activity/assessment is too much at this time. I look forward to trying some of the more "server-intensive" tools after the dual server is installed.
Overall, there are many concepts which will be useful in my class rooms. I would like to experiment with online language courses as well, although that project is in the future. For the present time, I will be applying many of the concepts from the course to my traditional classroom, using what tools are available and compatible with our current systems.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)