Technolandia - Technology for Foreign Language Teaching

Posting Your Resources and Assignments

One of the values of having a class blog or webpage is to be able to post assignments and resources online so that you don't have to make a million copies or keep running back and forth to the copier to make extras for those students who just didn't get something or lost it. The only problem I've had is that I don't want to post the "document" in a format that other people can edit. There are lots of sites now that offer free file conversion to PDF, but the one I like the best is PrimoOnline.

PrimoOnline is better to me because it gets the file to you faster than other sites. Here's how it works:

• You go to PrimoOnline and type in your email address.
• You navegate to the file you want converted and upload it.
• PrimoOnline then sends you an email with the converted file as an attachment in 5 minutes or less.

I think this will really help you as much as it helps me.

Enjoy,
Amy

Back to School

Hey there! I hope you all had a great start to the new year and that all of your students are excited to be in your classes and ready to learn! Okay, am I wishing for too much? :)

Today, I wanted to share two items with you to enhance your use of technology in your classroom.

First, for those of you who started class blogs, you need to know about Feedburner. This is the free service I use to allow my students and other readers to subscribe to my blog. This is the gadget you used to subscribe to this blog.

1. Go to Feedburner and type in your blog address into the textbox and click "next."

2. Follow the instructions you see. You will have to create a free account to be able to use this service, but you won't receive any spam or unwanted email from signing up.

3.At this point, being new to the service, I would click on the link at the bottom beside "next" that sends you directly to the management page.

4. You will now go the "Publicize" tab and click on the "Email Subscriptions" tab on the left hand side.

5. Once you click "Email Subscriptions" and scroll down a bit, you will get a box full of HTML text and then a drop down box giving you the option to place a widget on your blog for subscription. Since most of you used Blogger, that is what you will choose and follow any prompts after that point.

This will post the subscription box on your blog. You can then log onto your blog and move it to whatever location you want, but the hard work is done.

Now, your students and parents can subscribe and receive your blog posts directly in their email box!

The other item is a slide show I found created by Zaid and hosted on Slideshare (also a great tool you should know about) that shows off a lot of web resources for pretty much whatever you might be looking for. To get an idea for how Slideshare works, click on the advance buttons directly from here and the slideshow advances without having to download a file or open up Powerpoint.

101 Free Learning Tools

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: thinking tools)

Well, it is Monday morning and there are just a few hours left before we are back in school. Please enjoy your free day! And, let's see some comments about how those blogs are going! Adios, Amy

Linking Your Blog to Your School Web Page

Hello again,

Being that many of you started your own blogs last Tuesday, here's something you can do to get the best out of your class blog.

Linking it to your school web page

This is pretty easy to do. You can put a link on your school page in your resources or you can do this (click on the picture to enlarge it):

You can see my "blidget" sitting right on my resource page.

What is a "blidget"? It's a "blog widget" that sets a miniature version of your blog pretty much wherever you want it.

To create your blidget:

1. Go to www.widgetbox.com and create a free account.

2. Scroll to the bottom of the Widgetbox home page and find the menu that includes, "Make a blidget." Click on that link.

3. Type in the complete website of your blog into the text box you see on the next screen. Click "Continue."

4. It will take a few seconds, but you will be directed to a new screen that is titled, "Make a New Blidget". Here, you get to pick the color, size, and other specifics of your blidget. Make your choices and then click, "Save Blidget."

5. At this point, you will have to say you agree with Widgetbox's policies... and you will click "Save Blidget" again.

6. We're getting close to being done! Now, click on "Get Widget" (another green button). You will then see a pop up that's titled "Embed Code" that looks like this (click the picture to enlarge):

7. Click on the "Copy" button. This copies the code you see in the text box. You need this to post into the school webpage.

8. At this point, log on to your school web page so you can edit it. Head to your Resource page and click on the "Admin" link.

9. Paste the code you copied into the Description box and click "Add Resource".

YOU ARE DONE!

This takes a lot of little steps, but overall it is super simple to do.

I hope this helps you get set up for the school year. At the very least, you will impress your teacher friends!

Post Inservice Message

Hola amigos,

Just wanted to send you a message to say thanks for coming to my session on Integrating Technology into Instruction This Year. I hope you discovered at least one resource that you can add to your instruction this year to make things easier for you or for your students. I also hope that we can stay in touch to help each other grow technologically. Please also feel free to look over my blogs or any other teacher's blogs to steal ideas from us. That's what I do sometimes, well, a lot of the time. :)

I also wanted to extend our session today by showing you how to make your blog interactive by having your readers (in this case you) to post comments to your blogs.

To post a comment, you will click on comment (look just underneath this message), fill in the required fields of information, and type your comment into the comment box. You can practice by posting a comment to this message today, or if you want, go back to the post I created for the inservice session and leave me your thoughts or questions.

Also, since you are probably reading this as an email, you need to know that if you click the title at the top, it will take you to the actual blog on the Internet.

Thanks again for attending! I wish you all the best school year ever!

Amy

Integrating Technology in Your Instruction THIS YEAR

Integrating Technology into Your Instruction THIS YEAR

Fall 2008 FBISD BTS Foreign Language District Professional Development

Agenda:

1st Half Hour - Introduction and Demonstration

Remaining 45 Minutes - Play and Create!

I. Catching Up in the 21st Century Classroom - Some Suggestions

1. A class blog - Some Free Blog Links: Wordpress, Edublogs, Blogger, 21Classes

2. Social Bookmarking - IKeepBookmarks, SiteMark, Delicious, Mister Wong, and many, many more! 

II. Product Based Applications

Glogster - Trash those posterboards you've been grading and have your students create multimedia electronic posters!

     Example Products:

Voice Thread - Students can create all kinds of products with this. See more on their site!

Comiqs - Have your students create electronic comic books using whatever them you are studying. This is great for any level!

     Example Product:

Lenord the Teenager from alenord on Comiqs

III. Assessment Resources

RCampus & iRubric - RCampus.com offers online classroom resources including a rubric generator iRubric that is very easy to use!

Rubistar - A very familiar resource for those who use rubrics a lot. Easy to use rubric generator.

IV. Additional Resources

Amy Lenord's Class Blog     Andrea Henderson's Class Blog - Take a look at our blogs for ideas on how they can be used in Foreign Language or for any class.

Blogging for Beginners - This is a blog created to educate those who aren't yet blogging how to blog. If you are considering creating your own blog, you should really read this resource.

Teachers First Blog Ideas - The title explains itself, but this is a good read for blogging beginners.

Starting Your Blog - An article that leads you through the process.

50 Useful Blogging Tips

7 Things to Know About Social Bookmarking

50+ Social Bookmarking Sites - Read over the list at Mashable to choose a service that fits your needs.

Classroom Timer - Great online timer with sound. I use this all the time for in class activities!

Quizlet - Site for making study activities for your students. Awesome resource!

Go2Web2.0 - Want to find cool web gadgets and applications yourself? Here's where I go to look!

Using Timelines Online

Hey everybody! I've got something great for you all! TIMELINES! I am about to make my students compare the two Spanish past tenses in the context of their own lives (preterite and imperfect) and I really think the distinction between the two can be facilitated with their making a timeline of their own life. They would have to include text on each of the events to explain the eventsthat happened in their lives (preterite) or the periods in their lives or background information (imperfect).

Some other ideas for how you can use these timelines are research projects over artists, authors, historical figures or events, and so much more!

I would assign the timeline and the finished product would have to be posted on my class blog so that it would be easy to grade all of them. I read recently from another teacher who blogs for her class, that when she has her students create a product, she picks the best to post on her blog/site. She says that the quality improves because her students want to impress her and the others who read her blog. Another friend of mine says that she likes to post all of her students' work, good and poor, because she believes her students can learn from each other by examining good products, and help their peers with poor ones, but also she says that posting all examples shows other teachers that read her blog the reality of the types of students and issues we all deal with. Also, she says the quality of the work also increases because all of her students know that their peers as well as readers from all over the world will see their work, so they take more pride in what they do. Right now, I choose to post all their work no matter what the quality because it makes for easy access and grading for me. Selfish, I know, but sometimes as teachers we just have to self-preserve, right? At any rate, you should consider these points of view when you decide how you are going to go about posting student work.

Finally, I think it is always a good idea to make one yourself prior to assigning one to your students for two reasons: 1. Showing them an example always makes for their final products better looking and better written and 2. Making one yourself educates you so that you can answer their questions, troubleshoot for them, and ease the process of the assignment.

Here are some of the sites I have found where you can make timelines:

Xtimeline , OurStory or Viygo - Create embeddable timelines to put on blogs or websites. OurStory also allows for multimedia and you can opt to have the timeline "play" where you post it.

Dipity - Create interactive timelines including Google Maps, photos, and integrate other services like Flickr that you use.

As soon as I get my students' examples, I will post them for you to see the results. Happy timelining y'all!

Amy

Text to Speech Applicaitons on the Web

PLAY THE SOUND FILE ABOVE TO HEAR A RECORDING OF THIS BLOG POST AS YOU READ.

Hello again!

I've just finished playing with and posting something I think has a lot of potential for us as language teachers who want to use more technology in our teaching. The site I found is www.readthewords.com and the way it works is very simple. You can create a FREE account and either type in text you want to use or upload a document, and with one mouse click, the site converts your text into an audio file you can either download or embed on a blog or website. This application supports English, French and Spanish in either male or female voices and with different accents. I am posting my first attempt with the app here so you can take a look: http://alenord.typepad.com . Take a look at the post, play the audio and read along.

As always, please comment, ask questions, or start a discussion of ideas by submitting a comment to this post. I can't wait to hear other ideas you have!

Happy Sunday,

Amy

Using a Blog as a Project Gallery

Hey there! It's been awhile since my last post, I know, but I have been moving into a new classroom (I was a floater) and setting up shop. I hope what you see in this post will make up for the absence.

Recently, my Spanish 2 students have been studying a unit on childhood and the Imperfect tense. Every year, I have them do a project on their childhood because they all love to see each other as children and babies, but also it is amazing to see how much they love to talk about and remember their childhood. Just going through and defining the vocabulary list with them is so much fun because of all the memories we all get to share. It is really a great unit. The projects I have assigned in the past were either a composition with a poster/collage of images from their childhoods, or more recently a power point presentation with absolutely no text to give visual support and reminders for the students to be able to present in the target language without scripts of any kind. If you are like me, and you enjoy technology, you probably feel like power point has been overused and oftentimes misused, so this year I decided to incorporate some of the goodies I have discovered in my study of Web 2.0 and create an entirely technologically based project.

Here are the specifics:

1. My students created e-posters on www.glogster.com of their childhoods instead of power points. I chose this because it is embeddable in any website, social networking site and more, but also because it is flash based and allows you to embed video, audio and more.

2. They were required to memorize a speech/composition about their childhood with strict requirements and limitations to control where their Spanish came from.

3. I create a blog specifically for the project http://alenord.typepad.com/ninos and required my students to post their e-posters on the blog and catagorize them according to periods.

4. They are still in the process of presenting, and will use a Smart Board to do so.

For those who are interested, the childhood blog also includes the assignment sheet and rubric, along with a reflective poll the students were asked to participate in to give me feedback on using this much technology for the project.

During presentations, some students agreed to be video taped, so I will be posting video soon. Be sure to check back for that.

The best way to get the full scope of how everything turned out is to go explore yourself. This was very easy to create, use and manage, and the best thing is that no one had to lug posters or projects around or post and repost their projects when they were updated.

Please feel free to post a comment about what you see or ask any questions you might have.

Happy exploring,

Amy

TFLA Spring 2008

Whew! My trip to Corpus Christi for my first TFLA presentations is done! I survived that and grades falling due at the same time. I just have to say that I am so looking forward to hearing from all the new friends that I made there, and to get starting with a conversation about teaching strategies, technology, and just good old fashioned support for each other through this online connection.

I would like to invite you, if you haven't already, to subscribe to this blog, and if you start your own, to send me a link to it so that we can link up to each other and create a community of like-minded language teachers. Also, if you find something on my blog that you use or have an idea about how to use it, comment and let all the (future) readers in on your GENIUS!

Hope to see you online soon!

Amy :)

Web 2.0 in the Foreign Language Classroom

ChitChat - A New Educational Network

Hello everybody!

Here's a cool little site to check out, and it is all for FREE, just like teachers like it. ChitChat is an educational network you can sign up for, create classes in, post online assignments, and much more. You really need to go to the site and watch their introductory video to know all that it does, but to review it specifically for foreign language, there are a few things I saw that I liked.

First of all, if you have a uber-conservative district like mine, it doesn't pay for services like Quia, which can be so valuable outside of the classroom. ChitChat helps alieviate this problem by offering a feature that allows you to create flashcards of your own content. The really cool thing is that it takes that content and creates different options for how the students can study: flashcard style, fill in the blank, and showing the answers for direct study. When students submit assignments online, there is a feature that allows you to embed comments directly into the parts of their text so that they can see where they have problems.

I am still playing around with this nifty little site, go take a look and post your comments about what you think and how it you could use it in your FLANG class!

Buen día,

Amy