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The Netbook Journal: Integrating web 2.0 apps in the classroom

Earlier this year our school district offered high school teachers an opportunity to submit a proposal to “Re-imagine the 21st Century Classroom” . I, along with two English teachers - Tricia Buck and David Lunn - were awarded 30 netbooks and an opportunity to introduce technology driven activities to our curriculum. We are being supported by our district’s Instructional Technology Specialist, Cary Harrod.  I am thrilled to discover what my Spanish students can achieve when they augment their studies with technology on a daily basis. 

My students and I had our first full week with the netbooks in Spanish class.  

It has become apparent that my students are not familiar with or do not know how to use web 2.0 applications despite what many experts say. Other than word processing, email and uploading photos, many of my students are not comfortable and/or knowledgeable using technology for educational purposes.  

One of the activities my students did in class this week required them to create a hyperlink for a GoogleDoc presentation on our class Ning. I explained the process as I projected the steps on screen.  In my first period, class only 11 out of 24 students were able to do it without additional assistance. I was sharing this with my colleague Thea, and she pointed out the obvious.  Students learn better by doing.  Active learning trumps passive every time.  

Next week I plan on using Voicethread.  The application is fairly easy to use, but has its quirks. Rather than showing the kids how to produce a VT, I will first have them do a listening activity with a VT that last year’s students created. This way they can see what the application does, in context of the language learning.   I will then give them a short assignment to complete in their cooperative groups on VT.  My hope is that with each other as a resource and the opportunity to work hands on with VT, they will be able to figure out how to use the application. I will of course be available to facilitate and answer questions. 

How do you teach web 2.0 applications so that you maximize your class time?

Twitter favorites

I have been so busy this school year that whenever I'm on Twitter all I seem to do is mark intriguing Tweets as favorites.  This weekend I went through some of those favorite Tweets, and found all kinds of interesting links and posts.  I'd like to share a few.  

Triptico is a web site that has interactive spinners. Students or a teacher can customize double spinners with pronouns and infinite verbs to practice verb conjugation.  Perfect for pair work or a class game.

RTVE has several cartoons and kid's shows in Spanish available online.  The material listed on the site is fabulous, but I think you need to register to view & my registration did not go through the few times that I tried.  I look forward to trying the site out another day, and hope the site was just down when I tried it.

Also from RTVE is a 4-5 minute news clip.  This was very user friendly and did not require registration.

I checked out Formespa and found this great music video by the group Tam Tam Go called Atrapados en la red, perfect for tech vocabulary in Spanish! The site has many other activities for Spanish students.

I loved this Flickr application called Five Card Flickr Five photos are randomly chosen from Flickr and you (or your students) can write a story or a narration about them.

I also added a couple more blogs to my RSS feed. Sarita, a Spanish teacher in Kentucky, had some great ideas about how to grade blogs for homework.

Voices en Español has a blog to go along with its podcast.  The latest post mentioned Lenguajero, a website that is pairing up Spanish and English students for some virtual language practice. 

The wonderful José Picardo has some fabulous guest bloggers on his site, including one of my favorite Twitter colleagues Alice Ayel who writes about using photography in the FL classroom.

I want to thank all the wonderful people who share this information with me on Twitter every day!  I'm just sorry I can't give specific credit to each of you for the sites you brought to my attention, but believe me I do appreciate it very much.

Netbook Journal

 Earlier this year our school district offered high school teachers an opportunity to submit a proposal to “Re-imagine the 21st Century Classroom” . I, along with two English teachers - Tricia Buck and David Lunn - were awarded 30 netbooks and an opportunity to introduce technology driven activities to our curriculum. We are being supported by our district’s Instructional Technology Specialist, Cary Harrod. I am thrilled to discover what my Spanish students can achieve when they augment their studies with technology on a daily basis. 

 Our first activities started at the end of this past week, after a bout with a stupid cold. On Thursday and Friday I combined traditional instruction and self-paced work online to help students learn how to use the present perfect and review verbs that use indirect object pronouns. I gave students a quick explanation of how the present perfect works in Spanish, and then assigned a couple of workbook activities for practice. No questions. The students then moved on to a self-paced game on www. quia.com over the same material. The interactive activity tells them immediately when they make a mistake. Most of the kids figured out their mistake, but a few needed my help figuring out how to use the reflexive pronouns with this tense. These same kids must have made the same mistakes on the workbook activity, but either didn’t notice their mistakes or didn’t ask for clarification. I really like how quia practice gives kids that direct feedback, and doesn’t let them complete the activity till they correct the mistake.

 After the grammar practice the students moved on to a listened activity. Thanks to Zachary Jones’ site, they were able to view and listen to an Argentinean pop song that used the verb gustar over and over. They filled out a clozed activity and answered some comprehension questions about the song. The kids were able to go at their own pace when they used the netbooks and headphones. Some students understood most of the lyrics the first time around, and others needed to pause and rewind the song a few times to understand what was being said. When we get back on Monday, my students will work with their partner in Spanish to talk about what they liked or disliked about this pop song, and that will transition into other verbs that follow the same pattern as gustar. I like how my students can work at their own pace, and all students were actively engaged when they were online. Some students finished very quickly, so I am brainstorming open-ended activities that these kids can work on while their peers complete the original lesson plans. Any suggestions are very welcomed.

New for second semester

Monday morning these were waiting for me in my classroom.  My students will have access to online resources and tools on a daily basis.  I'm still trying to figure out the logistics, and we are waiting for a cart that will charge the netbooks, but I AM EXCITED!  I'll be writing more about how I plan on using the netbooks in our Spanish classroom, and will share what our short term and long term goals are soon.

Google Voice update

My biggest fear for my classroom is for Google Voice to disappear.  I wrote about Gabcast and the end of [free] Gabcast, and then I searched the web over for just. this. tool.  Recently a couple of people have sent this article to me, so I know there are other language teachers using it in their classrooms.  If you are not familiar with this tool, please check out my previous post that describes how it works. 

I want to explain a few activities that have worked out very well with Google Voice.  The first one is the most basic.  A student will call in and record a short written assignment.  I really focus on the pronunciation and fluency in this type of activity rather than the grammar of a formal written assignment. 

Partner activities are great for Google Voice too.  I will have the students pass the phone back and forth as they act out a conversation or skit.  Despite the background noise, the recording is pretty clear.  This is a huge time saving activity.  Partners can all record their conversation at the same time and be done in 10 minutes rather than go to the front of the class, get very self-conscious about talking in front of their classmates and take up two class periods.  There is something to be said about students hearing their peers and the learning that comes from repetition, but I can always select a handful of recordings to play back and still achieve that goal.  I now have a follow up listening activity produced by my students for their classmates. 

The third type of activity I tried out stressed the kids a little, but I hope with practice, they will grow more confident in their language abilities.  I wanted to simulate a spur of the moment type of conversation rather than a write-it-out-and-then read-it.  Students practiced asking each other 8-10 questions involving target vocabulary and grammar points.  After 10-15 minutes they randomly picked out three questions each.  The questions were in English, so the kids had to produce the question rather than just read it.  They had to ask their partner the questions and the partner needed to reply.  Then they switched roles.  Google Voice will record up to three minutes, so are pressed for time to come up with the question and reply.  

If you are using Google Voice in another manner, please share it with me.  I’m always looking for ideas.

One of my favorite blogs for Spanish class

Anyone who follows me on Twitter has already heard me gushing about Zachary Jones’ blog Actualidades.  So for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure to visit it, I urge you to do so. Soon!  You will find incredible resources to use in your intermediate - advanced level classes.  He has a section of cloze activities for popular songs, games to practice vocabulary, and many, many articles that pull from popular culture.  He very generously offered my students an opportunity to be a guest reporters on his blog, and I can’t even begin to tell you how excited each of them was when their article was published.  Although every student has posted a few blog posts through our class Ning, being published on a site outside of our class was much more exciting to them.  I hope to continue to find more opportunities for them to write to an audience that is outside of the classroom.