Final Assessment

I plan to use some of the tools that we dabbled with in this course. I do not want to be too overwhelmed so I am thinking that if I can do 2-3 of these that would be a great start. I plan to use Twitter as a reading / culture choice for students. I love that it is really current and up to the minute. I worry that it may not appeal to all students, so I am thinking that I need to have other options available as not all parents may approve of its use. I also plan to use quizlet. This is easy to create and I have already started with a vocabulary list for the first unit that I do, so I think that I will continue with the rest of the units. It  doesn't take too much time and some students can really benefit from the extra practice. I also want to use one of the data-gathering options - probably google since each student has an account already.

I am not overly comfortable with any of these so it will be a stretch to add it to my toolbox. I do feel that adding a few of these will help me stay fresh and force me to look at alternate ways to gather data and feedback from students. Sometimes I get frustrated all of the technology, especially when it does not work - but it is worth it to try as many different ways to reach students.

I hope to have a chance to look at some of the options that I skipped over. Lots of them looked interesting.

Activity #10: Free Choice - TWITTER

OK - I know most of you probably have used Twitter and follow people, places, or things! I seriously had never even thought about using Twitter - because it seemed like it was trendy and I was having a hard time thinking of a practical use. I do not want to tweet  because I am BORING and nobody would want to know what's up with me (including me sometimes). But, I have really been intrigued with following people, places, or things in Spanish. The first person that I decided to follow was Ricky Rubio from the Timberwolves. He in young and tweets a lot in Spanish. This got me to thinking.... how could I use this for my Spanish students. (This year I will be teaching 10th grade Spanish 2.)

I am thinking that as an optional reading assignment (more reading in Spanish will make better readers and I just need to get stuff to them that might be of interest.) I would have them choose to follow a number (maybe 10) of Spanish speaking people, places, events, teams, etc. My list currently includes: actors, singers, Sports teams, restaurants, news papers, TV stations, and athletes. Most of these tweet in Spanish. I think that it is very interesting to read very small blurbs - it is also pretty easy to figure out the vocabulary because it is usually in context. I would have the students report interesting activity and things that they have learned both orally and in writing.

Activity #9: Fitness Assessment

Scenario #4 Age Restrictions
This is very interesting because there are age recommendations/ restrictions on many sites. The one that I think about all of the time is Facebook. You are supposed to be 13. Why? Sometimes I think it should be even older when I read some of the crazy stuff posted on young people's walls. In our house we told our kids that they really could NOT have a page until age 13. This was met with unhappiness, because many many other kids had pages well before they were 13. This meant that they had to lie about their birth date. Is it a big deal? Probably not... but if you stretch the truth on this one - could you stretch it on other "age" restricted items as well? As a parent I tried to model this by not allowing a facebook page until age 13 - and then my kids have to be friends with at least 2 adults that I trust, and they have to show me there page at any time I request it. (I am not on facebook for a multitude of reasons - mostly the mental it adds to me life.) So far that is working, but I also know that there are ways to get around showing mommy everythinf so I keep preaching appropriate use and hope that it sinks in and is practiced.

As a teacher, I think it is a very bad idea to use a site in a class where there are age restrictions and ALL of your students do not meet the criteria. If I found out during or even just before (like with glogster) I would change plans and explain to my students why. Good lesson for them. Maybe the teacher in that scenario could give out more than one option and glogster could be one that they use at home with parent permission. Maybe she could use google instead during school... while not as cool looking it does meet the age restrictions for her class.

Scenario #6 Course overload
I have had many students complain about the amount of accounts and passwords that they have. I feel their pain. I have so many accounts on so many different sites that I am sometimes overwhelmed with the amount! I think that this needs to be talked about as a school. I know teachers that insist that their way and the site that they have chosen is the best way - not the site that the school provides. That is all well and good until a kids has to keep track of books, papers, backpacks, and all of the e-sites they are required to be on. Not all students can handle all of this so what do we do??

It seems like there are 2 places "supported" by our tech dept.: google and moodle. Both are OK. I have used moodle for a number of years and it is OK. It doesn't do anything fancy, but I have had OK success with using the forum to have the kids write essays, taking quizzes, and linking videos. In general, kids do not love it, but most do it as a part of the class. I run into kids every year that basically do nothing that is required outside of class and is online. This frustrates me and them. A lot of the time it is simply because they cannot keep track of all of the log in information. If I can get them one on one I can almost always get them logged on. I do think that having activities, quizzes, screencasts, etc. are extremely valuable to a class, so we as a school district should embrace the technology while thinking clearly about how to streamline what students are required to do.

Activity #8 Poll Everywhere

All in all this was pretty easy to use. I like the idea of using this as a quick question to practice vocabulary or to use as an exit slip.Could be used easily as a question of the day... then start the next day with the answer. I am not a fan of students having their cell phones out in class (and what about the poor kid that does not have one!!) because I think it invites then to get off task. But, it is a fabulous tool and perhaps easier to use than the SMART response system that I am accustomed to using for this type of activity. What I really liked was that I could use pictures in my poll. That was fun. I also made a google form using simple questions from a unit that I will be doing right away this fall on food. I would use these polling systems as a way for students to practice vocabulary and to be able to predict what their classmates might answer. They think it is fun to "guess" the most popular answer and don't even realize that the have to understand Spanish to answer and analize the answers! I would not use this every day as it might get old... but it also seems viable to use at the end of class or the end of a concept to see if they understand it.

Activity #7 Cloud computing

I created a google doc that I would use in class as a tool to have students write and share information during a unit on food and restaurants. I would have 10 students or perhaps a whole class share the document so that they could read about other restaurants. They would obviously share it with me also.

I would probably use this as a formative assessment - students would discuss what they wrote in class. At the end of the unit I would do something similar as a summative assessment.


https://docs.google.com/a/moundsviewschools.org/document/d/19XNzV50xS1rotYfE2snxwYHwnMM4sKghv_SrCcUOlow/edit?usp=sharing

I like the idea of using this as a tool for students to share work. I guess they could do the same thing on paper... but it is nice that they can comment on each other's work. I would probably add a piece that they have to make a comment on at least 2. As with all of these tools they are nice and some very fancy - but I am not sure if this makes my job easier. The positive is that they are easily shared and all students have google accounts so that is nice. The negative is - do you do this is class or as an assignment? If it is an assignment there are always some kids that do not complete it, but in class seems like you might be wasting time having them write.

Activity #6: Study tools

I used Tagxedo for my first study tool. It took only a few minutes to create a word picture and it was easy. I could not figure out if there was a place to sign in OR if I was simply supposed to save it to my computer. I did a few of them because I was not sure what I was doing. I can see using this for word poems or a fun way to display a vocabulary list. I made one with all of the members of my family. I printed it and used it as a card. FUN colors to choose from and fun outlines - though some don't look so great once the words are in them. This example is a simple geography of South America word bank in the shape of South America. I could use this to introduce the geography - or to use as a matching activity with countries and capitals.

For my second study tool I tried to use study blue but it kept making my computer crash! :( So, I moved on to quizlet. I have had students use quizle to study Spanisht in the past, but I have never generated my own flashcards. I have had students search the many thousands of card sets already available.

I decided to enter a set of vocabulary that I will be using this fall. Then I played with all of the activities that you can so. I really liked all of the activities! The flashcards are useful just to start studying. I liked that the Spanish characters were already there so I didn't have to use html codes. I also was really excited when you can actually hear the words spoken in Spanish - and it actually sounds ok! It took moments to create and seems to be useful. I will use this and/or offer it to my students to create their own.

Activity #5 You Tube Channel

Finally something that I have actually done! I set up a you tube channel last year so that I could have students produce and upload a news cast (which was their final speaking assessment for the semester) to my youtube channel. In groups of 4-6 students created a newscast and filmed using Ipads. I had already logged into my youtube channel (on the Ipad) so when the students were done with their presentation they simply hit upload. I checked my channel and then deleted them from the Ipads. They completed.the task during 1 class period. (They were to be ready to go with their news story before class.)

I had a lot of feedback from my students. Many loved it because they did NOT have to present in front of class. Some HATED it because they kept on trying to get a perfect take and got really anxious. All in all it was a decent activity. It took a while to grade, but wasn't too bad.

I did also link the videos to moodle so they could use the videos as a listening activity. We did watch some in class, but mainly they did the listening outside of class. It was a nice review of lots of different vocabulary.