Margaret Nerney
EDU 583- Cohort 1
Chapter 5: An integrated framework for educating world language teachers
Due: March 25, 2009
This chapter was distinctly different in its focus on teacher training instead of student technology training or use. It also felt more content driven, but seeing that my content area is actually English and not world language, this made it quite difficult to apply to my own classroom at times. I did, however, appreciate the general idea that teachers need more training and experience with technology to be able to use it to its fullest within the classroom. I myself have seen a shift in my own teaching following the technology course that I took a couple of years ago through my district and the courses that I have been taking here at UMF as part of my Master’s program. I started a few years ago with simple iMovie options for projects, which then turned into a large scale Madman and Genius documentary Film Festival! As I grew more comfortable with the technology, I felt more comfortable teaching my students how to use it therefore improving their interest and quality of product. Now I am moving into the realm of wikis and blogs in hopes of improving the level of feedback that my students can obtain on their work and to expand their audience. The teacher’s comfort level, knowledge, and confidence with technology really do impact the integration in the classroom.
As far as real-time communication technology, I too would like to include more of this. I wasn’t completely surprised to see that the use of video conferencing, chatting, and emailing was improving language learners skills. It seems only natural that the students would need to practice the skills they are learning in a real way with a real audience to truly improve their performance. I, in fact, want to use video-conferencing and a form of “chatting” to enable my students to communicate with the students of my best friend who will be teaching internationally for the next two years in South Korea. We want to help our own students to experience cultural differences and nuances through real interaction. We also thought that giving the students a real audience would aid in the quality of their writing and other products. We are still working things out and don’t have plans to put this into motion until next year, but we are looking in this new direction.
Although this section was particularly hard for me to relate to, I appreciated the suggestion that teachers can’t do this on their own and that they need strong role models and pre-service opportunities to really work with and feel comfortable with these new tools. It is certainly a whole new world with a whole set of new expectations and new opportunities.
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ReplyDeleteRuth:
I appreciated your MIT libraries link. I think that it would certainly be interesting to view other country's newspapers! My friend Renee has spent some time in England and Thailand. She was particularly interested in the different views on issues involving the United States of America. I think that my AP Language and Composition kids would really benefit from this analysis of divergent thinking.
My students have often used Free Rice to practice for the SAT test as well. I used it to have them practice breaking down root words to determine their meaning. It doesn't ALWAYS help to know the roots, but they definitely experienced new words and became better at the fast pace of a standardized multiple choice test.
Hattie
I was impressed with your video "The Dinnertable." I immediately thought of the website that Cindy suggested to me. It is called Voice Thread. You upload a video, image or web document and then everyone responds around the edge of it. The idea is that the kids are all communicating about the same topic, but in a visually and organizationally pleasing way. I could see my students looking at that "dinnertable" film, creating their own to practice, and then trying to create a dinnertable discussion for the Wabanaki people! It is always so important to me to have kids experience the things we are learning in a new and more hands-on way.
The deaf links really impressed me. Although my grandfather refuses to learn sign language, I think the music site was very interesting. I remember him dancing with my grandmother at my brother's wedding a few years ago. I asked him how he knew when to speed up and slow down. He said that he just held her in his arms and felt the vibrations through the floor boards and let it happen. It made me cry, in fact, I still tear up. They hadn't danced in YEARS after being dancing fools in their youth. That was the last time they did.
I've used voice thread quite a bit in the classroom. My kids are pretty into it, though it can sometimes be frustrating for kids who are not as tech savvy. It takes some patience and some playing around with to get the hang of using it.
ReplyDeleteThat's such a cool story about your grandfather. I had not thought of this beforehand, but it totally makes sense that older folks lose their hearing and could benefit from some basic ASL. I worked in a nursing home in high school and never once saw any sort of ASL implemented or used by a resident or a staff member. This should be part of the "curriculum" (for lack of a better term) in nursing homes.
Maggie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing how you use the Free Rice site and the way you could use news papers to compare different perspectives. Also, thank you for sharing your Wabanaki Perspective through your web site. I learned a lot about the culture which is very important in learning world languages.