Web 2.0

3/24/2013

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Ok this was one of those assignments that left me nervous and to be super honest (knowing my professor will read this) I was relieved that life was so busy with legitimate excuses like the fact we are currently moving that I had to put this off. When I heard Web 2.0 I thought that I was going to have to do super hard, complicated web stuff that I am not interested in. Well I was surprised tonight! The options that Garth gave us were so simple! Of course it took me a little bit to get familiar with how each piece of technology works but it was much simpler than I expected. I think I will first tell you about the tools before discussing how this changes teaching and learning.

First, Prezi. This is an amazing site that is way, way, way better than Power Point. The concept is similar to Power Point but you can zoom in on topics and it is simple to use. They give you cool templates or you can create your own presentation BUT on each type it is the same, you are working from a white board and can place your content where ever you want within the presentation. So if you were giving a presentation your audience would see the big picture first and you would zoom in on finer points. I found a neat template that was like a trail so I made a prezi about conjugating irregular -ir verbs in Spanish. Now, if you did not like Spanish when you were a student or found irregular verbs tough, maybe it would have been easier to understand them if your teacher had presented them in a more exciting and clear way like we can using Prezi. Below you will see a screen shot of my completed Prezi. I was not able to figure out how to embed it on my blog so you will have to trust me that you can zoom in and out!
Now on to voki. This was the one tool that did frustrate me initially but I will get to that in a minute. This is a way that you can create your own avatar, it can be a person or an animal, and then you customize it and then record your voice for 60 seconds. This is a super neat way you can give your students information. Of course since it is just 60 seconds long you can only give them the most important data but hey maybe they will be more likely to remember it if one of the ways they learn it is through a fun avatar. What frustrated me was that I had to record 60 seconds and could not stop it earlier. Also even though I spoke the entire time when I played it back there were gaps as if my microphone turned off. I will have to tweak this when I use it more in the classroom. So below is my voki. You can listen but unless you speak Spanish it isn't going to make much sense :). 
This last web 2.0 tool is simple, simple, simple but I like that it is less flashy but yet a good way to get at what your students have learned and what they need to study more. Also, since no one will know who is answering there may be less anxiety for the students who may be unsure about the answer. So what is this tool? It is AnswerGarden. What you do is you type a question and then your students answer it. As an answer is submitted it shows up on the screen and the more answers there are the screen changes and grows. Below you will see one I created asking students what country they would like to visit. Of course I entered a few so that you could get an idea of what it looks like with some answers.
So how does this change teaching and learning? I think I am becoming a broken record but it allows us as teachers to communicate with our students in a medium that they find comfortable and more interesting. I think they would be more likely to listen and remember information they heard from a cool voki more than from a lecture during a traditional class period. But then the traditional class period can be changed using Prezi. You can have a discussion with your students about say how to conjugate irregular verbs and use prezi to make the content more accesible and interesting and hopefully easier to remember because of how you deliver it. Then if you need to get a feel for where your class is in a particular unit you can put an AnswerGarden question up on your class website to find out. Or you can have one for your students to write what they need clarification on. Then you can modify your lesson plans and teaching based on your students' needs and interests. Ultimately all these tools allow our classroom to be student centered rather than focused on teachers. Plus it is more fun for us to interact with content this way than just traditional paper and chalkboard. Yes you heard it this is more fun and I will use these tools...I am not intimidated anymore!
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Visual Learning and the Web

3/18/2013

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For this week we are supposed to look at visual learners and understand what is a visual learner and how technology can help them. I was excited about this assignment because when teaching a language comprehensible input is so, so important. Comprehensible input (a theory developed by Stephen Krashen) basically states that you must first understand what you are learning or seeing in order to learn it in another language. The video below is long but skip forward to about minute 3:25 and you will see a demonstration of how comprehensible input works and how integral visuals are.
Isn't that amazing?! My only language other than English is Spanish but I think it is so neat to see how we can learn even a few words in German quickly. Now how much cooler would that be using today's technology?

I am getting ahead of myself. My professor wants me to first talk about what visual learners are. I did find a list of the characteristics of visual learners created by Lehigh University. 

• Learns through seeing
• Reader/observer
• Scans everything; wants to see things, enjoys visual stimulation
• Enjoys maps, pictures, diagrams, and color
• Needs to see the teacher’s body language/facial expression to fully comprehend
• Often closes their eyes to visualize or remember something
• Daydreams; a word, sound, or smell causes recall and mental wandering
• Usually takes detailed notes to absorb the information
• May think in pictures and learn best from visual displays such as diagrams, illustrated
textbooks, overhead transparencies, PowerPoint presentations, videos, and handouts
• Tends to prefer sitting at the front of the classroom to avoid visual obstructions
• Is usually neat and clean
• Finds something to watch if they are bored
• Benefits from illustrations and presentations that use color
• Is attracted to written or spoken language rich in imagery
• Finds passive surroundings ideal

I think what I found most surprising about this list is that it is important that visual learners need to see the teacher's body language/facial expressions to fully comprehend but then if they tend to daydream they are prone to miss a lot of that vital information. 

When it comes to helping visual learners there are a myriad of suggestions. Here are a few I found helpful from education.com: "Let the picture load" because they must, in one sense, rewind the tape to find the answers. "Allow Piles" because that is how best they organize there papers, not in file cabinets but in piles they can see (this would drive me CRAZY but then I am not a visual learner).

How does this change teaching and learning? I think more radically for some content areas than for mine. As a language teacher visuals are vital in teaching language whether it is through realia or a poster illustrating the word they are learning. This of course gets complicated as you begin to teach grammar but when I figure out just how to do that I will let you know! 
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This is Pablo Neruda's poem, Tus Manos, put into a Wordle. I think it would be neat to have students compare the Spanish version of the poem to the English one using a wordle. That way they could see if they understood the words that were repeated the most.
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This is the English version of Your Hands. I just love this comparison.
Isn't Wordle cool?! It was so easy. I just cut and pasted the poem into the create box, hit go and boom here was my wordle! The more words are used the bigger they become. You then can choose your font and color combination.  It was lots of fun.

Now let's move on to Tagxedo. This is another cool word visual that you can use in class. It would work great for comprehensible input too because you can choose a shape, like the map of the U.S. or a hand or a bird, tree, etc and then put words that relate to that shape. But for the purposes of the blog and my class I have included words about Netiquette. Like Wordle you can choose your font and color. One big difference is that when your cursor goes over a word the word gets bigger so you can see it. That works well since some are so small. I had lots of fun playing on this!
Finally, the last cool way to create visuals is from the site bubbl.us. This site lets you create graphic organizers easily. For language teachers this is especially helpful if you are working through a difficult academic text with an intermediate class. In my Techniques of Teaching English as a Second Language class last semester we learned that one of the best ways to help students organize, sort and understand higher level language is to use graphic organizers. There are many different forms this can take but one is a concept definition map. I had to make one for a lesson I was teaching on the Volstead Act. The lesson was geared toward high intermediate to low advanced ELLs (English Language Learners). In this lesson I modified the original Volstead Act to somewhat simpler language that would be easier for the students. Then I created a concept definition map. It took HOURS to figure out how to do that. It was very frustrating and I even had to get help from family members who are a bit more computer savvy than me and they still had trouble. I really, really wish I had known about bubbl then because I could have finished the map in about 10 minutes. Below is my concept definition map.
So what does this mean for us? I think I have touched on this already but just in case I will summarize it this way: through technology we have the opportunity to make learning more accessible for ALL our students but especially for those who need visuals the most. Now their learning will not primarily be auditory but will be easily supported through visuals. Honestly these were not that hard to do and were quick once I was acclimated to the site (that only took a couple minutes). Tagxedo was the hardest only because I had to download a program but even then it was easier than I thought it would be. So go for it! Use  visuals from technology to help your students and ultimately yourself. I think it will make us all better, more effective teachers.
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Inquiring Minds Want to Know

3/6/2013

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This week we learned about a variety of things. I have to admit that reading about Inquiry Based learning opened my eyes to something. It showed me why I am so very uncomfortable with this technology class. I am not uncomfortable because I have a difficult time with the technology I am using or that I don't buy into how to use it in the classroom BUT for me I am not used to learning through the problem based approach. Problem Based learning is when students learn about a topic through the experience of problem solving. When I was in school (I graduated high school in 1997) teaching was primarily teacher-centric with memorization and regurgitating back to the teacher what you read in the book or heard in class. For this class I am having to go out and find web tools and resources and figure out how to use them. There is a loose rubric and schedule but nothing as formal as I am used to. That is why I find this type of learning, quite honestly, anxiety inducing. It is outside my comfort zone. When I told my professor this he said that many of his 7th grade students feel the same way when they start in his class! I am thankful that this did not come as a surprise to him.

Anyway, if you watch the screencast below you will hear more details about what exactly Inquiry Learning is and examples of it from problem based learning and then an example of it found in webquests. You may want to view our Google Document with the details because it is helpful to read over the pros and cons of this type of teaching AND we have some links to helpful websites.

Now how do technologies like Screencast-o-matic and webquests change teaching and learning? Well we can, as educators, stop standing up in front of a class of glassy-eyed students telling them a bunch of information of which they will only remember 50% of and get them involved. I can hear the groans from teachers now..."how can we do that?" Well there are lots of ways, for example our "lecture" could be a screencast (like the one below) where as we are giving the students important information we are simultaneously showing them the websites where it is found or showing them how to do the task we have assigned. That way students can watch it and re-watch it if they missed something. Then in class they can ask questions of us or begin to dig deeper. Also many students are visual and this is a simple way to give them the visuals while audibly delivering the information. Are we no longer teaching? Is it just a flipped classroom where they do homework in school and listen to lectures at home? No. We are facilitating their learning. We are involved. We are the guide or as my professor puts it we are the coach. We are giving the skills our students need to find, analyze and reflect of the information they learn all the while we are there on the sidelines guiding them. That means we are more involved. We create webquests where we find online resources for our students to get them started on their research. We create real life problems for them to solve. For me as a language teacher it could be something as simple as saying and writing directions in Spanish from La Plaza Mayor to the Museo Del Prado for lower level students. For my higher level Spanish students it could be investigating the Spanish Inquisition and the events leading up to it. The possibilities are endless. With the wealth of information on the web and our guidance and direction our students will be able to not only learn important information that will make them well rounded people but it will also have them practice and hone important technology skills.

One final note about Screencast-o-matic. It is super simple and fun to use but a word of warning. If you use the full screen option while doing it be sure you know the keystroke to stop recording. When my blog buddy Shelly and I did it we could not figure out how to stop recording so at the end of our screencast you can hear us laughing. I ended up just closing the computer to stop. We did not rerecord because our mistake is a 
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