6.30.10
The introductory session (June 30) presented topics to include various technology applications with which the SMAC students will be expected to become familiar: wikispace, webinar, PLNs, podcasting, and audio/video recording and evaluation.
I am particularly interested in Wikispace for Educators (K-12). Foreign Language teachers have found this venue to have phenomenal real-world application. In my limited secondary teaching experience, a "French Cultural Exchange" wikispace was developed to serve as a multiple-user pen pal website. The exchange connected our high school in Michigan with a lycee in the French Alps. The students posted class photos, blogged discussion topics (the discussion on French slang was both entertaining and dangerous)!
The wiki brought the subject content to life for the students, as it provided them with the opportunity to practice writing in the target language, to communicate in French with their overseas counterparts. Through the discussion topics, they discovered surprising similarities and dispelled cultural stereotypes. And learned some colorful French slang... The wikispace was a complement to the course curriculum, and its technology application was directly relevant.
Although I am unfamiliar with the webnar and podcasting applications, I am looking forward to developing at least a basic working proficiency with them. As an advocate for technology integration in the secondary classroom, I can only begin to envision their creative use.
Mindy Broderick
Section B
We'll be using Wikispaces for our wikifolios -- more on that in class. I will be eager to learn what you think about podcasting -- both as a tool to bring content to your kids and as a way to capture your students' oral fluency.
ReplyDeleteMindy, it's great that you bring these experiences to the class...we're very lucky and hope to hear more from you about what you've seen.
ReplyDeleteYour comments made me think about another language educator, Allison Ricciardi, who used a ning (a flexible kind of tool for managing multiple modes of communication) for her Chinese course. Maybe you would get a kick out of seeing her article.
Mindy, it's great that you've had this kind of experience, as it will be something exciting for you to share with your colleagues.
ReplyDeleteI want to share an article with you, written by fellow MACer Allison Ricciardi, about her experience using a "ning" when she taught Chinese at a middle school in South Lyon. You likely know this, but a ning is a website designed to integrate multiple modes (blogs, wikis, etc.) of communication. Here's a link to an article that she wrote about what she did.
Mindy,
ReplyDeleteYou are clearly well on your way coming into this, given your prior experience. The layout of your blog site is beautiful. Great photos! I suspect you will be very good at designing engaging content for students.
Best,
Monte
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ReplyDeleteSorry-there was a typo in my first comment and I'm a little OCD :)
ReplyDeleteMindy,
I really want to go back to Paris after being on your blog. I love your photos-did you take them? I wish that I had had a foreign language teacher like you-the pen pal wikispace would have really engaged me (I think I probably would have not given up on foreign language if I had actually made contacts/friends on such a page). I'm interested if there's a page like this for teachers of other subjects. I'm a English major-it would be interesting in a world literature class, for example, to have a wikispace like the one that you used, where students learning Spanish literature could be penpals with Spanish students studying American literaure. Maybe we'll learn about this later in the class.
Looking forward to your next blog,
Danielle
P.S-Maybe we should plan a MAC-wide trip to Europe for next June?
Mindy,
ReplyDeleteI'm so envious that you have had such good experiences using technology as a teaching aid, listening to you explain your student's pen-pal program the other day in class, and reading about it again now makes me really excited to find some way for my future students to have a similar experience... maybe they can pen-pal with the Pope... :)
Salut, Mindy. J'aime bien les photos de Paris que tu as chosies. Pour moi Paris sera toujours une ville de reves et de mystere. Il va falloir que nous parlions beaucoup de tes experiences avec wikispace. Ca, c'est une activite formidable que j'ai envie d'utilizer.
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