Fun website

As a result of all the snow days this year, we had 2 school days over spring break. Knowing that attendance would be low, I sought an activity that would be engaging and relevant to the curriculum without starting new material. I found this great website that I can use during any unit to help students review. It’s a free online comic strip generator. I reserved the lab for the day, gave a quick tutorial and then just let the kids have fun with it. They wrote creative dialogues in French and had a fun time doing it. I did the same lesson for all four different levels that I teach and the beauty was that each class could create interesting work each at their own level. My first-year 6th graders employed the new vocabulary they had learned the previous week about inviting a friend to do an activity over the weekend. I challenged my third-year 8th graders to use the past tense in their dialogues.

I can imagine that this website could be used as a review in any discipline. For example in a science class, the assignment could be to have one character explaining the process of photosynthesis to the other. The students could have fun creatively personalizing their characters while simultaneously reviewing necessary content.

games in education

I have to admit that I have never played any of the virtual games mentioned in the readings for the week. To be honest I can’t really imagine myself being interested in playing any of them for my own leisure. If I have an extra couple of hours on my hands I’m either reading a book or watching a movie. But I can see the potential for using them in the classroom.

The elements that I find most exciting are the motivation that it stirs in children and how it nurtures both independent skills and group skills simultaneously.   According to the article by James Paul Gee, good games continuously push players to expand to the next level. In the classroom we are constantly seeking ways to differentiate and to ensure that all students are being pushed to their fullest potential despite the obvious differences in abilities. I am interested in the fact that video games appear to offer a very tailored experience to the player with his or her own identity and at his or her own level without being isolationist. It is fascinating that players can have full autonomy of their decisions and yet be compelled to work within a group and possess understanding of the players around them. In the classroom we encourage group work as an essential life skill but often the individual is overshadowed by the group dynamic. Video games appear to be able to marry individual problem solving skills with cooperative group dynamics in a unique way.

Although I haven’t played any of these games yet, I am intrigued to figure out how I may incorporate them in my teaching in the future.  Although it may be a bit of a stretch for me, I can imagine a new generation of young teachers who have been raised on games such as these. What fascinating ideas they may bring to education.

SMART Board French Lesson

Since I began teaching six years ago, I have had an Interactive white board in my classroom. My first year teaching I used in minimally. The district I was in barely supported the technology and although there was a board in every classroom, very few teachers knew how to operate them even in the most basic sense. In my second year and in a new district, I was pleased to work with colleagues who had much deeper understanding of the capabilities of the technology.

Currently, I use the White Board daily. At a minimum, I use it as tool to do the following functions:

• create different “do-nows” for each of the four levels I teach where the students can come up to the board, write the answer and edit one another’s work
• to display and add notes to powerpoint presentations with text and visuals
• to connect to the Internet to show videos, seek information, demonstrate authentic French materials etc.
• to write notes

For some subjects I have created more interactive lessons in which students can drag images and words around to make sentences, match vocabulary, change verb tenses, etc. But in listening to Alan November I am reminded that even these more sophisticated lessons are still interactive to only the handful of children who volunteer to come to the board. The interview we listened to this week really impressed the point that without the e-clickers in the hands of each student, the Smart board is not being used to its fully interactive potential.

Everything that I have done so far on my interactive white board has been generated by me. As with everything else in education – it is time-consuming. I was very impressed with the Smart Exchange and the potential it offers. The only drawback for me is that my district uses a different software called Interwrite. My initial search has not uncovered anything as impressive as the Smart Exchange, but I am determined to keep looking. After browsing through a few different French language lessons on the Smart Exchange I found one focused on the house and city. There were many pages that could be tailored for other lessons that had very interactive and visually clear activities. They also appeared to be compatible with e-clicker technology. My school has two sets of e-clickers that all teachers are welcomed to use. Currently only about 3 teachers are taking advantage of them. Initially I was interested in trying them but was daunted by making a lesson from scratch to accompany them.  If I can find useful templates like those found on Smart Exchange, I will definitely try using them in the future.

opensource

Yikes, maybe I’m not cut out for this class.

I spent about 3 hours trying to download a variety of different open source software but was entirely unsuccessful. Browsing through different software on SourceForge, I came up with some seemingly wonderful ideas to use in my French classroom:

• flashcard generators
• comprehensive international dictionaries
• comic book generators
• French verb workshop

Alas, my inability to figure out how to open them from my download folder on my MAC was an insurmountable obstacle. Dragging the item from my download folder into my applications folder was unfruitful. I tried to seek advice on the web and was lead to a new software to enable downloading software but that merely lead me back to my original problem!

Ultimately, I tried to download Openoffice under the assumption that since it is such a popular software, it might be more obvious to download. Fortunately, when I double-clicked on the downloaded file, it opened a new window that directed me to drag it into my applications folder and then it opened automatically.

I explored it a bit and found out how to set the language in French as I typically do in Word and was pleased with the results. Despite the terribly frustrating beginning, I now have a very friendly “productivity suite” on my computer (I kept postponing shelling out the money to buy the Microsoft Word package because I didn’t know about open source software).  And perhaps I will learn how to download less obvious software in the near future.

self organization

The post I chose to discuss is by Steve Wheeler about Self Organization and Virtual Learning. In his power-point he concludes that, “Self organised learners do not need management, they need facilitation.” Although I completely agree with the concept of  self organized learning and the benefits of developing personal learning environments, I imagine that such freedom might result in loosing some students.

As a middle school teacher, I’ve noticed that two of the most vital skills in middle school are the ability to focus and personal organization. The lack of these skills in our struggling students is striking. Recently, I took a group of my 8th grade french students into the lab to work individually on self assessments from the French textbook’s website. The students were directed to stay only on the textbook’s website but to move freely throughout the exercises there with the goal of assessing how well they have understood the chapter so far. Most students were productively working at their own pace and benefiting from the exercise. But there were a handful who were merely typing nonsense into the fields just to give the appearance of working. I have noticed this type of classroom behavior repeatedly not only in my classroom but in other disciplines as well.

I was impressed by the 7th grade science student’s PLE in our reading this week but I have trouble imagining how the students I mention above would be able to navigate such freedom. Of course this dilemma does not diminish the obvious benefits of PLEs. It should only be considered in how we teach all students and how we balance between managing and facilitating.

Authentic French materials

As a French teacher I am constantly looking for ways to integrate authentic French materials into my teaching. For example, it is amazing how much mileage a teacher can get out of a restaurant receipt from a real cafe.

realia

This brief receipt can launch a discussion about dozens of topics including vocabulary, grammar or culture. For my middle school audience I might use this receipt to discuss: the structure and vocabulary linked to the date, currency conversion, or simply basic vocabulary.

Since I have started subscribing to French teaching blogs I have found many more resources including this fascinating blog hosted by French university students to help teach French. The basic idea is that it offers video of authentic French speaking situations, i.e. an interview with one of its members or perhaps a short advertisement like this one for the TGV train in France, and adds a transcript below. This format permits new learners the opportunity read along with the dialogue. There is a brief written introduction to set up the situation, then following the transcript are notes about the culture and key expressions.

Since the blog is written entirely in French, it might be a stretch for my middle school students to explore independently. However, I will use it as a resource for enrichment for some of my more advanced students.

Music is the classroom

Being new to the blog world, I am appreciating the use of Google reader to organize my RSS feeds. I have come across and subscribed to a handful of French teaching blogs in addition to the Pace students blogs we were obliged to follow. In the short time that I have been following them, I have come encountered some great ideas that I can use in my teaching as well as materials that I can share.

I am particularly fond of this recent post that I came across about using music in the foreign language classroom. When I was originally in graduate school I recall resolving to use music regularly in the classroom as a means of teaching the language and infusing culture. Now in my 6th year of teaching middle-school French, I realize that I sometimes forget this resolution I originally made to myself. On the occasions that I have used music, I have found great success in student involvement.  I have used music primarily in two different ways: to teach vocabulary –  for example I have introduced a common children’s song, Lundi matin, to teach the days of the week; and as background music. I have played French pop music as background to help students focus while working individually on writing projects. I find that it minimizes the temptation to talk to other students when they are tasked to work individually on projects.

This blog post referenced above explains the science behind how using music activates both sides of the brain and can increase classroom learning. The concept is not radically new, in fact as I mentioned earlier, it’s already something I resolved to pursue but it reminds me how subscribing to blogs such as this one can rejuvenate one’s teaching.

A new kind of Textbook

After nearly every superintendent conference day in my district, the committee in charge of coordinating professional development asks the faculty to respond to a survey about the effectiveness of the time spent that day. Each time there is a field for, “suggestions for future superintendent days”.  My perennial suggestion to the Prof Dev Committee is to offer lab time to department based groups to collaborate on researching resources available on the internet to use in the classroom: online textbook resources, videos from educational resources such as united streaming, WGBH or even you-tube, teacher generated materials, etc. As a French teacher I am constantly looking for authentic “realia” from the internet to use in the classroom: menus from actual cafes, train schedules to teach time, weather reports around the world, etc.

I am fortunate to work in a district that supports technology. Every classroom in my school has an interactive Smartboard. More importantly than merely having the technology, the district supports the investments it makes: training is extensive, turnaround on repairs is impressive, there are opportunities to pilot new technologies, etc. However, from a teacher perspective it is difficult to find the time to adapt our curriculum to the emerging technology and to really exploit all the new technology we have.  Therefore why not pool our resources as a department and work together to share what we have indivually stumbled upon amidst the seemingly boundless resources of the internet.

Which leads me to another thought: although my proposal is thoughtful and useful, is this really the best allocation of our Prof Dev time? For the same reason that we wouldn’t use our time to write a textbook, why shouldn’t we outsource this service? And why are textbook publishers so antiquated that they haven’t come up with this idea themselves yet?

As a middle school French teacher I use a textbook as a skeleton for my instruction. It provides useful guidance in terms of marrying vocabulary with grammar points, offers reference materials for students and provides resources such as assessments and workbook activities as well as audio and video resources. Many of these resources can be accessed through the online edition.  I use these resources to inform my instruction, I pick and choose what I find helpful, integrate other sources and combine it all with materials I develop on my own.

Imagine a textbook publisher that offered the basic resources listed above but went further and acted as a agregator for other resources available on the internet and organized it in a way that would be useful to teachers. Perhaps it could develop and maintain a wiki for example, based on my French intermediate level textbook, that permitted all subscribers access to the wiki to link resources, provide lesson ideas and update information.

Publishers typically would sell textbooks to districts with the intention that each student would take home a textbook. Oh the backpacks! I wouldn’t kill the textbook entirely, and can imagine the usefulness of purchasing a scaled-down set of textbooks to keep in the classroom as reference on basic skeletal points: grammar rules, vocabulary lists, verb conjugations, etc. The money saved on the extreme cost of paper and printing could be reallocated to the development and maintenance of much broader online resources including links to videos, online realia, student generated work, teacher generated resources, Smartboard resources, etc. The publishers could go even further and create a living textbook with a real person as a “guide” along the model of about.com. In addition to making contributions, subscribers could pose questions or make requests to the “guide”. This concept marries the broad contributions of the wiki with the customized service of a responsive provider. The benefit that the publisher could offer its clients would be to organize, vet and feed this information to it’s subscribers.

Mac Lab

My district recently has built a Mac Lab in our middle school. I have been working in a PLC to help define the space, build templates and guidelines on how it should be used and test the equipment. It’s a wonderfully exciting venture but slightly daunting at the same time. Many of our meetings so far have been obtuse, I believe because there are so many possibilities and questions we are all having troubling focusing on just what needs to be addressed first.

How will this lab offer different possibilities to our students than the traditional computer labs we currently have with PCs?

Many of us are interested in having our students use I-movie to create short videos projects. As a French teacher – rather than having students perform their dialogues in front of the class in French they could film and edit them in I-movie. However we’ve learned that the students may spend 2 periods on the French and then several days in the lab doing the shooting, editing, etc.  How do we compromise the time taken away from content instruction?

One of the primary goals in my classroom as a French teacher is to encourage my students to talk to one another in French. My district has long advocated using video-conferencing but I recently Skyped for the first time with friend (put that on the list of new things lately along with blogging, twitter, RSS, etc). I realized that the Mac Lab creates the opportunity for children to Skype with children in other classrooms. How cool would that be to motivate students?!  In one of our discussions the head of technology mentioned that “chatting” in not permitted within the district. How can we manage chatting to make it a safe tool we can use to help children learn a new language?

Could Blogging change the traditional classroom?

I believe that, yes, blogging can change the traditional classroom.

In education one of the biggest obstacles to student learning, particularly in secondary education, is motivation. The use of new technologies typically sparks motivation in students but technology for technology’s sake is not reason alone to use it. The use of new technology in the classroom must be relevant and meaningful.

I currently teach French at White Plains Middle School. My district has begun a new initiative summarized as, “write to learn” in which teachers are encouraged to emphasize student writing in all disciplines. The district has cited a study from the Carnegie Corporation of New York that supports that writing can improve reading and has outlined resources to help teachers integrate more writing in their curriculum. Blogging is a perfect medium by which teachers can encourage more writing from their students.

Of the myriad examples posted by Professor Calvert on his blog and on blackboard, I was most impressed by Ms. Baker’s Biology Class – particularly the video of students’ impressions on how blogging has impacted their learning in science class. The feedback from the students profiled was articulate and positive. The most compelling to me was the last student who claimed that blogging in Ms. Baker’s class made the students better writers. He implied that the expectations were elevated. Furthermore it appears that the students themselves were more invested in the projects they were working on and therefore felt a greater responsibility to do their best work particularly with the knowledge that they were writing for a broader audience rather than merely the eyes of their teacher.

The “write to learn” initiative in my district is focusing initially on a check for understanding at the end of a lesson. Perhaps in the form of an exit ticket (index cards, anyone?), students will be asked to summarize the lesson, impart what they took away from the lesson or pose questions based on the lesson. The intention is the exercise will have the dual benefit of compelling students to express themselves through writing and will provide the teacher with a formative assessment of the success of his or her lesson. This exercise seems like a perfect format for micro-blogging.

Twitter with its limited number of characters would compel students to be concise and the format would undeniably be more attractive than the old index card. Furthermore the fact that it would be public would give students the opportunity to view one another’s posts and garner ideas from each other. As a French teacher I often use TPR (Total Physical Response) as a means of teaching new vocabulary. It is a technique in which the students mimic the gestures of the teacher associated with a particular vocabulary word or expression. For example, “to talk on the phone” is accompanied with the action of holding an imaginary phone to one’s ear. For this activity, I remind students to look around the room at their classmates if they are not sure what gesture to do – it is not cheating but simply learning from one another. Likewise with Twitter – students would have the opportunity to learn from their classmates in their own voices resulting in a more student-centered experience.

Of course, this experience  of tweeting as a check for understanding as I imagine it above, requires individual laptops for each student. Fortunately, White Plains is a district that supports new technology and is very open to experimenting but we are not at the point where every student has his or her own computer.  Given the vastly broad socioeconomic spectrum of the student population, it is unrealistic to expect that students outside of school will have equal access to computers. Therefore whatever the district can provide within the school environment can be wonderfully enriching.