Education Blog Browsing 

I've been doing a lot of browsing of Spanish teacher blogs in order to find different ideas to incorporate into my lesson plans. There is a wealth of knowledge out there but it can be a daunting task to sort through it all and find the hidden gems. I was really excited to find a blog called "The Organized Señorita" which is also written by a young student teacher who is in an education program somewhere out there. She had some really creative ideas for activities to make things like grammar and vocabulary more engaging and fun. I commented on one of her activities which I really wanted to use in my own classroom. I asked for her feedback on how to control behavior during such an activity and also told her how I planned to incorporate the lesson into my classes. She has not responded to me, which is fair because I only made the comment yesterday, and we all know how busy student teachers' lives are!!

It's been fun looking through this blog and seeing another young, like minded individual's opinions on how to run a Spanish classroom. This particular blog is run by a student teacher who is in a middle school, but I find that the activities are still applicable in a high school setting. 

The other blog that I looked at is absolutely fabulous and is called Zambobozo. This blog is incredibly organized. I have been looking a lot through the "Unidades" (Units) section of the blog where it is divided up into grammar points. It's a fantastic resource for activities based on certain tenses and grammar concepts! He also has funny things like comics and "Miaúcoles" which is... cats.. on Wednesdays. He really likes cats. I'm cool with it. Unfortunately there was not a method of commenting on his blog. I really would have liked to thank him and tell him how much of an awesome resource he has created for struggling Spanish teachers out there! 

Overall, blog browsing is an intimidating but exciting activity. There are some pretty bad blogs out there, I'm not going to lie. However, the blogs that are creative, organized and thoughtful definitely outweigh the unhelpful resources out there. If I had to sum up this perspective in one oversimplified statement I would say that good blogs are good, and bad blogs are bad. It's as simple as that. If the writers put time and effort towards their blogs, it really shows. I will be using more blogs to keep my ideas fresh and bring new materials into my classroom. I do not want my classroom to get stagnant. 

I really enjoyed the presentation on Socrative. Starting out the presentation with a mock lesson that showed a comparison between using Socrative for a quiz and using regular paper and pencil was a fantastic idea. This comparison really led me to think about the benefits and the downfalls of using this online assessment tool.

I see Socrative as a really beneficial tool for simple assessments of knowledge. I think it would work well for vocabulary or simple conjugation quizzes in a language classroom. I like that students can get immediate feedback and can move at their own pace.

Socrative is one of the tools that definitely makes you consider access to technology. I would not want students to be held back by lack of access to technology when it comes to assessment. If my school had great access to laptops for the students, I would definitely use this tool in class so that students can see their mistakes right away. If my school had constant problems with laptop carts, slow moving and non-functioning computers, I would probably steer clear of this resource unless I knew all of my students had internet and computer access at home.

Overall, Socrative seems like a great teacher tool and I will keep it in consideration for future use. The in class presentation on it really sold me on some of the benefits that a website like this can offer your classroom!

Guest Presenter: Tom Ward

I was very interested in Tom Ward's presentation as I know I am not great about keeping up to date with social media sites and technology but I know this is an important factor of relating to my students. I do not use Twitter personally but I see Twitter as a valuable education resource since high school students are addicted to it. I love the idea of incorporating social media and technology into assignments because students are skilled at using these and they enjoy using them.

In terms of Twitter, I am already designing lesson plans that incorporate tweets as homework. I created a professional Twitter where students can follow me, and I am only following Spanish speaking sports players, musicians, actors/actresses and news. I can assign short writing assignments as tweets and correct them as students tweet them at me. Students are able to see their classmates posts and can be inspired and also learn to use correct grammar.

In Tom's presentation he proved how he engages his students using video by drawing us all in with the example of the basketball player attempting to make a shot. He had us guess whether or not we thought the player was successful. He paused the video for dramatic effect and drew out the amount of time before we were able to see whether or not we were right or wrong about the shot. This type of activity, just as it engaged us master's students, engages high school students very well.

This presentation reminded me that despite my views of technology, this does not stop the fact that the majority of my students think that their phone is a part of their body they cannot live without. Instead of letting this work against me, I can use it in the classroom and let students use technology in a way that engages them in the material as well as forces them to practice it.

Tech in My Placement

Overall, my findings for the Tech in My Placement assignment depressed me. Pioneer is one of the top high schools in Ann Arbor, however the technology available to students and teachers is outdated and frequently broken. My mentor teacher taught at Pioneer for most of her career and then moved to Skyline for a few years. At Skyline, teachers are spoiled by the technology they have available to them as well as the support from the technology staff. When she returned to Pioneer, the stark difference between the technology resources available at Pioneer vs. Skyline have been a source of many complaints.

The laptop carts available at Pioneer are older, very slow, and often broken. If a teacher wants to use technology for a day in class, they must allot a large amount of time solely to letting the computers start up and have students switch out their non-functioning computers with functioning ones. My mentor teacher has had issues with her projecting system making all sorts of weird/loud sounds and the technology staff has just said, that's how it is, there is no way to fix it. In a Spanish classroom, functioning sound is vital to hear authentic speech and music.

It took months for my teacher to get the Doc Cam that she requested at the beginning of the year. Eventually, she did receive the Doc Cam but it frequently malfunctions. Compared to the Doc Cams that are in classrooms here at UofM, the Doc Cam in my classroom is just not a great piece of technology.

There are many great online Spanish practice resources that I would love to be able to use in the classroom. However, without reliable laptops this becomes very difficult. Students can access some of these items on their phones, but not all of them. Not all students have a smartphone to begin with. This limits the activities that one can use that involve technology and requires that students use these helpful practice resources at home. If they don't have computers at home, then access to these resources is limited to time they go to the library to use the computers there.

Overall, it seems many people are in the same boat as me at their schools. Their technological resources are lacking. Some questions that this has raised for me are: How do schools raise money to improve technological resources? Do other teacher's see the technology at Pioneer as normal, or sub-par? What sort of budget does a school have for technology and where does this money go?

Woohoo! Back to blogging with a bang! I read through all of the Maize cohort's Connections Across Disciplines assignments and although they were all very well done, I had to choose one to write about. I ended up choosing the Biology group's "BYOD-to-Discover-Tree-Species" because they took such a different approach than my group did. The Biology group gave an excellent example of how students using their own technology could benefit a Biology classroom. The students would go out into the woods and take pictures of different tree species. The use of technology is beneficial here because students can document their observations in a quicker and more accurate way than, for example, drawing out each species they find.

I really liked that this group addressed how they would handle if students did not each have their own device. Each group only needed to have one device so it is likely that there would be enough student's with electronic devices that this would work out. I liked this lesson plan because it was very hands on. The students got to go outside and interact with nature which for a generation of students so technology-focused, going out in nature may be a rare encounter for them. It also showed them how technology can actually help bring them close to nature as this app "Leafsnap" could be used as an electronic field guide to identify tree species. This was a nice contrast to the usual use of technology that brings students farther away from nature.

The group referenced the success of the field trips at Scarlett Middle School during the summer program that were successful in having the students engage actively with nature. I liked this connection and their continued focus on bringing students outside in order to learn more about the world around them. Due to the unique aspect of this lesson where students would go outside instead of staying in the classroom, I would have liked to see a bit more maybe about how the group thought about how they would talk about appropriate behavior before students went out into the woods. Before going out into the woods at Scarlett we always discussed with out students how important it is to respect nature and how much more you would see and observe if you are quiet. The group did discuss how it is important to use all 5 senses which I liked a lot!

Overall, I think the Biology group came up with a great lesson and I think it would function well in either middle school or high school. Students these days do not interact with nature as much as past generations did and this is detrimental to their development in general and detrimental to the formation of their relationship with the natural world.

COOL TREES!

When I first downloaded Evernote, I was less than impressed by the features. An app just for notes? I have notes on my computer already! Since the assignment wasn't to give up on the app five minutes after downloading, I spent some time getting to know it. The more time I spent on it, the more it grew on me. I noticed small features like the ability to make your note into a check list. There is NOTHING more satisfying than checking off things on a to-do list. I loved the PDF annotation feature and was able to engage with my on-screen readings much more effectively. The annotation summary is brilliant as it brings all of your annotated items to the front of the document so if you were looking for key points to talk about, they would be easily accessible. Another aspect I liked is the web clipper with which you can save directly from the internet. You can save websites as bookmarks, articles, full pages or screenshots. This would be a handy tool for research.

When creating the hand-out, I found it difficult to think about how someone who is not very familiar with using technology would need things explained. I think this was a useful exercise because when explaining technology to your students, their levels of knowledge will likely vary greatly. Learning to explain the basics in a step-by-step manner is vital. I originally thought that speaking for 25 minutes would be impossible, but when it comes to walking people through an unfamiliar task, it takes time. 25 minutes ended up passing quickly and I still had more features of the app that I had not explained thoroughly. 

I have incorporated Evernote into my every day life, and for the foreseeable future will continue to use it. In fact, it was a check-list that I created on Evernote that reminded me I need to complete this blog post! See? It is quite useful! Also the icon is a little elephant, and elephants are my favorite. It's a match made in heaven.

The other app that we learned about that I loved was Blendspace. I saw this app as an incredibly useful tool for a teacher looking to create a lesson quickly. I thought the quizzes you could give throughout the lesson were a great idea. You can have your students view the lesson at home as well and keep track of the time that they spend on it. I plan on trying out Blendspace when I start planning lessons!

¡¡Conjuguemos!!

I was introduced to a new online Spanish game called Conjuguemos which I see as a very useful tool both for an advanced Spanish learner needing a brush up and a beginner. On top of being useful for learners, this game can be useful for teachers as well. The direct translation of the title of the game is "We conjugate" in the subjuctive nosotros form of the Spanish verb conjugar, however the site also has practice for Italian, Latin, German, French and Portuguese. My understanding is that the game started as just a conjugation practice game, but then expanded to both grammar and vocabulary.

For the verb conjugation game you can look at a verb conjugation chart of each tense to study before you play the game. Then, you choose a certain amount of time that you want to be timed (or choose not to be timed) and then the site gives you a verb, a pronoun and you provide the conjugation. You can choose if you want to focus on certain pronouns or a certain verbs, for example, excluding the vosotros form since that is only relevant in Spanish used in Spain. The site keeps track of how accurate you are, and as a student, you can send how you do to a teacher so the teacher can keep track of how you are doing. 

I think this is especially useful because you can have different students practice different things that they need to at the same time. It is also fun because it makes conjugation into a competition against yourself. You want to get as many conjugations correct in the allotted time and if you play multiple times, you want to beat your past score. 

There are also grammar activities where you fill in blanks based on certain grammar topics as well as vocabulary exercises you can do based on theme vocabulary. I will be using this game to practice my own Spanish and I definitely see it's potential as a tool in my classroom in the future. 

I'm picturing a student typing with only two fingers struggling through the English portion of the Smarter Balanced Assessments.  I'm picturing a third grader who has never learned how to properly use the computer attempt to maneuver his or her way through the complicated interface of the math portion of the Smarter Balanced Assessments. I'm picturing a student with his or her head down on the desk, sleeping through the assessment. What do all these students have in common? Their scores on these tests determine whether or not some teachers will keep their jobs or not. As a future educator, I see our nation's obsession with standardized testing as my biggest enemy, and I believe that many teachers are on the same page.

When those who are creating policies mandating what standards students and teachers are held to are not the ones who spend their time in classrooms, how can they say with any reasonable confidence that these evaluations will work? 40% of teacher evaluations are now based on student growth and assessment data. With the increasing allegations of various states and cities cheating on standardized tests, one would think that the need for a different evaluation method was clearer. Thinking even on how current teachers tell their students to write their essays for the ACT- write the strongest essay with the most evidence, instead of, write about what you truly believe about the prompt- the system is plagued with questionable methods. I am not saying I have a solution for how students and teachers should be evaluated, but I firmly believe that standardized tests are not fair to all students and judging teacher performance based off of these tests is not benefiting anyone. I lied. It might be benefitting those who make money off of these standardized tests. However, when you think about how our youth are the future leaders of our world, maybe a system that most benefits them would be a slightly better idea.

I feel unprepared to fully delve into the issues that teachers face with standardized testing. I am but a mere education student with no true practice in the classroom, and no personal experience in these struggles that teachers face with standardized testing. I don't think this withholds my right to an opinion on the matter, but I do think that I cannot fully understand what it means to be held to these evaluation standards without experiencing them first hand.

After reviewing the Smarter Balanced Assessments and attempting some of the math portions of the assessments, I am concerned about the formatting. The third grade math had a complicated interface that it took a significant amount of time to understand even as a graduate student. Each question had a different format of how the answer was submitted, which made the test feel choppy and threw off my thinking process. The point of these tests was to move away from the traditional bubbling in of answers, but wasn't there some benefit to consistency? The math for higher grade levels was difficult, even for the math major sitting next to me taking the 9th grade math exam. That in itself should raise some questions about this test. What motivates students to want to do well on this test? Who teaches them the technology necessary to perform well on the test?

I have much to learn about the Smarter Balanced Assessments and how teachers and students are evaluated, but the way I see it now, I see standardized tests as an obstacle, not a useful tool. How can we change that? I think if someone had the answer to that question, there would not be so much turmoil in the education policy world.

"I believe that if nine-tenths of the energy at present directed towards making the child learn certain things, were spent in seeing to it that the child was forming proper images, the work of instruction would be indefinitely facilitated" John Dewey 

John Dewey presents an incredibly vivid and insightful view of education in "My Pedagogic Creed" that even 117 years after it was written, is still affecting educators worldwide. I was highly intrigued by the quote above because it is a bold statement to say that educators are devoting so much of their energy towards the wrong type of education. At first I did not understand what Dewey meant by "images," because it was clear to me that his view of this word was not image in the traditional sense. What I took away from his interpretation of an image was that it is the way in which a child understands how he/she is connected to the information and experiences that they encounter. These images are meaningful because the child is able to form his/her own opinions on the matters and they are unique since they embody how the child sees themselves in relation to these matters. Children have such powerful creativity, and it has been proven that they way in which we currently educate children, they start out with all this potential for ingenuity and when they end their education have lost the majority of this power. If we let student's have more of an influence on what they are taking away from education, maybe they would be able to harness more of their creative abilities and go out and change the world.

However, I do not think that just because Dewey did not believe in the way students were being educated that he thought teachers were irrelevant. In fact, I believe he saw teachers as powerful tools in the process of educating youth. He understood that "purely discovery approach was insufficient... the teacher's role is rather to provide students the correct guidance through the process of learning" (Rich, Reeves, 2006, pg. 55). I am a firm believer in this form of teaching. If the teacher assumes the role as a guide on this journey in the path of gaining understanding, they are able to play a part as learners just as much as the students are. In the vein of Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" I am firmly against the "banking approach" to education and feel that student's will learn more if they understand that their teachers are not there to bestow knowledge upon them but instead help facilitate learning in a more authentic way.

The way that I see my future classroom, I do not see technology as a prime method for students to obtain information. I do see technology as a useful tool as it allows access to a world of knowledge and images. I think that student's also need to know how to utilize technology as it is an integral part of most occupations. Although I am not entirely set in my opinion, I think I am leaning against the concept of "BYOD" (Bring Your Own Device). As Gary Stager states in his argument against BYOD, it "allows more affluent students to continue having an unfair advantage over their classmates" (2012, pg. 6). Effective teachers strive for equity in their classrooms and it seems that allowing student's to use their own technology perpetuates the inequity that plagues the education system currently. If all student's had access to equal technology, then having them bring their own devices could function, however, this is simply not a reality. As a Spanish teacher in a world where some schools are eliminating language teacher's in place of solely virtual classrooms, I do not want to view technology as the enemy. Technology opens up possibilities in the classroom that were not available in the past and I hope to be able to utilize it. However, I would like to do so in a way that does not give some student's the continued boost they are allowed by their socio-economic privilege.