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?