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.
I too agree with your statement that we should use technology to engage students, but that this is difficult to weave into one's own lesson plans. That is so cool that you are already using twitter to interact with your students through their homework assignments. I think especially for a foreign language that social media is an incredible platform. I am still struggling with how to incorporate social media into my own practices, especially due to the norms established in my mentor teachers classroom.
ReplyDeleteTom's presentation definitely showed the power of using technology in the classroom and I think he presented the perfect balance of information so that it was not overwhelming to those of us less comfortable with incorporating it into our own practices. As a chemistry teacher I can see so many cool ways to incorporate videos into my teaching.
While I am comfortable with how I use technology, how to use it in the classroom effectively is still overwhelming. I guess that proves that we, especially as teachers, must be life-long learners.
Hi Betsy!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post and am excited to hear more about your plans to use Twitter in your classroom! I'm sure the students will have a lot of fun. I also like your comment on how all students will try to use their devices in the classroom, so why not form assignments that make them learn while using those devices! If you can't beat 'em...join 'em.
I know Kaitlynn already commented on your post, but I was wondering if you had seen her Webinar on using Twitter in the classroom! May be worth looking into. Another tech tool that could be useful in a language classroom is skype as well! I know in a methods course I took with Kelsey, we learned how you could make numerous skype accounts representing different famous people from the country and have students log on as those characters and try and organize the renting of apartments among a group of 4 or 5 of them! If you haven't talked about it already, I would recommend asking Kelsey about it! It was pretty cool.
Anyways, thanks again for an interesting post to read and I wish you the best of luck as we finish up this semester!
Jeni