Helping Kids Manage their Digital Footprint

When I browse Facebook, sometimes I'm not proud of my friends in terms of what I see. Do you think that employers are really fooled by you editing cats over your beer cans and raised middle fingers? I don't think so! I believe that teaching kids to effectively manage their digital footprint is absolutely vital- from early on! If nobody ever teaches kids WHO can see what they post on social media and what the consequences can be for these seemingly meaningless posts, how would they know the harm they could potentially be causing their future selves?

I think that a teacher can have an active role in helping students use social media positively, however, I think that if there is an active parent/guardian in the students' life, it is their job to show their child right and wrong in the social media world. I loved Lisa Nielsen's idea of having the child use a Recall App in order to see a word/status cloud. A discussion on how the child and parent feel about what comes up in this cloud of commonly used words and statuses could be very valuable! Most importantly is the parent reminding their child how some of these words/statuses that may seem innocent could be viewed by other adults and therefore potential employers.

In school, helping students use social media effectively can be done by showing students where they can find blogs, Twitter pages or websites on their passions. In my classroom, I have students Tweeting Spanish to me so that I can respond. They know that Señorita Swigart will be seeing their Spanish tweet so they only post appropriate tweets to me... but that doesn't mean that everything on their page is so appropriate.

I think the conversation on whether teens should be using their real names online is very interesting. Reflecting on my personal experience, I have nothing that I am ashamed of on my Facebook page, however, in order that students cannot find me, I do not have my real full name attached to my Facebook. I think to think about controlling one's digital identity and what choosing to use one's real name or not means for that. Should my students use their real names online? If they are posting responsibly, why not?

These topics are incredibly interesting and as a Spanish teacher, I had not thought of having a talk with my students about acceptable/responsible use of social media. However, if I am encouraging the use of social media in order to get involved with Spanish, why shouldn't it be me to start this conversation? Someone needs to do it!

The MACUL Experience

The MACUL Technology Conference at the COBO Center in Detroit was a refreshing break from the usual. Don’t get me wrong, I love my students! However, for a day, I truly got to be the student as I sat and took notes on various speakers at this conference. I was extremely hopeful to find some technological resources that I could bring back to my placement and use in my everyday teaching. Luckily, I found a World Language focused speaker who had resources in order to improve the ability to assess speaking in the classroom. Giving oral exams is an incredibly time consuming process and it was great to hear that this teacher has been using technology in order to have students record their oral exams through programs like MSU Clear Conversations and Lingt Language. These tools allow you, the teacher, to record yourself saying questions and then the students record a response. The kicker is that the students are timed and on video, so it’s pretty clear if students are trying to use their notes or other resources on the test. It is incredibly difficult to simulate real conversation in an exam and these tools allow language teachers to save time and still assess students’ spoken skills. 

Another of the sessions that I sat in on was called "Lightning Talks." Now, the name can be slightly deceptive, there was no actual sudden electrostatic discharge during this event, however, the jolt of energy and enthusiasm that I got from listening to these passionate speakers allowed these talks to live up to their name. The idea behind "Lightning Talks" was that each of the speakers was given 5 minutes to talk, and their powerpoint presentation played behind them at a rate of 15 seconds per slide without their control. These speakers had to be succinct, powerful, well-spoken and above all, passionate. The most inspiring of these talks were the speakers who chose not to speak about content but spoke about kids. When it comes down to it, I cannot relate to every single content area but, we aren't here to be content-area teachers, we are here to teach kids!!! One woman talked about how we go through a process of judging and sorting people when we meet them. We do this with students as well. Students know the labels that we have placed above their heads because the way that we teach reflects these labels. She challenged us to tear down any negative words we have placed above students heads, no matter how infuriating their behavior or performance can be. She encouraged us to put positive words such as "scholar" and "high achiever"  above every kid because each student has this potential and needs us to believe it. I was inspired by her passion and her dedication to kids. 

Another speaker gave what was more like a spoken word piece than an informative talk. It was absolutely chilling. He spoke about a girl who went to school while still taking care of her 2 baby sisters and alcoholic father at home, with no mother in the picture. He reminded us how some of our students have to be heroes every day and the Cs that they may be achieving in our classroom may be triumphs to them. Every student that comes into our classroom is dealing with something and it is our job to care about them and be solid mentors, role models and confidants for them. Ending the conference with that powerful 5 minute piece was a great end to an enlightening day. I look forward to opportunities to attend more conferences like this one and bring back passion, technology and revitalized energy to my classroom. 

Technology Teach-In

Look at that cute little frog! Not only is he a cute little guy, he appears on a language practice website that is incredibly useful for French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese and Spanish teachers.

For my Technology Teach-In lesson my students will be utilizing Conjuguemos.com, a website with vocab, grammar, listening and most valuably, verb conjugation practice. Verb conjugation can be a tedious skill to practice however, conjuguemos.com makes it more game-like and students can compete against themselves and against each other to race against the clock and conjugate as many verbs as possible correctly in the chosen tense. Sounds like fun, right? (I think it is, but, I am a Spanish teacher.)

Students will soon be learning the imperfect tense in my Spanish 2AC class. This verb tense is awesome because there are only 3 irregulars so mastery of the verb forms comes swiftly unlike it's past tense friend the preterit that can take weeks to learn. In order to help cut down on the time that it takes for students to feel confident conjugating these verbs I am going to use conjuguemos.com. This is a valuable tool because students get immediate feedback on whether they are right or wrong and they can practice tons of verbs individually in a very short time. It is impossible to give such individualized feedback on verb practice without such a tool!

I will be checking out the laptop carts at Pioneer, praying to the technology gods that the laptops are having a good day and the majority of them are functioning, and giving students time to practice imperfect verb conjugation. This will probably be done on the day after the verb tense is introduced to students so they will have a basic concept of how the tense is formed but not significant practice with it. The other awesome thing about conjuguemos.com is that when you have a teacher account, students can send their scores for activities directly to you. Not only is there individualized feedback but students can be held accountable easily for the work they are expected to complete. I will probably give them a goal, such as getting 98% accuracy or more on 20 verbs in 2 minutes. Basically what I usually do is see how many I can do accurately in a certain time frame and then cut it in half. Impressive, I know.

This technology gives my mentor teacher and I the opportunity to let students practice at their own pace, receive immediate feedback on their individual work and send their results to us with the single click of a button. Boom! Questions? Concerns? Feedback? Help a teacher out! And if you are a language teacher, use this website! It rocks! (AND, it's free :D)