Final Reflection

Final Reflection

                                                        http://www.ipeacemeal.com/

• How is your unit different?   I think that the biggest difference in my unit is that my students will have a larger audience. Instead of just introducing themselves to the other students in their physical classroom, they will be introducing themselves to students in Trujillo, Peru as well. 

• Why did you make these changes? Using the technology that is available to us will help Spanish class come alive. I want my classes to be about communicating and negotiating meaning in the real world.

• How will the integration of technology impact your students' learning?  Without technology, this type of real-time communication  would be impossible. They will be able to ask questions to their South American peers and get answers much more quickly than in the past.

• Why will your students be more engaged in their learning? I believe that my students will be much more motivated to learn when they know that they will be communicating with students in South America. Having an authentic audience will definitely be more engaging.

Cultivating Creativity in the Classroom

"Do we need a new science of creativity education?'"Can we be any more creative, and if so, should creativity be cultivated in the classroom?"

Yes, yes, and yes! This is my response to the questions that Dr. Michael Hogan poses in his article. I do not think that we can afford NOT to cultivate creativity in the classroom. Our world is changing at lightening speed.

A few years ago our administration showed the above video "Shift Happens" during our first inservice day. Now, many of the facts are completely outdated (there is an updated 4.0 version but I don't like the music as much as the original)! This just goes to show that things are not slowing down and we must roll with the changes in order to move forward.

                                         
Our students need to be creative in order to survive in an ever changing world. How can we "teach" creativity? A great place to start is to use the 5 key components of customized learning. If we are to prepare students for jobs that have not even been created yet and we are counting on them to help solve the problems of our world, then we must help them to learn to think creatively and to be resilient. Fostering a climate of student voice and choice will empower our students to take risks and learn from their failures when necessary.  By using both lower and higher order thinking skills we can help our students to stretch their minds to prepare for independent thinking. Formative assessment will provide the feedback necessary to guide students towards their goals. And finally, employing multiple pathways to learning will insure that all students can access the learning tools that work best for them.

Reflection on classroom collaboration

I am a firm believer in student collaboration. In our language classroom, the main goal is communication. I try to foster a climate of collaboration from day one. Students are required to work together in pairs and small groups on a daily basis to complete small tasks. I try to guide them to make the most out of the opportunities that they have for collaboration. Below is a graphic that an online colleague (Heather Witten) shared with me. She calls it "Success in Spanish" but it is applicable to most subjects. This past year I  posted this on my class Moodle page and discussed it at the beginning of the school year. 

                             

When I think back over my teaching career I can remember many times when I had students work on projects together in groups. Some attempts were complete failures and others were quite successful. A few common problems that I encountered in the past were logistical issues (one student from the group is absent and the other members claim that that person has the paper that they need in order to move forward), unequal distribution of the workload (one student ends up doing the majority of the work), and personality conflicts between group members. I have addressed these issues in a variety of ways. The logistical issues have been resolved by having students collaborate using web tools such as Google Docs so that they all have access to their project. The unequal distribution of work is improved by assigning specific roles to students within their groups. Finally, I try to address the personality clashes at the beginning of the year by explaining that students will be required to work with various partners throughout the year. I tell my students that I am helping to prepare them for the workforce where they will inevitably have to work with people they may not like from time to time.

I am excited to use some of the online resources that we learned about this week to improve future group projects in my classroom. I want to knock down the walls of our classroom and go global! I think that Skype, The Global classroom and Wikispaces for education all look promising. I have a lot of work to do before heading back to school in August.

Research and Information Literacy Skills

My head was spinning by the end of class today. We looked at so many different apps that have great possibilities for use in the classroom. I definitely need more time to digest all of the information. After the whirl wind afternoon of apps, I am trying to take a step back and remember our discussion from this morning about critical thinking and information literacy. We received several great resources this morning but my favorite site was Kathy Schrock's page "Literacy in the Digital Age."I think that there is enough information on this one webpage to keep me busy all summer! I definitely plan to spend some quality time there.

As I start to think about the upcoming school year, I want to figure out some ways to include the topic of information literacy into my curriculum. I know that my students can definitely benefit from more instruction on learning to evaluate websites for reliability. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing things that we read online without taking the time to investigate things fully. I have received countless emails from friends over the years warning of imminent dangers on the Internet which turned out to be hoaxes. It is not only our students who are easily duped at times. That being said, it is difficult for me to decide exactly how I will implement this topic. I like to stay in the target language as much as possible during class because students need a lot of comprehensible input in Spanish. I have been searching around a bit and I have come up with a few articles written in Spanish that deal with the subject of  evaluating the credibility of a website. I am planning to gather a few more and then have students choose an article to prepare for a class discussion. Then I think that one activity that I want to try is to have my AP Spanish students film some public service announcements on the topic of information literacy that I could then show to my lower level classes.

Critical Thinking and Customized Learning

Critical thinking skills align very well with the key components of customized learning. In project and problem-based learning scenarios the climate of student voice and choice forces students to think critically. They must make various decisions about their own learning. They must evaluate sources and ask good questions. Lower and higher level thinking skills are required as students progress through a project.They must start with basic recall and understanding of concepts but as they get further into the project they will apply, analyze, evaluate and create. Formative assessment by the teacher is an important aspect of customized learning because it helps the students to evaluate their own progress and to stay on track. Finally, project-based learning encourages critical thinking since there is no single 'right' way to complete a project. The multiple pathways to learning go hand in hand with critical thinking.

The websites Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie, and Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division are great examples to use to show the importance of critical thinking. Both websites have many of the elements of legitimate websites. There are testimonials, visuals, official looking links to web stores and payment options, there is even a link to a press kit! Some great class discussions could be generated around the topics of how to evaluate a website and how to maintain a critical eye when viewing information on the  Internet. I could see using these sites in my Spanish classes as a brief introduction to the importance of finding credible sources. I could also use these sites as jumping off points for creative writing assignments. For example, I could have my upper level students write a testimonial letter for the Aluminium  Foil Deflector Beanie in Spanish or come up with their own special report about the dangers of DHMO in Spanish to add to the research in order to give the site a international flair!

Technology Infused Classrooms: A Unique Learning Environment

Today was a productive day in class. I am glad that the class is small and we can concentrate on topics that are of interest to specific people. Three things that stand out to me from today's class are the following;

1. When technology is truly infused to create a more student-centered classroom, it can really help to promote higher level thinking skills. Students don't always like being pushed to think and create which is one reason that so many students seem to push back and resist embracing the use of technology in the classroom.
2. Clear rules and expectations for the use of devices in the classroom coupled with consistent reinforcement should help create a more manageable classroom environment. This is one area that I really want to explore and solidify before the start of the next school year.
3. Allowing students to choose the tools that they want to use to complete a certain task may lead to better results when using technology. 

NETS (The National Educational Technology Standards)

One of the NETS for students that stands out to me is #2 Communication and Collaboration. As a world language teacher I am obviously interested in communication and I would like to do a better job of providing my students with opportunities for collaboration with students from other cultures. As a parent of a recent college graduate (who is now gainfully employed!!) I can testify to the importance of good communication skills for students who are searching for a job. Both face-to-face and online communication skills are essential life skills that we need to emphasize with our students.

One NET for teachers that stands out to me is #1 Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity. For me, this is what teaching is all about. If using technology tools can help me to do this in a more efficient way then I am ready to learn. When I stop to think about how much education has changed throughout my career, it truly boggles my mind. I remember when getting my hands on one Spanish newspaper or magazine was a major chore. Now the world is literally at my finger tips. Authentic Spanish language samples are just a click away for me and my students. The resources available can be overwhelming.

This leads me into my concern about my unit project. I am planning to revise my first unit for my Spanish 3 classes. This involves a review of the past tenses in Spanish as well as learning how to express opinions in Spanish. I would like to make this more relevant to my students by helping them to make connections with a wider audience than just our class. I am hoping to have them correspond with students in Ecuador. I actually have a connection with a teacher there (one of my former students) and we started emailing back and forth this past spring about connecting our classes. I love the idea but when he started to throw out some ideas of web tools that the students might use to communicate with one another, I began to panic. I have never heard of some of things he mentioned and I started to feel overwhelmed. My hope is that I can explore some of these tools this week and I will be able to contact him with an informed response so that we can get things rolling when we return to school in the fall.

5 Instructional Shifts to Promote Deep Learning

This article makes a lot of sense to me. As technology becomes more and more a part of our daily lives, it imperative that we (as educators) find ways to help our students make the best use of technology to support their learning. We need to focus on the instructional goals of our curriculum and choose the technology tools that support those goals. Too often technology-use is viewed as a goal in and of itself rather than a tool to support learning the curriculum. One line from the article really struck a cord with me: "While it's safe to say that many schools are wired, it's time to combine digital tools with innovative instructional practices to get our students plugged in."

If I had to choose just one of the five instructional shifts as a focus area for improvement in my own instruction, I would choose the Informal Assessment shift.  Although I do assess my students informally on a daily basis, I definitely need to do a better job of managing separate groups for remediation and enrichment. I would also like to work on designing lessons that allow my students to access content and demonstrate learning in a variety of engaging ways. I know that there are technology tools available that can assist me in accomplishing these goals but I need time to explore and choose the best tools and then to learn the best ways to implement them in my classroom.