Before reading the Michigan Merit Curriculum "Online Experience Guideline" (Companion document), I did not realize that the State had such a clear set of expectations regarding what qualifies as an "online experience" for our students and what does not. I also did not realize that there is a 20 hour requirement for these "experiences" and can't help but wonder how many students are actually achieving that goal.
One technology that is mentioned that I feel is highly useful for Spanish students is the podcast. Podcasts have so many applications in a language classroom, as they can provide great auditory experiences, visual learning, and can allow students to engage in self-driven learning or add to a lesson guided by the teacher. I often wish my students had additional opportunities to listen to native speakers and other fluent speakers besides myself because I believe that helps them get a better feel for the flow of the language overall. Podcasts would enable students to listen to other speakers as well as conversations in context.
I believe that podcasts can essentially help teach almost any Spanish content. Students can listen/watch a lesson on grammar points, practice vocabulary with listen/repeat formats, and gain cultural awareness through hearing podcasts of hispanic news updates or dialogues on key topics.
In my experience, podcasts are not only useful as modes of content delivery, they also are a fun, different way for students to demonstrate their knowledge or mastery of the subject. A few years ago, I had my students write and record "Spanish raps" in which they were teaching English speakers how to conjugate Spanish verbs in the present tense. They used the Apple program "GarageBand" to put their audio (including drums, bass lines, etc.) together, and simply saved them as "podcasts". I saw students' level of engagement increase substantially as they created projects that they knew could be shared over the Internet and downloaded to their mp3 players. Also, students could then recall and use the class raps to remind them of the conjugations.
Pedagogically, podcasts can provide scaffolding--guiding students through lessons. They also allow for cooperative learning in the case of projects like the one I mentioned. They enable educators to assume the role of a "guide on the side", where students are working with the content through the podcast and the teacher provides supporting structure, questions, etc.
I think blogs, although I love them, would be harder to use with my students. While on one hand students familiarity with web-based profiles, etc. could be useful in blogging, I also feel it could jeopardize their safety. What I mean is that students are used to sharing information through media such as Facebook and generally do not censor themselves much. Students might feel that same amount of "freedom" on a blog and share too much information, inappropriate information, etc. I also feel that blogs would be hard to monitor on a large scale with only one adult to keep track of them. 150 blogs to follow would mean a huge amount of time checking on student posts, monitoring for appropriateness, etc. They might work with a smaller group and may be more easy to use with older students (e.g. 12th graders rather than 9th) who might be less tempted to abuse the privilege.
1 comment:
We have very similar views on this subject! I almost wrote about blogs being difficult to use in the classroom as well. Trying to explain and back up the use of blogs to parents and administrators may be challenging. Not to mention blogs are a potential space for students to reveal too much about themselves, just as you said.
I loved your idea of using GarageBand! I bet the students had a great time using that to create their raps. I'm sure they were also learning a lot about conjugating verbs and technology at the same time. I just may have to try that out!
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