Embed - Aug. 1: Audacity

listen to ‘French Radio Show’ on Audioboo

I've embedded a sample "radio show" podcast created using Audacity.  It has 20 seconds of my voice and part of a French rap song in it.  I think podcasts are a useful tool and can motivate students.  However, after I recorded a podcast myself, I started to wonder if it exacerbates or makes obvious differences in student oral proficiency levels.  I think that in subject where most students are using English, it might be easier.  In FSL, students might have pronounciation issues.  On the other hand, podcasts could motivate them to improve their pronounciation.  Scaffolding with Audioboo may be a good idea to ease students into podcasting.  I can use podcasting in many ways in the classroom.  I can create a radio show as I did in this podcast.  To lighten workload, I could also collaborate with the other teachers in the school and have teachers of different subject areas each week talking about an idea that students had difficulty with or tough questions students asked them.  (e.g. How to pronounce "r" in French, Why do we need to learn math anyway?, What would have happened if Severus Snape went back in time and assassinated Hitler?)

Response: Content curation

I found the article well organized and reflective.  However, at the end of it, I still was not sure what content curation actually was.  This is the first time I've heard of this term.  I knew that curators at museums interpreted a museum's collections and would be involved in putting displays together for the public.  In that vein I guessed that content curation in education involved teachers interpreting content for students.  I looked some examples online of content curation on Pinterest and others and it seemed more like content sharing. I think I have an idea of what content curation for a History 12 course might look like, but I'm not too sure what it would look like for a FSL classroom.  My last thought was that if content curation is interpreting information and displaying it for students, it sounds exactly like when teachers deliver content in their classrooms using Powerpoint, notes, the textbook, and other lesson delivery devices.  In other words, for all of teachable subjects, a 75 min. lesson block is made up mostly of this content sharing.  I'm wondering if this will replace that.

Response: Podcasts

A fellow teacher candidate did talk about podcasting before as a teaching resource, but I find the idea of student-produced podcasts very exciting.  Now that I think about it, having students record their voices keeps them accountable and they are very conscious of the quality of their work.  I felt the same thing when I recorded myself teaching or when I screencasted in this class.  There is something powerful in hearing your own voice being played back to you.  I thought of a similar medium in terms of this kind of accountability, which would be video where students would see themselves as well as hear themselves. Video requires more planned elements such as blocking, camera angles, and other techniques and it is also more time-consuming.  Podcasting can be a better alternative to videos.

Embed - July 31: Polyvore

grey long-sleeved top by chengxia featuring platform sandals

I've embedded a set I've created on Polyvore.  Students could use these as inspiration to write dialogues.  For example, they could have two characters in the dialogue: the customer and the shop employee.  They could also use the set for a writing exercise on description and use of adjectives.  Another possibility is to have the students describe the set and have the class draw some items according to the description.  I like the idea of analysing characterization.  A variation of this could be a set and the students have to describe the personality of the person wearing it.

Response: Online translators

It's interesting that after I mentioned online translators in my last post, that we are looking at online translators today.  However, after further thought, online translators can operate as sophisticated dictionaries.  If students attempt to rely on a translator to do their work for them and plug in complex sentences, the translator most likely will not translate properly.  I think that online translators is one of the first issues to be addressed in an L2 classroom.  Once in my practicum, I did discover that a student used a translator.  It was mostly correct except for a handful of very awkward words.  The level of the French I saw was also beyond that student's ability level.  Now I wonder if the student found someone to translate it for her.  Either way, it was obvious and I had her rewrite the assignment for me in class.  I also noticed that the spacing between letters and the odd placement of periods made me suspicious.  That student was meticulous and would never put in strange periods and spaces like that.  Once again, I'm wondering if there is a technological solution to this besides having the students write in class with pen and paper.  It seemed like even if my SA and I were clear about online translators, they would still try to use it anyway thinking that we wouldn't notice.  The most frustrated person in the end would still be the teacher.

Embed - July 30: E-mags

Open publication - Free publishing - More cinema

I didn't know that so many e-mags would be available for free and in high quality!  I've embedded a volume of the e-mag «Clap!».  I could use this particular magazine for an in-class exercise or for homework.  I do agree that magazines are more visual and this particular magazine is quite visually attractive.  The students would be interested in the pop culture content in the magazine as well.  The articles can be very short and can be used as prompts for writing.  This would be particularly useful as a resource paired to many resource packages that schools buy such as Ça Marche! and On y Va that have units with themes on film and TV shows.  It would be a great way to supplement a textbook with more current content.

Response: Reading in the L2 classroom

I thought the article was very practical.  I appreciated the reminder from the article that students need to be reading different kinds of texts and that aren't always storing information in paragraphs.  I also liked the reading exercises that we could make quickly to help students with their reading skills.  My question is then how we would integrate technology into this area.  Technology does enable us to share text from the Internet with our students (e.g. blogs, websites).  However, if I did assign reading a webpage for homework, it is highly possible for students to Google Translate it.  During my practicum I did come across this problem and a teacher's solution for this was to do everything in class the old school way with dictionaries and paper.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with the pen and paper approach and we do not need to forcibly include technology in areas such as these.  However, it is true that student productions created with the aid of technology are easier to mark and students learn a great deal from online dictionaries as well.  I'm hoping that there is an online tool that could help with that.