Trackstar and Observations

 I really enjoyed learning about Trackstar yesterday. I think that it's a good way to unit various ESL resources into one commonly placed lesson plan. I'm about to begin my creation for next weeks assignment and I have been pondering all morning what to include in it. More importantly, I'm considering what content or grammar objectives I will have. I think I am going to have a little bit of fun with this project.

 Youssouf's demonstration was simple and to the point. I was reminded that almost any website can be used for specific language purposes, especially websites like about.com that congregate fact-based information about several subjects. I was glad to see Youssouf enthusiastic about technology for a change! I still think that there are pedagogical implications that need to answered when using a site like that, especially for grammar activities. Like I said in class, I believe that most activities should be content-based and overall, communicative. The vast majority of activities online are still in the grammar-translation mode. Although, this is slowly changing for the better, I think.

 I'm preparing for my observations, mentally. I will be observing a Spanish class in the GLL. This class meets 4 days a week. I am also observing two other Spanish classes that meet just as frequently. I personally think it's too much to do in a given amount of time. I will be researching for my APP as well as for the CALL class. The only difference between the two objectives is that the class observation is more broad based, meaning that I'll be looking at all aspects of language teaching with technology and not only listening.

 I was excited about conducting an interview at the conclusion of the observation. I'm not so eager about the pre-observation. I personally think a questionnaire would work best for this and it would be far more practical on everone's behalf. However, I suppose there are reasons for everything and I plan on doing it nonetheless. October is going to be a month of agony for me with everything with teaching and classes etc....

Breathing deep....

Jesse

Google Earth and James' Podcasting Presentation

 I thought the presentation I gave was a good beginning introduction to Google Earth and what it may offer to a language classroom. I really enjoyed watching the students maneuvere around it and see the potential benefits that it has. One of the reasons why I enjoy using it so much is because of my love of Geography and History. I can't wait to incorporate my web based lesson with this great tool. I think the recording feature offers many great things, but it still has faults. It would be nice if the images were clear in the 3-D viewing (they become blurry when recorded), and that you could see the multimedia pictures and videos that the author would click on. Nonetheless, it's a great thing to monkey around with! :)

 James' podcasting presentation was a great thing  to see. I really enjoyed seeing the potential benefits that casting offers to a class. I think this is something that I could utilize in future projects. Privacy would have to be very important. I think that when publishing them, especially for K-12 classes, they should be kept private on a site where you establish the personal settings.

 Dira and I discussed our web based project some more. We're sticking to the travel theme and hopefully will use Google Earth to enhance our lesson. Perhaps we can even use some sort of voicethread to enhance the communication between students and teacher. I look forward to completing this assisngment.

James' Presentation.

 I thought the presentation of Picasa done by James was interesting. He divided the way in which you work with the program into easy to follow steps. I think that this lesson would be good for a lower-intermediate class that understands basic instructions in the target language. I think it would be apparent to make sure that everyone has the same version of Windows so that the steps are perfectly in sync.

 If this were done in a real time classroom, I think it could easily occupy one hour of time given the speed of the students and the repetetive nature that comes with working with technology. The presentation was a good example of task-based integrative learning in which mulitple subjects and objectives were tackled in the course of completing one assignment.

 Good job James!

Wiki-mania!

 Yesterday's class was pretty fun. I've been on wiki's before but never created one and I like the prospet of using it as a tool for our final project. I like how a lot of these technology programs are meant to increase and harness the power of communicating within an online forum. Similar to Twitter, Wiki's offer a great deal of resources for getting ones voice heard.

 I thought James' presentation was well done. He highlighted some very interesting ideas of Twitter and am glad to say that I learned a fair bit. Although I wonder how effective it would be for providing vast amounts of authentic input? I see Twitter more as a great way of submitting/answering questions to the teacher or class. For spreading ideas and little bits of knowledge. I think that through other websites like facebook, twitter could be incorporated into the huge world of social-media sites.

 I'm glad that I teamed up with Dira and Xu for the project. We work good together and have a lot of things in common. We decided that our topic of interest for the final project is "travel". I thought about this last night and like the idea of task-based instruction activities in which students would have to go and look up airline dates and prices on real travel websites like Orbitz or Priceline and answer a number of questions. They could also lookup the weather for their destinations and seek general information regarding popular places to vacation. I think this topic opens up a whole new world to task-based learning when combined with the internet for language enhancement. It's also given me some ideas on what I will do for my Technology Demonstration in two weeks.

 The discussion that we had in class was a pretty good one. I enjoyed thinking about James' point on the R of RAT. I do admit that I somewhat disagree with the point that he made regarding using technology just to get used to it. That made me question the goals of a language course. You're not there to learn about computer programs etc...., although learning new programs could be a part of a thematic unit. I think that basic instructions on computer use should be save for a technology class like I had back in middle school. But, I see his point in accustoming students so that their level of anxiety lessens and more language can be utilized.