Languages from a Distance

I threw together a VuVox collage to create a mini presentation for our annual Education Staff Retreat at KET. The presentation is a bit rough on the edges but it was fun to work with VuVox to create it. See if you can find the “Hot Spot” to Alan Levine’s 50 Tools for Story Telling. It is a GREAT resource for educators in finding Web 2.0 tools.

Happy George Washington’s B-day! Hey, speaking of presidents…. there’s a presidential election going on: an election, in which the word “change” has been evoked throughout. What a fitting theme to all the activity that is taking place in the world of distance learning! Connectivity, choice, and personalization can now be provided as never before to ALL students regardless of geographic location.

Some of the new components of KET’s Distance-Learning German program are outlined on this short video. Click here and have a look!

The rate at which amazing educational tools are being created and refined in just the last months is beyond comprehension. I hope by now you have come to terms with the fact that there is no way that you will be able to keep up with it all– especially if you are a teacher (i.e. you ALREADY have no life.) The good news is there are some great edtech bloggers out there who do a lot of important investigative work for you. My favorites are Will Richardson and Wes Fryer. In the end however you will have to decide on your own which technologies work the best for your unique circumstances.

Where to start? Well, what are the priorities you’ve set out for yourself in your teaching?

As a world language teacher, the idea of helping my students establish connections with young people in the target culture has long been a central part of my approach to instruction. But now that I have gone into distance learning, connections play an even bigger role. Connections are part of what has become the triumvirate of top considerations for me when deciding the road ahead. The formula I’ve come up with goes something like this: connections+collaboration= community. For years, research has shown us that community is essential to students’ feeling of success and satisfaction in distance learning. See here. Thus we have to urgently seek out means of connection and collaboration for our students to ensure that a community can establish itself.

New web technologies provide us with so many great tools. In the last month I have narrowed my focus down to a small assortment that I’m monitoring closely, some older and more familiar than others: Facebook, Ustream, Voicethread, Gabcast, Mindmeister, Google Earth, Yugma, Skype, and Second Life. Though the list is long, I think that each platform offers something unique..and yet is easily accessible and user friendly (Second Life may be a bit of an exception here.) Many of these tools and platforms can be used in conjunction with others. I’ll be commenting on my experiences with them in future posts.

Doubts? Plenty. I do worry about what happens if the community that we’re aiming for does not materialize….Students seem so “maxed out” these days. Will they be willing to set aside time and get actively involved?

How to avoid failure? We’ll build towards community slowly. Providing students opportunities for connections comes first. Of course we will push the opportunities through incentives…. And then collaboration will be required as well.

So much to do. I’ve decided that I’m going to borrow from others…

Susan and Thomas describe the Personal Pizza project as a fun way to get back into the language and vocabulary that students learned the year before. That would fit perfectly into the review and intro unit that I plan to start off the new KET German II program with. The Personal Pizza could be the first “event” of the Ger II year and provide a context around which the language (themes/ functions/grammar) to be practiced could be organized.

For the project, the students use (or construct) a pizza box which, when opened, shows a pizza–a personal pizza, mind you–that like any normal pizza is divided into slices (I have just 7 listed below.) In each slice the students provide artwork representations –no writing!–according to the following instructions:

1. describe self

2. describe activities you like to do and activities you dislike to do

3. describe 4 things about school

4. describe your favorite season

5. describe the upcoming weekend (using words perhaps / sometimes)

6. describe a typical day

7. complete the thought After school…

For the event Susan explained how she interviews each student one at a time (usually out in the hallway, while the other students work on something else.) Each student must bring his or her pizza box and point to the artwork while talking about each slice in the target language. The teacher uses a rubric that she checks off as the student presents.

Why is this so exciting? We can now do this in a DL context. Web 2.0 platforms make it possible. I can think of many possibilities, but Voicethread and UStream would be two very strong choices. Both are web-based, user friendly, and interactive. Simple podcasting would work too of course.