Using Technology in F2F is possible too

 This week I thought a lot about participation, class management, and class “landscape” as Eric Robertson calls the online classroom. There was a lot to read and diverse; I enjoyed reading the articles and the book, even the Moodle Tool Guide which made me explore a little bit Moodle and its possibilities.

You are probably tired of read on my blog that I do not teach online but I am eager to start. And here I go again; exited to be close to the day I have my own online class. The instructors on my department are constantly helping me and giving me ideas. They showed me their classes and that helped immensely.

I am very comfortable with Blackboard 9. I am the kind of person who likes to try new things all the time and in the times when Blackboard was not mandatory to use for the F2F classes I had my class set and used it every semester since. I participated in lots of workshops and conferences about Blackboard and other technologies. Now that I “played” a lot I think I know what is comfortable for me and what is better for the students of Spanish. I would not dare to create a class from scratch; I would use Blackboard for sure (Voice Board, Voice Email, Discussion Board, and syllabus). I will also use Google (Google Voice, Drive, Sites, and Forms), Skype, and Facebook.

 I read Ko and Rossen suggestions for participation points and also consulted my colleagues about what they do for participation. I am thinking and I am almost convinced that I would like to use Facebook for participation. I have to design a rubric that specifies what students need to do to get the points and make sure I do participate also in it. I use Facebook personally all the time to be informed about what my kids and grandkids do. I also like to stay in touch with my friends in Argentina. My Facebook is all bilingual; I write half in English and half in Spanish; I read half English and half Spanish. That is what gave me the idea of a group Facebook page where students post information about them, videos in Spanish they like and etc. I believe it is going to create a sense of community and will allow me to get to know my students. I love to hear from my classmates in POTCERT about this 🙂

I leave you with a phrase I really liked from Rebuilding the LMS for the 21st Century:

“A phrase we use a lot on our campus is that we feel it is our responsibility to train our students for the world they’re going to inherit, not the world they live in now, and certainly not the world we grew up in.”