Mendoza: Spanish

Wow, I cannot believe the semester is coming to a close. It’s a great satisfaction to know that I made it to the end. This semester has been one of my busiest semester ever and I’m elated that I managed to keep up with my four classes in two different colleges, the MCC Soccer Club, Mi familia, the POT Program, etc. I feel accomplished today. 🙂

When assessing my contribution I felt like I could have done more, but overall I believe my contribution was satisfactory. My posts were insightful and I was able to communicate ideas that I believed were relevant to the assignment. I wished I had made more time to comment of other posts and giving more thoughtful insight. I attended all the workshops that POT offered this semester, which made it possible to meet Lisa and Laura and other professors. I was able to find very cool tools and resources that helped me grow, and it also helped me to re-ignite my passion for technology: Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever.

Finally, I am very happy for the opportunity to work with great professors that gave me feedback and new ideas. Thank you and I’ll see you next semester.

Week 1: A little about me
Week 2: Pedagogy and a bit more
Week 3: SLO and culture in my class
Week 4: Creating my course on BB
Week 5: Creating an interactive syllabus
Week 6: Fun activities
Week 7: Online vs F2F
Week 8: Creating community
Week 9: Skype and VoiceThread
Week 10: Create and share should be our motto
Week 11: It took me a while to complete but it was worth it
Week 12 🙂

It took longer that I expected to create and upload the video presentation to my blog, but it was all worth it. Please if there are any comments or suggestions, they are all welcomed. Thank you for watching.

http://youtu.be/brbyEdcCmZY

I really enjoyed Larry Lessig’s video. He argues that it is important to take content/music and create something new.  That is how we learn and create. An idea enables us to create a new one, enhance one, remix one or modify one. As an instructor, I want precisely that. I want my students to get my content, spread it and use it often. I want to spread my knowledge.

I also agree with Lessig when he states that no one should be able to take someone’s work, package it and sell it for profit. I am fairly aware of copyrighted material and I strongly encourage my student to be conscious about plagiarism and using content that does not belong to them. Copyright laws are in my opinion very vague and after reading chapter 8 I felt a bit more educated on the matter. As I get more into online teaching, I know more questions about copyright and intellectual property will arise.

Open Educational Resources (EOR) are great. I in fact have bookmarked and downloaded many free resources. I spent a great deal of time searching the vast amount of interesting resources for Spanish. Here are some links for Spanish resources: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=spanish and https://archive.org/search.php?query=spanish

Over all this week was extremely informative, and I am pleasantly surprise for the resources provided to us. For next week I am thinking of uploading a Slideshare. It will be a very interesting week as well.

This week we had to reflect on student activities. Fortunately, for language courses we have a great number of resources that we can provide to our students.

The downside of online language courses is the limited communicative experiences students could have.  The challenge for me is to find different activities to promote and encourage oral and written practice.

These are some potential activities:

1. Meet-ups with groups or with a partner to complete an oral activity or activities. In our reading, it mentions that working with large groups is not recommended. I also agree that large groups do not work. The students will keep a log to register their time and describe what they accomplished. The meet-ups can be via Skype, FaceTime, or other means arranged by the students.

2. An oral presentation. This activity will allow students to talk about themselves and by the same token learn about their fellow classmates.

3. Creating Discussion Boards, Journals or Blogs. I intent to create a Discussion Board for students to comment about their personal tips on studying, progress, struggles, etc.

4. Having a guest speaker sounds great. I can introduce a former student or Hispanic student and allow questions and answers.

I am sure that with some experience that the number of activities will grow and will become more efficient. If you have any ideas or activities that definitely work, please pass them along.

This week we learned how important creating a community in our f2f or online classes is. What I love about my f2f classes is the close knit community that we build during the semester. How do I create community in my classes? I do a couple of things: 1) many, many group activities, 2) meet-ups  after class or before class in our study groups and 3) oral presentations/fiesta (party), where we learn more about our fellow classmates. It’s a process from begin to end. It takes great effort to establish a strong community but once you have it, it’s well worth it.

I believe the same approach can be taken in our online classes. Therefore, it is vital to begin on our first day of class. Here a voice-thread can be the perfect tool. You can ask students to introduce themselves by leaving a thread and comment on one or more threads. This can be a great opportunity for students to meet you as well. I know it works because I have used voicethread.com for my hybrid course.

In our reading this week it mentioned that Myspace or Facebook can be great tools for (a)synchronous communication. This week I’ll be working on my Facebook for my Spanish classes. I also created an IM on Blackboard and I’m working on incorporating other tools into my classes, such as Skype and Screenr.

I also think Pilar makes a great point. You need to make your online space inviting and pretty. As a student we want to feel welcomed and feel great in our environment, in our classes.

I have taught a hybrid class in the past, and I don’t know what to expect once I get an opportunity to teach a full-online class in the future. I do feel comfortable in the classroom because I have been teaching for a few years. I’m pretty sure I’ll find new challenges. The textbook mentioned that teaching an online class is based on trial and error, and I find that to be true. I say that because of my own experience teaching on campus classes. I find myself critiquing all my activities and trying to find a way to make them better. I am sure it will be similar to teaching an online course; it is scary but at the same time exciting.

Jinnefer Humber’s video summed it all up: Who, What, Where, When and How? The five questions can act as a check list for an online class.  For me, it has been very helpful. It will determine who my students are, what goals and objectives must be met, where they can access the course material, when they can access and submit it and how they will access it.

Finally, I have been visiting different (free) sites in order to get acquainted with other tools that might be useful once I begin teaching on online class. I have signed up for Twitter and began to follow a few interesting people, created my avatar and began creating a video presentation for my Spanish 101 class.

I had a blast creating my avatar. He and I even look identical–maybe not so much. Press play to hear him talk. Here he is:

This week I was introduced to html and other useful tools. Html is a bit intimidating to say the least but very useful and interesting.

I found a good internet site that incorporates lyrics, writing and listening skills to teach Spanish and other languages. This activity is great because I love using music in my classroom, and this website will help me embed music to Blackboard.  My students in this activity will be analyzing and applying information. 

This is what a student would have to do: Choose a song and a level (easy, medium or difficult), play it and type the lyrics in the blank space. The student can repeat the song indefinitely. The song will stop if the student cannot type the correct lyrics. Once the student types the missing lyrics, he or she can proceed.

I had a difficult time trying to layout the video. What I did was first post an image of the site. Because I am not tech savvy, I was unable to link the pic to the website. Here is the link to the website: http://www.lyricstraining.com/play/1822/yuridia/irremediable#

Yuridia, “Irremediable”

I also posted the YouTube video with the lyrics in case anyone wants to hear the song in its entirety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPjAzhQ9QEM

Week 5: Online Syllabus.

Transforming my f2f syllabus to an online syllabus has been challenging, but fortunately I have gotten great advise, such as emphasizing due dates in bold and red, repeatedly sending announcements, chatting as much as you can to let students know that you are there, having an easy way for students to communicate with you, being prompt on responding, creating a contract in Bb and making things explicit. These greats tips are reiterated in chapter 5 of our textbook.

One thing that I found questionable was creating a class with weekly tasks or giving students an overwhelming amount of information. I think breaking up activities and assignments is the best way to go. My class is divided into chapters. I found this option at this time more appealing. I am pretty sure I will make many changes to my class with time.