Trying to engage first year spanish students may be a hard task for teacher's as a language is usually required to graduate, not necessarily a "want to take" class. Getting students to become engaged is a challenge, but would the help us technology help to make it easier? Getting students in a first year Spanish class to talk with people of other countries was a required assignment, to hopefully get them to relate more to the culture they were learning about, but how do you do that if you are no where near that country? This is were the wonderful use of technology and computers come in; they are required to talk to people through online chats and hear from the countries natives what their lives are like. In addition to online chatting, they used: blogs, wiki, excel, online databases, graphic organizers, email and photo story to "sheen a country report". After extensive research the students were required to give a power point presentation based on the facts and information they found about their country.
Trying to get students more evolved and excited about doing reports is what needs to be done to obtain better grades and an understanding that will last with them, rather than cramming the knowledge just for a report and good grade. Letting the students have online chats with people from other countries gives them the knowledge from a person their age, a point of view they can relate to. Being able to give a power point presentation in a 3rd grade class would be a great experience for the teacher to see where the students are in the technology area. Students need to learn how to use wiki and proper research data bases to receive the correct and probable information to complete a truthful project, especially research projects. Having the option for all the different technology resources available will, in my opinion, help to further a child's education.
I really like this idea in this article. I have never thought about doing online chat with other countries as a way to get exposed to the language. This was related to the article I read about students learning globally through "cyberadventures", as where the students would meet other students from a different part of the world and experience the outside world through the Internet.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great way to get students to actually use the language they are learning. They probably wouldn't use it much outside of class, and actually engaging in conversations with someone in the language they are learning will help them remember what they've learned and force them to learn the language. Getting to know the culture and actual people from that culture may provide a more interesting setting than just talking to other students in their class.
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