Summer Vacation: A great time for Webinars

To be honest I am not sure I'll make all of these as many are when I have my short stint at home in San Diego, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't attend one or two. There are many more out there, but these are the ones that interested me:

Thursday June 28th the British Council has a webinar on how to make every lesson great! It takes place at noon UK time (which means I am getting up early down here in Mexico) but it should be fun! The speaker is an Anthony Gaughan (veteran teacher of 17+ years in the UK and Germany). He is a Dogme fan so we can probably expect some unplugged thinking. No need to registeer just click here when the time is right.

I have Shelly Terrell's webinars booked (every Friday at 1p.m. for LA) but I never manage to make them. I also hardly know what the topic will be before which I think makes me less likely to show up, but here's a link for anyone interested.

The ASCD is offering a webinar on "Reading for Meaning: How to Build Students’ Comprehension, Reasoning, and Problem-Solving Skills." Harry Silver will be the presenter. It takes place: Thursday, July 12, 2012, 12:00p.m. ET. The intention is to teach stduents to read for meaning, and draw conclusions that they can defend with evidence. You can register here.

EdWeek.org offers a webinar of Enhancing Teacher's Effectiveness. You can register here

This event takes place on Thursday, July 12, 2012, 2 to 3p.m. ET. And is basically about, The research that talkes about the impact of teacher effectiveness on student achievement. And the best strategies to achieve that.  Presenters: Dr. Jack Parish, executive director, 
Georgia Association of Educational Leaders 
Kirk Vandersall, founder and managing director, Arroyo Research Services 
Christina Mills, 2010 Wyoming Teacher of the Year 
Dr. Becky L. Shermis, executive director of program design, Product Development Group, Laureate Education, Inc. 
Moderator: Dr. Christine Jax, associate dean of Ph.D., Ed.D., and Ed.S. programs, The Riley College of Education and Leadership

 Connie Moss is the presenter for another ASCD webinar, "Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim  for Understanding" Tuesday, July 17, 2012 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT The goal is to improve student's learning by "creating learning targets to help teachers create daily lessons and learning experiences that amount to something enduring and meaningful over time." This looks like something that would encourage autonomous learning which I am a big fan of! You can register here.

Another ASCD webinar is on Tuesday July 24, 2012 4:00p.m. - 5:00p.m. EDT  Mike Fisher presents as he discusses some of the web tools he has found useful for educators. I am always hesitant about these as I don't know how much will be repeat, but since the webinar includes specific tasks and appropriate tool choices, with real classroom applications it should be one to check out. You can register here

One of my first Webinars was done through San Diego State's Language Lab. They still do a version of it every Summer. It is Social Media Workshop and can be done via the internet OR on campus if you are in San Diego. The workshop is July 30-August 30 and you can register here. 


There's another Technology Webinar this time with Howard Pitler. The ASCD gives on Tuesday, August 7, 2012 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT This one specifically discusses how to integrate technology into clasrooms effectively to get the most out of student. Feel frree to register here
Do you know about any webinars coming up this Summer? Share your knowledge in the comments!

Don't flip out! It is just a flipped class! (part2)

So after I listened to Jon and Aaron talk about flipping I checked out the flipped class tweets and saw that Crystal (Who Jon actually gave a shout out for her WSQ forms) was holding a webinar. So I thought...why not! (a recording is now available here: if you want to check it out yourself)

There were some technical difficulties so the webinar started 15 minutes late (5pm). I had an appointment at 6pm, so I hope I don't miss much at the end.

To start she used PREZI so I was happy :)

So Crystal is a high school math teacher (seems like she does some of the higher levels: (pre-calculus) and some of the basics (algebra).  She started flipped classes because:

• She was having problems with the traditional class:
• Her students worked at different paces (OK...mine too)
• They miss different parts (zoning out or missing days) (Not so much here on physical, but mental ooooh yeah)
• They do homework incorrectly or not at all since it is too long between class and homework and they don't have guidance. (Yep)
• Too much teacher talk time with only 20-30 minutes for students to work in class. (Yep)
• Lots of tutoring for students who didn't get it the first time. (Eh, my students don't show up to tutoring, but...I suppose)

She reviewed what a flipped class is. Basically we go from being a "Sage on the stage" to a "guide on the side" (who coined those terms? I am in love!)

• So, why is flipping better that the traditional classes?
• I can work one on one with each student each day I see them! (This seems ideal)
• There is the dynamic, engaging, interactive classroom that she always wanted but never had (again, this sounds good)
• Students without parents who can't help students with their homework can have the teacher's guidance and support in class (awesome, I remember calling my cousin Karen when I was younger for math help once I passed my parents)



My awesome 2nd Graders in Getafe!

• It is easier to differentiate classes. (ahhh differentiation...always the goal)

• What flipping let's students do:

• Students can pause, rewind, and re-watch lessons at their own pace
• Students don't have to worry about getting behind when they are absent due to illness or extracurricular activities
• Students can access the content for their class anytime, anywhere on any device.
• Students become active learners and self-reflective, knowing when they need to rewind, or pause the material to ensure their understanding. Basically students are in full control of their learning
• Students aren't stuck on homework problems anymore because now the teacher is here when they need them.
• They don't get as frustrated by homework assignments because they work on the problems in class where there is support.
• Students can discuss and make meaning of the content (higher up on bloom's taxonomy)
• Students who are proficient can work ahead on lessons and challenge themselves
• They can review material from any time in the year without waiting to see the teacher (or a response from her e-mail)
• Students learn to manage time and are held accountable for their time in class
• They receive instant feedback

From my perspective here is why I like flipping. I encourage my students to realize that their actions have results. I don't give bathroom passes. If they want to leave they can, but I won't repeat myself. I hardly take away phone, if they want to text and lose out on the lesson then they need to realize they won't understand things.

Flipping a class allows students to be in charge of their own education! They can control if they need to watch it again. They can control if they need to pause to understand a concept. They can stop it and do jumping jacks if they need their blood flowing!

However, like Crystal, I do think that the videos should be engaging AND the students should be engaged. 

Whether this is through asking questions in the video, making students to KWL sheets or...as in Crystal's case: having her students WSQ.

Have them huh? Her WSQ (pronounced whisk)

W They watch the 8-15 minute video and take notes in their Student Success Sheet packets.

S Students write a summary of the main points of the concept. They are either given sentence starters to use as support or key questions to answer to guide their summary. (The questions make sure that they know what you want them to know)

Q Finally like any good AVID student they question! They either need to ask something that they don't know the answer to, or a question that they want to challenge the class with. The questions should be HOT (Higher Order Thinking) as this leads to good quality discussions

Sometimes they use Google forms to submit the students answers (instant feedback wohoo!) and paperless (save the trees!) A teacher can read all the answers because they do it outside the class. I have used Google forms before but am always hesitant due to Google’s less than stellar privacy policy, but I may just need to suck it up and admit defeat. Especially because one of the attendees just introduced me to Flubaroo which looks very appealing for Concept Check assignments.

OK we're coming up to my favorite part. She, a math teacher, said that she wanted her students TWIRLING every day Thinking, Writing, Interacting, Reading and Listening! (she had speaking as well, but I am going to say that's covered in interacting). How great is that? She acknowledges the benefits of a well-rounded classroom! Why can't we all do that? I expect my students to calculate the totals on exams and figure out their percentages. I think whole brain learning is always best!

So, personally to me (after my 2 hour flipping crash course), I don't think I would want to flip classes every day but I do think that it will be helpful when working on essays, paragraph structure, grammar points etc. 

The other classes are usually interactive already (focusing on speaking and small groups) and flipping wouldn't be the best fit.

If you want to know more about how Crystal flipped check out her blog, you can also see her worksheets and samples of student’s work: http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.mx/

Do you flip? Did you have questions?  Do you know of a good alternative to Google forms?

Don't flip out! It is just a flipped class! (part1)

Notes regarding the last webinars I attended are still coming, but I managed to get some stuff in on Flipped classes today!

First I listened to Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams talk about Flipped Classes in an ASCDWebinar, and here's what turned up :)

OK first let me say LOTS of people have said LOTS of things about flipped classes. They gave us a few links at the beginning, if you end up being interested or just have more questions you should really check them out!

http://flippped-learning.com   http://flippedclass.com   http://flippedlearning.org   http://flipped‐learning.com   http://flippedlearning.eduvision.tv

Most people look at flipped classes as: "Classwork is done at home and homework is done at class" This is part of it, but they broke it down to some easy to see steps.

First off as a teacher you have to think. "What is the most valuable use of class time?"

For me, as an ESL teacher, it is speaking practice (pronunciation), them hearing native speakers, them getting to play with the language, writing, critical thinking and peer grading (which I standby as one of the best ways to learn).

To me, Aaron Sams said it best when he said, "We want students engaged in science, not listening in science." He admits that it started when he would record his lessons for his students. That way when someone missed class they could watch the class and catch up on the main ideas and then see the teacher with specific questions (YAY time savers)

In the end they decided to use the videos for the bottom two tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy (recollection and understanding) and trying to do the more complicated parts of Blooms together in class (analyzing, applying and evaluating) and possibly creating!

As a TBL lover this is great point. By moving the first two steps to home we have time in class to work on something more involved.

An important part to note is that the videos aren't always the first time the students see the information. Sometimes teachers give the videos at the start of a lesson. Other times they'll throw in in the middle. And yes, even sometimes at the end. The great thing is there's no WRONG way to do this!

Myths and Misconceptions:

• Flipped classrooms are all about the videos. 
• They are important to give you time to do COOL stuff, but they aren't the be all and end all of flipped classes. In some ways most upper division classes I've taken have been flipped. We were expected to do all the reading and research out of class so we could discuss and debate in class.

• Flipped classroom relies on homework 
• They suggested that you have stations, like in Elementary school, to avoid the homework concept. What about the Have vs. the Have Nots? Assign that homework to be done in school not at home just outside of the period (which is hard for athletes). Personally I think this part was a little weak and that with most of my students' schedules it would have to be done at home.

• Flipped classrooms create a digital divide.
• If a student doesn't have the internet you can put the videos on flash drives. If they have no computers you can burn the videos onto DVDs. The problems get bigger if you don't have a DVD burner, but you can write grants, ask the community for computer donations, ask a local tec company if anyone can refurbish some computers to help a school. Where there's a will there's a way!

• Flipped classrooms propagate bad teaching (lectures). 
• Lectures can be bad. They can be students falling asleep and teachers droning on and on, or they can be dynamic interactive classes. The same goes with videos. If we make interactive media rich videos then it is not encouraging bad teaching, it is giving us more time to teach in class while engaging students in a manner they are used to. They can be interactive. They are interesting. They are media rich for the YouTube generation.

• Flipped teaching is only for math and science.
• There's a PE teacher known as the flipped coach: Jason Hahnstadt. Basically, he feels that as a PE coach we spend too much time telling students how to move instead of them spending time moving. Check him out at FlippedCoach.com If you can do it with PE then you can do it with any subject! 

• Flipped classrooms will solve all your problems and make your classes perfect.. 
• It is NOT magic! As Jon Bergermann said, "It won't solve all of your problems in class. You still have to be a good teacher."

So what is it?

• A tool in the tool box. It is a tool in the tool box that you can use when it works.
• Use the idea as a stepping stone/bridge to make best combination of homework/classwork you can use with your students 
• Try to think of a flipped classroom as flipping the attention away from the teacher and flipping the attention toward the student.

The webinar discussed how helpful it is for special ed students (since they can repeat the information as often as needed) however I don't have special ed students so I didn't focus so much on that part.

Problems?

• What about students who can't learn from videos? (We recognize there are different learners)
• Basically this allows students to use the videos as one way to learn, but allowing them to have others if needed. Basically it is applying self-differentiation. You assign tons of options of how they can get the knowledge and then they choose what works best for them.
• You can also apply this to students' assessments. Students need different ways to represent that they have learned something. (It's why I give 5-7 different assignments for short stories and allow students to pick 3)
• What about the kid who doesn't watch the video?
• No magic bullet, this is just like every student who doesn't do homework.
• Some teachers have students watch in the back and they just miss out on in class time.

So how can you easily flip your class?

My great IH San Diego students flipped!

• Flip assessments
• Flip the tools (iMovie, Prize, etc.)
• I see myself flipping
• Essay structure
• Grammar points
• Some of my TOEFL lessons

How long will it take to flip a school?

I thought this was interesting to note:

The first year: You will be working on something new, but keep at it!

The second year: You will have some bugs, yet things will be getting better.

The third year: Almost there you'll just be getting rid of some wrinkles.

By the end of the third year: Everyone will know that this is just the way things are done.

Overall

Well it was nice to hear from teachers and see the questions other teachers had. Parts of the flipped classroom seem appealing, and while I don't think I would flip my whole class I may flip a lesson or two along the way. 

The mentioned their book is out so if flipping classes is something you want to learn more about you may like to check it out.

(I found another webinar the same day! If you want to hear what I learned from a teacher using this now check it out here)  

Have you had a chance to try flipping classes? What do you think? Or why haven't you done it yet?

Convention!

There's an TOESL convention coming up in Spain! I am pretty sure I am attending (my pre-registration hasn't been confirmed yet) with my roomie Katie. Looking forward to it (yep, I am a nerd :P)

http://www.tesol-spain.org/Events/Conv2011/Conv2011.html

Here are some keynote speakers:

Hugh Dellar Heinle Cengage / The University of Westminster Activating Memory in Class
Gavin Dudeney The Consultants-E New Literacies, Teachers & Learners
Adrian Doff Cambridge University Press Keeping it Real: Speaking English in the Real World
Mark Hancock Freelance Pronunciation Games for Spain
David A. Hill Helbling Languages The Essential Nature of Creativity
Ceri Jones Freelance You've got Mail
Geoff Jordan Vidreres, Girona Whatever Happened to CALL?
Jamie Keddie Freelance The Authenticity Trap
Nina Lauder OUP Exploring the Real World in the English Classroom
Andrea Littlewood Hyland Language Centre Ready, Steady…Speak: Steps towards Better Speaking
Herbert Puchta Cambridge University Press Ideas that work: Teaching teens to speak
Carol Read Freelance Picture Books and Cross-curricular Themes
Pete Sharma Freelance Teaching in the Digital Age
Russell Stannard University of Warwick Gems on the Web
Penny Ur Cambridge University Press Teaching Large Heterogeneous Classes

Foreign Language Classroom Assessment in Support of Teaching and Learning

There's a webinar coming up on the 10th through LARC again. It covers Language Assesment in foreign language classrooms. There's a quick podcast out now from the speaker (Dr. Matthew Poehner) who is trying to support assment towards support of learning compared to merely assessment fo measurement.

With the ongoing struggle of teaching to the test to generate adequate scores for their classes I a interested in this discussion and the implementation of dynamic assessment. It seems to be a more involved humanistic approach. We'll see how it goes. If you are interested in joining you can read more information here: http://larc.sdsu.edu/poehner-webinar/

Children's Literature

So in Methodology we were discussing different ways to teach using Children's Literature. My friend Danesha and I got together and made up a lesson for Hansel and Gretel. In this case we taught emotions and made a brief version of the story

So this is the lesson plan:


And this is the script for the role play:

CLIL and Teaching Methodolgy

The talented and smart Jennifer Schmidt

My other first class was led by Jennifer Schmidt. She got her Masters in TESOL and Linguistics and works as an English Professor in a business school. Our classes were mainly spent going over the different methodologies used to teach and trying to focus on teaching English through teaching another subject matter (using math for example to teach plural nouns)

For our final project we had to create a CLIL lesson plan using a seventh grade standard (from the LOE again) to teach English. In my case I taught about Alexander the Great to teach reported speech, and how to summarize. Throughout the lesson there would also be a review of past tenses. This is the first lesson (includes activating the schemata and such).



This is the teacher's notes, as Jennifer explained its like a toolbox it doesn't need to be in any order, it is where we put all the information we COULD use and then we use them when creating the daily lesson plans.


Overall it was nice introduction to the world of CLIL

House and Home

One of my courses was Biliteracy and Curricular Design it is designed to "include an analysis of biliteracy as well as its application to curriculum design in bilingual and multicultural schools." Our teacher Amparo-Abengozar is a coordinator of the bilingual project in Madrid as well as an English teacher in the program itself. She is also an English Language Assistant trainer for the Bilingual Project in the Community of Madrid State schools AND the BEDA program (Bilingual English Development & Assessment).

Through the course she focused on having us look over the different types of bilingual programs, the bilingual program in Spain and most importantly how to plan a didactic unit that connects the Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE) which creates the standards all classes need to follow.

In the end I created a didactic unit on the house and home (focusing on prepositions) for infantil classes.

House and Home on Prezi

Go Padres!

I went to a Padres game last night with my dad so I didn't have a chance to try out glogster, but I did make a quick voki


Get a Voki now!


Today's presentations are going to be on ESL wow by Claire Bradin Siskin. She has about tons of experience with technology and ESL so it should be good. She's actually presenting now so I'll make this fast

After that there's a presentation from Chris (who's been active in all discussions thus far) who has used twitter to teach Spanish!

Can't wait!

Blogging about Blogs

Perhaps this is considered meta-blogging?

Today started off with Ronnie Burt who works with edu-blogs now. Think of edu-blogs as a sort of teachertube of blogger (although I am sure they have a better marketing tagline). Most schools allow edu-blogs through their security filters when other blogs (like mine: http://www.blogger.com/) would get stuck. Which makes sense, I remember when youtube was blocked in Korea for a week. My lessons were dependent on those videos, I had to run home download a program that would save youtube videos to disk. Transfer those to my mp3 player and then plug that into the computer to make it work...basically it would have been much easier if I had been using teachertube and not had that stressful ordeal.

We went over embedding (which I manged to work out when I used my personal blog) and review some of the other fun web 2.0 things the Internet has to offer

Glogster Which I've checked out before, but at the moment is a bit too graphic for me. Perhaps I'll play with this later tonight and post something tomorrow. (update: Dec 10 2011 I still am not a big fan of Glogster for me, but find it a great took to give to students)

Vokis are essentially speaking avatars. I had never really thought of implementing them into ESL before, but I think I am beginning to stir up some options. Will probably mess with this tonight as well.

watchknow Is sort of like a moderated twitter for videos. Moderators essentially keep a running post of videos they think you should watch. But the catalog is AMAZING

They have a category for English grammar!

Which is then divided into Beginning English Grammar, Active and Passive Voice, Parts of Speech, Sentence Structure, Punctuation, and Spelling. Talk about user friendly! You can also just run a search if you're looking for a specific topic.

So not only could I perhaps find a video I have my students watch as homework about a difficult grammar concept(or use it to brush up myself before the lesson!). I could give them actual authentic content for History or Science in English! Or have them watch a video on hobbies and have them try to replicate it with their own hobby using photostory 3! Really excited about this as I see it as something that can save me a lot of time I usually spend looking through youtube videos.

Wordle isn't a new concept to me (people use it in couchsurfing a lot) but for those unfamiliar: You basically go to the website and either copy and paste a bunch of words, or a link to a web page which has words (in this case I used my blog) and it makes a "cloud" of words. The more a word is used the bigger it is (so my blog is pretty student centered I suppose). It is nice to make one for students before a lesson and use it as a quick attention getter/prediction task.

you can mess with how things show up if you like (colors, font, orientation etc).
So the one above is the same as the one below (as far as content) it just has different preferences.

A few more things and then I'll stop rambling :)

There's "Wall Wisher" where you can create a wall where people can leave sticky notes. I am not sure I really see the applied differences between this and a blog, but I suppose it would appeal more to visual and kinesthetic learners. For now I am envisioning something like this:


There's a theme (in this case regret) and students would need to post relevant videos, songs or stories. In case they need something to start I posted a song in L1 that they could refer to in the target language.

Vimeo is essentially a youtube (video sharing service) but it allows longer videos and seems to have stricter rules...I am not sure would have to look into it.

LAST THING!

So many of these websites you just want to try out before you sign up, right (like a test drive BEFORE you buy the car)?

I was reminded of an older website I used to use http://www.bugmenot.com/ It is used for free accounts online. Essentially you go to bugmenot and put the website you want to access. If someone has already gone through the hassle of creating a "shared" account you can just take that shared password and username to try the site out.

NOTE: This should NOT be used if you plan on using ANYTHING private. As you are using a username and password accessible by anyone ANYONE can access what you do within your account. But I usually use it BEFORE I make an account for a new free service (like Prezi) to see if it is even anything that I would be interested in joining.

Online class and some Linguistic fun stuff!

The first presentation started with Glen talking about his job. He's been a distance teacher for about 6 years. His students live in small villages where it is too inconvenient or expensive to get teachers, so he teaches from the computer.

He went over some ways that he uses eluminate with his students to keep it interactive and not just presentation.

Then we went through the basics of photoStory 3. It had gotten some great results from his students who felt that it was "more fun than writing an essay" (even though it still uses the same basic skills). So using some old photographs from Korea I put together a basic video.


Not fantastic, but I get how it can work with students. My one fear is that they may spend more time on effects than the language content. Sometimes we see this happen with pen and paper assignments. The artists make the fantastic elaborate posters with very little language content and the artistically challenged (me) do stick figures and gigantic paragraphs (theirs always looked so much better!).

---

Well I figured out what re-mix semiotic practices means! Thorne's presentation was really cool! You can still check out the recording and I HIGHLY recommend it. I'll actually try to make another separate post on it because it hits on some of the things I studied in Communications back in college so I'd like to be able to link to some Communication theories (which means it shall take a bit longer than the other summary/reflection posts).

Super fast

So...the things I've "made" using the new technology

I made a screenr of how to use primary pad



It is a big rambly, but at least I get my point across.

There's the primary pad we've been working on as a group. (You can see how we all could add to each other's work (in this case not much peer editing was done)

In the primary pad document we were advised to go onto voice thread and tell a bit about ourselves and what we learned

Soo, that's pretty much it today, we have Glen Cake giving a presentation on the "Online Class and Digital Story Telling through PhotoStory 3." This is supposed to give us the tools for storytelling such as how to integrate voice, images and text.

After lunch we have a recorded presentation from Steven L Thorn. This will go into uses of social media, "remix semiotic practices" I have no idea what that means, new media literacies, and multi-player gaming as settings for teaching languages.

That recording is already available here

Social Media in Language Education Part II Day 1

Well Michelle and Catalina seemed to mainly focus on the use of primary pad and voice thread for student collaboration. To help their students practice third person they were assigned groups from another school and had to describe

As a group students had to come up with sentences describing the duck. Now in this case they are 8th grade Spanish teachers so the sentences would be in Spanish. Since I primarily teach EFL my students would be doing this is English.

• His name is Paul.
• He likes to swim.
• He hates to do math homework.

Primary pad is a type of etherpad. EtherPad was the first web-based word processor that allowed people to work together in really real-time. It was started by applejet and later acquired by google (I believe) but when they shut down the program they released the code for others to develop. I may be wrong, but all you really need to know is it allows several people to get together and brainstorm, peer edit etc. The other thing I really like about it is you can use the public version without logging in or registering!

Since students are working with one another they get all the positives of peer learning (team-building, greater psychological well-being, social competence, communication skills, self-esteem, higher achievement etc.)

Now, this activity gets them to practice reading and writing, but speaking is also pretty important. So the students also had to go to the link that the teacher had previously created and they would read the list they had created describing their duck. Voice thread seems pretty basic, it is just a way to have students record their voice over a picture and allow people to leave voice comments.

Their presentation is here

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Finally Kyle Murley took the opportunity to show us around some sites on the web and we all brainstormed some possible applications of these different options.

Some of the things we went over:

Prezi: Essentially a gigantic white canvas where you can put images, text, etc that you can play with (rotate, make bigger etc). A decent alternative to powerpoint, but it will take me a long while before I figure out if it is really any "better." It still seems rather presentational rather than interactive. Regardless, it was still nice to be made aware of this thing I kept hearing about.

Twitter: Twitter is actually linked with screenr when Kyle spoke about it. I think that Thursday we will have Chris Brown talk about twitter more so for now I am going to skip any application and just talk about the concept. Most people are aware that twitter is a "micro-blog" which allows members to post 140 characters per entry. While many native speakers have to practice to get concise this is a pretty good size for people acquiring a language.

Flickr: By linking Flickr to an e-mail address you can have students e-mail (or sms) pictures of relevant vocabulary words or themes tagging them appropriately. This will give students a great base of pictures (meaning!) and since it is THEIR material they will be more motivated and passionate about the concepts you teach! GREAT!

Blogs!: It is also possible to send pictures straight to a blog! I know Blogger offers this as does flickr (through blogger). By just having a number or e-mail students need to text things so they avoid needing to have yet another log in and password and you still maintain control. There's more discussion on blogs on Wednesday so for now we'll end that train of thought.

Screenr: The great thing about screenr is it can post things directly to your twitter without even needing to start an account with screenr. If you have a twitter account that's all you need! YAY for one less password. Its basically a way to record what goes on your screen (and you can voice over) so you could do an exercise on "How to look for an apartment in England." A nice replacement to the usual, "How do you make lemonade?" I'll make an example later but for now that's a pretty good summary! I am really glad I found this and looking forward to tomorrow!

Social Media in Language Education Part I Day 1

On a lunch break from a Social Media workshop.

Teachers can use more than just books to learn!

"The goal of this summer's workshop is for each participant to walk away (or log off) with a new social media tool to use in their next language classroom. Along the way they will hear from language teachers using these tools, engage in discussions on best practices, theory, and global trends, and also meet potential partners for future projects. It is going to be an exciting and interactive workshop, so plan on diving into the technology without inhibition."

http://sites.google.com/site/larcsocialmediaworkshop/

Thus far I've had the opportunity to hear from Evan Rubin and learn more about using Elluminate. It is essentially an e-classroom with screen sharing, microphone, webcam, private rooms and many more functions. You can create a free account which allows you to have up to 3 people working at the same time. For bigger meetings (like this webinar) you need to have a paid account, but for the present time it seems the free one should work fine! We also got an idea of where everyone tuning in was from and the diverse backgrounds we all had in social media. If anyone was unable to make it but interested you are welcome to view the recorded session here We were also given the link to Learn Central where all the participants will be able to log in after and keep in touch with one another and the ongoing acts of incorporating social media into our lessons.

Soon after we had a chance to hear from Nicole Naditz as we all reviewed the basic standards for teaching (and learning a foreign language). It was great to be able to review what the main goals of learning should be and the different ways we all accomplish that.Her recording is here

Next up are Michelle Olah and Catalina Bohorquez who will be sharing about PrimaryPad and Voicethread applicable uses for students beyond the walls of the classroom.