Home Sweet Home

How nice is it to be back at home? I'm sleeping late, hanging out with my dogs, and I haven't read a thing since I left Bennington, Vermont. I am bracing for a busy and productive school year, and I hope to start planning my courses in detail this week or next. I want to work on incorporating these new tech tools as soon as possible while they are still fresh in my mind. Maybe I'll even create another Webquest just for fun...though I think not.
I am going to work on building a Wiki space and getting in touch with my tech people back at school. I am very excited to share my technology experiences with my colleagues at school. I hope that everyone enjoys the rest of their summer. See you on the Moodle...

Technology to Increase Student Understanding of Environmentally Friendlier Alternatives

Ok, well I don't know how much energy is actually used to power these tech tools, but I do know that using electronic formats for silabi, assignments, and other documents that our students often lose does save on resources used to create paper. It can also save the school money in that there is less money spent on ink, toner and paper.

I have tried to rely as much as possible on school sponsored class pages on the Web to post the assignment sheets, attachments and handouts that I would normally give in class from saving the trees, and the time to run off copies. In the past I've used FirstClass and WhippleHill, and next year I'll obviously be using the Wiki. It holds the students accountable for accessing the materials, rather than relying on the teacher to give them to them. You do need to be clear about the expectation that they do actually need to refer to these cyber-postings. The other nice thing about posting documents on any Web or in electronic format is that the students know where to go if they have misplaced their copies (as is often the case with adolescents). Finally, it is great to be able to show parents how organized you are, and to be able to refer them to the place where all of the documents are posted. This approach definitely eliminates excuses like, well, the teacher never told us that or I didn't know we had a test. Of course you did, the assignment was posted two weeks ago and the cyber gods have the proof.

I think that I may have just gone on what Lisa calls a bird walk. So, speaking of the birds, and the bees, and mother nature...Only print when necessary. Think green.

Using Technology to Increase Student Understanding

I am very excited about the prospect of making other cultural settings more accessible to my students through the more efficient use of technology for education that I have been working with this summer.

For example, I have already created a collaborative Wiki space because I just absolutely love the idea of having an online collaborative community where work, ideas and comments can be shared. I think that it will help to build and strengthen relationships in my classes as well as provide an organized format for class activities.

I think that exposure to new types of technology is an excellent way for our students to construct their own meaning and make choices about how to use the technology for projects and assessments. In my classes, they will also need to visit different sites on the internet in order to research and develop their virtual 'Madrid' identies. For example, they will look for apartments and use tools like Google Earth to see the precise location. They will create these identities and use that context to practice the language communicatively.

I think the greatest thing about using more diverse tech tools in our classrooms is that the students can relate to these tools in that they are of the internet generation and they will need to be proficient in using a variety of tech tools during their lives, so we are provided them with valuble skills that can be applied in any profession that they choose.

Mission almost completed

What a relief! I've just finished (well, just about) my Webquest. What a great deal of work it is to design a Webquest for the first time. I wonder if it gets easier with experience...
I am excited to use this Webquest with my students to get the ball rolling in September. I am also interested to see how my students enjoy the Webquest activity. If all of their feedback is positive, I will look for other good webquests to use in my classes that already exist...no need to re-invent the wheel, right? I hope not. Creating a good Webquest is hard work, and I'm not even so sure that all of my hard work has produced a 'good' Webquest.

Emotional Overload

If ever I've had a "case of the Mondays," today was the day. I began the day with dicussion in my Spanish class about the desaparecidos of Argentina and the torture and murder associated with the country's last dictatorship. After, we watched the film Garaje Olimpo which depicted (rather graphically) the scenes of torture and horror in the concentration camps. Already feeling disparaged about the plight of the human race and our propensity for violence, I learn that an innocent family in the town where I teach was terrorized by two villians who invaded their home around 3am, and held the family hostage until they could take the mother to the bank in the morning to make a withdrawal while the father and two daughters were kept at the home. (I happen to do my banking at this same bank). This mother happens(ed) to be a nurse at my school, Jenn Petit. As I went through the phases of shock, sorrow, concern, wonder and the feeling of being utterly perplexed as to how anyone could be capable of such destruction of human life in such a violent and terrifying manner, I fail to understand why? and how?

Now, I think to the impact this will have on the community and how we will continue to be affected...As a boarding and day school, we establish close relationships, and I try to imagine how my colleagues and students will be reacting to this harsh reality. I wonder how well we will do to preserve their memory or how Dr. Petit, Jenn's husband will cope with the deaths of his wife and two daughters, and the circumstances surrounding this horrific event. I realize how close to home violence can be. I wonder how I will be able to support my colleagues and students during a time in which they will be coping, grieving and trying to make sense of this situation. Most of all, I wonder if, as a human race, we will ever put an end to these types of cruelities and behaviors...

If you'd like to see news pertaining to this story, visit: http://www.wtnh.com/.

Hitting the Wall

Not literally...Ok, so I've been asked to write about what it feels like to be 'hitting the wall' here at MATSL this week. I'm not quite sure I understand clearly what this means, but I think that I get to vent my frustrations in some way...so, here I go...
I guess that the most difficult part of being a Matslista this week has been trying to keep organized with all of the collaborative projects that we are working on with different groups. It has been challenging to get everyone together to work on our tasks, but somehow we are managing (I think its the Wiki that's holding us together!)
Also, beginning to work on a Webquest has been quite an eye-popping experience--I had no idea how much prior planning and work went into building a Webquest. It's daunting, but I think I can handle it. I will need a vacation after these three weeks though...
Being a student (and a teacher) definitely helps to give perspective to the experiences of my students during the school year. I can understand clearly why some have a strong preference for either working with peers collaboratively or working individually.

It's another rainy evening at Bennington College, and I've holed up in my room to finish reading Internet Detective. I actually felt like the information reviewed many things that I learned previously in my undergraduate library orientations and research endeavors. I did, however, enjoy the thorough review and the opportunity to quiz myself about my understanding of the material.
The part that most stuck out to me actually didn't deal with academics so much as it spoke to my personal experience. Reading about the precautions one should take to prevent Scams and protect his/her identity on the internet was very valuble as well as seeing that there are many resouces and links out there for veryfying the legitmacy of emails or websites such as http://www.snopes.com/ or http://www.scambusters.com/ . When I read that there was an email scam with PayPal some years ago, I felt foolish and angry for possibly haven fallen into this trap--a few years ago, someone hacked into my bank account under the guise of PayPal and made two extremely small deposits, each followed by a rather large withdrawal. I discovered it after my check card was declined for a small purchase at the supermarket. Fortunately the bank returned the funds to me, but I had to close the account, and open a new one, and it was a major inconvenience. So, if you take nothing else from this, remember that there are ways to be smarter and protect your finances online.