Coffee Break French

Although I have yet to use a Podcast in my curriculum, I have heard very positive feedback from colleagues about their experiences in using Podcasts in the classroom.  I think that especially for foreign language educators, Podcasts allow students to have an extended period of listening contact with a native speaker of the language they are studying.  I believe that using Podcasts in the foreign language classroom would immensely improve students' listening skills, however I do think that there is more involved in using podcasts in the FL classroom environment than merely just playing the Podcast.  Students need to become familiar with vocabulary terms related to the Podcast before they even listen to it.  I also think that there needs to be supplemental activities included.  For example, students would need a "frontloading" activity, also known as an "anticipatory set" in which students would become familiar with the topic and related objectives to the activity.  Finally, there also needs to be a follow-up activity or an assessment, where students could show their understanding perhaps through a journal entry or through responses to comprehension questions in regards to the Podcast.  Podcasts can be great supplemental tools to use in the classroom but there should always be supplemental activities included.

While searching in the "Education" section of the I-Tunes store, I came across a very interesting and professionally sounding Podcast called "Coffee Break French".  Although the creators of this Podcast are not native speakers of the language, their accent isn't distracting when they're speaking French and their method of teaching important vocabulary terms, expressions, or verb tenses is quite easy to follow.  I listened to a particular Podcast that they created in regards to ordering food in a restaurant during breakfast time.  Since I teach this particular topic in my beginning level French classes, I decided that this would be a relevant Podcast to follow.  The dialogue takes place in Sainte Marie and as a "frontloading" activity, I would have my students do some research on this city and look up local restaurants.  I would also ask them to look at some of the menus associated with these local restaurants so that they could become familiar with what a breakfast menu in French looks like.  The dialogue itself is slower-paced so students would not have a difficult time following along, especially after they have become familiar with the associated vocabulary during class.  After each dialogue is completed, the creators of Coffee Break French then review what was said and what happened during the particular scenario.  They ask their listeners of their Podcast to listen again to different sections of the conversation to focus their listening skills.  Although the entire segment is 18 minutes long, I would probably only use the initial sections instead of the entire segment because my students would probably have the ability to listen through the dialogue twice without much problem.  Any issues that they had in regards to their comprehension could be reviewed by returning to the sections that they had problems with.  They would indicate their issues with the conversation during a follow-up assessment, responding to comprehension questions.  As a follow-up activity to this Podcast, I would ask my students to create their own dialogues related to eating out at a French cafe/restaurant and then have them role play their dialogues in class.

Podcasts have an incredible amount of potential to be used beneficially in the classroom and through my discoveries today, I have been convinced that this is an incredibly useful tool for the foreign language classroom.  Merci beaucoup Podcast!

ePals with Survey Monkey

Part of the attraction to ePals is that since it is online other tools and resources can be used while collaborating.  I mentioned in my last post that one idea I have for incorporating ePals into my classroom would be through a "Getting to Know You" activity in which students would write about themselves and ask their cooperating student questions about their own lives.  One tool that could be beneficial to this activity would be Survey Monkey.  Students could create a series of questions related to preferences in order to get to know their cooperating partner even better.  They could inquire about favorite past times, TV shows, types of music, musical artists, sports, etc. while using the Target Language.  This would not only again be beneficial to their language learning, but also to their understanding of a new culture as perhaps new musicians, TV programs, films, and even sports may be mentioned by their cooperating student.  This would also create more opportunity for dialogue between the partners as one partner may be curious about these new findings and the other student would be excited to share these things with his or her partner.  Instant collaboration is key to ePals' success and educators need to keep in mind the vast resources that are available to their students when developing an activity through ePal.

ePals

         I recently discovered a fantastic collaborative website based on intercultural exchanges.  It is called "ePals" and it is educationally based.  While viewing this site, I came to identify the intentions that ePals' creators had in mind when creating this website.  It is clear that they intended to create a space online for educators and their students where they could interact with other educators and students through collaborative projects or email exchanges and therefore would learn about another way of life.  Students would not only be given the opportunity to learn about a new culture and contrast it with one's own, but students would also obtain insight into commonalities that he or she shares with someone from another culture as well as creating a meaningful project that would serve their learning.  I was ecstatic to see this collaborative learning on the Internet and how beneficial this site could be for my students and their experiences in learning about French-speaking cultures.

       While exploring ePals, I noticed that a lot of users had already posted creative projects and ideas for using ePals in the classroom.  I think that this is wonderful as educators who are unfamiliar with this website, such as myself, could benefit from ideas and projects that have already proven to be effective activities in regards to students' learning.  ePals has six main headings on their site that help guide users to resourceful tools that ePals has to offer.  These include: Focus Areas, Projects, Connect, Forums, How To, and ePals Tour.  The How To section is very helpful to users of ePals in that it provides answers to any questions that a user may have in regards to this website.  The ePals Tour provides additional resources to the site, including a blog that provides educators with ideas connected to the use of ePals that will help enrich students' learning and help in acheiving academic goals.  This section also gives up-to-date news regarding ePals achievements.  Users of ePals can connect with other classes through the subtopic Connect, where users have the opportunity to select a location on a map or to refine a search by searching for a particular language or area.  Users can also connect with classrooms by searching through Projects.  Here users can look through a list of projects and select one as a means of specifying a collaborative project.  Through Focus Areas, users are given additional resources and links to a specific topic.  Finally, Forums allows users to post requests, ideas, or other information regarding the use of ePals that will evoke interaction with other users.  Under the heading of Forums, there are sub-Forums related to specific users, such as: students, teachers, and family members, as well as Project based forums and Focus-Area forums.  This amazingly innovative and collaborative website is user-friendly and provides its users with an abundance of resources that makes the cultural exchange more productive.

      After exploring this website, I felt very inspired.  I often feel as a foreign language educator that my students are lacking in authentic experiences that I know would only make their learning more personal and therefore would provide them with more motivation in learning a foreign language.  It's difficult to provide students with face to face contact with native speakers of French when there are very few in their region.  The Internet however has provided foreign language educators with an abundance of authentic materials, and now through websites like ePals, Taking it Global, and iEarn, students have the opportunity to interact with other students of different cultures in a more personal way.  The following are a list of ideas that I have in regards to incorporating ePals into my classroom:
1. Getting to Know You
          Simply put, students would have the opportunity to use their foreign language skills in getting to know a person of the Target Language culture.  They could explore the similarities and differences that they have with one another and begin to form an online relationship that would be productive to not only their language learning but also to their cultural understanding.
2. Digital Storytelling
           Students would be able to refine their language skills by creating a story with a student of another culture.  They would be given an image with which they must create a narrative that would describe what is happening in the picture and who the characters are.  Perhaps they could collaborate with a student from another culture by both providing a different narrative and then responding to each other's story.  Or perhaps they could make a collaborative effort in creating a story together by taking turns writing.  One student could start the story and then the next student could continue the story and so on.
3.  Writing Prompts

           Students could be given a topic to share with another student from a foreign classroom based on cultural aspects, such as: family, holidays, traditions, school, free time, food, etc.  They would then be able to learn about an individual's experience in another culture as not everyone within a certain culture shares complete commonalities with each other.

         In regards to ePals, the sky really is the limit.  The interactional cultural experiences that this site offers is priceless in regards to students' cultural understanding as it provides personal insights into another way of life.  I am excited about sharing this program with my students and I look forward to the insights that they will gain as a result of our collaboration.

La Vie en Rose

    Choosing appropriate and stimulating visual supplements to enrich curriculum is key to an educator.  This is true for all educators but particularly for foreign language educators as most of our students do not have the real-life opportunities to experience foreign cultures.  Through the use of YouTube, VideoJug, TeacherTube, and other video websites, educators now have an enormous amount of resources to choose from when selecting visual supplements for the foreign language classroom.  As amazing a resource as the World Wide Web can be, it can also be extremely overwhelming.  Therefore, before approaching any online video website, it is advised to have some concrete ideas in mind, otherwise, it may take awhile to choose.

During my search on VideoJug, I came across a "how to" video related to making crepes.  This was a great find as food is a consistent topic in the foreign language classroom.  I often try to bring in unique foods for my students to try and they are always curious about making these recipes on their own.  That is why I was especially excited when I found a video related to this topic.  I could post this video on my individual teacher website and students could watch it and then make it on their own.  It included ingredients as well as step by step instructions in how to make delicious crepes.  After I found this video, I decided to keep searching for related videos on YouTube and found one of a French creperie.  There were people speaking French throughout the video and I feel that this video would give my students the unique opportunity to see the same process done in a French creperie where the equipment and timeliness of this process can be quite different.

       In my curriculum, I also do a mini-unit on "les spectacles" in which I show French videos, music, artwork, and other related topics.  Since seeing the movie, "La Vie en Rose" with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf, I have been smitten with showing this movie in class, at least parts of it that lend to the understanding of Edith Piaf's life and French music from that time period.  I found some footage of Edith Piaf's performances on YouTube and added that to my video list as well.   These videos would be great to show in comparison/contrast to that of "La Vie en Rose" movie.

       I think that anything that makes learning more engaging and real to learners is key to their success and finding valuable visual resources online can be so crucial to enriching students' learning.

Bubblr Meets Flickr

Paris Stills by Boheme77

The link above is an example of how you could use Flickr along with Bubblr to create comic strips to be used in a Foreign Language classroom.  Typically I show students one individual frame or image to review expressions or common phrases that are used in the French language.  I created three different frames through this website and the link above will take you to my first creation on Bubblr.

Flickr

With Flickr, there are endless possibilities for use in an educational setting.  Having already used Snapfish, I made the false assumption that Flickr would be a similar website in form and in use.  Flickr is not just a place where online users can store their photos, but it's a place where creativity thrives.  Online users who post their pictures on this site have the opportunity to share their photos with other users and can access others' photos by using the tool "Creative Commons" which is located within Flickr's search engine.  Having access to a huge range of pictures is essential to Flickr's effectiveness in the classroom.

I was inspired by some of the ideas that I read about in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts by Will Richardson and I wanted to share them so below is a list that I have compiled of my top 5 educational uses of Flickr in the foreign language classroom.
1. Use in projects and/or presentations
        -Students in the FL classroom are consistently developing their language skills and understanding of cultural related topics through the medium of projects and presentations.  Instead of allowing students to get their pictures from just anywhere (typically images from a Google search), students can search through Flickr.  Not only will they probably find fantastic photos to use but they would also have the opportunity to communicate with the photographer.  This would be a great opportunity for students to interact with people from different cultures and at the same time it would greatly enhance their presentation or project.
2. Identify features in an image
         -With Flickr, you have the option to delve deeper with your pictures by highlighting certain parts of the picture by marking them off with a square.  This would be a great tool to use when introducing or reviewing vocabulary.  You could take a picture and use it as a theme and then search deeper into the picture by identifying different objects, actions, or people in the scene.  For example, a scene from a grocery store could be used to identify different food or beverage items.

3. Flicktion
          -Students find a picture in the "Creative Commons" search engine of Flickr and then they write a fictional story using the picture as a focus for their story.
4. Field Trips/Foreign Exchange Programs
          -Flickr has potential to serve as a tool for building relationships.  Students who participate in foreign exchange programs can use Flickr as a place to share pictures from trips or other experiences with their new friends.
5. Online Discussions
           -Students and teachers alike have the opportunity to engage in online discussions related to pictures that are posted on Flickr.  This would serve students well as they could engage in discussions related to cultural themes observed in images.

Flickr provides teachers the opportunity to enhance their visual supplements related to curriculum while at the same time benefiting students with engaging and exciting visuals to use as a point of discussion, to interact with, and to use in their own projects and presentations.

This Online World of Tweeting . . .

Up until this week, I had never before entered the Online world of "Twitter".  I had certainly heard much about it, from TV,  the news,  the radio, and also from friends and people that I work with.  I have always avoided this new phenomenon of social networking because in my mind, it was just another way for people to point attention to themselves, for people who would rather spend a night in with their computer as opposed to actually going out and being a part of a real social event.  Don't get me wrong.  I love technology.  It is a huge part of my life, but I also believe that there is a line.  Maybe I'm a traditionalist at heart, but I would much rather enjoy a conversation with someone over a cup of coffee and have face to face contact with them rather then having to send persistent text messages or to imitate a conversation via my computer.  I always saw Twitter in my mind as a small replica of Facebook, in that it gives people the opportunity to talk about the mediocre details of their day.  What is so and so doing right now?  And how is so and so feeling right now?  Technology has given us so many extraordinary opportunities to be creative and to make social connections around the world and this aspect of it has always turned me off.  However, I do see some light at the end of the tunnel.

When I finally put my prejudices aside and created a Twitter account, I realized that this site does offer some resources for today's educator.  I found a really great Twitter from a French teacher in North Carolina who had a plethora of great resources and suggestions for implementing technology into the classroom.  I also found some Twitter-ers who had insightful educational tips on blogging or making connections online.  I must admit though that it did take me awhile to find some of these worthwhile accounts but they are there.

After reading the article, 27 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom, and watching the video, Better Learning with ICT - Online Communities in the Classroom, I have decided that the following ideas would be advantageous to my curriculum in regards to micro-blogging:

• Collaborate Classroom Views: in essence, create a mini-blog by having students write brief reactions to a story, a cultural topic from class, etc.
• Create a class story using Twitter rules - only 140 characters; have students work in small groups to develop different parts of the story and then come together as a class to see how our story came out.
• Online Penpals: working with a school (in a French-speaking country), assign students a penpal to "tweet" with; each week may be a different topic: sports, school subjects, weekend activities, preferences, films, music, etc.
• Monitor Students' Learning Progress: have students "tweet" about what difficulties they are having with material, questions they may have, interests they have, etc.
• Discuss Current Events in France: students can read articles related to current events and then "tweet" on one topic that they found very interesting; they could also use this to begin learning headlining format, etc.

All in all, I can see relevance to this new phenomenon.  Although I may not use it consistently, some of my prejudices have been disspelled and I have found some worthy "diamonds in the rough".

Google Wave

This evening I created a Blogline and one of the first Blogs that I added to my feed was "So You Want to Teach?" - a very up to date Blog related to education and technology.  They had just posted, as of today, a write-up as well as a very interesting and informative video about Google Wave, a new e-mail that will supposedly revolutionize online education.  I watched the video that they had posted and suddenly became fascinated by this innovative way of sending and receieving e-mail.  They suggested that besides making e-mail more user friendly and efficient, Google Wave also has the potential to influence online education.

They suggested that Google Wave has the potential to replace Wikis by removing some of the common issues that users face when creating and/or adding to Wikis.  Along with improving group work activity and giving students direct contact with their teachers online, Google Wave also helps those students who may have been absent during a group project assignment begun during class time.  Since there is a playback function incorporated into this new system, students have the ability to see what his/her group has already accomplished and will better understand what his/her role is for the group project.  This also gives teachers the unique opportunity to observe their student's progress.

I am very excited about becoming a new user of the Google Wave although it has not officially been released yet.  Until then, I will continue with my regular good ole e-mail.

Ning-ing

The Ning group that I just joined, French Teachers in the 21st Century, seems like a great resource for me as a French teacher.  As I was scanning the webpage, I noticed that there was already a ton of great ideas being discussed and new technology resources to incorporate into foreign language curriculum. As a result, I am hoping to use this website as a place to dialogue with others who are in my professional field and to brainstorm new ways of introducing technology into the classroom.

A learner is like a chameleon . . .

A learner is like a chameleon because he/she must change and adapt to his/her environment in order to survive. 

In today's digital age, the ability to access and utilize knowledge is crucial to one's success in education, in one's profession, and in life.  George Siemens mentions this critical element to success in his article, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, when he states that a significant trend in learning is that the "know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed)".  Once a learner understands this crucial element and begins to utilize it, he/she begins to make changes to his/her understanding and begins to evolve into a new learner.  I used the analogy of a chameleon because I see today's learner as someone who must make changes to his/her way of learning and accessing information in order to adapt to an ever-changing environment.  A chameleon will change colors to adapt to his/her environment and will therefore survive in any environment by applying his/her survival skills.

Siemens reflects on this aspect of the learner nicely when he quotes Driscoll as defining learning as "a persisting change in human performance or performance potential which must come about as a result of experiences and interactions with content or other people."

While watching Siemens' video, The Impact of Social Software on Learning, I was again reminded of the importance of adaptibility as a learner.  Siemens stressed the importance of social networking as a tool to success in the field of education and expressed the essence of blogs and wikis when he said, "Blogs and wikis developed in order to enable individuals in a quickly changing knowledge field to continue to stay current and to continue to learn from each other."  Besides placing an emphasis on the ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment, Siemens suggests that the only way that learners can succeed is through social networking.  Experiences in life are very much connected to how we learn and what we learn and we have the unique opportunity to learn from others whose experiences we have not yet shared.  Social networking allows us this unique opportunity to gain new knowledge about experiences and to dialogue with others in order to build meaning and understanding.

Like chameleons, learners must adapt to their changing environments, but unlike chameleons, our chance of survival rests in our ability to work together.

Did You Know?

Choosing from a list of video titles found on YouTube, my interest was peaked immediately when I saw the title, "Did You Know?", so I selected that one to watch.  However, several seconds into it, I realized that this same video was used during one of my staff development courses and therefore I had already seen it.  I watched it again though with a new perspective of technology practice in my mind and a fresh question, "How does this connect to Blogging?"  I then decided to watch the video "Why Let Our Students Blog?" to see if there were any correlations to the first video.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a direct correlation.

The first video emphasizes the characteristics of the 21st century learner - what does he/she do, how does he/she think?, etc.  It also reveals how there is so much job fluctuation in the world right now.  Our students will most likely have between 10-14 jobs before they reach the age of 38.  With all of these shifting changes, we, as educators, have one important question to answer, "How do we prepare our students for technology and situations that don't even exist yet?"  In the end, we discover that it's more than just teaching them our content area.  We have to teach them skills that will be vital to their success in later years.  We need to teach them how to analyze, reflect, create, collaborate, evaluate, and communicate.  As educators, we already have a crucial responsibility to our students, but in this day and age our responsibilities have slightly shifted and we need to emphasize these skills in our classrooms, in our curriculums, and in our methods of teaching.

Giving our students the unique opportunity to use technology in the classroom is one way in which we can promote and foster these skills necessary to the 21st century learner.  The second video focuses on the advantages that come with blogging.  Through blogging we give our students the opportunity to communicate, to develop their literacy skills, to collaborate with others - in and outside of the classroom environment, to share their ideas, to create, and to actively reflect.  We also provide them with an audience and the chance to share their voice. 

Blogging is an engaging and motivating tool in education and we as educators need to begin to utilize technology in such a way that we provide our students (21st century learners) with necessary skills for the future.

Safety Blogging Tips

Some things to remember about safe blogging:

• Keep students' identities private.  (You can do this by either assigning students a new name or a number that they can use to post.)
• If students post pictures, they should not include any names of people in the picture.
• Make parents aware of the Blog.  (Send a letter home to inform parents of their child's involvement with the Blog, the purpose of the Blog, and to seek permission from them in regards to their child's involvement with the Blog.)
• Comment should only be approved by the teacher. (This can be set up through Blog settings.)

Blogs as Resources

Top 3 ways Blogs could be used in my French class:

1)  As a supplement to Cultural topics discussed in class.

            Since NYS is a Regents-based state where test scores are considered extremely important, cultural topics are oftentimes skimmed over in order to provide more time for grammar and other topics pertinent to students' success on the LOTE Regents.  A Blog could provide links where students could find additional information related to cultural topics discussed in class.

2)  Communication between American students and French students

              My school has a foreign exchange program in which students and teachers from a French school come to stay for a week with American teachers and students who are taking French as a foreign language.  This Blog could allow students a safe place to communicate with students that may be coming to stay with them or it could be used as a pre-discussion/post-discussion forum for questions that students may raise before or after the program happens.

3)  Photo Blog

              Providing students an opportunity to post pictures of different trips that they took, photos related to material we are covering in class (impressionist paintings, French art, etc.), or pictures from their French exchange program experience, would be a unique and exciting way for students to communicate with other students (French/American) and their classmates.  This would also provide students an opportunity to comment on their experiences and thoughts regarding different photos.