Wow! What a semester! I have to admit this semester was a very tough semester for me. It was the first time I took two full semester grad. classes and it was a lot. Driving to SHU two times a week and not getting home until after 8:00 makes it a very long day. Not to mention a packed teaching schedule that didn’t make this semester any easier. However, I did enjoy the majority of the class. I learned a lot of new tools that will help me to improve some of my lessons and gave me great ideas for some new things to try in my classes.
I liked the visual vocabulary project because as a elementary Spanish teacher I am always using pictures to represent the words that I am teaching my students. I use print pictures almost like flashcards and I also make PowerPoints with the Spanish word and the picture and they can link them. When I am first introducing the new set of vocabulary words I often will review the words on day 2 with a visual vocabulary PowerPoint. In the first half of my PowerPoints the Spanish word appears first and I read it and ask the students what it means in English. After the correct answer is given I will show the picture the represents the word. In the second half of my PowerPoint the picture appears first and the students then have to give me the Spanish word that is represented by the picture. This is a little harder but they can almost always come up with the word even if I have to do a little prompting. You commented that I should have given the English meaning afterwards but I disagree in foreign language learning you are suppose to stay away from English as much as possible. With my guidance students are able to understand all the words presented without the English written down.
I am not a fan of the wiki. I find it hard to use and a little confusing. I guess I am old-fashioned but I would rather sit with my group and work together face-to-face than thru a wiki. I can see the benefits of a wiki where people can work on a project and still be miles apart. However, I would rather work with the person sitting next to me. I can feed off of what they are saying and I work better that way. My group mostly did the work before and after class and just tweaked the wiki during the week before our presentation.
The digital stories were fun and I liked them but they were a lot more work than I had originally thought. I couldn’t use Premier Elements because it was only the trial version. So that was a little frustrating. Then I had to use movie maker which I never used before and had to figure out. I would have preferred doing the podcasts first and then the digital stories because the podcast are just audio, whereas, the digital stories include pictures as well. I wanted to have a music track in my first digital story but it was due before you taught as Audacity and I didn’t know how to mix audio and sound tracks. If I was using Premier Elements it would have been fine but I wasn’t so I was disappointed about that. I liked how both digital stories came out and my students are excited to see them. I will be showing them in my 5th grade Spanish classes next week.
I also liked Podcasting. Now that I really got the hang of Audacity the process went much quicker. I was proud of how I was able to stick certain sound effects in at the correct portion of the reading. It will make comprehension of the poem a lot easier. I’m excited to share the Mexican version of The Night before Christmas with my 3rd grade students next week. I will give them a print copy so they can follow along as I play my podcast for them.
The last project, the poster project, was my least favorite. I wish I could have made it more directly relate to my field because I think it would be more useful that way. I’m not great a design but I tried to make it eye-catching and informative.
Overall, I enjoyed the class. I learned a lot of new things that will improve my methods of instruction and allow the students to express their knowledge in new and different ways. Thank you.
