Tecnología en la Aula

This past week flew by yet again. Even though it was a full week, it felt like it was shorter. I started out the week working with a substitute teacher as my cooperating teacher had just gotten married the weekend before.  Although it was hard work to be prepared for everything that happened between Thursday and Tuesday, it was great practice for me as it was more like having my own classroom.  Near the end of the week this week, I could tell my students were starting to get antsy with anticipation for Thanksgiving break, which is quickly approaching. I had trouble keeping students quiet all day, which, from talking to other teachers, seemed to be true in their classrooms as well.

One word I might choose to describe this week, however, is drama. The eighth grade students have been having some trouble with a bully in the school. Today, the drama continued and it was evident that many of the other students were fed up with the actions of the bully. Despite their impatience, they are afraid of turning away from her (the bully) because of what she might do to them. They are not only afraid she will verbally bully them, but also that she might try to physically hurt them. The student has already been suspended twice this year for bullying, but the teachers had not realized how bad the problem had gotten until today when another event took place. When this happened, there were many students chomping at the bit to share their stories of being bullied by this same girl. The girl isn’t only bullying random students in the grade, but the people she calls her friends as well. These so called “friends” shared with my cooperating teacher and I today that they feel afraid to stop being her friend because of what she might try to do to them. 

In some ways I feel like I’m not quite sure what kind of advice to give my students, because I have never seen bullying at this level. My cooperating teacher seems to be experienced in dealing with this sort of situation (although I’m don’t know if she’s seen a case quite as serious before either). She has not only dealt with bullying as a teacher before, but she has had first hand experience with being bullied in middle school. This allows her to give students advice about what they should do and how to deal with it. It’s really hard to see this happening to our students because we can tell how much it is affecting the whole grade. Although bullying is a terrible thing, it’s been helpful to hear about dealing with it as an educator because I know that it is something that may happen quite often in middle school.

On a lighter note, last week I set two goals for myself: to look at the results of each students quiz and figure out which questions many of them got incorrect. Based on these results, I wanted to review the material to make sure they understood before moving on to new topics. I also wanted to have a good mock interview with Superintendent Klaisner and to learn a lot from him and the experience. Unfortunately I was not able to do a mock interview with Superintendent Klaisner because he accidentally double scheduled meetings at the time I was supposed to meet with him. I was able to show up a few minutes earlier than we had planned, but we were only able to review my revised resume and cover letter. He asked me to set up a date to do the mock interview for the beginning of December, however, so I will email his assistant on Monday. It’s really nice of him to be willing to meet with me and help me as all of this is relatively new to me. As for my other goal, I took notes of the most common mistakes and reviewed them with students the following day. What I think helped students the most was not just to correct them, but that I also tried to explain to students how they might have gotten goofed up. This ways students understand how to fix their problem next time as well as understand the difference between different grammatical structures. For example, many students were saying “puedas” instead of “puedes” which cam from their thinking the “poder” was an “ar” verb instead of an “er” verb. By explaining that they had to memorize the infinitive and not forgot what type of verb it was they were able to fix their problem.

Next week I’d like to set a few more goals to work at. The first goal I’d like to to write at least four dialogues (which will be used for assessing students) before I start my break on Tuesday.  My second goal is make is to start using the new overhead projector we recently had installed in our room. It will be a nice tool, but I will have to make an adjustment in my presentation of the material.

Speaking of incorporating technology in the classroom, I have learned a lot throughout the semester about using technology as a fun and helpful tool in the classroom. We have used and learned about (at an institute day) several different technology tools that can be beneficial in the classroom. For example, I wrote about using Voki, which is a site where students create their own avatar and can record their voice to make it talk. Students really seemed to enjoy this tool, not only because they could be creative in creating their own character, but because they were able to rehearse and record their presentation in Spanish, rather than presenting in front of class. This took away some of the nerves of speaking a foreign language in front of piers and allowed them to take more risks and be creative in what they said in Spanish.

At one of our institute days I also learned about several other web 2.0 tools, which can be used in the classroom. The ones that most stuck out to me to have the potential to be effective in a foreign language classroom were Spaaze, Blabberize, WriteComics, Audio-Boo, Stixy, Fotobabble, Goanimate, Live type, and Voicethread. I look forward to using some, if not all, of these technology tools in my classroom in the near future. They have the opportunity to create fun, engaging ways to help students practice their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in Spanish. With so many useful tools available, it is easy to incorporate technology as a great tool in the classroom.

The district in which I am completing my student teaching is trying to push technology in order to bring the world into the classroom. This is a great idea, which I fully support, because we have so many tools available to us. But, we must be careful with how we use these tools, because they can be less helpful than we think at times. For example, this semester our school wanted my cooperating teacher and I to try a technology tool called VuVox. It was a tool where students could record their voice to pictures moving across the screen. So, we had students do a presentation for Day of the Dead on different famous Hispanics which are dead. Unfortunately, however, this site did not work very well and we were all very frustrated with trying to make it work. Students stuck it out, though and ended up doing alright besides some weird problems with the program. It was good to try, but I don’t think I’ll use that tool again in the future.

Each of the tools I mentioned earlier would be useful in different ways and could apply to various learning goals. For example, in order to help students with speaking tools such as Voki, AudioBoo, and Blabberize would be most useful. Typewithme, Letterpop, and Bitstrips and WriteComics are tools that would be more appropriate to help students with their writing abilities in the target language. To help with reading, there are tools such as online newspapers, manythings.org, and cueprompter.com As for listening skills in the target language, there are tools such as Lyrics training and 10 questions.

Along with using the new overhead projector this week, I would like to start planning a few lessons in the remainder of this semester in which I could incorporate more of the tools I have learned about. I think students would enjoy using them and have the ability to learn a lot.


In order to continue developing my technology skills and my ability to incorporate technology in the classroom, I will attend workshops and study on my own. Many times people will have website which help people learn how to use a technology tool. This will be helpful in learning how to use tools in the classroom. I will also try different tools in my classroom, which will give me more confidence in using them. 

I look forward to the upcoming week, but can’t believe how soon we’re closing in on the end of the semester. It’s going to be really sad to leave Lincoln Hall and I know I will miss it a lot.