In French, we say that progress can't be stopped. Progress is good, but knowing how to use it well and appropriately can sometimes bring new challenges.I feel that as I get stronger in using technology in my classroom, I loose focus on my teaching: French as a modern language. I need to take a step back, and follow Shirleyville's advise : "As I adapt my own practice, I take the ideas that can deepen the meaning for my students, and put on hold the ideas that don’t."
Yet, it's so hard to hold back on creativity. New attractive tools are coming out so often and so fast, that it's hard not to want to try them. I get new ideas for teacher or students' projects every week.
At the end of the 2008-2009 school year, my last blog post presented some of the web 2.0 tools that I started to explore in my French classes.
This year, we are only (already) 2 months in, and already I have tried 3 new tools in my classroom.
1) Glogster.com : interactive poster
2) slideshare.net: upload your power-point presentation and share it with the world.
3) Student French portfolio:
In may, I was still searching for an ideal tool for students' portfolio. I want to get away from the paper portfolio that get stacked in the back of my classroom at the end of every school year and find a creative tool for students to show off their French.
This school year, our middle school students have all created their individual school blog account.
We will use those blogs as our French portfolio. It allows us to post pictures, journal entries, presentations, movies, etc. Time consuming? YES! But it looks promising. Again, because technology changes so fast, I am worried, but hopeful that we will keep the students' blog longer than a year (unlike other tools like myisb).
You can see students' blogs/portfolio through my classroom pages
http://inside.isb.ac.th/chenriotfrenchintro/
http://inside.isb.ac.th/chenriotfrencha/
http://inside.isb.ac.th/chenriotfrenchb/
How has my teaching changed? It hasn't stopped evolving and improving. Does it make my teaching better? Do students communicate better in French?
Let's reflect...
I would totally agree with this statement:
ReplyDeleteAs I adapt my own practice, I take the ideas that can deepen the meaning for my students, and put on hold the ideas that don’t.
Just because we can do different things with technology doesn't always mean we should. Once you have so many tools at your disposal, the challenge becomes selecting the right tool for the task. When you know the outcomes you want for your students, you now have a bigger toolbox to choose from for them to demonstrate their understanding.
I think it's easy to get caught up in all the new cool things, so it's the reflection, with the end in mind of what we want to achieve, that becomes the powerful skill - just knowing how isn't enough anymore, now we also need to know why.