Recently I heard a teacher complain that he was being forced to use technology for just the sake of it - Why don't you film yourself singing and show it to the students? - his principal suggested. I agree that the idea sounds ridiculous, but it was just ridiculous in the way it was proposed. An excellent use of this proposed video would be to make it available to students to reinforce at home a song that they learn at school. For example, I found a great song from Sesame Street about fruits - although the language was more than my first graders could acquire, I used it so that they could recognize the names of the fruits. I put it on my YouTube channel. One of the last times that I used the video in class, I saw one of my first graders singing along with me. I asked her how did she know the words, and she responded that she had been listening to it at home a lot because she loved it.
I agree that sometimes it takes time to use technology appropriately, but then it actually makes you more efficient as a teacher. There are a lot of sites and tools out there - too many! It's like choosing from a menu with too many choices, so I decided to only explore a few. Some were too complicated to use, but I have found a few that work and do not require too much effort. Here are some:
- Having a web page (obviously) with activities, games and videos
- Creating your own YouTube channel to collect appropriate videos and to showcase your students' work
- Using Voice Thread to create reinforcement videos - like I told my students: it is like having extra Spanish class at home! Check out the ones I have created so far. I am also using them at school with the students who needed that extra push to complete their assignment. They were thrilled to use the computer and completed the assignment a lot faster that it would have taken me to work with each one individually.
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