Tech Tool Box (its growing!)

The web has so much free software available to us. It is amazing to see how many programs one can use to share photos, or store music! I remember when I was in school technology and computers were only used for doing research and typing essays. Word did not even capitalize “i” automatically, if I remember correctly. Teachers could not require typed essays from every student because not everyone had access to a computer and printer at home. If you did not have access to computers at home the option was to write your essays neatly in black or blue ink, but that was always a white-out nightmare for me.

Sometimes if there was lab time we could play a math or spelling game on the computers at school, but I never really did well with these games because I did not get what the little worm on the screen wanted me to do. Now students, our technology natives, pick up games and software instinctually.

• I was experimenting with a program called i- respond. Students have remotes in their hands and as a quiz or game is projected on the screen, students can key in their answer and send it to my laptop which stores it automatically. There is an option to have the scores displayed on a side bar so students can see how they are doing compared to other students. As I was figuring out how to get all of the remotes synced and getting the test set up one student said, “Hey Ms. Glenn, why don’t you let me figure it out?” Sure enough we got it going within minuets after I turned control over to my students.

Despite the fact that they were taking a quiz, my students really enjoyed taking their quizzes through i-respond. There are also games that we can play with this program. So this is the new software I am learning, however it is not free, so on to the free software that I have used and enjoy.

• Moodle
  This is a course management software that our principal is encouraging us to use. We can post homework and lesson plans, set up class calendars, teachers have electronic drop boxes where assignments can be turned in and graded electronically, and we can put copies of worksheets online that students can access when they are traveling for activities or on extended vacations.
  My Spanish students are going to create a visitors guide of Kodiak. We are going to go around town and take picture of some of the cool places of our city and make a blogg. The problem we have is that students do not have access to site such as blogger.com; however we can make bloggs through Moodle.
  
• Babylon.com
  As a Spanish teacher I struggle with allowing students to use online translators to do work. It is just do easy for them to type in something and have the computer do the work for them. Very often the translation is done too literal and is incorrect. However, online translators are good tools to check grammar and vocabulary.
  
• Audacity.com
  This is a fun program that I have been playing with that records and mixes audio tracks. I used it with Microsoft moviemaker when I made a digital story last semester and am going to use it to record students talking in Spanish. I think it is important for students to hear themselves speaking. I know that when I have heard my voice after I have recorded it I can critique myself better listen for pronunciation and accent correctness.
  
• Youtube.com
  This has been helpful to show movies that other Spanish students have made. Also with my government class we watched a lot of the inauguration and public service announcements that President Obama has made.
  
• LomasTV.com
  This is a new resource that a college of mine introduced me to. It has songs and videos from current Spanish pop culture. With the songs there are games, vocabulary quizzes, and other activities that students really get into.
  
• I use a variety of websites when we talk about culture aspects such as el día de los muertos, la navidad, el día del san valentin, and cinco de mayo to show examples of yarn paintings, tin ornaments, or costumes before students create their own original craft.
  
  Sometime I feel I am pretty green about technology and am just learning how to incorporate it meaningfully in my classes. Another obstacle that I have come up against is that our computer labs are called “extenda labs” so they do not have USB ports on them. It is difficult to input data at school and students can be unreliable to get their homework done at home. There are a couple of stand alone units that we can share, but that takes time. As I can imagine with other school districts in the state there are limitations on students internet privileges and, like I mentioned before, students don’t have access to certain websites. These programs are convenient time savers as I have found that instead of spending hours creating visual aids, worksheets, and writing stories I can use these some of the free technology that is available to do the work for me.