Incorporating Technology into my L2 Classroom

Salvete omnes, has anyone ever asked you whether you are an digital native or a digital immigrant? Are you sitting there rereading that question and scratching your head? Well fear not, dear reader, because you are not alone. Earlier this week, I read a few articles by Marc Prensky that introduce this concept of digital natives versus digital immigrants. So who are digital natives and who are digital immigrants? In his 2001 article , Prensky refers to digital natives as the generation of kids who grew up alongside technology and because of that are fluent in its language and applications. Whereas digital immigrants are the generation of adults who adopted technology and its employment later in their lives.  According to this follow-up video , the cutoff to determine which category an individual might fall under was draw at the year 1980. Based on this criteria, I would have to label myself as a digital native. Although I don’t feel as if I think any differently than my parents,

Salvete omnes, today I want to talk about you about introducing podcasts into your classroom. Now I know what you are thinking. “But Brittany, why should I give podcasting the time of day when I can look up videos on a variety topics on YouTube? What’s the difference between the two?” Ah, my dear reader, as always you bring up an excellent point. Why don’t we take a look at these two applications and decide for ourselves which we would implement in the classroom. The first and possibly biggest point of each one is that anyone can view and create either a YouTube video or podcast. This means that there is a wide variety of videos and podcasts available for users to explore. The second similarity between the two is the ability to subscribe. So if you find a YouTube channel or a podcast that consistently puts out content you enjoy, then you can subscribe to that channel or site and receive notifications about when new content becomes available. The only difference between the two i

Salvete omnes. In my last post I introduced an increasingly popular education concept known as a flipped classroom. As I’m sure you, my sweet reader, have realized by now is that I am a very curious person. I always enjoy try out the new technology, or the new ways to use already existing technology, that I discover as I am working my way through my graduate studies. So I hope it does not surprise you to learn that after I posted my previous blog entry, in which I gave a general introduction to flipped classrooms, that I went out into the wilderness of the Internet to try my hand at creating a lesson for a flipped classroom. It was during this journey that I was lead to TED-Ed.com , where I was able to create and publish my lesson. It was a relatively easy process. I searched through the videos provided on TED-Ed, and with the topic of Roman engineering and technology on my mind I settled on the idea of creating a lesson on aqueducts. Really I think choosing the video may have b

Salvete omnes and welcome back! Before we delve into this week’s blog topic, I need you to do something for me. Imagine with me please, you’re sitting in math class doing everything you are supposed to do. You’re paying attention to the teacher, you’re taking comprehensive notes, and you’re raising your hand to ask questions about concepts that seem a bit confusing. By the time class ends you feel like you have a pretty good grasp on everything you just learned. Now jump ahead with me a few hours and imagine that you are at home. You’re sitting down and beginning to start your math homework. You take a look at the first question and .... nothing.  Everything you learned has flown out the window and you are left confused and frustrated. My sweet reader has this ever happened to you? Because, if so you are not alone and if I’m being honest with you this was my experience with all my math classes throughout high school. But what if I told you there was another way? Acknowledging the p

Salvete omnes and happy Ides of October. Because of my recent experiences with Twitter chats, I have become increasingly eager to learn more about the potential of using Twitter for more professional and academic purposes. In the article titled, “ Using Twitter for Professional Development ”, Brian Paul Hill states that as educators, “We have to be consumers of information. Constant consumers of information. Information that is current and important. If we aren’t doing this, then we become stagnant in our work and complacent in our profession.” It is clear to me, through the conversations I took part in and the articles I read, that Twitter could possibly be one of the most accessible and effective tools available to educators.  Similar to Mary Poppins’ magical bag, once you get involved using Twitter professionally, the possibilities available to you are practically endless. You are suddenly able to network, collaborate, and share tips and resources with educators all over the wor

Ah Twitter. The social media platform where users can quickly post their thoughts for their followers and the world to see in 140 characters or less. The place where I wasted countless hours throughout my youth scrolling through my news feed and tweeting about just that. I thought I was being so #deep. My high school CIS teacher, (computer information systems, for those of you wondering), called this life tweeting and explained that this is what the majority of individuals used Twitter for. But what would you say if I told you that Twitter can be used as more than a megaphone to update everyone on your life with hashtags? That it is possible to use Twitter as a platform of personal development? Salvete omnes, today I want to share with you my adventure that was my first experiences with Twitter chat. But first, what is a Twitter chat ? A Twitter chat is when a group of people, who are interested in a similar topic, assemble under a designated hashtag, to discuss a topic.

Salvete omnes! How we receive the News changes almost as frequently as Ancient Rome changed emperors?. Starting with an oral tradition, moving to the written word, and shifting again with the rise of the machines. There is no escaping the News. Not that you would want to because as humans we have an innate desire to be “ in the know ”, and how we receive the News today completely depends on our browser history.   Earlier today, I was watching a TEDTalk featuring Eli Pariser, titled Beware Online “Filter Bubbles” . In the video, he states that, “ There is no standard Google anymore ”. For reasons I was not quite sure of at the time caused this statement to stick with me through the rest of my viewing. I guess it might have been because I had never considered that my google search would be any different from that of my Fiance or of a classmate if we were both Googling for information on the same topic. But nevertheless, during his presentation, Pariser describes having asked a bunch o

Salvete omnes, I know it hasn’t been very long since we last spoke, but I’ve never had a penpal before so I hope you can forgive my overbearing enthusiasm. I’ve always really liked the idea of having a penpal, especially in a foreign language classroom, because there are so many benefits to being able to practice your second language with a native speaker.   The most amazing, and possibly most scary, thing about technology is its ability to affect even the most ordinary aspects of our lives. Snail-mail is steadily becoming a thing of the past, soon to be reserved only for Amazon orders and unwanted bills. While I personally think that is a little sad because I love snail mail, I can acknowledge that many life skills needed in today’s world and in the foreseeable future will require computer literacy. This brings me to a website called ePals which is an online education platform that allows teachers to connect with other educators and classrooms from all over the world. I rea

The first rule of fight club is to…. Oh wait! Wrong club... Beware the Ides of March Salvete omnes! I was visiting YouTube the other day, my home away from home if you will, and in between my usual viewings of cat videos I was able to watch a video titled, New Media Consortium . In the video the presenter, Adam Levine, discusses the importance of establishing a network of colleagues, both in and outside of your discipline, to experiment and explore new techniques of integrating technology in the classroom. The most important thing, I think, Adam says in the video is, “ it is really important for us to stay connected to people who are smarter than because we can’t know everything ”. I think it was important for me, and for other people who may be like me, to hear that it is okay to reach out for help. Being someone who wants to be able to do and know it all, this is not something that comes to mind easily. Adam’s whole video really emphasized the necessity of having a Perso

Salvete omnes! For today’s post I want to discuss the concept of connectivism, but first, have you ever heard of Moore’s Law? For those readers who have not, simply put, Moore’s Law states that processor speeds, or overall processing power of computers will double every two years. This statement was coined in 19 6 5 by George Moore who is one of the co-founders of Intel and is still a popular trend that can be observed among technology today.  If at this point you are thinking, “well that is a neat fun fact, but what does that have to do with education?”. I’m so glad you asked because to me, a learner is like technology. We’ve all heard this saying before but I’m going to say it again now, what students are learning today, and how they are learning it, has drastically changed from when I was in school. So too has technology. Just as we have discussed before on this blog, changes in policy, the incorporation of technology in our classrooms, and the amount of information av

Jon Snow vs. Ramsey Bolton! Octavian vs. Mark Antony! Bat-cat vs. Joker Dog! Salvete omnes, today's competition is less of a battle and more of a comparison. Nor are our competitors fighting to take back their family home, or for the right to rule an empire, or even to stop a fiendish pup from causing chaos around the house. Instead the contenders I want to discuss are ways to utilize social bookmarking for the classroom. So first let’s answer some questions. What is social bookmarking? Social bookmarking is an online tool that is used for saving websites you find useful and/or interesting. How is that any different from the bookmarking feature on your web browser? For the most part it isn't, but social bookmarks are an improved method for organizing your information and also allow you to tag, annotate, and share your saved webpages. As mentioned in the title, this post is a battle of the bookmarks so we will compare the social bookmarking tools that you may re

Salvete omnes and welcome back! Did you know that the earliest stone tools date back to 3.3 million years ago. Since that time the tools we have designed, created, and used have evolved into the advance technology we see today. While we are still (hopefully) a far ways off from a Terminator- level takeover, no one can deny the enormous influence that technology has on our lives. A video posted to YouTube titled, Social Media Revolution 2011 , presents the social media statistics for 2011. The video quotes several examples of how social media is used. Such as how 93% of marketers use social media to promote their business and how YouTube is actually the second largest search engine in the world. After watching this video it's crazy to think how quickly modern technology and the Internet has evolved in such a short amount of time. I recently watched another video because I have been watching a lot of videos in the past week, titled Future Learning . This video is part of a mini d