Incorporating Technology into my L2 Classroom

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! 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 bun...