PSA Texting While Driving

This is my groups video on texting while driving. We have a few glitches and things, but we tried our best despite having some setbacks. Personally, I am very passionate about not texting while driving, or the use of a phone in general while driving. I think it is a major issue and more laws should be put in place and enforced so people aren't so quick to do it.

Tech Tool For the Classroom 3

Last class, Eric introduced to a new tech tool: Finale. Although I must admit I think I would be very confused on starting to use the program (I have nine years of instrumental experience, but 0 in music composition). However, I think that this program is very fascinating and could really be used in the field of foreign language. Perhaps I could create tunes to help students remember difficult German vocabulary, or concepts. I could see the use of this program in other content areas as well. It was a great pick for the classroom!

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Teaching Tool #2

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In class on 11/3, we again had several students present different educational tools for the classroom. Perhaps the most interesting to me was 'Museum Box'. I can see so many possibilities in using this tool in the classroom. I like that it enables you to compartmenalize various artifacts about a concept, person, place, thing or idea in one set of common spaces. I think that this would enable students to really explore a topic on their own and make a personal connection.

I would like to experiment with the site and create my own museum box. I would fill it with many important facets of my life. I am very glad that this tool was presented to us.

Tech Tool For the Classroom

http://www.wordle.net/create

Tuesday we learned a bit about a few different tools that can be utilized in the classroom. Of the tools we learned to use, I particularly liked Wordle. Wordle is a site that enables you to plug in certain terms and generate a very unique word collage. A nice feature about this is that you can customize the colors, fonts and design for your word collage. Also you have the ability to make certain words bigger by repeating them more often in the list.

As an educator, especially for Foreign Language, I can see a Wordle being very useful. As a German teacher I could create Wordles using like terms, or concepts in German (and even in their English counterparts) as an alternative to a word wall. I think that because Wordles are very visual depictions, it would work well for getting students to remember vocabulary.

One downside to Wordles are that after creating them you cannot save them. Therefore, if I wanted to use a certain Wordle again, I would have to start over each time. Now I could speed this up by copying and pasting the words I used in a particular Wordle, into a Word document, but still I would need to customize it once again and it would never be quite the same.

Overall, I think Wordle is very useful as a tool for the classroom but perhaps needs a better sharing capability online. I really appreciated the presentations, and this one in particular stood out for me.

How Language Transformed Humanity

This is an awesome presentation about the power of language. Mark Pagel presents the idea that language is one of the most important and dangerous tools. In this video he talks about how much language has involved into such a tool that works in a seeming technological process. Dr. Pagel also theorizes that language has evolved as a social tool that enables us to do so much more because of how it is used. I really found this fascinating, I hope you do too.

Issue In Education

An issue I find often in education is the lack of support for English Language Learners (ELLs). There are so many students who may not speak English proficiiently who are many times, just thrown haphazardly into classrooms and left to drown so to speak. Now, some school district offer ESL teachers which predominantly helps students that speak Spanish as their native language. But what about the children from Europe? Africa? Even children from English speaking nations like Great Britatin and Australuia can have an adjustment.

If this problem isn't addressed, we will continue to let children of other cultures and different languages slip through the cracks. These children have so much valuable information and experiences to share with us, but often times we are not reaching out to them. Thus we are unable to learn from their vastly differentiated knowledge and use what we learn to broaden our horizons.

Personally, I am wildly passionate about differentiated instruction, multiculturalism and the rich vales international and multi national students can bring to the classroom. As a teacher, I would always make it my personal goal to make sure I am meeting the needs of all of my students. This can be very difficult but it is something I believe very strongly in. It's not fair for the child in the class who has only had, for example, a years worth of English inclusion, to be expected to be right on task with all of the other students in class who clearly have the advantage.

How can we as future educators ensure that we are meeting teh needs of all of our students?

How can we promote inclusion in the classroom?

What are the rewards that can be gained from a more multiculturally diverse classroom?