BP9_2009102_Week 2 Comments to Classmate

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Go!Animate-animation website

GoAnimate.com, the online platform that enables everyone to create their own customizable animations, it has recently announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with CopCorp Licensing to add Jim Benton's popular (and hilariously rude) It's Happy Bunny™ to its ever-expanding list of characters. You can now create full animations using It's Happy Bunny, providing a whole new world of possibilities for interacting with and creating your own humor to share with your friends.

http://goanimate.com/howdoesitwork tutorial.

http://goanimate.com/ is a website that allows you and you students to create animations with background scenes, audio, music, and animated characters, in a storybook format. Generally, visual clips and different visualization assets have changed the way we elaborate and share our ideas. Studies show that the human brain is more capable of processing what it sees compared to what it reads. This is because communication channels, more often than not, focus on the visual and verbal aspects of what we see and hear. Visualization helps in associating the need to rapidly understand the feedback we receive in relationships and also aides in allowing us to share story lines that someone could find difficultly dealing with.Go!Animate is an entertainment portal, and makes use of these animation techniques, which can allow the user to convey their ideas with visual impact; making sure your ideas are delivered. Students can translate any topic, project or event into an animated video. There are tutorials and examples and this provides a user-friendly interface, making sure that your use of the site is smooth. Go!Animate is complete fun and a perfect platform to shape your imagination into an animation reality.

BP8_2009102_Web2.0Tool_Babbel

While there are many Web 2.0 tools that I have encountered over the past couple of courses through Full Sail University, I have also uncovered some interesting tools, through recent research, that would be specifically useful to the instruction of my French courses. One such tool is through the web tool Babbel at http://www.babbel.com/.

Babbel is a tool that allows users to learn French vocabulary and grammar through interactions with other learners around the world. Although some features require users to pay, many of the features available for study and practice are completely free. All of these activities are available exclusively on the Web as opposed to a computer based platform. Users create a profile and complete grammar and vocabulary lessons to receive scores. They can also share their completed assignment with other users to receive feedback (Babbel, 2009).

It is appartent, from the way that this tool is designed, that it is very useful to French students but there are some other specific ways that this tool can benefit my instruction in particular. In my French courses, I would use this to have students practice their French when they are outside of the classroom. With block scheduling, students only meet every other day and this schedule format is often not conduicive to the consistent pratice students need to study a foreign language. Babbel will give students the opportunity to study during off days and still receive feedback for their work that they could not otherwise access when they are not in class with me.

Another useful feature of this tool is that is helps to reduce the need to provide students a computer with a specific set of software loaded onto it. Again, students can complete actitivies as homework assignments or even use the computer in my classroom to complete activities during class. This would eliminate the frequent use of the school computer lab. Although that lab would be ideal, a tool like Babbel will make it is possible for me to accomplish more within my classroom and on my own classtime.

It is this feature of mobility in tools like Babbel that I wish to explore more deeply as I begin an Action Research project on the concept of the language lab. A tool like Babbel could illiminate the need for a school to purchase software and additional computers for a school wide language lab and, instead, give teachers the opportunity to do more with just one classroom desktop.

References

Babbel. (2009). Knowledge base. Retrieved from http://support.babbel.com/forums/28238/entries

Babbel (2009). Images Retrieved from http://www.babbel.com

BP7_2009102_Web2.0Tool_Blogger

As I discussed in my last post, it is extremely important to find ways to create ways that will exercise foreign language students' writing, reading, speaking, and listening skills in the classroom. One useful way to have students work on writing in French is through the use of a blog. Blogger is one such utility that allows users to create their own blog site and post their findings to the web. They can share these blogs with anyone and anyone can comment on the blog posts (Common Craft, 2008).

In my French courses, I currently have students write journal entries in French pertaining to their reactions on subjects that we have studied in class. Students write these entries in a paper notebook each night. It takes me a long to read and make comments on these journal entries and no one else is able to read these entries except for me. That means that students do not get a lot of feedback, and they do not necessarily appreciate or connect to the limited feedback that they do receive from me.

Blogging through a Web 2.0 tool such as Blogger could completely revitalize the journaling process within my courses.

(Blogger, 2009)

Using Blogger, I would have students create individual blog pages and share them with their classmates. Once students have created and shared their blog pages, I would have students write their thoughts on what we have studied in class as blog posts each night. In addition, students would read and comment on the blog post of at least one other classmate. This process will cause students to practice writing in French, reading in French, and having to think in French as they create and comment on blog posts. Hopefully, this will make the process of journaling more fun, more interactive, and more useful to students.

References

Blogger. (2009). Blog post images. Retrieved from http://kdavisfso.blogspot.com

Common Craft (2008). Blogs in plain English. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI

BP6_2009102_Web2.0Tool_iGoogle

As a French teacher, I seek as many opportunities as possible to immerse students in the French language in an authentic way although there is no possibility for students to travel to a francophone country. Therefore, it is necessary to find some other way to integrate authentic French into the classroom in a way that helps students practice the four competences (writing, reading, speaking, and listening) daily.

IGoogle is one of many Web 2.0 tools that are quite useful in teaching foreign language. Foreign language teachers, like me, can use iGoogle in a way the replicates an immersion experience and fosters daily practice. The iGoogle tools allow users to set up a homepage and add several gadgets to that homepage (Google, 2009).

According to Google (2009) “gadgets come in lots of different forms and provide access to activities and information from all across the web.” Both the iGoogle tool itself and the gadgets that one can add to it are easily adapted into the foreign language classroom because these gadgets can feature information in the target language that students can read, listen to, write about, then discuss in class.

If I were to integrate the iGoogle tool into my French courses, I would use many aspects of the tool to develop the students’ skills in the four competences. For example, students could create their Google homepages from the French version of the tool. Here is an example of a French iGoogle homepage:

(Google, 2009)

The French version of the homepage forces students to read in French because all titles, tabs, and gadgets in French. This gives students immediate access to authentic and current uses of French phrases and vocabulary.

Second, students could add gadgets to their homepages that would give them further access to current and authentic French. For example, Google Reader, which allows users to receive updates to websites to subscriptions to RSS feeds can give students access to French sites with podcasts, articles, and videos on a variety of subjects (Commom Craft, 2008). Students can then share these feeds with their classmates and with me as their instructor so we can collaborate on what they have been learning through the feeds.

Third, students can add gadgets that feature famous French quotes, word of the day, or a French-English dictionary. These are gadgets that will introduce students to new vocabulary, and even some French culture or history as they look up new words and learn quotes of famous historical French figures.

(Google, 2009)

Finally, students can also use the Google Docs gadget within their iGoogle homepage. This could allow students to create PowerPoint presentations or Word documents in French and invite classmates to edit the documents. In this way, students could collaborate on group projects and presentations using the information they have learned in from the articles and resources in their Google Reader.

IGoogle presents many opportunities to improve the communcation skills of French students and would be extremely useful to me as a foreign language teacher. The main benefit of a Web 2.0 tool such as iGoogle is that it presents an adaptable platform that can only improve and become more useful as more gadgets are created and made available.

References

Google. (2009). Features: what is iGoogle? Retrieved from http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=20324&nbsp

Common Craft. (2008). Google reader in plain English. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPZ2Uu_X3Y

Google. (2009). iGoogle homepage images. Retrieved from http://www.igoogle.fr/ig

BP5_2009102_SocialBookmarking

Social Bookmarking in Education

There are a wide variety of uses and benefits of social bookmarking in relation to education and instruction. This useful Web 2.0 tool accomplishes many of the objectives inherent in current educational goals and perspectives. First, social bookmarking can produce educators who are more informed on current research. For example, teachers can search for several sites and other links on Internet, save them immediately, share those links with other teachers, and organize those links for easy and expedient access in the future. These bookmarks are then available to teachers at any time without a platform giving teachers support for their class lectures and lesson plans (Grosseck, 2008).

The second benefit and utility of social bookmarking in education is that it creates a collaborative environment in which students can share links with classmates or students from anywhere in the world (Educase Learning Initiative, 2005). In this way, social bookmarking is also beneficial to teachers because it offers them a way to maintain lines of communicating. This, for example, helps teachers remain part of a professional community through sharing perspectives on information beneficial for training or other instruction as part of Personal Learning Communities (Solomon & Schrum, 2007). Both students and teachers benefit from the collaboration that is key aspect of a variety of social bookmarking sites.

As a result of collaborative nature of social bookmarking, another benefit to the educational environment is that it encourages accountability on the part of students. The process of tagging calls uses to make decisions about the words they choose in tagging links. This is also known as folksonomy and, as part of this process, users are in control of how others will be able to view and make use of links. Users must decide whether to be selfish, altruistic, friendly, or popular as the classify links and “the social benefit of such a classification consists in the user’s maturity” (Grosseck, 2008). This provides teachers the opportunity to instruct and set standards and requirements for ethical and accurate approaches to tagging.

Just as social bookmarking provides an opportunity for students to practice maturity and critical thinking skills when tagging, it also provides a similar opportunity with source evaluation. Because of the way social bookmarking requires users to view and tag links, users must also make value judgments about the links that they choose to tag. This can be a benefit of social bookmarking in relation to education because it will help train students to evaluate sources. As students weed out invalid or unreliable sources they will contribute to the validity and reliability of the links that their classmates and others will find on their sites. In the end, the more users who access social bookmarking sites “the more value accrues to the system itself and thereby to all who participate in it” (Hammand, Hannay, Lund, & Scott, 2005).

References

Hammon, T., Hannay, T., Lund, B. & Scott, J. (2005). Social bookmarking tools: a general review. D-Lib Magazing, 11(4). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html

Grosseck, G. (2007). Using de.licio.us in education. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/212002/Using-delicious-In-Education

Educase Learning Initiative. (2005). 7 things you should know about social bookmarking. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf

Solomon, G & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: new tools, new schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

BP4_2009101_iGoogleScreen Shots

Below are the screenshots for my iGoogle PLE for the ETC course for October 2009.

This is my What's Going On/Home Page:

This is my Action Research Page:

This is my ETC course page:

BP3_2009101_RSSFeeds

Though it is slightly embarrassing to admit, I am entirely new to the world of creating and following blogs. The first set of assignments for the FSO ETC course on creating and setting up the iGoogle site as well as the Blogger and Google Reader has caused a huge learning curve on my part. Still, the process of searching and adding RSS feeds to the Google Reader has brought interesting insight to the use of these feeds.

Before knowing about RSS feeds and how they worked, I couldn't picture how they would be useful to me. In just a fews additions to my subscription list, I have already discovered how incredibly useful these blogs will be to my work at FSO and the improving my teaching methods in general.

I chose the initial 11 feeds that I have added to my Reader for the purpose gaining information that I will hopefully use in the classroom. For example, several of the feeds that I discovered came for the website for the French newspaper LeFigaro. These blogs involve a variety of subjects in French including news and perspectives on French culture, cinema, foreign relations, fashion, and more. All of these will help to inform my teaching on current events and information about the French speaking world and hopefully cause students to become more excited about the real life application of the French language as I share this information with them.

Also, these blog posts and links will help me, most simply, to continue to keep up with my French speaking skills. One of the challenges of teaching a foreign language when it is your second language it finding the ability to use and practice your own communication skills. Especially with French in the US, it is difficult to find many people with whom you can communicate in French or places in which you are immersed in the French language. The feeds that I have chosen for my reader, in ways, replicate the immersion experience through offering several opportunities to see French, read French, and if desired, respond to posts using French.

Some of the blogs also include tips geared toward helping teachers such as French for Fun and The Drama Teacher which offer perspectives for teachers of those subjects on how to improve the time with students in the classroom. I would hope that being able to access this information in a more timely and manageable fashion through Google Reader will render obsolete the issue of searching for information each time I create a new lesson plan.

The next weeks will hopefully bring more insight into the effectiveness of the easy accessible information that the Google Readers will provide and its impact on my work at FSO and my teaching in general.