Week 6 blog
Voice Chat: Once again, it is hard for me to envision using this
technology because of the lack of adequate equipment in our school. However, I
think it would be useful, perhaps as a homework assignment for classes in which
all the students have adequate computer set-ups at home. It's hard to conceive
of a fool-proof method of ensuring that a conversation not monitored by the
teacher would actually take place in English, although perhaps creating a
communication gap activity and providing a checklist for students to check on
the honor system (We asked the given questions, we spoke in English, etc., )
would work well enough. I see that the option of recording the video exists in
Skype. Perhaps that is a way to verify that the conversation took place in
English.
The idea of pairing up students via Skype from Israel to students from, for
instance, America, would be really amazing. Perhaps a school in a
sister-community would be amenable to sharing a chat learning opportunity. Part
of the conversation could take place in English to help the Israeli students,
while a second part could take place in Hebrew to help the American students.
Digital Storytelling The main thing I noticed looking through the
Tech&Learning blog about digital storytelling was that they're for the ipad
and ipod. One exception was Posterous, but when I clicked on the link, I
learned that the site was no longer available. I watched the tutorial for the
Sock Puppets app . . . I don't know, but I wasn't impressed. Perhaps my expectations
are too high. I suppose I can envision elementary school students being excited
to hear their voices accompanying a sock puppet and telling a story, but the
example of the story provided (The Apple) lacked any creativity, charm, really
anything to recommend it. It seems to me that there are far better uses of
class time than creating anything like this story with this tool. For example,
actually creating sock puppets and acting out the story with the teacher
recording it on a phone for posterity would accomplish the same effect, without
the added hassle of a technology-driven learning curve.
VocabularySpellingCity.com seems like a site that could be useful
for spelling tests. The vocabulary lists provided by the site are suitable for
native speakers (so for a "dovrim") class, they're possibly a good
resource), but less so for ESL students, in my opinion. For instance, I clicked
on a list for the The Hunger Games, since it's popular with kids, but the words
were "hegemony" and "apocalyptic," which are good words,
but not too relevant for ESL high schoolers. To be fair, the word
"rebellion" also appeared on the quiz, and that's more appropriate.
Still, without buying the premium package, I'm not sure there's much here that
adds more than, for instance, Quizlet.
Spelling Bee. I actually preferred Spelling Bee to VocabularySpellingCity. I could envision
using it for Foundation Level students. The stories are simple enough that I think
Israeli students could comprehend them, and the spelling words are basic, yet
still require learning. "His" and "me" for instance, from
the story I listened to, are words that Foundation Level students must learn
how to spell. "Eat," "brown," "two," "four,"
and "good" are all words that students need to learn how to spell
correctly. This site seems like it could be worthwhile, assuming kids have
computers with earphones in their computer room.
SMS Generator I also liked the fake SMS generator. I think this
would be a good tool to get kids whose language is limited to practice writing
grammatically correct phrases and sentences. It's got a bit of dazzle, just by
virtue of its being a "texting" tool, which adds enough fun to make
the activity more exciting. However, it doesn't require extensive learning or
anything other than having a computer room. I could envision using this tool
with my students were we to have an adequate computer room. A simple assignment like arranging a meeting place, or planning an outing, would fit this tool.
