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.