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Being a foreign language teacher, I think blogging provides a new medium for students to express themselves in the target language through writing. It also allows them to utilize their creativity by adding graphics or pictures to what they write so that it is personal. I’ve used blogs once so far with an 8th grade Spanish project that required students to talk about their favorite pastimes or activities. Students were given specific requirements and they were permitted to add whatever sort of graphics they wanted to make it more representative of them. Others could comment on what they wrote. The example I provide below is a student talking about her favorite activities which include video games and lacrosse.

To see an example, click HERE.

This next example showcases how a blog can be used to teach English as a second language or as a foreign language. It should give the typical French, Spanish or German teachers some ideas to consider if thinking about using blogs in the classroom. It looks like the students in this case speak Spanish as their native language and are learning English. As the author, Isabel Perez, indicates in her introduction, the blog was created to give her students a place to read and listen to English. It includes videos, questionnaires, and plenty of links for students to view.

To view Isabel’s site, click HERE.

Finally, I came across a couple of Spanish teachers that use the blog format to post assignments and resources for their students. Considering that blog posts usually show the most recent post first, it’s a good idea for assignments as students will always see the most recent assignment first. Take a look.

To view Señora Malan’s blog, click HERE.

This one is from Señor Urry. Click HERE to view.

As a foreign language teacher, I can definitely see how clickers can be incorporated into classroom activities. Much of what we teach has to do with the key elements of learning any language: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, reading, writing and speaking. With this in mind, I was excited to begin my search for examples of how foreign language teachers have been using this exciting technology. Unfortunately, the examples were few and far between. Not being one to ever give up, I decided to simply provide some ideas and a few of my own examples of how I might incorporate this tool into my own classes.

Example 1: The Basics

Let’s start with the basics. Regardless of what language you teach, usually the first things foreign language teachers present are some general questions and answers that are limited to hellos, goodbyes, “how are you?”, my name is, etc. So I’ll start here.

Step 1: Present the appropriate vocabulary for the unit or lesson.

Step 2: Make sure students are comfortable with the meanings and pronunciation

Step 3: Have students practice utilizing vocabulary with one another

Step 4: Advise them to review their vocabulary for homework or give them a simple matching assignment that requires them to match a question with an appropriate answer.

Step 5: The next day, assess their understanding by utilizing clickers for a quick warm up activity.

• Click HERE for an example of how this might look using CPS software

Step 6: Review vocabulary as needed

Example 2: Using PowerPoint with Clickers

Most software that accompanies a clicker package allows you to incorporate PowerPoint presentations within your clicker based lesson. From my observations, this is a great way to get students to take notes. Most do this automatically because they know that at some point, they will quizzed using the clickers within the presentation.

This has many applications in the foreign language classroom. Here’s one that I’ve been working with. I’ll go through the steps below.

Step 1: Create a PowerPoint presentation based on a particular theme. I chose weather in my example.

Step 2: Embed a short video based on the topic. I dowloaded a very short video on some basic weather terminology from PowerMediaPlus. The video should be about two minutes long.

Step 3: Add multiple choice questions in your PowerPoint to test for comprehension. This is where students will be using the clickers to input their responses

Step 4: Review correct answer with students

• Click HERE for my example

Example 3: Clickers and Listening Comprehension

Because listening skills are critical to the acquisition of a foreign language, it’s important that you find an effective way of assessing this ability. Clickers are a perfect way to do this. Let me share my thoughts on doing this.

Step 1: Put together an audio example that you will either read to the students or simply improvise on a theme in the target language. To give you an idea, I’ll show you a video that I put together to model what I wanted for a projected my 8th grade students did a couple of years ago. It’s about likes and dislikes. I was a little shaggier back then…so don’t laugh. There are English subtitles for those that don’t speak Spanish.

After you’ve read or improvised what you are going to say, have students answer questions to see if they understood what they’ve heard. For teachers that are preparing their students for either a state proficiency exam or regents, this would be a perfect way to review for the listening comprehension portions of those exams.

• Click HERE for an example of the questions I would use based on the video

Having used digital video with my classes on several occasions, I want to take this opportunity to share a few of my observations. While these observations have been made with middle school students, I believe they are universal to the digital generation (and perhaps all generations).

To begin, I’ve noticed that kids get pretty excited when they know that they are going to be filmed. I don’t think there’s one student out there that doesn’t want to look and sound good on camera. This generally brings a certain enthusiasm to projects that utilize digital video.

Secondly, other students have respect for the filming process. This means that, while they get a little loud when they put their projects together, they are very well behaved when they know that someone is being filmed. So if you have classroom management issues, you’ll see the problems virtually cease while filming is being done. Keep in mind, you must still be well organized and, as a teacher, you must know what you are doing. On the other hand, students are at home with many of these technologies and sometimes it comes easier for them. What does this mean? Expect them to discover new things that you never knew about, and don’t be afraid to ask them to teach you a thing or two. They like that.

Lastly, I’ve done some projects where one group was filmed at a time. I’ve done others where I’ve distributed four cameras and let the students do their thing. What you do depends on your tolerance for a little chaos. If you want more control, record one group at a time. If you feel that your students will stay on task and will be more creative on their own, so be it. In either scenario, it’s a good idea to request a little help from a teacher aid or technology integrator. I never did and I wish I had.

Enough said. On with the examples. The videos you’ll see were created by some of my 8th grade Spanish students. The first is a video self portrait done by a student that just happened to bring his guitar in the day we were filming. You’ll notice that there were subtitles added in English. This was to allow parents to understand what he was saying while his video was being shown at an open house. All video taping and editing was done by the students with a little help from me (adding subtitles was particularly challenging). We used iMovie to add titles pages, credits and music if there was time. Take a look…

This next example was from a group project that was created with the intention of reviewing seventh grade Spanish topics. After deciding on groups, I assigned various topics ranging from personal identification, weather, prepositions, etc. The students in the video you’ll see did a great job with weather expressions. While putting the video together, I noticed there were what you might call “bloopers” spread through the project. Because I thought they added such character and humor to the work, I gave the ok to leave them in. In think you’ll like it….

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Podcasting is particularly suited for the foreign language classroom as it is primarily composed of recorded voice. Applications can range from assisting students with pronuniation practice, dialogue creation, audio homework assignments and listening to stories in the target language while reading them. As a Spanish teacher, I’ve used podcasts more as an instructional tool for pronunciation review. I’ve included podcasts to accompany vocabulary lists as well as to practice speaking in a more fluid manner.

Being that foreign language class is about hearing and reacting to what you are presented with, it’s important that students have a way to practice this both inside and outside of class. I came across a great example of how students can practice these abilities using a service called GabCast. While podcasts can be recorded the traditional way, GabCast also allows you to submit your audio by telephone! This is great for the student that does not have access to a computer at home. In the example, the teacher leaves a question in Spanish in the first podcast. Students are to leave their own podcast (at least a minute long) that answers the question in Spanish in as much detail as possible.

Here is the teacher’s question in Spanish…(What’s your most important possession and why?)

Gabcast! Español II - Cap. 7, 1st Assigment #1

Here is a sample of a student response to her question…

Gabcast! Español II - Cap. 7, 1st Assigment #10

Through seeing and making associations between images and meaning, we acquire languages. An interactive whiteboard is a perfect tool to display images and have students make associations between what they see and what they here. In this next video, we see Marie Daniels incorporating a whiteboard as well as other technologies into her teaching practices to provide her students with an engaging experience.

To view the video, click HERE.

Because teaching English as a second language is very similar to teaching a foreign language to English-speaking students, I decided to incorporate videos that highlighted ESL teachers using whiteboards. For a foreign language teacher, the similarities will be obvious and ideas should start to flow. This next video showcases a teacher using a whiteboard to demonstrate prepositions. She then has students drag objects around the screen based on the prepositions they are learning.

In this final video, the same teacher utilizes the Whiteboard to teach the past tense of various verbs. She has a student come up to the board to complete an action and asks the rest of the class what that student did. The correct response must come in the past tense.