Yoga & Pilates

My new favorite thing to wear is my workout outfit. Black yoga pants, pink sports bra, and grey super soft T-shirt. It's so comfortable and it makes me want to be active! 


My mom and I walked around the neighborhood four times on Saturday night. (I think that's about a mile.) And I did a pilates workout last week. I think I'm going to do it again when I get home from class. I just feel so good after I do this workout. All the breathing and centering is so calming also.

http://www.smccd.edu/accounts/salahuddinr/

I attended a yoga class at the Wellness Center earlier in the semester and absolutely loved it. Once again there is the breathing and the centering. Yoga also feels very spiritual. And I just ordered a DVD online. Yoga for Depression and Anxiety. I am very excited to try it out. There were wonderful reviews on Amazon about this product. 


And my girlfriend, Angel, wants to do yoga with me. I think I will definitely benefit from a little accountability in this department (as well as someone willing to do it with me). 


Any advice is always welcome and if you want to join in with me I'd love it!!!

New Tech V: Proprofs Quizmaker

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/04/proprofs-adds-useful-tracking.html

Finally I'd like to quickly comment on ProProfs Quiz Maker. This site allows for you to create and take quizzes. I think this is a wonderful platform for teachers to use. I would love to have online practice quizzes available to my students to help them prepare for exams. 


There are so many options of what can be done. 


Quizzes can be multiple choice, fill-in the blank, true/false, or essay. You can then decided if you want the correct answer to appear after the question is answered or once the whole quiz is completed, if at all. An explanation of why the answer is correct can be provided as well. This feature would be great especially for practice situations. 


In addition the creator can track the results of the quizzes. I would then be able to see which questions many students struggled with. I could then assess it and decide if I need to go over that material again or if it was just a bad question. 


I would use this resource for all grade levels. And K-12 teachers get to use this tool for only $3.97/month whereas anyone else would spend about $40/month. A downside would be the cost although it's not very high. 


I can't wait to do a pre-test with my first year students to see what knowledge they bring with them to Spanish I.
. 

New Tech IV: Wallwisher

• List causes of the Spanish-American War.

• Rearrange the verbs so that they are in two categories: regular verbs and irregular verbs.

• List words in English that you are curious to know their Spanish translation.

• Give me topic ideas for our next unit.

What do the four previous sentences have in common?
They would all be good discussions to have on Wallwisher!

http://www.cnyric.org/teacherpage.cfm?teacher=1037

Wallwisher is an online notice board in which students can go on and add to the discussion. Each comment is like a virtual post-it note that can be added, rearranged, and deleted. Best of all it's completely free.


I absolutely love the idea of brainstorming via this tool. How many times are you asked a question on the spot and can't think of a single thing but then it hits you when you're driving home or in the shower? I would love it if my students could simply go online and post their idea without worrying about forgetting it before the next day of class. 


I think this also be a good tool for students to use to regulate their own time and learning. They could create their own wall as a sort of to-do checklist which would help them see everything they need to do and they could rearrange it according to priority. This would encourage my students to be self-regulated learners. (Holler to Dr. Was in Educational Psychology.)


I would use this tool with middle and high school students. I love that it's free but dislike that each post can only have 160 characters. But even that's not the worse thing in the world.


I think I'm going to start a wall right not to help me get through the last few weeks of this semester! 

New Tech III: Storybird

Many of the technologies presented in class allow for online interactions between students and teachers. Another platform that offers this is Storybird. 

http://wltechconsultants.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/storybird-needs-language-moderators/

Storybird is a collaborative story-telling tool. This free website allows teachers to create virtual classrooms and invite their students to join. Students do not even need an email to sign on which is nice for younger students who are not old enough to have one.  The teacher would create a username for the students, a password is created by the site and the student has private access to the site. 


Teachers can then create assignments which the students will see when they log on. Students can create stories to go along with provided images. The images give a professional feel to the piece and if desired the student or parent could pay to have the product printed.


I would use this site for creative writing in Spanish. In my high school Spanish class my teacher would give us a new prompt every Monday and we would spend time writing on that topic. This was an opportunity to use creativity in our thinking and not to be so bogged down by all the rules that go into learning a foreign language. I think Storybird would be a wonderful site to do something similar. The different prompts also allow for students to tell about their own lives or respond to current events. 


I would love to see Spanish IV or AP Spanish students (grade 12) do an end of the year project and create a book. If funds were available at the school I would love to then have their books published and given as a gift for their hard work in completing so many years of foreign language study.


I love the fact that the teacher is the moderator in everything on the site and that I would have the power to take down or delete anything the students posted that I did not agree with. A down side is the fact that the images are limited but hopefully this will be something that is added to as time goes on.


In addition I am weary to have students complete writing assignments solely on the computer. The temptation to use online translators and to cheat would be so strong. I need to research how other foreign language teachers integrate technology successfully. I want to know what my students think and that they know how to say not, what a computer can regurgitate for them. 


If anyone knows of any suggestions for this concern of mine I would love to hear from you. 


Gracias.

New Tech II: Prezi

Now I'm sure everyone is familiar with PowerPoint presentations. And there is always the class that you dread going to because you know that the presentation is going to be a total bore. Or worse Mr. Dzeda wants to show you slides with audio from the 1930s. Then there's the professor who packs way too much onto a single slide and then just flies through them (Ge). 


Prezi is a solution for the monotony of old fashioned slides.

http://prezi.com/

Presentations and games can be created on this website. They are immediately uploaded onto the internet for all to see. This, along with the difficulty in creation process, may be a downside to the technology. 

I believe that this type of presentation program could hold the attention of students of all ages. Young students might be more impressed with the twirling and zooming. I believe any subject could use Prezi and I would use it for showing historical or cultural aspects of Spanish-speaking people. 

The non-linear form of this tool would allow students to see how aspects of culture or history are interconnected and do not stand alone. The outlay of Spanish apartments (pisos) is related to how Spaniards feel about privacy. Points such as this and others could be presented in an interesting manner for a Spanish class.

New Tech I: WordQ + SpeakQ

In my educational technology course we each have to give a presentation on "new" technologies that can be utilized in the classroom. I signed up for the first round of presentations and I thought it went pretty well. Mine was over Ning - a social networking site where you can create your own social network and make it as private as you'd like. I think it has a lot of potential for classroom discussion/blogging.

My friend, Amanda, did her presentation on WordQ and SpeakQ. These are computer programs that aid the user in writing assignments.

http://www.goqsoftware.com/

They can be used together or separately. SpeakQ is used with a microphone and when a the user comes upon a word that she does not know how to spell she simply says it aloud. The application (which is used in conjunction with Microsoft Word) will then enter the word (or phrase) for the user. WordQ is similar in that it will give suggestions of what word the user is attempting to write. The user can then choose from a drop down list the word that they are looking for. You can also have it read back what you have written, which can be very helpful in locating errors.


A great thing about this technology is that it comes in Spanish!!! (It even breaks it down to Castellano - Spanish from Spain - and  Español.)


I think that this technology could be extremely useful for any high school student who struggles with language learning. Students who maybe don't take a language because of disabilities may be able to find more success with a tool like this.


I think a disadvantage would be the price of the tool (although you can get grants) and the fact that it works best when it is only dealing with one specific voice. Having multiple students use this program with varying accents may diminish its accuracy and helpfulness.


I would be interested in researching the current use of this technology in high school classrooms.


Please feel free to leave feedback. And if you have used either of these programs I'd love to know what your experience was like.


:D

Wedding Dress by Derek Webb

I loved this song the first time I heard it play in a friend's car on the way home from college. It is exactly what I need to hear right now. 

I need a revival.

If you could love me as a wife
And for my wedding gift, your life
Should that be all I’d ever need?
Or is there more I’m looking for

And should I read between the lines
And look for blessings in disguise
To make me handsome, rich, and wise
Is that really what you want?

[Chorus]
‘Cause I am a whore I do confess
But I put you on just like a wedding dress
And I run down the aisle, I run down the aisle
I’m a prodigal with no way home
But I put you on just like a ring of gold
And I run down the aisle
I run down the aisle to you

So could you love this bastard child?
Though I don’t trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
And with the other in your side
‘Cause I am so easily satisfied
By the call of lovers so less wild
That I would take a little cash
Over your very flesh and blood

[Chorus x2]

Because money cannot buy
A husband’s jealous eye
When you have knowingly deceived his wife

[Chorus x2]

Lyrics from Derek Webb's website.

Image from this blog.