Final Post - Reflections

Reading and Learning about 11 Tools for 21st Century was exited and enrichment. All these state of the arts digital technologies have just gave me an overview of the many opportunities I have as an educator to implement and use technology in my classroom.

I understand that the future in education will be turned toward the use of the digital technology. There are some of the digital tools that I would like to incorporate in my classroom like; digital storytelling. As a project the students will write personal narratives integrating, images, texts, pre-writing techniques, music and their own voice. this will be a motivating way to create a good digital product. Also I would like to create my own classroom web page with the use of Google Site. It would be an informative site for students and parents. They will have access to this page and post their own blogs. I think that with iTouchs in our classroom we will have the opportunity to explore and learn more about the use of this mobile technology and their applications.

Tool # 11 Digital Citizenship

Like everything in our life, Digital World needs to be ruled. We can call this Digital Citizenship. We have read and learned the fabulous things around the digital technology. It takes us to in imaginable places with no boundaries with an easy way. Digital Citizenship is a way to prepare our students or users for a society full of the technology with responsibility and ethics.

One of the most important duties as educators of the new technology is to orient our students about the responsible use of this technology for their good and the community.

I would like to educate my students in first place about the appropriate way to operate in the digital world. A way to provide them with a rich but safe learning environment. Three things that I will recommend my students to be a good digital citizen will be; always remember to access secure sites approved by the teacher, never enrolled in on-line conversations, never provide personal or others identity.

Tool # 10 Exploring Mobile Technology

This is about Mobile Technology. Products like ; itouch, ipad, iphone, give us a good portable tools that we can use to interact with the digital world. Using this portal devices you can have access a great numbers of application like; video games, web pages, podcast, videos, blogs, photos, audios, etc.

It is very important to know that you can have access to many educational app's that can be used in your classroom. I was exploring some of them like ; Caramba Spanish course. It can take you to a dozens of interactive Spanish lesson. Another interesting application that I could use in the classroom was Cramzy Experimenter. This cool application show step by step how to do a variety of Science experiments that students can do at home or in the classroom. I think my students and I will have a good time learning and developing applications using this incredible mobile technology.

Tool # 9 Sharing Information

Now it is about the way we can share information into the digital world. There are two products we can use to share information in our social network. Jing enhance the communication by adding visuals to our on-line conversation. It can be a simple screen or a full video. Jing allows you also create your own video clip. I could use Jing to produce my own video clip to explain step by step the content of a science project, so my students can watch the video anytime they need information about it.

Another tool to share information is Skipe. Using Skipe in our classroom we could experiment sending texts or have a video conference in Spanish with other users in our school, city, nation or any other place in the world. We probably will need a video camera and a headset.

Tool # 8 Video Resources

It is common to look for educational videos in the Internet. There are a variety of sites where we can find interesting videos to show in our classroom. This is the concept of stream videos. A video that can be delivered to an end user any time. You can find videos in sites like; National Geographic, or hosting websites like; You Tube, Teachers Tube, School Tube, etc. There are also searching machines like Blinkx that have access to hundreds of videos sites.

I went to Blinkx in search of some videos in Spanish to be used in my classroom. I founded several interesting videos that will help my students to develop listening and vocabulary in Spanish like:
http://www.ashcombe.surrey.sch.uk/MM_spanish/1a_family/self_family_fset.htm


http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/talk/introductions/

Tool # 7 Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling or Podcats provides tools from the digital world to tell stories using multimedia technics. There are several products you can use to produce digital stories like; PhotoStory for Dell or iMovie for McBooks.

Digital storytelling can be used to place technology in our classroom. A way to motivate our students to write and tell a story with their own creativity and voice. Creating a digital storytelling students will have to put together resources like scanning hand-drawn images, texts, photos or videos, voice and music. Students will still have to apply the pre-writing strategies like composing and editing plus the digital process to develop and share a clear, structure and effective multimedia product to tell their story.

I have created a photostory about my hometown, Saltillo Mexico. The pictures are a little blurry, but they remind me of home.

It wasn't able to upload my photostory video. I left it in my documents.

Tool # 6 Wikis

Reading about Wikis took me to several sites for us to use it like; PB Works, Wikispaces, and Google Sites. A Wiki is a simple data base which anybody can use it to create your own site to organize information and share it. It can be a personal, a club or a public site. Where the participants can update information collaboratively.

I liked Google Site. You can create a web page easily, and can be used for different purpose like you own club, family page, team project, classroom site, etc. This page can be customized according to your needs. You can upload files, insert pictures, texts, blogs, calendars, etc. I can imaging creating my own classroom web site, where the teacher can post a site map with information of interest to students and parents like; announcements, homework, reading list, dates to remember, school forms, school supplies, calendars, etc. The students and parents would have access to the blog page and post their comments. www.google.com/sites

Tool # 5 Social Bookmarking

I was reading about Delicious and Diigo bookmarking softwares both used to create a social networks to share and organize web sites. I decided to search into Diigo. Using tags like "Dual" and "Spanish" I could find some interesting sites like;
www.cal.org/twi, and http://www.unc.edu/world/2007_Latin_Amer/Pres&HOs/Fasciano_Dual%20Language%20Immersion.pdf, both sites provide interesting information about the Two Way Dual Language Immersion Program. Likewise, searching with the word "Spanish"
I founded an interesting site www.miscositas.com this site provides you with incredible resources that you can printout by free to be used with two-way dual language learners. Diito also allows you to organize your bookmarks using lists and also you can create your own network to share you bookmarks or be part of a community or group.

Tool # 4 Using Google Tools

I have been reading some of the cool tools Google have to share information. I explored Google Doc. It is an extraordinary tool to upload documents and share it with other persons to be seen and updated as needed. This tool can be used in Projects where a group of students or teams can share and work with the same document. A grade level team can share a monthly calendar and keep it updated with events and activities as needed. I personally shared a students welcome letter with my colleagues for revision and edition before to be sent to the parents.

Another tool that called my attention was Google Readers. It allow me to select a variety of articles or blogs of interest and keep me updated in a very visual window in one of my blog spaces.

Tool # 3 Using Image Generator

I was exploring Big Huge Labs. I made a USA map to illustrate the first 10 states the students have to study during the first nine weeks in Social Studies. The idea was that students could just click on the map to name and find the specific state they want to learn.

USA Map - First 10 states

http://bighugelabs.com/map.php

Another interesting Image Generator was the Wordle. This can be used to built A poster to illustrate important words into a cloud of words.

Tool # 2 Building a Community of Learners

One of the most important ideas of being a blogger is the creation
of a PLN ( Personal Learning Network) a community of users that can communicate each others by posting comments on their blogs. We as educators can use this new technology to create a community (students, parents, and colleagues) of learners to share comments of common interests in areas of our lives, academics or personal. The same way as a users of this new technology we are part of the digital world where we can interact with other educators of the same thoughts and ideas.

What most stood me out from the commenting advice was the fact that only 1% of the users are actively engaged in contributing in the blog community. Some of the advices that I founded out interesting to improve the numbers of comments that you can receive were; invite to post a comment, ask questions, writing open ended post, be interactive, gracious, controversial, etc.

I have posted comments on:

Something Else to Do
Fatigued Teacher
Guzman's Class Corner
Savcic's Savants
The Tech-Teacher Experiment

Tool # 1 Creating a Blog

After several weeks thinking when to start with this training about 11 tools. I finally started it today. I knew it was going to take me some time to figure it out how to set up my blog, my avatar, etc. I named this space "bilingual-forum" as a way to share and communicate with my students and parents suggestions about how to improve their second language skills and experiences having in the classroom. This way I will create an on-line social network as an opportunity to implement new technology in our classroom.