Week 1 Summary

This week I did a lot of research over the different uses of technology in the classroom. There were many different resources that seems to be immediately helpful. I especially enjoyed learning about the podcasts and tumble books. Both of these new technologies seemed very innovative. Though they were both more interesting than the rest, the idea of pod casts were much newer to me. Though the websites were very easy to maneuver and gather information, I think that it goes beyond that. To use a pod cast, the teacher must either be comfortable doing the pod cast/blog themselves, or comfortable enough to use someone else's. I have not seen major usage of pod casts in my school, let alone in our Spanish department, so I do not feel as comfortable using these just yet.
The most immediate resource that I do feel comfortable using in my classroom are the Tumble Books. I was completely fascinated when I found that site. The use of Spanish books is absolutely amazing. My kids enjoy reading books in class, but most are only partially in Spanish, so I have to change some words that they are working on, to make better use of the vocabulary. A lot of other books that I have found have both English and Spanish, which makes it easier for them to look off the other words, and understand what is going on without trying as hard. I have found that it is better in the SPanish classroom to completely omit as much English as possible so that they rely on what they have learned. These books are not as good to introduce information, but they are a great way to review. Another great thing about the tumble books website is that there were puzzles to go along with the stories. With the tumble books, the students are completely immersed in the language. I will be interested to do some more research on this topic, because I think that there should be some more ebooks available for free. I have already set up a trial account with tumble books, so we will see how that goes. I also sent out an email to the other teachers, letting them know that I will be using the smart board in class this week.
The only challenge that I foresee in the future with this new program is the usage of the smart board. I travel to each class for their 20 minutes of Spanish. During this time, classroom teachers utilize their free time to catch up on emails, and grading. Most days I have free access to the smart board, but sometimes the teachers cannot give up their computer for me to use. The best way to handle this situation is to let them know ahead of time that I would like to use the smart board. This way, any extra time it takes to turn on the monitor is done before I get there, and the teachers can prepare themselves to do something off of the computer during Spanish time. I will keep you all updated on how the class receives my new technology!