Evaluating Learning Materials

The following site: Spanish Proficiency Exercises presents a multitude of videos with Native Speakers speaking on various topic. Each topic is accompanied by related vocabulary, related phrases, and related grammar points. However, is this a good learning material for in the classroom? 

Checkout my following evaluation of the site and feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with my findings.

Quality of Content:

1. All information that is heard is coming directly from Native Spanish and all accompanying work matches what they were saying. Therefore all concepts, models, and skills are valid and accurate.
2. The site hits all levels of Spanish from Beginner to Superior and a wide range of topics. The topics include your basics of colors, numbers, objects, and family members to name only a few and continues to conversational topics such as stereotypes people would like to see eliminated, as well as a few role-playing topics. All of the videos tailor directly to these topics that are all very important, useful, and necessary when using the Spanish language.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:

1. The most effective way to use this tool would be to use it during the Demonstration phase. Students are able to see up to 6 different demonstrations of each topic from a different Native Speaker. Additionally, it could be used as an Explanation tool, though with the Native Speakers it is most likely more difficult to understand and therefore would not be as effective as it would be in the demonstration phase. Unfortunately it does not allow the student to vocally interact, so if it was used as a Practice tool it could only be in the capacity of practicing the ability to understand spoken Spanish. 
   1. Explanation or description of the topic/stating the problem
   2. Demonstration of the curriculum/exploration of the problem
   3. Practice using the curriculum/analysis of the outcomes from solving the problem
   4. Applying the curriculum to "new" problems/application of the outcomes to other problems
2. The learning objectives are that the students will be able to understand the different topics of Spanish and be able to use said topics on their own. Students will also be able to use the topics more grammatically correct after exploring the related grammar section.
3. The characteristics of the target learners is from beginning Spanish to superior Spanish level with self-motivation to learn and explore more of the topics offered as well as the additional learning opportunities on the side. I would guess that the age is most likely high school to Higher Education.
4. The interactive/media-rich presentation of material will improve faculty and students' abilities to teach and learn the ability to understand spoken Spanish, but gives the student no opportunity to engage with the content or feedback on how the student is doing. Therefore its improvement on faculty and students' abilities to teach and learn is very limited.
5. The site can be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the discipline. With the wide range of topics that the site offers, it can be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the discipline.
6. I don't believe the site can be used in a variety of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals, especially with the lack of interaction on the site.
7. The intro page of the site gives the goal of increasing Spanish speaking ability, but there is no easy to identify goals throughout the main portion of the site, only the many different topics to choose from.
8. Good learning assignments can be written easily for using the site, but the range of them is very limited with the basis being on the ability to understand spoken Spanish and the occasional very specific grammar points.

Ease of Use:

1. The site is very easy to maneuver through with all of the levels always displayed at the top and when you scroll over the top a drop down menu of all of the topics appear. Once you click on the topic the pictures of each of the native speakers appears and a simple click on their picture brings up their video. Then on the right hand side is a bar with an option to chose related vocab, phrases, and grammar. The user can't get trapped or lost in the material. Everything is very consistent, though each section looks identical, so I would not say that each section or topic is visually distinct.
2. There is no interaction with the site at all besides the one sided viewing of the videos so there is no feedback whatsoever from the system.
3. The entire site is very static and has little to no flexibility.
4. All that is required technically speaking for the student is a computer with speakers and access to the Internet that can play Quicktime. All of the videos run on their own after clicking on one. This makes this site easy to use with less technical resources in the classroom as well as for students with less technology background.
5. There are lists of vocabulary with the English translation, which is how Spanish vocabulary is most often presented, but I teach using TPRS (Teaching proficiency through reading and stories) and therefore none of the format would be familiar to them.
6. The only attractive presentation of information is the videos and even those are close-ups of the Native Speakers with little to none background and are occasionally hard to see. Otherwise the material is not presented in an attractive way.

In a final conclusion this is a very organized and easy to follow site that the students would be able to easily access. However its uses are very limited and does not have an interaction part for the students to further their learning and be engaging to them. For me personally, as a K-8 Spanish teacher, it appears to be too old for my students as even the beginning level topics are introduced in full sentences and would be very overwhelming to my students. I believe this is a great resource to expose students to Native Speakers, but falls short in almost every other area. 

Personal Reflection

Technology is a fun new toy that can be both overused and overwhelming. I learned that I need to have a purpose for integrating the technology and not use it to just use it. I also don’t have to be an expert in the subject. Although I do need to have a good foundation, I can allow the students to explore on their own and even teach me. This not only takes the load off my shoulders but also gets the student’s adapting and thinking outside the box. 

However, just like I get overwhelmed, I need to realize that my students may get overwhelmed with technology. It is important to give them little bits at a time so that they don’t get frustrated and give up on the technology. The best way to work on this is to model the technology first, and then let them create something of their own. It’s also a great way to get them hooked! They see it and want to do it too.

Lastly, I learned that as a teacher it’s really important to integrate lessons of cyber bullying whenever using technology. This is a good way to teach the students what it is and to stop them from doing it right from the get go. 

Taking an online course really helped me think about and evaluate uses of technology. Every lesson in and of itself was an example of what one can do with technology. Then every lab really demonstrated how easy it was to explore and create on the Internet without too much direct instruction. I saw that I could create a lab and have my students follow it and then I wouldn’t need to model or demo each individual step. Furthermore, with each project we had to complete I was really able to see the possibilities and the future of that technology in my classroom. 

A lot of my thinking shifted from individual work to collaborative work. The SIG project demonstrated the most with each individual step. I dived head first into the wonders of online book marking and doing so as a group. I was able to see how easy, effective, and efficient it was to create a Google document as a group. All of us were able to type in the document at the same time, while having a discussion on the side and talking about what we needed to accomplish. It opened up my eyes to collaboration, not only between students, but also between cultures. I really want to integrate a collaboration project with another Spanish-speaking classroom that is learning English. 

Finally our group was able to collaborate on the presentation portion of Google docs, and all of us were able to see the wonders of everyone else’s projects. I’m definitely sold on précis now and I only saw it in the presentation, haven’t even tried it myself. Needless to say, the integration of the Internet really got me thinking about everything I can do with technology and I can’t wait to learn more!

Of all of the assignments that I turned in, I really feel that the SIG presentation really exemplifies good teaching with technology. First of all our SIG was created on Google docs so it utilized new technology that allowed for collaboration and easy sharing. The PowerPoint itself was engaging and fun and was rich with links and youtube videos that played right in the presentation. However, the PowerPoint, while fun, was also professional and informative. I could imagine students paying attention and wanting to see what they were going to learn next, which is exactly what you want as a teacher.

Through this class and the labs I definitely reached my goal of exploring a wide variety of technologies. All of the technologies that we talked about were new to me and really gave me an appreciation for how much I’ve been missing out on (technology-wise). Through my own explorations I definitely ran across areas where I had difficulty, such as trying to figure out how to share Google reader or the fact that netvibes has a private and a public page and everything needs to be transferred to the public page, the information isn’t automatically in both. Therefore if I want my students to share their RSS reader with me, they need to put all of the information in the public page first. 

However, I wasn’t able to introduce the technologies into my classroom already mainly because I didn’t quite anticipate the time that it would take to complete the class, being that it is accelerated to complete in 8 weeks, and to maintain my classroom in my first year of teaching. In other words my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I wasn’t able to fit all of that in. I do wish that there was more of a break between the classes because I am very excited about everything that I am learning, but at the moment I don’t have time to include extensive projects and that’s exactly the vision that I have with the technology that I want to implement. 

I guess this leads me to one of my new short-term goals and that is to take something small that I’ve learned and implement it, such as the digital storytelling. I don’t have to get extravagant right away, though the bigger goals of using an RSS reader for current events in Latin American countries and sharing stories with a Spanish speaking school are still my main long-term goals. 

As stated in my Personal Technology Plan, I will also continue to explore the technologies that I have already touched on, especially the Web 2.0 tools. I will learn more about technology with each new class in the educational technology certificate program. I have already begun collaborating with my mentor teacher on different ways of using the technology and what technology we have in the district. I will take this summer to really try to figure out the different ways that I can incorporate everything that I will have learned so far.

Lastly I do feel that I made sure to ask questions no matter what, though I don’t think I had as many as I expected to have. Most likely I simply didn’t know what additional questions to ask, but now I have the resources to get help through Twitter and MACUL space even though the class is ending. 

In short, I have grown a lot through the labs and the projects in this class and am super psyched to take everything into my classroom and revolutionize the way that my students have been learning Spanish!