It’s an exciting time to be in education! Teaching in the online and hybrid environment
is fun on so many levels. One of my
favorite aspects is taking a good assignment and seeing how the available
technology can push us to the next level.
It’s an ongoing progress that involves some play.
Here’s one assignment for my TCE 572 online and hybrid
courses that I’m in the process of playing with. In short, students work with Second Language
Acquisition theories that many of them are encountering for the first time. It’s a lot to take in at once, so in looking
for alternative methods for them to work with the theories and express
themselves, they choose from a variety of levels of technologies: Prezi
(challenging), online comic strips, or Fakebook. Since technology is also an
objective of the course, they get exposure to it and discuss how they may be
able to use it with their language learners in the K-12 environment. Putting this into perspective, it’s a small
assignment, so I encourage them not to spend more than an hour, but I know many
of them spent more than that. (Note to
students: Thanks for your dedication to your learning:-)
This was my second time of giving this assignment a
whirl. There were a few glitches, but
they worked through them. The Fakebook
site seemed to work about 85% of the time and seemed to load best on Internet
Explorer for me. Although I imagine it
caused some frustration, many of those who had trouble with the site did
problem solving and took screenshots. In
future courses, I will suggest they screencast them.
A big thanks to all the students who may have stepped out of their comfort zones to work with this technology and content! Here are the debuts of those who chose the option to post them here!
Prezis on SLA: (For information on Prezi
Educator’s account, look here.)
Chomsky a. http://bit.ly/K6S7yO b. http://bit.ly/J1Mmr9
Schumann http://bit.ly/JE4QM2
Vygotsky http://bit.ly/J4f2ci
Derewianka http://bit.ly/JFWdhJ
COMICS on
SLA: Humor is displayed in several of these comic strips made with Make Beliefs Comix.
Approaches to Grammar
Instruction http://bit.ly/KdYOTD
FAKEBOOKS
on SLA THEORIES: This is a spin-off of the Facebook/social media idea
in popular culture. ClassTools.Net
is the site used. Several debates between theorists play out in
some of these. Some are in a question/answer format. One
student has a conversation with one of the theorists.
Chomsky http://bit.ly/KP94xe
Assignment Reflections: We had an interesting discussion in my hybrid
course about how this type of technology allows students to bring in their
everyday language. They talked about how they could use it to compare/contrast
academic language. These assignments
could be done in different languages as well. We also discussed following
through with oral presentations to give language learners an opportunity to speak, explain,
and ask questions.
It also made me reflect on the assignment when one student
first made her own Prezi for her kindergarten class using content that she was
familiar with in order to become comfortable with Prezi. She did this prior to moving onto working
with the new theory content. Her Prezi
with bright pictures shows how this could be a useful tool for teaching at this
level. http://bit.ly/KrlE8w
Extension for my
students to consider:
- Fakebook was working about 85 % of the time. If this happened with any technology in your class, but you really liked the assignment, what would you do?
- How would you grade this type of assignment in your own class?
- Here is a related site: ifaketext (See Tammy Worcester's suggested ways of using it.)
Thanks again to my students for their creations and
interesting discussions. Here’s a link
to the first time I attempted this assignment. Happy creating!
