Juggling Two Worlds

"If growing up in an analogue world was challenging for teens in the past, today's growing generations must juggle two worlds - one which will be there forever." 

This quote comes from a blogger I've been following, Ana Cristina (check out her blog CristinaSkyBox), in her post titled Shackled to the Web. I found this post to be extremely relevant to topics we've discussed in our "Teaching with Technology" class about digital natives and our role as teachers to help students understand their digital responsibilities. I felt that this quote adequately summed up one of the major themes that comes with a lesson of this type and that is to remember that whatever you post online is available to everyone, all the time, basically forever. 

Within her post, she talks about how students don't always remember this and they end up saying or publishing things that they believe to be okay in their "digital world" but that everyone knows is something you would never do in person. The challenge for us as teachers who teach digital responsibility is then to help the students understand, that even though these interactions are occurring face to face, they are still coming from the same origin-you! And the digital world is less forgiving than the so-called "real word" because what happens there could be tied to you forever. 

I found it really interesting that she also talked about this generation of students as the generation of learners. She made the point that although students may have made mistakes, she would hope that people in the future wouldn't hold it against them as a person, but understand that they were involved in this learning process of managing their etiquette in two worlds. I had never thought of it this way before. I think I grew up somewhat during the begininng of the popularity of the digital world (instant messaging, email, myspace, Facebook, etc.), my parents always telling me to never put any important information on the web, no pictures, nothing that would have people knowing anything about me. I actually never had a myspace, had limited time allotted to use instant messaging, and didn't have a Facebook until college because of this skepticism. I feel like I am still very reluctant to create accounts or profiles online and I acknowledge the fact that online image is an important part of what people see about you. But since this is so much a part of our world now, and students younger and younger have technology, when students don't know their responsibilities and things end up online, will people view this as a negative part of their history, or part of the learning process of our society in the digital world we are now adapting to?

Either way, I think her post brought up great points about the continued need to help students understand that although they live in essentially two worlds (the "real" world and the "digital" ones), it is necessarily to incorporate it into our classrooms but also to make sure students understand how they exists in both worlds.

New Curiosities

When I think of technology in school, I’m still stuck in thinking about computers, projectors, and tools like PowerPoint. Our technology class has showed me various options for different free online technology tools that could be implemented in the classroom but yet I have a hard time seeing how many of these will have a positive impact and enhance student learning in a world language classroom. Mostly, I think I’m fearful that setting up or getting starting with technology could take up meaningful time out of class, and if the technology too isn’t going to have a significant impact on my students, I’m not sure I see the benefit.

After doing the technology in my placement survey, I learned about even more programs that were being used within the middle school I was working at. And I think that although there are many technologies that are utilized for the reasons I’ve mentioned above aren’t used again, there are others that are used everyday. The everyday types of tools that I found most intriguing to learn more about were those being used for students with disabilities, as this is something I haven’t learned a whole lot about before. I’ve learned about some of the many different programs that can be used for different challenges students might face. Some students have programs that help with sight-reading and spelling words and some have scanners that put their books electronically so that they can program bookwork and worksheets to permit them to type in their answers.

Working with paraprofessionals at my school has allowed me to learn more about how these tools help the students with disabilities; however, a few times I’ve find myself working with the students one-on-one because the paraprofessional doesn’t speak Spanish. Because of these experiences, I believe that learning more about how technology can help students with disabilities and thinking about how this relates to a world language classroom will help make better accommodations. I am curious in how I can work with the paraprofessionals and these tools to help the students even more. 

Capzles Connections in the Classroom

In our class this semester we were broken up into groups to present in class on a “tech tool.” My group was assigned Capzles. Capzles is a time-lining tool that can be used to organize and express ideas linearly. There are a few different features of Capzles that I particularly enjoyed. For one, it is free to join and the steps to insert picture, text, music, and backgrounds are outlined clearly. The ability to put items in order and tag the date for each item within the timeline is a feature that I found neat. Since our last class focused on building student portfolios, I noticed the potential that Capzles could provide for this. It automatically tags the date for you (helps you to keep track of everything in the portfolio) and is easy to navigate in order to look for a particular assignment or photo that was posted. Cazples also provides a unique feature because you can put in music (or any sound) to play throughout the presentation. As a world language teacher, I thought this would be useful for listening activities in the classroom. Some of the Capzles I found on Spanish topics included native voiceovers that narrated the pictures. In my World Language methods class, we recently talked about how allowing the students to listen to authentic materials, even at an introductory level is important; however, if the text seems overwhelming to students they will try to translate everything in their head and thus they won’t be actually paying attention to the details of the narration. Therefore, Capzles offers an opportunity to have students listen to a narration, but will also have photos to help focus in their attention to the more important details of the speech.

During our presentation we had our colleagues get into groups based up their teaching areas and create a quick Capzle. Although these are rough outlines of how it could be used because of the time that was given to complete it, our colleagues were able to become familiar with the way that Capzles functioned. Here is what they came up with:

Math: http://www.capzles.com/c942d186-97ba-4dcd-96fe-389587690e31

Science: http://www.capzles.com/c5612468-cdf5-4715-a921-2d9d9e255ecf

Social Studies: http://www.capzles.com/#/e98d7199-34bd-48b2-834a-0345e2a93e2b/

World Language: http://www.capzles.com/#/3b87b585-b8d3-48a9-ac4a-0d43aaa93aa7/

English: http://www.capzles.com/#/dfb17fbc-bbad-4696-8f79-187f781e858a/

Overall I think Capzles offers an interesting tech tool because it provides yet another way for presentations and projects to be done in the classroom. When asked, 6/11 of our colleagues would use Capzles in the classroom. Some of the ways they suggested they would do this were:

• "The stacking feature! It would be cool to organize units with a few documents or key media. If we ever went over a systematic or procedural topic, Capzles would be perfect."
• "It could be useful as a way for students to aggregate their notes (in science) since science notes tend to be rather dense. Having the dating on each thing could be used to create a chronology of developments of science on a timeline that is seldom made so students may be able to see how developments build upon each other." 
• " It would be good for creating a character map or plot structure review-we could go back after each chapter as a class and add new info."

But as always, there are pros and cons to using any technology in the classroom. Like any technology, it can decide not to function properly. During the work time in the presentation, many of our colleagues experienced difficulties with the website loading slowly. They also found that finding videos, pictures, or documents and then uploading them to be a long process. One main takeaway I had from learning Capzles and giving our presentation is that Capzles is a quick and easy tech tool if you have all the adequate materials already saved on your computer, otherwise, the hassle of finding them (especially videos) can be daunting and time consuming. Given our short time, and some technical difficulties, Capzles didn't appear to be the best tool for many of my colleagues. The time it took to create and its strictly linear presentation made many of our colleagues share that because Prezi could provide a more holistic representation and PowerPoint was more dependable, they would tent to stick to using those programs. Capzles is a unique tool, but it appears to be better suited for some presentations and representations of information than others - and as with any technology used when teaching, it is important to think critically about the purpose that it is serving and what the students are going to get out of it!