Are Social Media websites really helpful in classroom instruction?

This question is brought up frequently in various content areas.  While some people think it is a big distraction to students and has no positive benefits at all, others think its usage is beneficial and is a great way to incorporate something they enjoy into the curriculum. I personally feel that in my subject area of foreign language that it has its positive and negative attributes. It is positive in the sense that students are able to speak with people from countries with the target language in an easy and fun way. However, once students go of course and start talking to their friends, family etc. it gets to be very distracting. Because of this, it is important that teachers allot specific time periods for students to use sites such as facebook, myspace, etc.  and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to  in order to get the most out of this interesting learning experience.

Use of digital cameras in the classroom.

Within the classroom of various content areas, the typical technologies that teachers use are smart boards, power point presentations, etc. But what about technologies  that are not as widely used? What type of role do they play in the classroom and how can students benefit from them? One item that I feel would embrace these concepts is the use of a digital camera in the classroom.  For example, in my subject areas of Italian and Spanish, digital cameras would be able to be used in many ways. I would have my students take pictures of Italian cultural items such as food, fashion, etc. and then do a project explaining their important role within Italian culture.  This would be a fun assignment because its not only embracing language and cultural skills but also creativity and artistic skills as well.

Use of Commercials in Classroom instruction

Over this past week,  I have gained a very interesting insight into the use of commercials in classroom instruction. For my commercial Italian class, we were asked to search for an Italian commercial and explain its importance in publicity and how it depicts Italian culture.  I found that this was a great approach that is able to be used not only in foreign language instruction but in every content area. For example, to do this activity,  I chose a barilla pasta commercial in Italian which depicted a mother and daughter shopping for the pasta and then shows them eating all together as a family. Through this,  it depicts the importance of family and food in the Italian culture using a very entertaining approach to sell the product. All in all, using approaches like this are very good ways to teach cultural, linguistic and publicity aspects to students in FL classes as well as other content areas.

Interactivity 4: The Pedagogical uses of technology

Google spreadsheet URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnKm6bRU2Ko0dHlzV2xjMHVndHdISmZxNFlxWVZNbVE#gid=0

I chose this particular lesson plan because in my opinion, it depicts a very organized lesson with just the right mix of technological and standard classroom approaches. The teacher does a good job of covering all the bases, including every aspect involved in teaching the lesson, even mentioning accommodations that may be necessary.

In my opinion, there were no gaps between the curriculum goals, teaching strategies and technologies used.  Because this is lesson plan being used for a Spanish 1 class and the topic is important, it would make sense that not too many technologies will be used in order to not overwhelm the students. As a result, all the information in this lesson plan is in a cohesive order and does not need to have anything added to it.  

The various technologies used in this lesson were essential to achieving the curriculum goals. The curriculum goals for this lesson were as follows : “The students will be introduced to basic Spanish words and sounds that will help them grammatically for further knowledge of the Spanish language in writing and speaking.”   Because the main goal of this lesson as stated here is to have the students feel comfortable with words and sounds, the technologies utilized in this lesson were very good choices for a number of reasons. One reason would be that the teacher recognized that although the main goal was hearing the words, seeing them is just as important. Some students need to both visualize and hear the word at the same time to memorize its meaning/pronunciation. Therefore the use of the overhead projector while she pronounces the words was a very good idea and really helped to carry out the curriculum goal. Next , the use of the audio tapes was another crucial component in this lesson, more so than the overhead projector in my opinion. Because students catch on to different sounds more so than others, hearing the words pronounced by the teacher as well as the various people in the audio tapes will help them to memorize them in a more concise manner.