Youtube to the rescue!

Another great resource for education is of course Youtube. If you want to learn something you can find videos on almost any subject. Of course, the difficulty is in finding videos that are of high quality in their instruction and information. There's definitely a lot of junk out there.

One way that I like to use Youtube videos is to provide instruction from other teachers. That way students get another angle on the subject that might click with them a little better than the way that I teach. In fact, one teacher I know has made it her goal to provide instruction from at least three different teachers (including her own) through the use of videos so that students can get different perspectives and hopefully at least one of those will reach them.

One weakness that I often see in videos is that they often don't check for understanding. It would certainly be nice if we could just sit and absorb information (and we do to some extent), but it isn't the most effective way of learning. There has to be some sort of active element, even if it's only a short quiz or some guiding questions.

So, to practice this a little bit I created a lesson plan and assignment for French 2 students to review the passé composé with avoir and être (not including reflexive verbs). You can check these out for yourself at:

French 2 Passé Composé Review With Youtube Lesson Plan
French 2 Passé Composé Review With Youtube Worksheet

Keeping on track with Google Calendar!

As part of my Google Apps for Education class I've been learning about Google Calendar and all that you are able to do with it. It's quite timely particularly because we will be required to use it for all of our classes this coming school year at MCPS. 

One of the features that I love about the Google Apps in general is that they are made so you can very easily share your work with others, while also keeping everything in one place. For example, I created a Google Calendar for my French 1 class, which I then embedded on my French 1 website and in my French 1 Moodle. If I change something on the calendar it will automatically be updated whether a student or parent is looking at the French 1 website or the French 1 Moodle (or any other place that I happen to embed it for that matter).

I usually put the topic of the day, the homework, and due dates on a calendar on a whiteboard in my room anyway, but this way I can put all of the same information on my Google calendar so students and parents can keep updated on what's going on. Plus, there will be a permanent record of what we did last week and the weeks before that. I just don't have enough whiteboard space for all of that!

Another feature that I wasn't aware of before is that you can attach files from your Google Drive to any events that you create. For example, if the topic of the day is the numbers 0-20 I can easily attach a Google Presentation or video to the event that I created called "Topic: #0-20". I can also create an event entitled "Homework: #0-20, Due: Next Class" and attach the actual homework to the event for download or printing.

The beauty of it all is that as long as the file is in my Google Drive I can always edit the original file and I won't have to worry about uploading the newest version. It will already be updated. Plus, it gets rid of the headache of wondering which version was the new version and which was the old version. Love it!

If you would like to see an example, here is my French 1 Google Calendar:

Google Apps for Education, Reflection #1

I just started a three week class on using Google Apps for Education, and it's pretty amazing how much is available. I already use Google apps a little bit- I have this blog, a gmail account, and I really love Google Drive. Google provides at least 10 gigabytes of free space, and I found out I could get 100 gigabytes of space for only $1.99 a month- which is a steal considering I can make sure all of my school files are synced and I don't need to worry so much about losing my work. I've always found copying and pasting files from one computer to another can be quite a headache. With Google Drive you can download the Google Drive application onto your computer and then copy any files and/or folders that you want onto it and it will then save all of those files onto the cloud so you can access it anywhere you have internet access. This makes it so I won't have to worry about whether what I saved on my flash drive was newer than the file that I saved on my computer, and if I change it in one place it will automatically be changed in another place. Amazing!

I'm looking forward to learning more about how to connect with other teachers, and be able to share what me and my students are doing on a regular basis.