Learning and Leading - November 2009

Student Eddie Cho created a short video using Blabberize. He superimposed his photo on a Spiderman image and recorded dialogue in Spanish. View it at http://75.101.140.69/ view?id=47666.

Student Timothy Curran created this cartoon in Spanish using Kerpoof.

Parents were very receptive to the digital portfolios, as they provide a window into the class. Through this digital lens, they can listen to podcasts and view student media productions and writing samples.

Spanish V—Describe your first day of school using the imperfect and preterite tenses correctly.

Kerpoof ( www.kerpoof.com). Allows users to create their own cartoons.

Assignment:

Create a cartoon in Spanish, using language freely, creatively, and appropriately.

Parents were very receptive to the digital portfolios, as they provide a window into the class. Through this digital lens, they can listen to podcasts and view student media productions and writing samples. One parent said she could see the transformation of her child from a caterpillar to a

butterfly. I showed the portfolios to parents at our open house and again at parent–teacher conferences. They listened to students recite poetry and browsed their restaurants. They especially enjoyed seeing the students’ best work showcased. One parent tearfully said about her daughter, “She has taken Spanish for many years, and I have never heard her speak like this. I did not know she could do this.”

Students enjoyed the digital portfolios because they were “something new” and provided an outlet for creative, intuitive work. The students engaged in both independent and collaborative assignments throughout their digital journey this year.

On many occasions, I saw students using translators because they did not know how to create accent marks, and they said it was easier to copy and paste from the translator. In addition to teaching the shortcuts for accent marks and showing them how to switch the keyboard to different languages, I posted a site called spanish. typeit.org on the portfolio main page. This allowed students to click a button to get the accent marks and copy and paste them into PowerPoint. For the digital kids, the click/copy/paste maneuver was more efficient.

Every time we went to the lab, I watched students work with their heads, their hands, and their hearts. These three domains are the foundation of our character education program and serve as a segue to digital citizenship and ethics.

In the lab, we had many conversations about social networking, ethics, and safety. The students learned the importance of always protecting their portfolios with passwords and learned to never use their last names on any websites.

I was thrilled to hear that students were using tools such as Google Docs, Flickr, Blabberize, and Animoto not only for their assignments, but for their own creative purposes. Web 2.0 tools, when properly infused into the curriculum, create a dynamic learning environment and foster both collaborative opportunities and individual autonomy.

—Lisa Bucciarelli is a foreign language instructor at Hinsdale Central High School. She has a master’s degree in Spanish and an EdD in curricular studies. She is a Google Certified Teacher and a Johns Hopkins University adjunct faculty member.