LaProfe

//**Reflections on Web 2.0 Workshop**

Monday, July 23, 2007// So here we are, learning about Web 2.0 and, hopefully, "imagining" how it can have a positive effect on the teaching/learning that takes place in our classrooms. Last spring the foreign language department learned that it would finally have access to the space and the hardware for the long awaited language lab. As soon as I found this out, I knew that one of my main professional goals for the coming school year would be to find effective ways to integrate this technology into our curriculum. This workshop is a great opportunity for exploration, and I hope that what I learn will be useful not only for my own classes, but for our understanding of the process of learning to communicate in a different language. And, in a way, that is what we are doing: learning the language of Web 2.0 as we learn to use to communicate in ways that are new to all of us. In fact, the more I think about it the more I see this week as a model for what ought to happen in our language classes: experience and experiment with the language we're learning -Spanish, Mandarin, Web 2.0- in order to communicate with the larger community.

Here are the first sites that have given me some inspiration, opportunity to think/rethink (in addition, of course, to what Scott has already prepared for us):

What is a Wiki? How is it used?

A collaboration of several FL instructors to create a resource site for FL teachers. (http://flteaching.wikispaces.com/)

[|Link to discussion of Web 2.0 in the teaching of foreign languages.] (http://dachid.people.wm.edu/599/599.htm)

//Monday night:// I have to confess all of this is a little overwhelming. Several questions keep running through my mind:
 * How to avoid using "technology" just for technology's sake and make it an effective tool for teaching and learning?
 * By "buying" into these new ideas about communication, are we contributing to our own and our students' isolation from other individuals? Does "global" communication equal the value of interpersonal communication?
 * How do we adjust the accepted cannon of our individual disciplines to these new ways of communication? How do we present it to our colleagues so that changes are not dismissed outright?


 * //Foreign Language Instruction//**


 * //Español//**


 * //Français//**


 * //Other Useful Tools//**

//Friday, July 27, '07// I had full intentions to post each day -actually, several times a day!- during our workshop to outline my progress in learning about the many tools that we have been introduced to this week. Well... clearly it has not happened; there is SO much to learn that I've hardly been able to keep up. However, I have finally seen how I can create the type of teacher page that I have often visualized, but have not been able to design. My project for the next two weeks is to edit my USN web page to incorporate as many of the tools that we have learned about in a manner that is creative, efficient and productive for my students and other visitors. I also plan to include a "Resources for teachers" link in which I can describe to other foreign language teachers the Web 2.0 tools that are available, how they relate to the field of teaching FL, and how I used them specifically in the Melchiore USN web page. It's a pretty big goal, but one that I want to take on because I believe that this is the way that I will really learn to use the resources that are available to us.