Foreign Language Department Meeting

About an hour before the department meeting with Foreign Language, I was in a bit of a panic. The entire network was down. Suddenly, with no reason (and no later explanation since, and I'm writing this about three days after the fact) there was simply no internet.

That was problematic since I was intending to show the teachers some tools and then discuss how they might be used for instructions.

Fortunately, about fifteen minutes before the meeting, the network just as suddenly and mysteriously decided to function again.

The meeting went relatively well. In prep, I had added a page for foreign language to my wiki. I mostly used tools I was already aware of that I felt had foreign language applications. I showed the teachers my wiki, and the list of tools I thought would be of use.

I was hoping to discuss more curriculum and/or standards. But, as is often the case with tech enthused teachers, they were very focused on the tools. Even so, while looking at the various tools, they did talk about HOW they could use them. They talked about how they could replace something less functional that they already used. They talked about specific lessons where these tools would engage students. At first, I was starting these conversations, but by the end of the meeting, I was just sitting back and listening to them.

I think this meeting was a very good start. I showed them voice thread, voki, audacity, and wordle.

Audacity was probably the least favorite, because it looks intimidating. They liked voice thread, but are a little wary of having to pay for the edu version, or of risking students stumbling across inappropriate content or comments. Also, I think trying to use the mouse to annotate images was frustrating for them. Voki was by far the favorite. The teachers were able to quickly figure it out, and saw the potential for having students be very engaged by it. They liked audacity for the idea of having students listen to themselves speaking a foreign language, but liked voki better. Students could still listen to themselves, and re-record as many times as they like. And, students could still share work with one another. But, the interface is more engaging (a talking cat is just better to look at than a big grey box) and less intimidating. The time limit of 60 seconds is also not likely to be an issues. And, as time moves on and the teachers become more comfortable with some technologies, they might be more willing to give audacity another try. I'm of the opinion that in the meantime I should look for something similar that scares people less.

They also had a chance for a better intro to the student laptops. Because they do not have teacher laptops, I decided to bring student laptops to the meeting so that everyone could have a computer. It did make trying to keep everyone on the same page a challenge. One teacher had an exceptionally hard time with the red mouse button. and, the teacher whose room we used wanted to sit at her desk, so it was harder for me to notice if she had missed something.

This was an intro--to the computers, to using technology, and to working with me--and as an intro it went very well. I think that I will have opportunities to collaborate with the foreign language department in the future.