End of Semester

I'm overloaded with information and exhausted.  My brain hurts.  My eyes hurt.  I want to go to bed and not stare at another computer for a month; then maybe my eyes won't hurt so much anymore.  God, please help me to survive these last two weeks.

Social Bookmarking Week 5 Assignment

I like the Delicious.com site that we can use for social bookmarking.  I like it because we can connect with other people who are interested in the same things we are and all of their searching for useful websites cuts down on the amount of time I have to spend looking for the same things.  How cool is that?

Save time and learn more!  Who can ask for more?

TontitoFrito YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tontitofrito+spanish&aq=f

My favorite Spanish Teacher.

Week 3 RSS Feeds

Week 3: Comment on your experience of working with the collaborative document on Google Docs
Comment on your experience with RSS feeds.

Like I commented in the collaborative blog for class- I really like the simplicity of Google Docs.  It allows me to not worry all the time whether or not I packed my flash drive.  Just saying "flash drive" makes me feel out of date!  There have been days when I had to drive all the way back home to retrieve my drive because I couldn't do any work without it.  Some days I have left it in my classroom computer only to get back to my office and freak out wondering where I left it!  So Google Docs is a super resource for me.

The RSS feeds...I'm not too crazy about.  I don't have a lot of time and I don't want to be distracted when I get onto the computer.  I am not naturally organized and so my method for staying organized is to not "have" a lot of things.  I think an RSS feed provides me with almost too much information and then I will become overwhelmed by it and waste time trying to organize it.

La Familia Grande - Barbara MacArthur - Spanish family vocabulary

¡Cuenta! Spanish number rap from "Sing, Dance, Laugh, and Eat Tacos" by ...

El Alfabeto - Barbara MacArthur - Learn the alphabet in Spanish

Dolor de cabeza - Barbara MacArthur - learn Spanish body parts

Spanish Speaking Countries Song by Barbara MacArthur

Posting #2

Your second blog post this week will be a short critique of a YouTube video. Choose any of the posted videos or discuss them cumulatively as to how you might use YouTube within your own environment to deliver instructions to your students.

I truly love how just about anything can be learned by watching You Tube.  Don't get me wrong; I'm an avid reader and I take my kids to the library every week, but there's something much more intriguing about watching a video to learn a concept rather than reading step-by-step instructions about that same concept.

One of my favorite You Tube videos are by a teacher named, "tontitofrito."   
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tontitofrito&aq=f

You can go to this general link for tontitofrito and then type in the grammar rule you want to learn.  You can't get it any better than this- it's an engaging video and it's FREE!  I love to use these as supplemental tutorials to our book's tutorials.  Some students just follow them better than the ones that come with the book.

I used to make my own tutorials but it seems pretty redundant to make my own when his are more high-tech and are exactly like I teach anyway!  I can't recommend a better Spanish website!

Setting up Blog for the First Time

I found the YouTube video on how to set up a blog, very useful, as I do better watching how to do something rather than reading how to do it.  I have never used a blog except one time and it was someone else who set it up, so this is my first time creating a blog.  I'm interested to see what kind of response I will get from my students and how much more time this will require me to commit to work than I already do.  My main concern is that students will not follow netiquette and may not be respectful of each others' varying opinions.  My other concern is that this will be one more place that I must go to view "homework" or "assignments" and give them a grade in order to get students to participate. 

Hopefully I'll have nothing but a positive experience using blogging.

Practice Set-Up

Learning how to blog