My Old Blog

I discoverd this free app on Miscositas' Facebook page this morning (¡Gracias!). Telligami is available on iPhones and iPads.  Tellagami lets you customize your character and record your voice or type in the text, select a voice, and have the character speak on his/her own.  You can customize the character's gender, hair, skin tone, and clothing items.  You can also change the background in which the character is displayed. I think Tellagami has good potential for the language classroom, particularly with my French students.  I would like to use it with the purpose of helping my students strengthen their oral language skills.  I plan to integrate this app-based activity into my morning routines in class, randomly picking students to quickly create a monologue in French comprised of about 3 - 4 sentences on a particular topic or in response to a question.

There is growing discussion around the term "personalized learning" in British Columbia. The idea behind personalized learning is that students can have their learning experiences and instruction customized to fit their abilities and learning preferences.  I like to think of personalized learning as a buffet of several choices of items that the learner can choose from.  The intent is to ensure the learner is getting the most out of his/her learning journey. basykeyes (Flickr) When I think of personalized learning, what comes to mind is a student being able to listen to an audio version of a chapter in a book on her mp3 player while reading along; she can then go to Khan Academy and watch a video on adding fractions with different denominators while taking notes.  She can replay the video as many times as needed.  She can then go into a learning management platform such as Moodle or Edmodo to ask her peers a question about today's video lecture on the Econom...

Since my last post about using Storybird in the classroom, I must admit that the excitement among students in using this site has begun to wane.  What is interesting to note is that it seems the male students in my class are the ones expressing dissatisfaction.  My female students, on the other hand, seem to generally still show enthusiasm about it all. When asking some of the girls in the class why they like Storybird, the common response is the illustrations.  They love the colorful, cute images.  This got me thinking about what it is the boys would find appealing.  I have boys in my class who love to draw in class.  One of my students has even gone to the lengths of drawing a character representing every boy in my class! So after some searching, I stumbled upon Story Jumper.  This site allows students to design their own illustrations and write stories.  The boys were all over this new site!  Everything from wizards to robots appea...

Below are some resources that I think will be highly useful to teachers and parents interested in the "Flipped Classroom" (or reverse instruction) model: Articles Explaining the Flipped Classroom Approach Copy of Learning Styles and The Flipped Classroom (Neil Commons' Presentation) How the Flipped Classroom is Radically Transforming Learning Real Flipped Classroom (Edudemic) Warning: Flipping Your Classroom May Lead to Increased Student Understanding (Teaching Science and Math) Infographic Explaining the Flipped Classroom Approach