anne+metaxas'+page

 This week we ek we learned about what seemed like an avalanche of internet applications as well as how to use many new features on Activinspire. Below are links to sample works, as I went through the motions of figuring out the mechanics of how things work.

(1) An embedded video clip made by students. The idea is to share student work, with the idea of letting them create mini-lessons to teach the class some aspect of the grammar; or as teacher, I could further use the song lyrics for some in class activity. Exercises could accompany the clip on a site. :

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 (2) In Toonlet, I created a funny message to put on my French University 2 blog for the first day with some back-to-school humor: 

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(3) For my Spanish class, I started to play around with the idea of using this song to work into a unit on health. The protagonist has a bicyle accident. I used googledocs to create a question sheet that feeds into a spreadsheet to be able to do something with the answers.

[|El Niagara en Bicicleta]

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(4) I created a unit in Activinspire on the present subjunctive, using a song called "A Dios le Pido". I found it to be a burdensome tool, very delicate ( a lot of freezes) and time-consuming. It reminded me of when I used to build webpages 12 years ago in html, in the sense that you have to manually carry out every operation that you want the program to perform. So, afterwards, I replicated it in   a wikipage for my Spanish 202 class. The drawback here was that <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">this was not a good format for building data because the many pages I created for a single unit would become extremely clu <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">ttered as soon as I started a new unit. So, I think I need to cut and paste all those activity sheets into Googledocs and just make one link for the unit. <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Then, this is something that I could bring into Activinspire as a link. But, I don't think I will do much composing or saving in Activinspire. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> We learned about RSS. I realized I could have my students sign up for an igoogle page or some other page that they may already have, to receive updates from [|my French University 2 blog]or [|my Spanish 202 blog.] I can link the blogs to my wikipages and they can get whatever assignments or documents they need. Throughout the year, this can become a record of topics covered in class and remamin accessible for review. //<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">

(5) We also learned about a myriad of other webapps: [|Voicethread], [|Webspiration], ////<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">http://blabberize.com // <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">/, www.imagechef.com, animoto.com, picnik.comscreencast.com, feedity.com, Lyricmuse.com, twitter.com, you name it! - <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;"> and we set up fee accounts at many of these. That led to another valuable lesson about keeping one's user ids and passwords in a convenient and safe location. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">//<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> (6) We saw the Dalton Sherman video (check it out...) [|Dalton Sherman inspirational speech]<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);"> // <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> (7) We learned that things you embed fall into the category of widgets, gadgets and gizmos.

(8) We learned how to RSS feed in Mac through the address bar as well as through feedity.com

(9) We learned that there will be a VHS to computer digitizer available in the Mac lab in the library in the fall.

(10) This was a great opportunity to work with Carolina Castro, Xuan Wang and Roberto Mariani in particular, because we were able to make a lot of curriculum connections, get to know each other, and help each other out when we got stuck. This collaboration can continue on this wiki as well. Many thanks to Rob and Dominick for their continual efforts to help us with all the little annoying obstacles that pop up as well as with the "big picture!"

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