Podcasting

I found a podcast for learners of Spanish on StudySpanish.com. This podcast in particular is geared toward intermediate learners: http://www.notesinspanish.com/category/intermediate-spanish-podcast/. The dialogue was between a male student and a female teacher, which would make it easier for students to follow. It also continued at an appropriate pace for high school students and contained common vocabulary and expressions that they would be familiar with. The topic is very interesting and current as well. It dealt with the issue of immigration, specifically immigration in Spain and England. Immigration is a great topic to discuss, especially since it is a current issue. Also, many students automatically think about immigration and the United States, and they may not realize that other countries have issues concerning immigration as well. My only concern for this podcast is its length. Most high school students cannot pay attention to a dialogue in another language for over ten minutes; Usually two to four minutes is ideal, especially since they listen to each dialogue twice.

Using Gabcast for a Global Cooperation Project

Gabcast is one of the tools from Mod 7 that could easily be used for global cooperation. As a class, we could establish pen pals from another accredited class in a Spanish speaking country. In addition to the traditional writing/typing to each other, the students could take it a step further and leave messages on their websites or blogs for their pen pals. Between writing and creating audio, students will be practicing the skills of listening, reading, writing, and speaking. In addition to practicing these skills, students will have the opportunity to hear and converse with a native speaker of the same age. This would be a great opportunity for students to learn more about other cultures as well as demonstrate the importance of being a global citizen.

Global Cooperation

The Global Schoolhouse is a tool that helps teachers find collaborative learning partners and appropriate projects. There are learning projects for every age and discipline. The site offers a project registry, videos, news and discussion lists, and online expeditions. The project registry contains more than 3,000 annotated listings – and is searchable by date, age level, geographic location, collaboration type, technology tools or keyword. I found several neat projects that I could easily implement in my classroom. One of them was called "Chatting in Spanish," where students could talk to other students around the world using tappedin.org. Another neat project was "Extra! Extra! Dare to enter the world of Dali," which had students interview famous Hispanic artists and create a newsletter with these interviews. While many of the Spanish-related projects were archived and already completed, they still can help me generate ideas for new projects, so that students can communicate with others on a global basis. After all, it would be wonderful for students to see their Spanish skills in action when being able to communicate with native speakers around the globe.
iEARN works similiarly to The Global Schoolhouse. All projects involve a final "product" or exhibition of the learning that has taken place as part of the collaboration. These have included magazines, creative writing anthologies, websites, reports to government officials, arts exhibits, performances, and many more examples of youth taking action as part of what they are learning in the classroom. Another neat feature is that you can choose any area of the world and find out how iEARN has been utilized in different countries. For example, I clicked on Latin America, and it appears that iEARN has been used in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Chile.