Saturday, March 31, 2007

Reading Prompt #10

I have used internet resources for my own professional development. A couple of years ago my district paid for and offered professional development courses through PBS TeacherLine. I remember taking a reading and math course. The reading course facilitated teacher interaction and research of children's authors online. I explored the possibility of students researching their favorite authors in the language they pleased.

Some of the Egbert resources I would be interested in trying is Wordsurfing. According to Egbert, this site helps to acquire vocabulary. This would be very beneficial for my language learners. I am also interested in The Amazing Picture Machine, a site that provides free graphics for students to use.

The images on Flickr could also be used in language learning classrooms. According to Richardson, language learning students can participate in "photo field trips". In this activity students can search for images from a certain part of the world, learn about them and then put them together in a powerpoint presentation. This is a great way to learn more about the culture of the language they are learning.

The book also mentioned an activity for students studying other countries or cultures. Student can search for specific images of other countries or cultures and learn with other people through the internet. Messages can be read and left on the images by the language learning students thus connecting the students to the photographer. This will enable learning about the image and the person behind the image. This communication encourages language learning in an interesting format.

2 comments:

Joleen J said...

Hello, Adrienne.

That's great that you have already taken advantage of some online professional development. It can be really useful for teachers. Not only are there programs designed for and sold specifically for teachers, like the ones you describe, but there are numerous forums and websites where teachers can upload their materials and activities.

It sounds like you are really working on getting students to talk about their (and other) cultures--I think that is a good example of student empowerment, like what we see in Ch. 11 of Cummins.

I'm going to put some of my favorite links for ideas and materials up in my post.

marysol trevino said...

I am glad that you had the opportunity to take professional development courses in Reading and Math.
Also, that you use technology in teaching language and content material in your classroom. . It takes a lot of organization but the results are amazing! Teaching and learning with technology will have an impact and progress in your student’s life. It is helpful for you and your students.
Very Good Adrienne!!