I completed the course survey and evaluation

PLE week 7

For my fifth article I chose to read Fighting Internet Filth. It was a good article for me to read because I sometimes find myself neglecting other important aspects of my life and spending too much time on the internet.
Some of the most useful and important things that I read were the steps to maintaining internet safety in your home by doing things like keeping the computer in a public place and having strong enough filters to keep out the junk. I also enjoyed Elder Bednar's talk and think it is very important for people to understand the difference between the cyberworld and the real world and to not get too caught up in technology.
As a parent I will follow the computer use quidelines provided by the church and help them to understand that they don't need to be afraid to come to me with any problems or concerns they might have with the computer or internet. I also don't think I will allow any video games at my house because I have seen first hand what they can do to people and how they can take over the lives of my friends and family and I don't want that for my children or my friends. If anyone might have a problem with the internet or technology addiction I can be supportive and offer my help to them because of what I've learned from these readings.
During my time looking at videos about internet safety, I watched all the videos available on the Netsmartz Workshop. These videos dealt with several scenarios of internet safety involving chat rooms and information given to friends to prevent crime or cyberbullying. I would use these resources in my classroom to help my students understand some of the consequences and risks they take when giving out information or when participating in something that they don't want to be made public to other people. The information we put on the internet is available to almost everyone and so precautions must be taken to ensure students' safety.
I spoke with a youth aged 17 about internet safety and precautions. I asked them what they knew about internet safety and shared what I learned about cyberbullying and recommended the Netsmartz website for them to look at and watch the videos there. It was a good experience and I feel that I taught something that this youth didn't necessarily know the severity of beforehand. Hopefully, they will take what they learned and apply it with their relationships and activities at school

PLE week 6 continued

I'm not sure what I was thinking. I've been to Vienna. I know what is there and what to say about it. Why wouldn't that be my first choice of a tour for my project?
I made a short tour of some of the more key sights in Vienna and the ones that I think are most interesting. This will address the cultural aspect of the Utah State core curriculum standards for Foreign Language classes. Here is a link to my tour of Vienna on my wiki. In a classroom I would use this project to give the students a look at what a major Austrian city looks like and would also help them with their language skills while they are reading the descriptions of each place.
TPACK reflection: the technology used in this project helps the students to learn about the landscape and architecture of Vienna. This content is important to my teaching style because I will then help them to ask for directions to a certain landmark or ask how to use the public transportation to get to a certain place.

PLE week 6

For my content-specific technology integration project I am going to create a either a littrip or a tour of a German town using GoogleEarth. I haven't decided for sure which one I will do because it really depends on how much time it might take me to know what to say in German if I were to do the tour of a town. I am leaning more towards a littrip but I'm not sure yet which book I would use. This would fulfill a culture knowledge standard for the curriculum or a comprehension of literary texts.

I did take a video of a conversation with my sister. Apparently it didn't quite record all the way. Oh well. At least I tried to get the extra credit.

PLE week 5

TPACK or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge tries to incorporate all types of knowledge used in the classroom including Content Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge and Technological Knowledge. Intersecting these three knowledges creates balance and a framework to draw from in the classrooms. Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the relationship between all three components.
TPK or Technological Pedagogical Knowledge removes the Content from this formula. It is merely the way of teaching in the classroom with the use of technology without a specific subject matter in mind.
Use of these two types of knowledge can be useful in the classroom. Having a knowledge of your subject and the way to teach it and how to integrate technology into that teaching makes a dynamic classroom allowing students to understand the subject matter while using technology, making things more interesting for them. This includes video, music, and interactive websites.

Video communication

I like using synchronous video communication better than asynchronous because it allows for immediate communication instead of waiting for another person to respond. I can understand how asynchronous would be useful though with wanting to send a presentation or something to a person who is not always available. I could use synchronous communication in my classroom by being able to communicate with a native speaker from Germany who could teach the class something about the culture.

PLE week 4

I liked learning this week about how to embed things into another website for access and to save space on your website. I also think that was the hardest thing for me. It wasn't hard to do but it was difficult to understand how embedding something works or what it does exactly and I'm the type of person who likes to understand things like that.
I created a wiki this week and I'm still trying to figure out how to get the lay out of the page the way I want it to be. That might also be one of the tougher things from this week. Here is a link to my wiki page. I think that this tool will be really helpful in the future because I hope to be able to post things to it for my classes that my students can access. I also think that the sharing on Google Docs will be really helpful for my students when they want to access a syllabus or project assignment. I hope that I will be able to implement these tools in my classes so that my students can have greater resources available to them to help them learn.

Beim Lebensmittelgeschaeft

Storyboards

These are my storyboards for my video on German Modal verbs. This video will serve as an example for my students as they are assigned to create their own video in German.

PLE week #2

I will make a video as a demonstration of Modal Verbs and what my students should do to create their own video of their use of modal verbs. I will use still images of myself at the grocery store shopping for foods that I want to eat. During the narration of these pictures, the text of the narration will be shown at the bottom of the screen with key verbs being underlined. At the end of the video I will list verbs that the students could use in their own videos. If I were using this video in class I would also hand this list out to the students. The Utah Core Curriculum has ability standards the students should reach. This video will comply with Beginning Standards 2

My Technology Background

Let's see... I'm not exactly sure where to start this. I guess my tech background includes pretty much all Microsoft Office programs including Publisher and excluding Outlook. Well, I know how to use it but I've never used it for my own email. I have my own blog which I rarely update just because I don't have a huge desire to share my thoughts with strangers although I do blog-stalk others:) and I use facebook on a regular basis. I feel like I know my way around the internet fairly well and know how to find information that I'm looking for. My personal computer has lots of gliches and problems just because it's old but I don't have the tech skills to know how to fix all of them. I guess that's about it. I know how to use my computer but I don't know how to fix it.