COLLABORATIVE TOOLS FOR WORLD LANGUAGE LEARNING

METHODOLOGY

Our Flipgrid space is private to our class, and I allow peers to view one another's videos as it might help get their creative juices flowing to see what someone else did. I can record my Flipgrid prompt or type it up for them, and I can set a time limit if I want a succinct answer. They respond in recorded fashion. I give them feedback in written format, or personalize it a bit more by responding in video format. The prompts I give vary from week to week: respond to some questions; practice a reading and then record it; listen to a scripted dialog and record it trying to match intonation and accent; choose your favorite joke and repeat it; tell me something I don't know about you, etc.

Flipgrid allows them to speak uninterrupted, be creative, and allows them time to think about their answers before recording, or restart their recording if they are not satisfied with it. The tools that come with Flipgrid allow the students to add personal touches on selfies after they do their work, and they can use a whiteboard or add images if they need to share some information visually. If I want students to offer a comment or respond to someone else's video, that can be assigned as well. If I want students to engage in a delayed conversation back and forth, Flipgrid works for this as well, but breakout rooms in Zoom do work better.

Ideas for prompts: go to a given link, listen to the dialog, and then record themselves reading the same dialog, having practiced intonation, words, delivery, etc.; 4 questions listed and choose 2 to answer; what they could talk about for 40 mn with no prior preparation; go the Carambar candy website, find their favorite joke, and tell it. Some prompts are serious and connect back to the lesson; some prompts are more light-hearted, just to give them a chance to share and be silly. They get a prompt once a week.

Examples

METHODOLOGY

GOOGLE DOCUMENT: In a normal school setting, I would prepare a weekly lesson plan and hand it out in class, and make an electronic copy available in Box. It would show what we would be doing in class and what would be assigned for homework. Since we have been online, teaching remotely, in order to keep everything centralized, and because plans can fluctuate, I chose to use Google Docs as a continuous document for the duration of each thematic unit . I usually try to get the plans up for the week, along with the homework assignments so that students can get their schedule organized with their various classes. By putting links to our resources in that document, they can quickly go back and find it . I can always indicate to them which page of the document they need to return to if they need a resource. If we are doing an activity in class for which I would like immediate answers that I can keep in one place, I will create a table, add their names, and that way, each student has a space in which to record their written answer. Everyone is accountable, everyone participates, and then we can go through the responses together immediately, one by one. If I did that in the chat in Zoom, it would not be accessible to them after the lesson to go back and do a review.

GOOGLE SLIDES: In a normal school setting, if the students were doing presentations, I would let each of them create their own format (prezi, powerpoint, poster, etc.) but that can take time for each person to come up, get their work set up on the screen, and then repeat this for the next person. Having a set of slides ready to go that each person or each group can use cuts down on that transition time, and prevents the need to search for a slide theme design. A pre-made set of slides also makes it easy to keep all their group work in one place, accessible to all, and you don't have one student creating the slides and getting their email address to invite them to it (another time consumer). When they are in breakout rooms working with partners, or in our main session working individually, I can see what work is taking place, and add comments next to the slide as needed to help them. If they need additional slides for that activity, they can add one. In terms of grading, it also simplifies the task for me, as I do not have to sort through several files and emails to find each person's or each group's work.

JAMBOARD:

Although Padlet and Answer Garden also allow for brainstorming and sharing of ideas, Jamboard has more variety as you can add images, post-it notes, shapes, and text. During class, we use Jamboard for brainstorming, for input, for sharing out between groups. We can put pictures in and then students have to write or match the image to a word. Outside of class, I use it for scavenger hunts. One downside to Jamboard's collaborative side is that you have no way of knowing who inserted the image or the textbox or the post-it note. So you just need to set expectations from the start as to what is acceptable.

Examples

METHODOLOGY

I use Answer Garden in a variety of ways in my classes. If we are reading a chapter and I want them to quickly jot down their new favorite words, I give them the link to the Answer Garden I created for that chapter and away they go, for a minute or two, and when we are done, it is visible which words were selected the most often. I take a screenshot of the garden and place it in our google doc under that day's lesson for future reference. If we are working on a thematic unit and I want their input on what words come to mind when thinking of that topic, we go to the link I put in our google doc, and I give them a few minutes to type in their ideas. My follow-up to this particular task is a writing assignment, for which they select 3 words from the garden (they can use anyone's words) and respond to the prompt they were given. Again, the screenshot of that garden is placed in our google doc for future reference.

Examples