"Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids to work together and motivating them, the teacher is most important" - Bill Gates
I believe strongly in utilizing and incorporating technology in teaching. I don't understand myself as a Tech-Geek who teaches but rather a Teaching-Geek who uses Tech. Incorporating technology into teaching enables students to have authentic resources, platforms to express themselves creatively, and tools to support their foreign language learning at their finger tips.
I created the YouTube video on the left, as a learning tool for a "Family-Unit" for beginner students. The video introduces the members of different families including my own. As a summative assignment at the end of the "Family-Unit" students record their own family introduction in form of a multimedia screen-recording featuring their written, and oral production of the target language.
This H5P video was also created for the "Family-Unit". I am utilizing the H5P.org App. This App is a free App created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students. It allows teachers to create interactive content by embedding questions directly into a Video. This enables the learner to have a more autonomous learning process by receiving automatic feedback without the teacher having to be present. Please also visit my website which contains additional H5P interactive exercises I created for my students.
Another App which I like to use is Edpuzzle. Just like H5P, Edpuzzle allows the teacher to create interactive video content.
An interesting way to guide student research is to utilize the Thinglink App. The example on the left was created for a "Sports-Unit" for second year German students. By clicking on the interactive icons on this movie poster the students are directed in guided research about the German Dassler brothers, who founded the rival sports empires of ADIDAS and PUMA. With the embedded links drilled- down and in English, I can even assign a research task to my Novice-Beginner students while they are learning about families.
To the left you can view a Video Presentation which I created for the Technology Course. I am presenting on chapter 8 written by Robert J. Blake on Teaching and Learning Foreign Language Speaking. This chapter is part of the textbook "The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning" by Carole Chapelle and Shannon Sauro, 2017. I not only wanted to discuss the technology in my presentation, I also wanted to use the technology. For that purpose, I created an H5P version of my presentational video with built-in questions for the audience.
Please visit the technology tools page for more information about my favorite Apps and Technology which I frequently use in my teaching and I highly recommend for fellow world language teachers.