The gloves officially came off today in my development of my online resources for my German course.  It occurred to me that what I was doing was more than just creating online resources that went along with my teaching, but essentially writing a whole new textbook, though in this case an electronic/interactive version of what I think the textbook should look like.  This seems appropriate, since our current textbook is from the early 90s, and it shows.  Nobody wears clothes like that, or has haircuts like that anymore.  Not only that, but the only textbook available in the US seems to be an update of the version we have with very little difference other than a few (but not all) updated pictures.   My students are quick enough to display over the top cultural biases, they don’t need any more encouragement.  In any case, I stray from the point of this post.

Today, I spent much of the day wrestling with the quirks of BlackBoard’s antiquated user interface.  I’m not sure if the problem is that it is so backwards and poorly designed, or if I have been spoiled by smooth Web 2.0 interfaces for so long.  Needless to say, I see room for improvement.  Today marked the end of the first semester, which is the time span allocated for me to cover the school unit in our text.  I COULD jam chapter four of the Komm Mit text into 8-9 weeks, but instead I go into some depth, and use storytelling as a big part of my isntruction (TPRS)

Since my classes are so short (20 minutes a day adds up to about 60 hours a year) it is my intention to move the majority of independent practice to the Online portion of my classroom.  This is a HUGE change from the norm for my students, who, with the exception of the one other teacher piloting BlendedSchools, have a hard time getting into the routine of using the computer for much more than playing games.

Today I put real effort into formalizing a structure for the chapter that we are now concluding.  I had intended to do this as I went, but now that I have a feel for what worked and what didn’t, I feel that it is best to re-vamp the content while everything is fresh.  The content is broken up into Thematic Units, in this case I am working on the “School Unit.”  I established the six main Lektionen (Lessons that take about 8-10 20 minute periods to complete) and the mini-lessons that I intend to design as more independent learning (with 1-2 class periods to review.)

My students need more Homework (they don’t want to hear that) and although I do buy into the concepts of TPR (it’s all in the natural langauge acquisition process.) I catch hell from the High School teacher if they don’t get the grammar on the first try.  So, I have to comprimise and hope that the natural learning is complementing the intentional process of the simple Grammar explainations we do.

Resources to include within each lesson:

• SCORM Instruction & Practice packages
  • This was my evening project — I learned how to use (Reload Editor) it is cumbersome, but I see the potential.
• Multimedia
  • Audio as well as written text of stories
  • Video from the web
  • Music
  • Authentic Resources
• Hot Potatoes
  • I’ll admit that I am not so progressive that my students rush into my class just oozing desire to learn German.  In fact, as a rule students in the school are very point motivated.  Since I discovered the SCORM package export in Hot Potatoes, I’ll use it, since it is much easier to use than BlackBoard’s Native tools.
• Podcast
  • Student delivered content to drive student learning — coming soon, I swear.

• Other Ideas forthcoming
  • Google earth / Maps for Geography
  • Share more Student work
  • Reflections via Voicethread
  • More reflections in General
  • Writing Samples & E-Portfolios

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 10:11 pm and is filed under reflection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.