Week 8 : Comment about the course

This course provided me a lot of tools. Quias, Educational Blogs, Power Point templates, and the experience to share with my classmates different viewpoints about how to apply technology in class to give students the skills to success in this comptetive world. I was excited to create my first pod cast and I was able o create my first photo story assignment about the Inca Culture. I think this is a good way to share with my students some little facts about different hispanic cultures in class.
Iam just sad because I would like to have more time to practice more about the Quia that allow teachers to organize data of students who took a test. I hope we have more technology classes to improve our knowledge and continue our development.
Thank a lot for all I learned from you. You are a great teacher!!!!

Week 7: Grant by Jacqueline

I have to mention that I don't know a lot about how to get grants in USA. I think the websites you provied are a good star.
On the other hand, If I have the opportunity to get a grant, I will invest this money in buying at least two digital cameras, good microphones and a good convertor. The videos will be used to record the Spanish plays which is a requirement for the finals of the two levels I teach. I will ask the students if I can film those presentations for educational purposes. This recorded videos will help others newcomers to see how other students struggle in getting the skills of the languages. These videos also will help students to see how others students prepare a ten or fifteen minutes play by using all the artifacts they need to get a good grade. This is agood way to get our own educational resources for the use of teachers and students.
Because learning languages requires a lot of practice in pronunciation and listening skills, I will use the microphones to allow the students to listen to different Spanish podcast and practice some vocabulary. Then they will be able to listen to themselves by using the Audacity Program.
I am glad to be part of this class because I learn a lot not only about technology but about different viewpoints of address a class by using technology.

Week 6: Writing Prompt response

Online Assestment tools
When I navigated the Quia.com website I found many interesting tools to use in my Spanish class. This website provides templates for creating different types of online activities, including flash cards, word search, battleship, challenge board, and cloze exercises. When I click on "sharing" I found 5811 activities that Spanish students can use to learn and have fun at the same time . Spanish Jepardy, which is a challenge board, pop-ups, jumble words, and Java games are some of the activities you can use for language classes. In addition, this website allow teachers to create their own topics by using this activities templates. This online activities and quizzes have been created by teachers from around the world, and other fellow teachers can access them quickly. That is great!!!
In addition, teachers can save a lot of time and manage students information by using Quia Books. The reason is because this is a program that helps you to grade students and create detailed reports on student performance. For example, this website can provide with a report that specifies what question students failed most. Certainly, teacher needs to know this information to help students to acquire this missing knowledge.

Week 1 : Visit three Educational Blogs.

First Blogs: K12EduTALK ( which is in the list of educational blogs). The link is:
k12edutalk
This blog provides a lot of discussion and conferencias about the use of technology in class. They also provide interviews about how to re-define teaching and learning in the 21st century.
I suggest other students to review this blog because they debate how technology is changing teaching instructional and learning process of the students and what the challenges of many educator face in this century are.
I would like to recommend to see this video:

I hope you enjoy it!!!

Week 5 : Is google Good or Evil? by Jacqueline Chavez

Credibility is a powerful tool for any company. Now Google Inc. is being criticized for being “evil” because they are crossing the line of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I don’t think so. I sincerely hope Google’s integrity is reflected in their philosophy for the well-being of many users.

What I have noticed is that Google managers are trying to improve their service by creating the robots.txt file, which is one of the many Google mechanisms to allow operators of a web site to request that part or their entire site not be included in search engine results. I think this is a good way to solve any dispute about copyright. To satisfy the users’ needs we do not need more lawsuits but good agreements among educational institutions, government and big companies like Google to provide a better access to a good and accurate information to make easy our researches.

What really concerns me is that Google keeps some of our personal information obtained from our e-mails. I disagree with this policy because I think we as users should be able to manage our own and personal information. If we decide to delete our e-mail, it should be deleted with our personal information too. I hope it changes.

Far beyond any Google critic, we should recognize that Google makes our lives easier. Since it provides us of the best research engines, fast Gmails, Google News, Google Images, and many other good services, now we are able to success in an organized World Wide Web.

Week 4: Using video fron You Tube in the classroom and students' ability to post their own content on You Tube.(jacqueline V. Chavez)

This week I watched a video in which a teacher and his students are acting disrespectfully. I was shocked. In my country teachers are like our second parents and we respect them like they respect us. It is sad to see that this teacher couldn't manage his class. We all know that to manage a class we need to set the rules first. "No cell phones on," or anything that disrupt the class are the first things students should learn an put in practice. For me, this video is a good evidence that some of those students need a punishment and the teacher needs a reprimand because of the innapropriate behaviors. Parents should understand that sometimes their children are not the angels they pretend to be in fornt of them. Parents need to work with the school staff to find the way to prevent this event again.

Nowadays technology is an easy way to defame teachers. We need to be aware that techonoly may be used for good and bad purposes. For this reason, the educational authorities, teachers, and parents need to work in set the rules or standars to create a video for educational purposes. I am sure that teachers have enough professional capability to censor or remove some part of the material created by students in order to maintain the respect and safety of the classroom.

On the other hand, I would like to mention that sometimes You Tube videos are very useful for students and teachers. However, many utube videos may be very unuseful and a waste of time for professionals. For this reason, I am glad to know that we some inteligent professionals have created Teacher You Tube . This is a website in where teachers and students post videos for educational purposes. In addition, everytime this website receives a post of a new didgital video , they inmediately censor it to make sure it is an appropriate educational material for students. For me, it will be great if teachers and students around the world could create multicultural videos and share them in different languages to have a better accesibility and learn more about different cultures.

Week 2 Blog Post Writing Prompt -Potential of postcasting and editing audio- comment

I never though about pod casting until I listened some of them. I realized that they are very useful because you can make students practice their pronunciation or tell them some tips about how to learn Spanish. In addition, podcast allow teachers to help other teachers to teach because teachers can share this educational podcast. I found one interesting podcast that i would like to incorporate in my curriculum because it talk about some common difficulties in learning Spanish. This podcast also incorporate some speeches from different presidents. But I enjoyed more was the idea that this podcast provide some Spanish sentences that students have to listen to and try to translate in English. Similarly, it podcast have some English sentences that students have to translate in Spanish after a certain time. These are some of the useful podcast I found:

http://epnweb.org/index.php?request_id=14&openpod=10#anchor10
Inside this address there are many examples of podcast like this:

http://epnweb.org/player.php?podshow=http://m2.slapcast.com/mp3/johan0808/johan0808-2005-04-17.mp3&podcast=Really%20Learn%20Spanish&program=Really%20Learn%20Spanish%20-%205%20(14:56)
With respect to using a student video student created video in class. I think I will use this activity as a group project for a final. They supposed to edit a video in which they make a little video clip in Spanish. For example, they can prepare a script about a conversation in a Mexican restaurant or any other idea related with any topic developed in class. the presentation will be just from five to ten minutes. In this way they will be able to practice their Spanish and have a fun activity in where they can use their creativity.
Note: Mr Eric
I hope to having created good links.
Thanks!!!
Jacqueline V. Chavez

Week 3-Online Speech Pits Students vs. Teachers - Comments

Sometimes, students believe they are smarter than teachers or any adult. They don't measure the consequences of their acts. They don't realize that nobody have the right to disrespect others or defame serious institutions. They also do not realize that they are not have the right to create fake sites for other people. I am so sad when I see parents to overprotect their children by asking the school not to punish them. I think those parents do not realize that they should teach their children to be honest and respect other as they would like to be respect. They should teach children to assume the consequence of their acts responsibly.
On the other hand, I think English is rich in words, so I don't think is proper to use bad words to express our gripes or disagreement. We are enough intelligent to use proper words and at the same time to demonstrate our culture.
I completely agree that those student receive a punishment because in that way parents will care more closely their children and students will be more careful about what they say or create on Internet.
I also completely agree that some instruction to students and parents on responsible Internet use is appropriate, and for me, urgent to avoid this kind of conflictive situations.

Week 3- Low-cost handhelod targets elementary students --Comments

The idea that these teachermate machines are cheaper is great but the idea that students are going to spend to much time by using these machine scare me. I think the best way to learn math is solving problems. A machine like this is good because students can learn and get fun at the same time but for me students shouldn't spend too much time in front of a machine because what they really need is to exercise their own reasoning. Sometimes, students see the answers of math exercises before they, at least, make a second effort for solving a problem, and in that case, students would not be learning to reasoning. Again for me the best think is that teachers are with students to answer any question and controlling this math activities with the use of technology to make sure students are really learning.

Week 3- Teachers tap video-sharing in the classroom -Comments

Definitely, I use technology in my class. In my Spanish classes I use short videos. I found that this is very useful specially when teachers have to show different customs or celebrations from different countries such as Spain or any Latin country. I share with my students videos about different celebrations such as Mexican wedding, fifteen years celebration in Colombia, religious holidays and so forth. After students see those videos they as me many different aspect of those cultures and they become more interested in learning. However, for me You Tube site is a double edge sword because in there you can find good educational videos and others that may hurt students. I think there should be an entity that controls the post of those videos because some student may have access to porno videos. The last time, I went to the North Kansas City Library, I was walking through the computer lab when I saw a student watching a porno video. I think librarians didn't realize about it because there were busy. Based on my experience I know students many times pretend to go to the library to study but sometimes they don't and they are just learning about sex by using technology. I certainly think that parents need to be close to their children and do not just let their children in the library or alone in their rooms for much time. Nobody knows if they are really watching an assigned video in You Tube or watching what they shouldn't.

Week3- Young people typically lug in to new technology far more often on their own time than in school- Comments

In fact, we are sorrounded by technology. We as human beings have the capacity to decide about the time we spend by using technology. I think nothing can substitute a teacher. Technology can help teachers to teach better or to catch the attention of students for a short time but we as educators know that human beings create those machines to serve people. It is very sad when people let technology control their lives. When I was working on a testing department, I remember that a students bagan to cry when he couldn't pass the math test because she didn't have a graphic calculator. In my country we learn to draw graphics or fuctions without using any graphic calculator because we use our best machine, our brain. It is so sad when a teacher can teach without having a video or any internet exercise available. We as teacher are very creative and if we don't have available techonology for different reasons we need to use other activities. I am not telling technology is not useful, I am just telling that we shouldn't let that technology controls or lives. There a time for techonlogy but we supposed to spend more time interacting as human beings and having a face to face learning process. I use techonology in class. Some videos for not more than 10 minutes, to introduce a class and then I make my students disscuss what hey saw. I think this is the best way to teach Spanish culture. When I need to focus on Spanish grammar, there are some interesting practices on internet that are useful but when my students use the computer I am always with them to answer any possible question about the theory. The reason is beacuse if I let my students along they will play any other thing on internet instead to practice grammar. What I am trying to say is that children and adolescents always wanted to do what they want and not what the teacher says. That's why teachers have a lot of mission to manage thier classes. My last idea is do not let technology control or teach the class for a teacher, an do not let children's and adolescents' desires make teachers use more technology than they should. Let teachers decide what is the best way to use technology at their class but teachers should be trained to use any kind of technology at class to us it based on their criterion.

North Kansas City Hispanic Baptist Congregation-Good Star to Practice your Spanish

Last year, Palabra Viva Baptist Church celebrated Christmas surrounded by members from many different Hispanic countries. It was a wonderful show in where children wore traditional customs from their countries to perform a musical and dancing show in honor to Jesus born.

Our church members are mainly from Cuba, Mexico, Perú, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, and Dominican Republic. As a leader at that church and as a Spanish teacher, I will recommend you to visit this church to learn more about different Hispanic cultures and practice your Spanish.

We are located at Iron Street 2205, North Kansas City, MO or call our Pastor Luis Mendoza at

(816) 805-7978. Our Sunday School begins at 10:30 a.m. and the preaching time is from noon to 1:30 p.m.

We will be waiting for you!!!

Hispanic Christmas Celebration video by Jacqueline!!!