Teaching Philosophy

Here's the link to my teaching philosophy statement. You can read it if you like, but the only thing I would like to preface it with is: IT'S ONLY 2.5 PAGES!! I'm so proud of that because, as I'm sure you all have already noticed, I tend to be a bit wordy...

Teaching Philosophy Statement: Teaching with Technology

Technology is so NIFTY

This is my first attempt at using Microsoft Word 2007 to publish a blog post. I've never actually tried it before and I just noticed today that it could be done. I don't really have much to say since I haven't completed revising my Teaching Philosophy, but I just wanted to test it out. It's very neat: it works like an FTP client in the sense that it allows you to enter in your username and password, and then publish directly from Word, so you don't even have to upload the document. This is really cool because you can write blog posts at times when you are not connected to the internet and then upload them later. That also allows you to save blog posts on your computer in case, for example, the internet dies tomorrow and all of that lovely work (or more importantly, all those procrastination tools) you've done disappears. If that does happen, you can still have "hard" copies on your computer to later make even "harder" copies out of. I think it's a novel idea and I love the potential of it…we'll see how I feel about it after this first post.

Just FYI….

Intercultural competence: can we teach it?

I want to start by saying that having the discussion with my chat mates in last week's class got me really interested in this topic. I think it's incredibly intriguing, and I think it's unfortunate that it, by nature, resists testing. One of the things that we discussed in our class at UF was whether or not it is possible to teach intercultural competence. I think that we, both as teachers AND as students, have this idea that teaching culture involves mainly being exposed to the PRODUCTS of the target culture (food, music, film, etc.), but one of the most interesting things we talked about last week in our class was how much language is involved in learning intercultural competence.

I made the comment, and I still hold it to be true, that language is inherently linked to culture, since it is intrinsically the primary means of transmitting culture from generation to generation and between natives and non-natives. Because of that fact, I find it hard to believe that we can teach culture without necessarily including language as a main component. I also mentioned that when I think of the times that I have experienced cultural misunderstandings, they have most always been linguistic in nature...but that of course is only my personal experience.

One other thing I want to mention in this relatively short post is the importance of the concept of recul in learning intercultural competence. I have always said that student motivation is one of the most important things in language learning, and recul is a perfect example of that. I believe that in order for a student to, first, reach that "third place" where s/he is able to analyze and compare aspects of the target culture to their own they must first be very motivated and prepared to accept the information.

I have much more I could say, but I'm very tired from a long trip today (I'm in NYC at the CUNY conference, check it out), and I'm posting only what is still swimming around in my head...desculpe.

Video Cameras and the Speaking World

My post this week will cover two topics in specific: possible video ideas for the Mini Project 3, and my new technological discovery, palabea.net. I am going to be doing my Mini Project 3 with a good friend who is also in the TIFLE class at UF, and he and I have been discussing possible project topics. We haven't exactly decided on a topic or a format, but we have knocked some ideas around. I was originally completely against the idea of having people in the video (living people anyway), just because I'm always wanting to try something new. I was thinking about maybe using puppets or even just objects--you know, busting it out Baby Einstein style--but after some brainstorming, I think we may go for real people in the end. Before talking about our ideas, I want to share a video idea that I was working on in a previous class, which I've been keeping in the back of my mind hoping that it will serve to inspire me on this project.

I formulated the plan for the particular video I just mentioned while taking a French Phonetics class in undergraduate with a professor who was in her last semester of teaching. She was a huge fan of Phonetics and she always talked about how much she enjoyed teaching the class, and since she and I were good friends, I wanted to make her a little going-away gift. So this was the idea: in French, there are certain liaisons (word-linking) which are prohibited (before words beginning with an h aspiré, after the conjunction et, in the plural forms of compound words, etc.); these are called liaisons interdites in French, which to me really sounded like a soap opera title. My idea consisted of making an old-timey film, in three acts with subtitles, which would use a dramatic scenario to explain each of the liaisons interdites. I wanted the film to include subtitles so that the students could see the words written, and the film was going to include one character who would serve as the "reminder" that the liaison was interdite, so for example, s/he would appear at random moments when the liaisons were being used incorrectly and do something completely out of context to call the students' attention to the liaison.

I never actually created the video because I couldn't find enough friends/students to agree to collaborate with me in writing and creating the video, so it went without being done. Maybe one day....For now, though, I am trying to focus on Spanish because that is my field of study, and I am also hoping to produce something I can use in the classroom. The idea that my partner and I have discussed involves a dance-instruction video (salsa, tango, etc.) that we could use to, simultaneously, explain how direct and indirect objects work: who does the action of the verb, who receives the action of the verb, etc. Still, the idea is pretty incomplete and requires a lot more thought and effort. We'll get there eventually though, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

The final thing I want to discuss in this post is my recent technological discovery: palabea.net. It's an online community of language learners, similar to livemocha, only much better (ironically, a Brazilian who I met through livemocha and speak to regularly turned me on to Palabea!). In case you aren't familiar with either of these, livemocha has as its principal goal live contact with native speakers, and it does work quite well. You can either enroll in a language course (from a VERY limited selection) or you can just search for native speakers of the language you are learning and then connect with them through the website. Livemocha has its own chat software, which, to be honest, works rather slowly but includes interesting features like a translation window and a second-language dictionary. Other drawbacks are that if you speak English as a mother tongue, you won't get any work done because so many people will be trying to chat with you. Still, you can deny chat requests and then talk to the ones you want to...you just might have to test it out a while to find a good partner. One thing I can say for livemocha, the native speakers I have come into contact with through it have all been very good about sharing language exchanges equally and correcting me when I make mistakes.

Palabea is a little different, and I think it's MUCH more relevant in a pedagogical sense. Palabea also offers contact with native speakers through synchronous chat (text, voice AND video), but it offers SO much more than that. It is actually connected with various language schools around the world, and you can enroll in their courses for free. These schools all maintain their own pages where they can upload documents (lessons, worksheets, etc.) as well as video-lessons (which can be really interesting or really boring), podcasts and other forms of media. The website itself also maintains a blog site that can be used by any member. The setup is nice in that it gives you the opportunity to enroll in whichever course you like and then all of the information you access is stored in your account and saved there for you to see later if you like. Another interesting thing: it allows every member to create their own course in which they can upload their own documents, videos, podcasts, etc., so that, for example, you could potentially run your entire class from the internet if you really felt like filming yourself teaching every day. It's very interesting and I think it deserves some research attention. It also houses a very interesting non-language-learning-exchange section where you can, for example, find a job as an au pair, and I think it has great potential for creating a real "community" of online language learners.

One other thing I would like to mention about Palabea is that after spending some time on the site, I've noticed that a couple of notable researchers maintain pages there, such as Orlando Kelm from UT Austin (he hosts the amazing Tá Falado website). There are some drawbacks though: the site is a BETA site, so it's still in the beginning stages, but it's very well designed and the interface is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. That said, you will have to navigate around for a while to figure things out, like which tabs mean which things. Still, I strongly suggest you try it out...it's worth the time.

**Sorry about the long post.......again.......hehe

Social software and the classroom

Reading about social software in the articles from last week really got me thinking, once again, about the actual (or should I say "practical") usefulness of technology in the classroom. In this post I'm going to focus on two social sites in specific: del.icio.us and citeulike. I realize that these are the ones that were suggested on the TIFLE homepage, but that is not why I would like to comment on them. I simply find them the most interesting, especially from a pedagogical perspective. I'm going to first start out by saying that I find no pedagogical use for these tools whatsoever. In fact, I was a little confused last week as to why exactly we were even discussing them in a class that is supposed to be aimed at helping up incorporate technology successfully into our pedagogy and teaching methods...and the articles we read only marginally increased my level of comprehension.


The truth of it all, for me, is that I cannot seem to find any one particular way that such software or websites could aid us in teaching our students. It's true that they can help the students to connect, or to publicly recognize their common interests. Still, what more do these social software sites offer our students? Is it reinforcing any of the 5 Cs that we are so constantly hoping to reinforce in the FL classroom? Except for offering the students a means of connecting with each other based on their interests, I can't see how it's doing any of those Cs.....maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

In general, this topic is very frustrating for me because I feel sort of on the fence about it. I think that we should definitely put time and energy into investigating the ways that technology can be useful to us in the classroom, but I still think we need to be very careful that we don't get ahead of ourselves. Just like I stated in my last post, it's not a matter of bringing stuff into our teaching that no one is familiar with. TIFLE, for me, is a peculiar topic in regards to research, because we always seem to be missing the mark....what I mean by that is that we are either stuck investigating--and reading about--topics that are no longer relevant (think discussion groups and email) or topics that are not quite relevant just yet (think Blogs and wikis), or that may never actually be relevant to us in teaching (think social software). I think all of these things merit research and consideration, but if we're going to successfully incorporate this technology into our classroom, I think we need to first focus on what the students are familiar with and what is the most current, and the most relevant. And for me, social software is just not where it's at.

Not so MINI project

I am posting my mini-project a day early because I have so much work to do that it's better for me just to get it out of my hair now. You'll see--if you decide to read the project, which as you can see from the title, isn't so mini after all--that the actual student description for the project as well as the grading rubric is located online and is hyperlinked from the Mini-Project document. You can click on those links to get a better idea of the scope of the project (please let me know if they aren't working!!).

Comments and suggestion for bettering the project are always accepted with open arms!

So, here it is:
Collaborative WIKI project: "Virtual" Culture Portfolios