GoogleDocs Fail...

Well, maybe not a fail per se, but it's not a technology that I have been having a lot of success with since my last post.  I tried using it for uploading/downloading documents, but the problem is the formatting for printing.  In order to print a document (like a worksheet for students) that I had loaded onto GoogleDocs, GD would generate a pdf for the purpose of printing.  Invariably the formatting would not translate to the pdf, so I would spend far too much of my time going back and forth trying to get tab stops to line up in the pdf by making them not line up in the online version.

Major pain in the butt.

So until the time comes where GoogleDocs makes formatting seamless for printing, I've given up on it for now.

Or until all my students have iPads.  Which should be in about 5 minutes. (Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little on that time line).

Anyone from Google want to chime in on how to fix this problem?

Verbs, verbs, verbs

I have been struggling for a few weeks now with one of my FSL classes.  They are not at the level that I expected them to be at in their writing or speaking, and I am struggling with what to do with them.  In particular, we have 3 new verb tenses to learn this semester, and they all struggle with conjugating regular and common irregular (etre, avoir, faire, aller) verbs in the present tense and also have a hard time distinguishing between the present tense and the past tense (passé composé).  I have spent a great deal of time reviewing with them things that they should know from previous years, and I have a hard time just letting them flounder because a) I hate seeing kids flounder and b) I don't know how we are going to learn new tenses if we can't keep the old ones straight.

So I have 2 ideas. 

First, is to give them an opportunity. I give them a worksheet/practice sheet with 7 verbs that they must conjugate in present, passé composé, imperative and futur proche. They can practice as many times as they like and write the exact same sheet as a quiz maximum once per week until they get 100%.  For this effort they would get 20 bonus marks towards their overall writing grade.

Second, send them off to Quia.com, create a quiz and log practice time until the students get 100% on the assignment, and get the same 20 bonus marks.

My dilemma is now - which is less work for me?  I understand the frustration of having to create an account, check the kids' practice time and collect the marks from a web-based tool. I also envision many of my own (wo)man hours correcting multiple opportunities of the written quiz.  So one is front-loaded work, the other is back-loaded work.  Which one will the kids choose? Which one will get them more motivated? Which one, after all is said and done, will get them to learn the $#%^&#@ verb conjugations?

Do I offer other enticements? Like a "100% Club" poster in the room for all the students who do achieve those 20 marks?

Your thoughts, please.  I am struggling with this.

Alternatives to microsoft...

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of students in my French 9 class last week. We were in the library, working on their Francophone country project and most were still at the research stage. I had shown the class some samples from last year; one of which was hand drawn by a former student and it was by far the most visually appealing of the lot.  I was speaking with a few of the boys in the class about the samples and they were shocked to learn that another boy had done that sample.  "I can't draw like that! What am I supposed to do?".  I suggested to them that they type up their sentences/information and then cut and paste into their brochures. A couple of them responded "but I don't have Word (or Office) at home! I can't type it up!".  Firstly, I was more than a little surprised that they didn't have MSOffice on their computer at home and secondly I was surprised that they didn't have the alternative or hadn't heard of it.  It is really that unusual to be using OpenOffice?  None of them had heard of it before.  I have only been using it on occasion over the past year or so, but I know that our school district is planning on switching over to Ubuntu in the next year or so, and therefore we will all be using OpenOffice at work then too.

I guess I'm always a little surprised when I am a little ahead of the 14 year old set when it comes to computer programs!

Have you heard of OpenOffice/Ubuntu before?  Do you or do you know anyone using it regularly, at home or at work?

Pro-D for math teachers

I volunteered at the end of the last school year to help plan our school's first two professional development days for the year.  I'll admit that my decision to volunteer was rather self-serving; I was ready to throw something at the speaker about halfway through last year's first pro-d seminar and didn't want to sit through another presentation like that one.  So here I am, helping to plan this year's day 2 of in school pro-d.

We had a brief meeting at lunch last week to discuss the plan, and in particular, we discussed what we were going to be doing in the afternoon. Our school teacher-librarian made a couple of suggestions for things to do and present technology-wise to the staff and I was keen to have an hour to browse through what our library has for online resources.  The kicker was what the question that was raised after her explanation:

"But what about the math teachers who are going to be bored/annoyed/not interested in this? What are they going to do?".

As someone who also teaches math as well as a modern language, I was partly offended but partly intrigued by this question.  There is no doubt that very little pro-d is offered for math teachers from what I have experienced in our district.  Or, at least there is very little offered for secondary math teachers.  On the other hand though, every once in a while during a semester teaching math I think "god this is boring".  Last year I discovered a few math teacher blogs that have piqued my interest as to why I find the monotony of textbook questions boring, and have been doing a lot of reading about what this is all about. I think it's really unfortunate that
a) math teachers are underserviced in pro-d
b) math teachers get a bad rap for not being interested in pro-d
c) math and its teachers get pegged for not wanting to be part of the crowd

Consequently, I volunteered to find something for the math teachers among us to keep them interested in some technology related pro-d.  Wolfram Alpha anyone?

(Incidentally, my most favourite math teacher blog for the last while is:
dy/dan
Check him out!)

Prezi!

I was at a summer teachers conference this year and someone did a presentation using Prezi.  It's a neat web-based presentation program that is a) easy to use and b) WAY more fun than powerpoint.  I'm sure powerpoint will hold its place in the realm of presentations for a while to come, but Prezi is fun, visually appealing and free for educators!  Well actually, it's free for most anyone, but educators get a more, shall we say, souped-up version with a few more features. 

I tried it out with my French 10 students the other day, and they were enthusiastic about it. One of the Prezi's biggest selling features for students is that you don't need to carry around a "nerd stick" when you want to present at school.  Just login to the site and your presentation is ready to go.  All this when I showed them my mediocre intro to our new unit in class; mediocre in that my prezi creating skills need some work.

Give it a try!  Tell me what you think!