New semester, new students

Week one of semester two is over and done, and I have met my lovely new students in French.  Having just finished exams it's nice to start fresh and get a new bunch of recruits in.  I have a nice group it seems and I'm looking forward to getting them going as they seem pretty keen.  I'll admit that on day three with them I had the overwhelming sense of "holy crap, how am I going to get them through all of this?".  I like to start speaking as much french as I can from the outset, which means lots of blank stares when I say "Sortez une feuille de papier" etc, and it always feels a little scary.  I don't think that I'm the only teacher who gets a bit nervous when the new semester or school year starts, but sometimes it's nice just to acknowledge that it's hard to believe that I do what I do for a living and that so far have survived the first week jitters again.  I think it keeps me on my toes too, which isn't a bad thing!

Open Source, Linux and Language Labs

Our school will be moved away from a Windows/PC environment at spring break this year and into a ThinClient/Linux system.  There has been a huge amount of uproar by some of our staff because of the impending change.  (Personally, I'm looking forward to it).  The main reason people are citing for being up in arms is software access.

Cries of "But, but, but, I won't have WORD!"  have been heard around the school on multiple occasions, and despite reassurances that OpenOffice will meet the needs of your basic word processor (and then some), there are still some very anxious and (dare I say) pissed off staff around.

However, one of the programs that 'may' not work in the Linux environment is our language lab program - CAN8.  Now, the version that we have at school is at least 15 years old (although built in Windows, looks like it's DOS based on screen) and did cost a big chunk of change.  And as much as I find it useful for students to practice on, I can't help thinking "Isn't there something better out there?"

So I've been trawling the internets tonight trying to find a) alternatives to Can8 that run natively in Linux and/or b) some open-source options.  I've found a few possibilities, but I'm not sure how they would work for French or Spanish as most of them seem to be geared towards ESL learners.

Anyone have any suggestions? Anyone running Can8 in a Linux OS?

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.

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!

On commence!

A bit of background:  I'm a teacher at a smallish high school in British Columbia.  I am relatively new to the profession and have been a keen blog-reader for a while now.  Most of the blogs I follow had been about my hobbies and interests, but in the past year I've started reading a few other teacher blogs and have been inspired to start one of my own.  I teach math and science and french.  There are more than a few math teachers blogging out there who write insightful, interesting and funny blogs, but I had yet to find any similarly interesting blogs about teaching modern languages.  So I have decided to jump in to blogging with hopes of filling in the gap a little!

My goal is to blog about teaching a modern language in this new era of web 2.0/technology/smartphones.  There may be some interludes to discuss the state of teaching in the public system today too.  Being a french teacher, there will be some posts in french, and about french language and culture.  I hope to integrate some web 2.0 tools into my teaching bag this year and look forward to hearing feedback from other teachers about integrating technology in the modern language classroom.

Alors, commençons!