Language Labs part 2

I have been remiss in posting lately.  Busy semester plus ideas only in their infancy are to blame.

But I read an interesting post this morning on the TeachPaperless blog and I loved it:

 21 things that will become obselete in education by 2020

So many of these topics have come up at my school and district in the past couple of months!  The point about language labs becoming obsolete though really hit home for me.

Hope it gives you a few things to ponder before class starts tomorrow morning.

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?

WiFi access for students

Lately there has been a lot of talk in our school about 21st century learning and how we need to change how we teach to address our 'new reality'.  Among the topics discussed was the use of technology (finally!) in the classroom by students. Most schools, including ours, have a policy of no cell phone use in class, and as yet, no iPads/iPods/laptops either (at the discretion of the classroom teacher). 

The conclusion being: WTH?  How are we going to allow students to use technology and be on board with technology use if we're not letting them use the technology that they already own?  I'm sure ours isn't the only district who would have a hard time funding school-owned laptops for all students, so why not take advantage of what the students have already and get them using it?

Along the same lines, students aren't allowed access to our school wifi, much to their disappointment.  Personally, if I'm doing research or preparing a lesson, I have a very difficult if not impossible time if I don't have access to the internet. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for students to not have this access. 

I know that there are security issues, and many teachers and admin get worried about appropriate use of technology and wifi, but if we're not teaching them this, when will they learn it? Would future employers not appreciate employees who know what's ok and what's not when it comes to appropriate use of technology at work?

Does your school/district have wifi at school and do students have access to it? How is security of the network maintained?

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!)