What is it that I want to learn from this course?
In 2002, I started my teaching career as a high school Spanish teacher in Redmond, Oregon. Redmond is a small farming town in the high desert of Central Oregon. It's located in the shadows of the beautiful snow capped volcanoes of the high cascades, in the middle of a seemingly endless expanse of wilderness. In other words, Redmond is remote. One of the reasons that I became a world language teacher is that I truly believe that knowing and experiencing other cultures is the path to creating a more peaceful, accepting, and caring world. So how did students in remote Redmond, Oregon in 2002 experience and know other cultures? Books, posters, songs, and videos, mostly. In other words, they had a glimpse, a peek- certainly not an authentic experience.
Fast forward to 2010... the evolution of technology in the past 8 years and the implications that this has for teachers and students of world languages is profound to say the least. At the heart of learning a language is communicating and connecting. Fortunately, technology now allows us to communicate globally and make connections to places and people all over the globe, even to remote Redmond, Oregon. Students today have the fortune of communicating and connecting via skype, voicethread, facebook, twitter, and youtube. These are technologies that didn't exist when I began teaching. As a language teacher I am thrilled that these tools exist to make language learning as authentic as possible. As a teacher who didn't grow up in the digital age, I know I need help navigating these technologies and how to use and implement them with my students. So as I think about the question, 'what do I want to learn from this course?' I immediately gravitate to this thought, I want to empower myself with the tools to create connection and communication for my students. I want them to experience and interact in the classroom, not only through books, posters, songs, and videos, but through authentic interaction with real students who live the language and culture. I want to use the power of technology to transport students from Bangkok to Barcelona.
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