Going Native, Digitally!

Last January, I began attending our 21st century skills course. I immediately empathized with my students. I was learning a new digital language just as they were learning a new foreign language. Many of my colleagues shared my feelings of empathy with our students. I understood that our roles, mine and my students were quite reversed. They were novice foreign language learners while I was a novice digital learner.

Our students love to interact with technology. The challenge for us as Foreign language teachers is to incorporate technology into our instructional practices. I gave my students an assignment to blog on my school webpage in Spanish about protecting our environment. The results were fascinating to me. I found that the students made many more spelling errors than usual. I attributed this to chatting and texting online in their native language. Some students didn't have the correct password to access the school website. I found this surprising since we were in the 8th month of school. I learned that I needed to provide more specific digital guidelines for the assignment. A pleasant surprise was that my students wrote positive comments to me personally in Spanish unrelated to the assignment. I plan to assign another blog next year with a very specific rubric and guidelines. I found an awesome blog rubric on the Sharon schools wiki. I want to learn more online about digital projects as student assessments.

Next stop, Twitterland!