http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll salvete • 欢 迎 • bienvenue • willkommen • bienvenido Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:07:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As many of my colleagues and friends know, I have accepted a new position as Language Coordinator in the Hispanic Studies department at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL. I will be doing many of the same things I've done been doing here at Lab (managing a lab space, training ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/06/12/fare-thee-well/ As you may or may not know, Mme Jackson has been the "Lab Liaison" since I started working here in the summer of 2007. First of all, you should know what a joy and privilege it is to work with this woman. She is upbeat, kind, thoughtful, and really sharp. ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/06/10/passing-the-bato/ Mr. Sun and his High School Chinese 1 class made several movie posters last week. They will be up on display in the lab with English translations in the Welcome Area. View a pdf version of the posters here. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/05/21/chinese-movie-posters/ Frau Zemil and her 4th graders have been working on MediaBlender projects to design the layout of a room. This simple program allows students to quickly draw and link images together. The projects can also be easily published online, like we've done here: Arbeitzimmer Arbeitzimmer 2 Garten Garten 2 Keller Kueche Schlafzimmer Schlafzimmer 2 Wohnzimmer Wohnzimmer 2 http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/05/15/mediablender-in-4th-grade-german/ Sra. Ramos has started a new wave of interest in the department in blabberize.com as a fun and simple way for students to demonstrate proficiency in first person narrative and presentational styles of speaking. She was able to create one login and password that all of the students could use ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/05/14/blabberize-enjoys-second-round/ Becky López and and Katie Hundley have been accepted to present at the upcoming ACTFL conference in San Diego this November. The title of their presentation, "Talking back: popular technologies in motivating conversation in Spanish" will feature methods for using popular technologies for motivating conversation practice in young students of ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/05/13/sras-lopez-and-hundley-to-present-at-actfl/ Lab owes a big thank you to Wayne Brasler and the myriad students who have helped him write and publish the Midway through the years. The maroon-bound volumes of Midways gone by, currently stored in Judd 014, are probably our single best source of Lab's history. I found a photograph ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/29/the-past-revisited/ Today, 5th graders are celebrating the languages and cultures they study with games, song, dance, and good food! I had the pleasure of accompanying a group of about 60 5th grade students to Little Village (26th street), where we practiced reading, writing, and speaking Spanish. We read signs, bought bread, ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/24/world-language-day/ Mr. Farver is the first teacher in our department to use EtherPad in the classroom. He checked out the iCarts and had students tell stories about an alien in the imperfect and perfect paste tenses. You can see the end result here, warts 'n all: The students started out by goofing ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/23/etherpad-in-the-classroom/ A small team of Spanish teachers are getting together today and May 29th to take a fresh look at the language skills they want students to develop for each grade level, particularly in the Lower and Middle Schools. This is not an easy task and it's wonderful that they are ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/21/spanish-curriculum-development/ Mr. Craig Reubelt used these scenarios in his HS Spanish class to practice chapter vocab, informal commands, the present perfect, and other tenses. His scenarios included conversations between a mechanic and the owner of a car, dialing 911, a police officer and the driver of a car, and two elderly ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/09/interesting-scenarios-for-dill/ Watch excerpts from the Skype video conference call between Mme. Romanelli's 8th grade French class and their sister classroom in France. You will see the technical and practical difficulties of 13 students here connecting with 27 students there, but you will also see what an eye-opening experience it is for ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/07/skype-to-france/ Maestra Guerrero and her two 6th grade classes have been working on recording PowerPoint presentations to practice comparisons this week and are doing a great job! I should have some samples to post next week. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/03/powerpoint-projects/ Sra. Ramos did the Language Class Idol activity (#23 on our list of DiLL Activities) again this year with her 5th graders. We used http://polleverywhere.com to tally student votes. Download Sra. Ramos' handout here. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/04/01/language-class-idol-take-2/ Ms. Guerrero attended three workshops at the ICE (Illinois Computing Educators) Annual Conference in Pheasant Run last week. She learned how to create a book from iPhoto How to design a layout in Pages Learned a little bit more about iMovie and worked with Pixie 2 for online digital storytelling. The ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/03/05/ms-guerrero-rocks-ice/ Yesterday in our Faculty Development meeting, we heard from three of our faculty about activities they have done with DiLL that have kept their students engaged and having fun. The abridged version of their activities go something like this: 1. Teacher pre-records 1-4 simple stories and ask students to illustrate what they ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/02/11/lots-of-laughter-lots-of-smiles-lots-of-spanish/ After analyzing the fairy tale Little Red Riding hood, Frau Zemil's German 5 class created a video interview between a reporter and Little Red Riding Hood and the Hunter. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/01/28/red-riding-hood/ ARD is not the easiest tool to learn, but teachers are motivated by the fact that they can monitor what is happening on all of their students' screens. Mme. Collet has been using this tool of late to log her 3rd graders in when they come to the lab, both ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/01/22/mme-collet-conquers-apple-remote-desktop-ard/ Sra. Baum regularly brings her 3rd grade students to the World Language Lab. This is not always easy, because they've never used DiLL (the Digital Language Lab) before. I like these simple instructions that she uses to help them get started: 1. Press play 2. Listen to the question and answer. 3. Hold ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2009/01/06/3rd-graders-in-the-lab/ Sra. Ramos made her own Flash-based games using linguamate.com last week. Just like Quia and Quizlet, teachers can design their own simple games based on the phrases and vocabulary they use in class. Linguamate is by far the most colorful and fun for Lower School kids. To publish these games, Sra. ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/12/17/flash-based-games-with-linguamatecom/ A big thanks to all of the HS students, teachers, and parents who submitted workshops for this year's ArtsFest (to be held Thursday, February 26, 2009). We had a great response this year and there are some awesome workshops to choose from. This year, registration for ArtsFest will be done entirely ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/12/10/arts-fest-registration-is-now-open/ Becky Lopez came up with a fun way of assessing the comprehension of emotions by using Photo Booth. She showed a PowerPoint presentation with 10 emotions and gave students about 20 seconds per slide to take a picture of themselves acting out the emotion. I'll see if I can get ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/12/09/photo-booth-for-emotions/ Design by Brienne Ellis and Layla Ehsan Ms. Ann Beck and her French 4 class have been looking at the economic challenges that Haitians face and thinking about how they can help. Between now and December 19th, they've decided to raise seed money to buy t-shirts. Then they will stencil original ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/12/03/fundraiser-for-haiti/ Mme Jackson is working on two cool iMovie projects. Her 8th graders are putting together intro movies for their friends at the Lycée André Malraux in France. All of the footage was captured on Flip cameras in the classroom and then copied on to each of the mac Minis in the ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/12/01/mme-jackson-works-with-7th-8th-graders-in-imovie-08/ Señora Lopez has designed a fun activity for her students. They use blabberize.com to tell somebody's future. Check out her very nicely designed worksheet. Puedo ver en el futuro que muchos maestros vayan a utilizar este sitio... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/11/18/tell-your-future-on-blabberizecom/ Check out this movie that Ms. Romanelli made with her 8th grade French students. Students introduce themselves to their French friends and show clips of the Halloween festivities. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/11/11/ms-romanelli-creates-a-movie-for-sister-classroom-in-la-rochelle-france/ Sra. Baum's Middle School Spanish class has created web pages using iWeb for their weather report project. Very nicely done, all! The lab headsets make you look like real meteorological professionals. Weather in Spain Weather in Spain Weather in the US Weather in GB Weather in the US Weather in the US http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/11/05/weather-reports-on-iweb/ Diane Jackson has already jumped on blabberize.com as a fun way to have her 8th grade students practice reflexive verbs. Check out her example! This is too fun. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/10/22/blabber-blabber-blabber/ Frau Zemil has started using Timeliner in the Project Area with her German 5 students. You can see how the program is structured and view one of her student's timelines here. http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/10/16/frau-zemil-innovates-again/ Frau Zemil has been in the lab at least three times so far this year to learn and implement a great piece of software called Apple Remote Desktop (ARD). ARD allows teachers to see the screens of all of the students in the Instructional Area. This is especially useful when ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/30/frau-zemil-discovers-the-benefits-of-apple-remote-desktop/ Maestra Guerrero learned iFlash this past week and planned a project for her 4th graders to create decks of their own. 4th graders will add audio, images, and text for basic vocabulary around the house. Click here to see a movie of how students can study with a deck of ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/26/yuperguerrero/ Mme Collet did a fun activity last week with DiLL. She gave her students a visual prompt: and then recorded questions for the students to respond to (i.e. Audio prompt: No. 1. Is her hair brown? Response: No, her hair is not brown. It's blond). Yet another fun application of ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/24/hair-color-activity/ Frau Steinbarth set a goal to have all of her German classes visit the lab at least once last week. Her 6th graders were the first to use the Project Area this year. They did some web activities that come with the Langenscheidt text and then explored a German kids ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/23/frau-steinbarths-classes-in-the-lab/ We welcome Mme Romanelli to the World Language Department this year, who is filling in for Mme Schneider while she takes a year off. [Mme Schneider, by the way, is posting her reflections and some of her writing on a WordPress blog that she set up this past summer. Take ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/19/romanelli/ Ms. Beck reports that she has made her first two homework assignments on her Blog for two of her French classes. This may seem like a little thing to some of us veterans, but it's *huge* step for someone who didn't really know what a blog was or how to ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/11/yuperblogger/ Ms. Liang brought her 5th and 4th graders into the lab this week to learn the words to the Beijing Olympic theme song. See a short video of the kids' singing/plaintive howling here. Both classes had a lot of fun with the activity and I understand that they will memorize ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/09/10/first-yuperstar-of-the-year/ SO. A short time to reflect as we begin a new school year. This department, the World Language Department at the Laboratory Schools, is really a special group of people. It was incredible to see everybody working together, helping each other, and really staying on task during our Professional Development week. ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/08/29/teachers-back-on-tuesday/ Today was slated as an open workday for teachers to finish up the Lesson Plans they had started during the week. We continued to set people up with blogs, work out the kinks in iWeb, and filled out a Summary&Feedback form (in Pages '08) to help us improve future technology ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/08/22/techweek2008day5/ Today, we began with an intense introduction to the features in iWeb. This software was by far the most difficult to learn for many of the teachers. We drilled down into more of the features available in the Inspector, which will help everyone as they continue to work with iLife ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/08/21/techweek2008day4/ Today, we began with a simple lesson plan that had teachers working with the built-in iSight cameras on their iMacs or our new Flip Cameras to create a simple movie in iMovie ‘08. Some of the finished products were really funny and enjoyable. (See the Summer2008 page on our wiki ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/08/20/techweek2008day3/