http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll salvete • 欢 迎 • bienvenue • willkommen • bienvenido Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:09:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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/summer2008-techweek-workday/ 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/2008/08/21/2008summer-techweek-iweb-blogs/ 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 teachers were very creative and I'll have to ask their permission so I can ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/08/20/2008summer-techweek-imovie/ Today, we began with a simple lesson plan that had students creating five simple slides in Keynote about any topic of interest (download the Five Slide Podcast activity at our wiki). Then we exported them to QuickTime (7.5.4!) and created movies that could be posted online or distributed as Podcasts. Everyone ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/08/19/2008summer-techweek-keynote-to-podcast/ Mme. Schneider's eighth-graders do a fun project where they try to recreate famous Impressionist paintings. These are really great. [bubbleshare 396220.62f478e2404] http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/06/11/name-this-impressionist-painter/ Ms. Pelliteri has been working with with two of her Latin 3/4 classes on iFlash decks. Thanks to Ms. Spaltro for training Ms. Pelliteri. It's a pretty sweet day when a teacher walks in here all ready to go with something new! http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/20/iflash-for-latin/ Ms. Zemil's German class has been busy writing and filming original commercials and TV shows. Check out their videos at the following sites: YouTube WLDX Video files are also available via iTunes. Go to the iTunes store and search for "GERMAN@LAB". http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/15/german-commericals/ Maestra Guerrero has just published her sixth grade class PowerPoints on her blog. She used QuickTime Pro to convert them to the light-weight .mp4 format. They look great! http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/05/02/comparaciones-parte-2/ Maestra Guerrero continues to work with her 6th graders on a fun PowerPoint presentation project about comparisons. Essential to this and many other projects that we're doing now is a shared "Classes" folder, where groups of students can save their projects and access them later, no matter who in the ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/18/comparisons/ It is most gratifying to see teachers working together to accomplish departmental tasks, share curricular ideas, and... drum roll, please... teach each other technology! Mme. Schneider volunteered to teach her colleagues how to create a recital program in pages using creative commons images from flickr. Now, Sra. Guerrero is ready ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/15/teachers-working-together/ Ms. Spaltro had her Latin class into the lab for the first time yesterday to do an iFlash project. I was really pleased to see her incorporating a lot of the things we had talked about prior to class, like using images from the Creative Commons. [Search 'creative commons' on ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/10/fran-spaltro-yuperstar-debut/ I've been hoping students and teachers would take advantage of all the cool iLife '08 technology we have here in the Project Area. Today, four of Ms. Spaltro's Latin class students came up to edit footage from the assassinations of Ceasar before break. I can't wait to see the results! http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/04/04/first-film-project-in-the-lab/ [bubbleshare 325169.8049d9813a7] Sra. Ramos did a great activity with her Fifth graders on Monday. They listened to a Jarabe de Palo song called "Bonito", filled in the missing words, and then sang the three verses into DiLL in Random Pairs. The student's .mp3s were circulated to the entire class using our ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/28/spanishidol/ Jon Sun brought his high school Chinese class into the lab on Friday to have a class discussion about ArtsFest and then recorded responses to a textbook audio lesson. Students enjoyed themselves and what's more, Lower School teacher, Xing-Lu Liang came to observe the whole process, in preparation for her ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/26/yupersun-and-yuperliang/ I have to hand it to our chair. He's taken the Comic Life bull by the horns and become more and more comfortable using the lab in general. It's been great to see how Comic Life has "spread" through the department. I think more than half of the faculty have ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2008/02/05/steve-farve-yuperstar/ Frau Zemil has worked with iFlash a little, but yesterday was the first day that we tried using it with an entire classroom of 6th graders. This time, Frau Steinbarth was the YuperStar. She learned the tool, started a deck with 75 vocabulary words, and then explained to her class ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/12/13/iflash-debut/ I have to give kudos to Marianne Zemil for doing probably the most complex multimedia project so far this year. Her German students designed a powerpoint, recorded audio narration, and included audio clips from interviews they had already recorded in Audacity. There were definitely some growing pains experienced by all, ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/11/15/the-audacity/ I feel like highlighting the efforts of Ms. Susan Joseph. Everyone teases Susan (Susan included) for her love-hate relationship with technology, but when it comes right down to it, Susan is paying the price to learn. Just this week, she got permission to spend her "Professional Renewal" time here in ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/11/01/yuperstar-november-2/ Check out the latest additions to World Language Deptartment blogs. This week's YuperStar goes to both Craig Reubelt and Mythili Venkataraman, who set up their blogs last week and have already created 58 posts between the two of them! I would love to hear from parents and students about their experience ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/10/25/mme-venkataraman-sr-reubelt-fly-with-their-blogs/ Mme. Collet has enthusiastically jumped into using the lab with all of her classes. Two weeks ago, she brought her 3rd graders in to do an activity in the Welcome Area. This nice little carpeted corner provides a place for students to set their things when they come in for ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/10/18/3rd-grade-french-in-the-lab-welcome-area/ [bubbleshare 247407.8a7eb8e3660] I think it's high time I feature Marianne Zemil, one of the driving forces behind the existence of this lab and someone who is always stretching her limits and trying new things. I know that in the past, she's attended conferences to put her finger on the pulse of ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/10/11/a-tech-pioneer/ Ann Beck did a wonderful thing last week by taking on the DiLL Lab Controller (teacher's interface to the Digital Learning Lab). During two class sessions with Spanish 3A, she mastered all of the shortcuts required to manipulate and talk/listen to client objects on the screen. You should watch this ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/10/04/ann-beck-yuperstar/ Diane Jackson found some cool videos on YouTube that are perfect for solidifying basic vocab in French. They are 3-minute videos of The Adventures of Little Brown Bear that are simply delightful, although I know a few UHigh students that might disagree with that assessment. Diane used these for a lab ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/09/27/diane-jacksons-7th-grade-french/ Suzanne did a DiLL activity with her classes and then moved them to the Project Area of the lab to have a discussion about one of their readings. I'm very impressed with the dialogues going on between Sra. Baum and her students. Great conversations that challenge students' comprehension and speaking ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/09/25/suzanne-baums-french-spanish-classes/ I asked Annette Steinbarth to share a little about the new curriculum for 6th grade German students. Marianne Zemil and I decided that to enable students to communicate across political and cultural boundaries, we would best serve our students by adopting a curriculum that conforms to both the U.S. National Standards ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/09/20/new-german-curriculum/ Becky Lopez was the first to reserve and use the lab this year. Check out these images of her class doing an internet research project. [bubbleshare 230556.f1eb803de4f] "YuperStar" is my term of endearment for any teacher that bravely goes where no teacher has gone before or tries new things with technology until ... http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/09/13/becky-lopezs-8th-grade-spanish/ For an RSS feed describing what teachers are working on in the lab today, click here: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/8862772.rss http://blogs.ucls.uchicago.edu/wll/2007/09/10/twitter/