Fac Dev Meeting: Mar 10, 2009
Tuesday we talked about a number of tech-related issues, so I wanted to quickly summarize them and then invite those who were interested to sign up/give me feedback online. Otherwise, it will be really hard for me to keep track of who wants to do what.
1) Summer Tech Training. I didn’t think to apply for funds again this summer simply because I thought there would be no way of getting enough funding for the entire department to work multiple days. But it doesn’t mean I can’t look into it. It is a lot of work, but if I have a firm commitment from a good number in the department and we come up with a pedagogical focus (not just gaining new tech skills for the sake of gaining new tech skills), than I would be happy to put a proposal together.
2) NAIS Presentation. Do take a look at this list that Diane and I worked on regarding DiLL activities:
http://worldlanguagelab.wikispaces.com/DiLL+Activities
There are some good ideas there for taking DiLL to the next level.
3) Video for 2nd grade parents. I suggested filming Steve, Diane, Jon, Marianne, Suzanne, or others giving the same spiel they gave to 2nd grade parents (in a slightly more abridged form). This film might be a helpful aid for parents of Lower School language students in general. We would probably need 90 minutes to film. Do you want to try and do this before the end of the school year? I’ll let you talk amongst yourselves and decide. I could edit this over the summer.
4) Video on integrating technology. I proposed taking video of teachers integrating technology in the lab or with the laptops to spotlight some of the efforts you’ve made over the last several years. If you are willing to let me “document” your experiences between now and the end of the year, just sign up and I’ll be in touch to decide which little clip we could film. Each teacher’s segment in the film would probably only be a minute long. Again, my focus will be on finding where good second language acquisition pedagogy is enhanced by technology. That’s harder to do than just showing all the cool hardware, software, or subscriptions we have at our disposal. By making a video about it, we will help other world language departments who are also starting down this path of integration.
5) iCarts. We talked about changing how iCarts are used for next year. Part of the survey will involve you telling me how much you plan to use iCarts next year. It sounded like there was consensus that at least one of the iCarts should go in Judd 110 or Judd 115. Should we keep the second iCart in another Judd room or move one to Belfield 160, UHigh 219, or MS276? I’ll ask a few more questions to try and get a handle on that. I will be meeting with Brent during the second week of Spring Break to take a look at any early version of the schedule that will inform our decision.
6) 1:1 laptop initiative. A number of you said you would support a 1:1 laptop initiative in the MS and HS. I’m a little unclear as to what exactly Curt would like us to say or do to support him. But if you tell me who you are, than I will take that list to him and ask him what the next step is. Going 1:1 would most certainly require additional training in classroom management and tech integration.
7) Articulation. Steve and Craig will have more to say on this, but basically I gathered that there was some consensus to use the third Tuesday meetings in April and May to take a fresh look at language skills, tech skills, projects, and theme-based units 1) for each language in each level and 2) comparing all of the languages across each grade level. I will be looking for some kind of tool that will make it easy to collaborate on this task over time. This is the kind of project that never ends, but we’ve got a great start in the document that was written a few years ago (which is saved in the yellow-colored Articulation folder on Projects). I’ll also point you to a table on our wiki that summarizes the projects/themes we know about so far: http://worldlanguagelab.wikispaces.com/programofstudies That would be Tuesday, April 21 and Tuesday, May 19.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE THINGS YOU ARE INTERESTED IN:
http://worldlanguagelab.wikispaces.com/survey
Have a fabulous break everyone!
