I Am In The Current ~ The stream is digital.

Someone sent me this link today. It has a simple presentation however the narration and monologue structure is very interesting.

A Little Background Information

This year I am working with Middle Year students in Saskatoon in a Core French program. The students reside on the East side of the river in a more affluent neighborhood. The students of the English program have studied Core French each year. Due to scheduled curricular minutes, students only receive brief instruction and time in contact with the language. Outside of the classroom, their schoolmates may be able to speak French however the dominant language is English. Students from the grade 6-8 study and learn French with me. I provide prep-time to the regular classroom teacher as an itinerant teacher. I work with the students twice a week- Tuesdays and Thursdays for 45 minutes per class. This being said, students receive an hour and a half of Core French instruction a week.

Curricular Focus and Blooming

The grade 7 classroom has been studying food and diets in Core French. Students have been working on preparing an original menu for their own restaurant. They were given resource sheets listing relevant vocabulary and have studied French sentence structure, verb conjugation, and the writing process in a second language. The grade 8 students have been studying vacations and traveling. They also received resource sheets with specific vocabulary and have studied language components and content as the grade 7 class.

Both groups are working on the application stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Using the rubric provided, students are to produce projects that are entirely in French. They were provided in-class work time and support as they worked on their projects.

Here Lies the Problem

Students in these grade levels have a very limited French. The majority of students who are very successful in the Core French program are girls although there are some boys. There are a few students who are moderately successful and a large number of students are not successful in this program. It’s hard to blame the kids as the have such a limited exposure to the language and I don’t employ a candy-incentive program in my classroom. French, much to my chagrin, is not the cool thing for these English first-language students.

There are a large number of the struggling students who did not hand-in their assignment on the due date. Another bulk of the classes quickly made their assignments in English and then used online translators to produce their French project.

The title of this blog post was translated by Babel Fish- Yahoo’s online translator. I entered: “Traduire un texte avec un service de traduction branché ce n’est pas l’ideal”. The translation according to Babel Fish is: ” To translate a text with a translation service connects this n’ is not l’ ideal”. The proper translation should be: “Translating a text with an online translator is not ideal”. Students were warned that these online translators do not produce an accurate translation.

The Tools

I suggested to students that they should use their resource sheets and work from what they know in French. I provided paper French- English dictionaries to the students and offered WordReference as an online translator should they be stuck but warned that it would not translate entire sentences (This is my prefered online dictionary for translation).

After surveying and peeking over shoulders in the computer lab here is the list on online translators my students used most to complete this assignement:

• Translate
• Babel Fish
• Google Translate

I struggle with this question: What is the value of an English project that was translated with an online translator? The student has not demonstrated that they can choose, organize, prepare, and produce a French menu or a Tourism Commercial.

The Humor

My favorite translation I found in a project was: écrasure de orange for orange juice. The proper translation should be jus d’orange. The translation provided states: smooshed of orange. )

Saskatoon Public School announced that they were anticipating vacancies for the following school year. The school division indicated that they were accepting letters of interest for these positions. I wrote a letter for the position of Online Learning Teacher. I have never made a video for a potential job. Truth be told, I have always stayed true to the cover letter as a communication tool between myself and an employer. I chose to make a movie presentation to introduce myself, to highlighting my strength and abilities, and to take a different yet logical angle to this letter of interest.

I made my video on my iMac. I used iMovie 7.1.4 The introduction was shot with my built-in camera using a black backdrop. The title image is from a pre-made template. The Google Earth clip was recorded with Jing Pro. The still images were shot from 2006-2008 from several different occasions. These images were salvaged from my scortched iMac after the house fire this summer. The Educational Technology Tools showcase were also recorded with Jing Pro. The music is by Depart. (I am a huge JoJo Mayer fan). In this movie I featured part of the song Prospection.

So enough said. Here is my iMovie.

For the longest time, I have wanted to update my About section on my blog with a multimedia presentation but have yet to do so. Maybe this first iMovie project will encourage me to do so.

My book club has completed it’s study of the 7 Keys to Comprehension by Suzan Zimmerman and Chryse Hutchins.

We met twice other then our introductory meeting. The first two session were held at the Saskatoon Public  board office and the third was changed to one of the participants home-school. I was able to book room 3304 where a projector and large screen was available to facilitate my two original Keynotes created for the introductory and first session.

The introductory session had the best attendance. By the final session attendance was below 50% of the registered attendees. I attribute poor attendance to seasonal scheduling conflicts and poor weather conditions. My original intent for scheduling my book club at the downtown office was to offer participants a central location to which to travel as it is centrally located in Saskatoon. In hind site, I should have acknowledged that downtown Saskatoon is very congested after school and makes travelling difficult. Later, I learned that some past book clubs have scheduled their sessions at coffee shops to allow participants to have something warm do eat or drink should they desire. This is something I would seriously consider for future book clubs. After teaching all day, people would appreciate something to allow them to unwind prior to commencing professional development.

Things I really appreciated about this book club was revisting key concepts in this book with colleagues and sharing ideas, experiences, tips, and strategies. Our book club was very lucky to have a member of the Sasktoon Public School’s Literacy Team sign up for our book club and to share valuable information with the group. This was really powerful because participants were able to hear a similar message from somebody else during the book club session. This reminded me of past experiences of offering my Web 2.0 and usessions. Many of my participants were new to Education Technology tools and the most powerful moments for them were Skype calls with other networked teachers who reinforced my message.

I think the one thing I will always remember about this book club experience is the participant who attendent all three sessions. This teacher diligently read and referenced sections of the book that were important to her and that could inform her classroom instruction. What was really marking was the powerful personal stories she shared about her growth as a reader, her willingness to admit moments of frustration and proud to share stories of her moments of growth as a reader. The one message I share in my session when working with this book is that everybody can become a better reader, even a parent or the classroom teacher.  Her contributions marked our book club sessions.

As a point of interests:

When preparing myself for the final session of the book club I looked around online for content from other sessions. When you google “The 7 Keys to Comprehension” you can find a copy of slides that were used by one of the author of the book for a parent session in Ottawa. 

Students in kindergarten can use visual clues. These clues are important for children to make sense of the world around them. They influence their perception of the who people are in their school and their role.

If your gym teacher wears a collared shirt and a tie, then he is both your teacher and the principal. To someone in Kindergarten, the collared shirt and tie automatically give the status of principal to any person working in a school.

This rule is observed even if the known principal is standing next to your gym teacher.

Photo credit: Brent Thomson- Flickr