Delaware is the latest state to consider adding a world language proficiency requirement for high school graduation. Delaware Online highlights the positive move and support of the World Language Task Force, State Board of Education, etc. Kudos to Delaware!
Google is hosting a competition for students to customize the Google logo. As world language educators, you could have your students enter this contest, focusing on language, culture, global understanding, etc. Why should you consider this? There is great power in being able to generate meaning through visual representation – it requires critical thinking and synthesis.
Here are some details:
Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to play around with our homepage logo and see what they come up with. This year we’re inviting U.S. kids to join in the doodling fun, around the intriguing theme “What if…?”
At Google we believe in thinking big, and dreaming big, and we can’t think of anything more important than encouraging students to do the same. So we hope you’ll gather those art supplies and some 8.5×11 landscape paper and encourage your kids to enrich us all with their creative visions of our world, as it is and as it might be.
You’ll find everything you need to get started here, including detailed lesson plans to incorporate the competition into your curricula. Registration closes on March 28th, and entries are due by April 12th. A panel of judges will select 40 finalist doodles, from which the public will help select a favorite to be featured on our homepage on May 22nd, 2008.
Google is supplying some lesson ideas, templates of the graphic, and more. Check the Google for Educators forum and check out other teacher’s experiences with the contest as well as with various Google services.
Need some more inspiration? Watch this video:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/BIctMbYL0d4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Live Mocha has launched – this website combines social networking with language learning. Here you can indicate what language you speak as well as what language(s) you would like to learn. There are synchronous and asynchronous opportunities, the ability to track your progress through various courses, and native speakers who are willing to interact with learners. Pretty cool community. I joined tonight – I’m ckendall – I’m going to learn some Chinese. Maybe some Farsi, too. Join me!
the United Nations declared 2008 the International Year of Languages. The February 2008 UNESCO Courier focuses on world languages and culture with several interesting articles.
“The first instrument of a people’s genius is its language,” said the French writer Stendhal. Literacy, learning, social integration….Everything transits through language, which embodies national, cultural and sometimes religious identity for each person. It constitutes one of the fundamental dimensions of a human being. Yet specialists estimate that within only a few generations, more than half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world face extinction, because they are not represented in government, education and the media. For this reason, the United Nations had declared 2008 the International Year of Languages, to be launched by UNESCO on 21 February, International Mother Language Day.
There are several interesting articles about languages around the world, bilingualism, and more! Happy reading!
The National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center at Iowa State University received a StarTalk grant for a special professional development institute for Chinese teachers to take place during the summer of 2008, Mentoring and Leadership for K-12 Chinese Teachers.
In this 10-day summer institute, K-12 Chinese teachers will explore key concepts and principles related to mentoring, leadership, and change. They will collaboratively develop standards-based, thematically focused, and culturally rich Chinese teaching materials and experiment with compelling classroom applications of emerging technologies such as blogs, podcasts, digital storytelling, and wikis. They will learn to use these technologies to disseminate materials and expand their mentoring and leadership to the profession at district and state levels.
Cherice Montgomery and I will be leading the institute, and Weiqing Wang, the Chinese cultural and linguistic consultant and demonstration teacher will be joining our team! Kudos to Marcia Rosenbusch, Director of the NFLRC, on receiving the grant. Marcia continues providing excellent direction to the Center as well as leadership and mentoring to colleagues and fellow world language educators.
Kiva had record traffic over the holidays. As I was home for the holidays, I volunteered for several shifts. As quickly as loans were translated they were moved to the live side of things. Millions of dollars came through to the budding entrepreneurs in developing nations. Volunteering to translate is interesting – I’ve translated loans about stores, artisans, agriculture, hardware and car repair shops. If you are a language teacher, consider volunteering to translate. It’s a great way to keep your language skills up to date. And there is a terrific support community for the translators, too!
Technology still excites, motivates, engages. And it scares others. The biggest message we tried to convey is that it really isn’t about the technology, but rather about the pedagogy. How can we use 21st century technologies to engage students in meaningful activities…. I think this may be the topic of many subsequent posts. I’m too tired after a week in San Antonio to go deeper in to this thought, but I will definitely return!
Leaving next week for the ACTFL conference in San Antonio, Tx. The first part of the week I’ll be in Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) training, then I’ll be presenting a session and a workshop with my friend Cherice. Of course the presentations aren’t quite finished – I’ll try to remember and post the urls – we are presenting on wikis and 21st century tech toys in the world language classroom.
The Michigan Department of Education has released two documents related to the World Language requirement of the Michigan Merit Curriculum:
Of particular note is Michigan’s requirement for 2 credits of a world language:
Learners at different ages and stages of development progress at different rates and require different amounts of learning time to achieve equivalent proficiency. Research indicates that students benefit from continuous and extended sequences of language study in the same world language. School districts may choose to deliver a sequence of study equivalent to two years of high school credit in a variety of ways. For example, students may complete:
1. two years of classroom instruction at the high school level;
2. formal instruction in the same world language provided by their school district over the course of the K-8 experience (proficiency assessment required; see next page); or
3. learning beyond the K-12 classroom, for example, formal schooling abroad, study abroad programs, college coursework, home or heritage languages, online courses, or other life experiences; formal documentation of equivalent proficiency is required.
I’m sure many districts will have questions on what does this mean for their students, particulary what it means to measure for proficiency. The next few years will be very interesting here in Michigan!
Via Jessica Haxhi, an easy to use web-based voice recording tool. Gabcast is a free utility to create sound files by calling an 800 number from your phone. No advertising, easy interface. Took me all of 5 minutes to set up, record, and publish here. Audio files can be downloaded as MP3 files. Slick. Audio quality is acceptable – sounds like a phone. By clicking the link below you will be sent over to the Gabcast website. Theoretically, I could save the MP3 file and put it up on DivShare, which may be needed depending on the number and size of audio files allowed in Gabcast’s free account. But for now I will leave it as the code is presented by Gabcast.
Gabcast! Communicate #1
How could a world language teacher use this?
