Sneak Peek – SWCOLT (South West Conference on Language Teaching)

After a long day of traveling we finally made it to beautiful Albuquerque. From our hotel we were able to see the sunset over the mountains and now we are enjoying the amber lights of the city. We are looking forward to a weekend of learning and collaborating with World Language teachers from all over the South West region.

As we are paging through the program we are trying to decide on what sessions we should attend. Some of the sessions that have caught our eye are:

• The Best of Texas – Modern Technology for the Modern Student presented by Cary Perkins and Barbara Gilbert promises to explore uses of technology from “Power Point to Ipods with sample of lessons plans and materials”.
• Web 2.0 Tools for Language Learning presented by James Yoder which seems to feature some classics that we love like voicethread, animotos, wikispaces and some new ones we would like to know more about like Lingt, Geobits and Google Earth in the WL classroom.
• The Best of Colorado – Personalization Gimmicks. A 21st Century Toolbox for Teachers presented by Noah Geisel (a colleague we have learned a lot from on Twitter and can’t wait to see in person @SenorG).
• The Best of Arizona – Google Docs and Maps. Collaboration and Discovery for Language Teaching presented by Barbara and Peter Lafford. Promises to give us the sneak peek at the latest Google Technology for World Language Teachers.
• 21st Century Tools to Teach, Learn, Collaborate and Advocate for Languages presented by Toni Theisen (another great Twitterer we enjoy following @tonitheisen ).

We will both tweet and blog about what we learn from these sessions throughout the weekend.

Finally, we would like to invite you to join us in our session this Saturday April 10th, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. in the Sierra 2. We will be presenting “Get Them Speaking. Connecting World Languages to Web 2.0”. We will be looking at Vokis, Voicethreads, Google Voice and more.

Are you looking forward to any specific sessions? Are you presenting and would like to tell us more about your presentation? Leave comments …

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Life-long Learner

Some people say that I am a life-long learner and I truly believe that. Maybe that explains why I don’t seem to be able to stay away from school. My husband sometimes sees this as a disadvantage since I will most likely have student loans for the rest of my life. I have no regrets on investing in my education but I think he is right. I may have to accept the fact that education is not always free.

I obtained my Master’s degree less than a year ago and I must confess that over the past few months I have caught myself pondering about possibly pursuing a Ph.D. I’ve given it some thought and I have reflected upon it and I feel that I cannot afford another degree at this time. It’s not only the money but the time it requires away from my family. I’m trying to make myself wait a couple of years then if the time is right enroll in a doctorate program. But … What do I do now? I’m still eager to learn things and “test” them out in my classroom with my students.

For the longest time I thought about taking some community education courses at the local community college; just to keep my mind busy but the more I think about it the more I want to learn things that will allow me to grow as an educator. So … this is when I decided that it was time to start attending professional development activities and conferences. I love conferences!

Michelle and I recently attended FETC. We also presented about some of the projects we have implemented in our classrooms. I attended several sessions and learned a lot of things that I want to implement with my students. Conferences are such a great way to learn from others, share things with others and network with people in your field. If you were not able to attend FETC I highly recommend you check out #fetc on twitter. Presenters, attendees and vendors were tweeting some amazing resources. Michelle and I focused our presentation on Etherpad and Voicethread. We love those two tools.

What tech tools are you using in your classroom / job?