Annotated Video Playlist...

Future goals and objectives...

All of us have goals and we live to accomplish them every day. One of my biggest goals in life is to get my Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education/Spanish and start teaching. After I get my bachelor’s I would love to start working on my master’s degree. I’ve been living in the treasure valley for a little bit over 10 years and I have witnessed the growth and demand there is for educators and new schools. I want to stay and work in this area for sure because I love this state and I also want to give back to my community. Besides my professional goals, I’m also working on my personal goals some of them are living a healthier life style, reducing my stress, and spending more time with my children. Family to me is everything and my children are my priority, every decision I make I do it because of them and only for them. I want them to grow in a safer community and have great role models to look up to that’s one of the reasons why I want to teach. I also want them to look back and say “If my mom did it I can do it too” 


I often visualize my classroom and think about what type of teacher I want to be, they say the more that if you visualize your dreams and aspirations the bigger the possibilities are. I want my students to feel safe in my classroom, I don’t want them to feel judged or be bullies. I want to create an environment where they can ask as many questions as they want and be willing to work with me and the rest of the students. My classroom should feel like home, I want to have a lot of cultural decorations such as flags, pictures, and souvenirs from all the different Latin American countries and of course Spain. My classroom will also have a reading space where students can relax and read books in Spanish to help gain vocabulary and refined their language acquisition skills

A teacher's vision...

When you enter my classroom, you will see the flags from all the Latin American countries and a bigger one from Spain, the reason that flag is bigger it’s because Spain is considered the motherland of this language. I have a couch on one of the corners next to a bookcase filled with books from all levels of Spanish for my students to read, I call it “Rincón de lectura” (Reading corner). I have 30 individual desks lined up, 15 on each side of the room for a better class interaction between the students and me. I have one white board and one smart board that I use for my interactive lessons, I love it! The use of technology is very important in my classroom hence I have computers and tablets for online activities and lessons.

I want my classroom to feel like the Latin culture, warm and cozy. I want people to feel the same way I feel when I walk into my aunt’s home in Mexico; loved and welcomed. I truly believe that if I can make them feel like that they will be connecting with the culture on another level other than me in front of a board going over a “verb” lesson. Food and music will also be a big part of my class and lessons and for that I want to invite parents to participate and maybe have a “cooking” night on which we will be preparing famous recipes from different “Latin American” countries. Karaoke “nights” will be incorporated too because they students need to practice their new vocabulary in a fun way. 

A classroom’s atmosphere plays a big role in a student’s success and interest in your class that’s one of the reasons why I want my students to feel welcomed. I want them to engage and never forget what they felt every time they walked in Mrs. Rivera's classroom. 

Making it look good...

How many of us like to critique our own work? 

I don't! In fact I dislike it so much that I get red as an apple of embarrassment every time I go back and look at one of my assignments let alone critique it or give myself feedback on it. This time I had the opportunity to go back and reviewed one of my power point presentations regarding "The Internet Dangers". The original version, I have to agree, was not the best one. Had I presented it in front of my class and their parents they probably would have fell asleep right there and then. So after I watched some videos about colors and how they help us get our audience's attention I went back and altered my original presentation and made it more appealing to be presented. It was hard but not impossible and after the fact I really liked the newer version better than the original.

-Diana

Cultural Icon (3D Print)

3D printing is a cool tool you can use in your classroom it allows you to bring, in this case, cultural icons from web pages or your own drawings to life giving your lesson a more personal touch.
For this assignment I chose one of the greatest cultural icons of the Latin American culture, especially the Mexican culture. Quetzalcoatl which means "feathered serpent" is the god of wind and wisdom" of the Mayans and Aztecs. I presented the idea to my teacher and she showed me how to 3D print it. It came out looking just like the picture I submitted.

Quetzalcoatl

I can see myself using something like this to add a little bit of flavor to the cultural experience aspect of my lessons. It is important to teach my future students not only the language but also about the culture of the language they're learning. They need to know what's that culture made of and what its people believe and celebrate. My experience with 3D was quite amazing! 

Evaluating Apps for Educational Purposes...

The old days when teachers relied on books, paper and pencils to teach are long gone. Modern technology has reached our classrooms making the learning experience for our students more interactive and engaging. We have so many options to choose from, whether we only have access to desktop computers or tablets there are thousands of apps to help us teach according to our lesson plans and activities. Now I don't know about you but this sounds amazing to me!
The first app I evaluated with the help of this article called "iPad in Education: Evaluating Apps for the classroom" is called Duolingo. I had a lot of fun using Duolingo, this app allows your students to learn real life situations in any language. I chose Spanish because that's the language I'm interested in learning so I worked on different levels. Duolingo lets you chat about real life situation and listen to native speakers talk about them. Students can access this fun app at home and work on their iPads or cell phones if they can. For the second app I used an article called "Educational Apps: 4 Pillars for Evaluating Classroom Technology"  it's called FluentU this app wasn't as fun as the other one. FluentU is more formal, it's more for older students I would say. It uses a lot of videos and then it quizzes you on their content. You learn a lot don't take me wrong, but if your students get easily bored this is not the app for your class.

         

Blow up the gradebook...

To be honest I felt a little bit overwhelmed by this video and the idea of not having homework, tests and due dates... Maybe it's because every since I remember in my academic career I have always, always have homework and my life evolves around due dates and getting caught up with homework. A couple months ago an article about a Texas teacher circulated the web, in this article the teacher sent out a note home with her students. In this note she was letting the parents know that her students were not going to have any homework during the school year and that they could use that time to spend it with their kids playing or doing family activities. Due dates and homework add a huge amount of stress into the students lives, we know that! we were students once too, we know better than anybody what it feels. I agree with Chris Haskell, more technology should be applied in our classrooms, we should invest more time into developing and excising our students minds, instead of sending home loaded with stress and homework. Ultimately it is up to the student to participate and advance in our classes.