I have been pondering over the essential question for my action research this past week or so, but things seem to becoming more concrete. For some time I have been trying to use more technology in my classroom to enhance learning and motivation and I am curious to know if it does help students retain more and keep them more focused on their studies. In a Language classroom technology can be used in many ways; students can hear the voices of authentic native speakers; students can make connections online with other foreign students; students can research and make presentations to other students in their class in the target language about what they have found out & students can also use different types of apps to help them learn and become more familiar with the target language.
In this action research, I am hoping to focus more on using apps /tools which help students learn vocabulary/grammar concepts as opposed to other types of educational technology. In particular my French 1 class is in the beginning stages of learning the language and so need to become more familiar with new vocabulary. What I would like to do is to compare a sample of their quiz results to see if using traditional methods alone, or using traditional methods with educational technology gives them better test results. First of all I will teach students using only traditional methods and not use any apps in the classroom. Students will be introduced to the topic of classroom vocabulary and will work on activities from the textbook. I will get them to make flashcards of the new words that they are required to learn and they will then bring these to each class and review them with a partner over the course of a couple of weeks. We will also complete other speaking/reading/writing activities around this same topic. Once the two week period is up, I will test the students on their vocabulary to see what they have been able to retain, and can spell. When this test is complete the class will move onto the topic of school subjects. For students to absorb this new vocabulary I propose to use a variety of teaching techniques and this time include technology. Students will still make their flashcards to work on with a partner, but they will also use quizlet to review the words and test themselves and as a class we will play quizlet live where students get into teams and have to choose the right answer. Kahoot is another app that I will use to help students review and again after two weeks I will give them a quiz and see how they do. All students will complete the different activities in the assigned way but only a few students will have their test results analyzed and compared. It will be very important to get a good cross section of people taking part in the research, other wise it could be somewhat bias. Students also all need to be at the same starting point, otherwise some will have an advantage over others. I have chosen to conduct my research in my French class as most people there have very little or no previous knowledge of the language. My Spanish classes on the other hand vary and some students are native speakers, so they could have an unfair advantage over other students. I think the test should probably be as simple as possible just to test students' vocabulary and spelling, as to include other information could perhaps be too complex and it could be difficult to compare or interpret the data accurately. Also knowing if students have access to the internet at home could influence the results as they could use educational technology on their own time to help quiz themselves on the new vocabulary. Overall, I am thinking that they were will be a correlation between technology being used and better test results, but obviously I will need to gather the evidence to substantiate this hypothesis.
4 Comments
Catalina J Goldstein
9/9/2018 11:09:14 am
It looks like you have a clear path ahead of you to see if technology will be helpful to you. I remember back in my high school days of taking language classes we did not use very much technology in our classroom even though much was available to our teachers.
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9/9/2018 12:58:04 pm
This was such a beautifully written blog entry. I especially appreciate the way you systematically planned how you would incorporate technology into your class. I also plan to use all the apps that apply to my writing and reading classes. My students have been asking if we could start now. It's a bit too, too soon, but we will be able to explore apps in a week or so.
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Caitlin Mitchell
9/9/2018 03:43:02 pm
I agree with the part where you said it may be hard to get a clear result and interpreting the data correctly. I have the same concern. I don't to muddle my results by giving a test that is too hard. I also worry that there are outliers that could effect my results...as a teacher there are so many different elements that go into teaching...so many moving parts. It is really hard to isolate one specific input to see how it affects something because of this.
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Brandon DeJesus
9/10/2018 10:13:58 am
I have also tried to integrate more technology into my classroom but I find that students who are not shown explicitly how to use technology for learning purposes will default to using it for their own interests. I appreciate that you made it a point to teach students how to use apps effectively. I think technology is ideal for new language acquisition and if students use tech in meaningful ways it will absolutely offer new ways to practice, increasing their retention.
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AuthorI am a French & Spanish teacher at Justin-Siena High School wanting to get new ideas to motivate my students. Archives
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