Summary

At the last day before the Christmas break we thought about the question: “What is worth keeping in mind for the future?”. In small groups we decided on the presentation of this summary and we have chosen a mind map which we created on bubbl.us. To make it accessible for the future reference, I think it is reasonable to present it in our blog.

The tools, especially the 100 essential web tools are very useful for Media in FLE. We learned ways of creating lessons on the internet or with the help of the internet. Of course, therefore we also need some technical background. Before all, a teacher has to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of new media in order to decide whether and which opportunity of new media is helpful for the students and afterwards the students should be taught these advantages and disadvantages.

Field Trip- Answers

After our visit to the Alfred-Wegener- Schule on January 19th, we got answers to most of the questions in our Field Trip Questions – post.

1. How many computers do you have?

- There are three different rooms with computers. Two of them are convetional computer labs, one is a learning room with a library and group tables with computers for older students and the other one is the “Lernwerkstatt”. It has a special architecture: It is one big room, where you find  a library and some small group-talking-rooms like cabins, upstairs are some computers and a printer. Roughly there are about 80 computers at school.

2. How do you finance the computers?

Field Trip- Questions

The Alfred-Wegener- Schule Kirchhain was the Media School of the Month (January 2009) and we are going to visit them.

Here are some questions we prepared to get information about experiences with new media at school:

1. How many computers do you have?
2. Since when do you own them? How often do you update the systems?
3. How do you finance the computers?
4. How often and in which subjects do teachers use the computers? Do they really integrate new media into their lesson plans?

Teacher Blogs

You can find a lot of teacher blogs on the internet which provide you with teaching material for various topics, ideas on how to use the new media in your classroom and many more. In the following, I will present two very useful teacher blogs which among other things contain lists of helpful websites for English teachers, lists of other helpful teacher blogs, suggestions for lesson plans, resources for the classroom etc.

WebQuests in Class

WebQuests can be used in class in order to improve a sensible dealing with the internet and its contents. They are activities based on research and contain information provided mostly by web sources. WebQuests can be created by groups and may differ in length. What is more, they can refer to a single topic or to several topics.

The Digital Schoolbag

The Digital Schoolbag is a collection of standard software which is portable and can be run from a flash pen drive. Therefore, it can be easily accessed on every computer and does not need to be installed on school computers. What is more, it is free since it only contains open source software. The only thing that needs to be purchased is a pen drive. A great advantage derives from the fact that data and programs can be stored on the same flash pen and what is more, equal software and learning environments can be created on each computer so that all students have access to the same basic information and preliminaries.

Where can you get it from?

–> Medienzentrum-Kassel

A WebQuest on Evaluating Software

The neologism “Edutainment” is a combination of the words education and entertainment which offers young learners the opportunity to enjoy learning English. You can find various learning games for the English classroom online.

In our last in-class session we had to do a webquest which guided us through some websites that deal with the topic “edutainment” and some interesting educational games for the English classroom.

In the following, you will find some key aspects that are relevant when evaluating educational software and four examples of “edutainment” including an evaluation.

How to setup a video-projector in class: A checklist

Video presentations in the classroom are used with increasing frequency but many teachers have problems with setting up a video-projector. The following checklist is to help all of those who are inexperienced or are not well schooled in setting up video-projectors.

Hello World!

Welcome to our group blog “Experiences with New Medie in Foreign Language Education” which will provide you with useful information and ideas on how to use the new media in the foreign language classroom. We are always open for suggestions in order to improve our knowledge, so do not be shy and add your comments on this blog!

Best regards,

Gloria & Jana & Nermin & Sofia