thoughts about my final project

I am still working on ideas for my final project. One possible question I have come up with is does online chat provide an environment that allows more creativity with the language than face to face conversation. I chose this because I was wondering if students would feel more comfortable typing their conversation, and therefore not feel as nervous about speaking. Is it possible that they are less hindered when it comes to chatting rather than speaking. Also, do they make less errors as time goes on because they can see what they are typing and can self correct before they enter the text. I think that I would find this to be true, the students will be willing to take more risks and play with the language more than they would in a face to face situation.
Another possible topic could deal with e-mail. Not 100% sure what exactly--I would like to explore the advantages of using e-mail to gain insight into another culture. I think pen pals through e-mail are great ideas for foreign language classes. It is a great way to have the students communicate with someone they never would have normally and to use the target language.

I heart Enrique!

This is a great song and video! Dimelo by Enrique Iglesias

feeling behind

Hey ya'll! I was out last week with the flu...no fun! So I feel like I missed out on a lot about the blog. I am not sure about some of these terms...I do think that adding sound and video would be neat if I knew how to. (maybe we talked about that last class-- not sure). Will add more to this post later when I know a little more.

PowerPoint

I am not that skilled yet on the PowerPoint, but I am working on it. I think it would be a great tool in the classroom. In the classroom I could use PowerPoint to make fun slide shows for the students, for instance when teaching reflexive verbs I could make a presentation on my daily routine. I also think they are helpful because you can post them to the internet and students can download all the notes from class.
I do not think that PowerPoint should be used for every class. I think that could get boring for the students. But every now and then it would be fun to incorporate into instruction. It would also be nice to allow the students to make their own presentations for the class.

El Internet

So I have been keeping track of my internet use over the past week.... I have noticed that since I started Student Teaching this semester I do not have as much time to play around on the internet. I used to could spend a lot of time on perezhilton.com just reading all my celebrity gossip but now I am too tired to do anything for fun. I basically just do searches and check my email and my facebook. I just now spent way too much time looking through all my pictures to find one for my blog profile. Here is a breakdown of my time spent on the internet:

Monday: Checked my webmail account for all of 1 minute at 6:30am, looked up plane tickets on cheaptickets.com for 15 minutes at 9:30pm then I used yahoo.com to search for spanish pen pals for 10 minutes.
Tuesday: Sent an e-mail at 9:30pm, checked hotmail.com for 2 minutes then my facebook account for 5 minutes, checked weather.com for 2 minutes, then I searched on yahoo.com for the song that is in the new apple commercial for the thin laptop-5 minutes, then I went to youtube.com to listen to the whole song.
Wednesday: Checked webmail.sc.edu for 1 minute at 5:40am, at 8:30 I checked my hotmail and facebook for 5 minutes, then checked movie times on movies.yahoo.com, then looked at perezhilton.com for 15 minutes, sc.edu to look up courses offered in Maymester- 2 minutes bc nothing was up yet.
Thursday: Checked webmail.sc.edu, hotmail.com, and facebook.com for 3 minutes each, then used yahoo.com to search for lesson plan ideas to teach holidays in Spanish-15 minutes, then searched yahoo for the calendar dates of the US holidays during this year-10 minutes.
Friday: Searched yellowpages.com at 5:45am, then searched another listing on yellowpages.com at 5:30pm both for about 1 minute, then I checked hotmail.com, webmail.sc.edu, and facebook.com for 2 minutes each.

I usually receive about 5 e-mails a day on my hotmail account and 2 on my USC account. I send or receive 1 or 2 messages on facebook each day. I usually only send school related e-mails. I will only check my e-mail in the morning if I know I have some kind of meeting that day to make sure it is not cancelled or anything. Also, before student teaching I used AOL Instant Messenger almost everynight to chat with my family or friends, but now I am too tired to stay up to talk. I think I use the internet mostly to search for things-usually school related, also to keep in touch with friends (facebook). I really don't think I use it that much and when I do it is only for simple tasks.