Mini Project

I tried to upload this as a word doc, but I am not doing something right... here is my paper part- my video will follow soon!


The use of technology in the foreign language classroom is a hot topic. Everyone wants to know how teachers can incorporate technology into their lessons. There are many different ways you can use technology from blogs and podcasts to the use of digital videos. I am sure countless numbers of students have watched a homemade video on youtube.com. Why not watch one in the target language? The students are able to get valuable input from the videos they watch, as well as output with the creation of their own videos.

I am a strong believer in giving students a context in which to speak, and making their own cooking show is a great real life situation. They are given a reason to speak; they are explaining how to cook a specific recipe to someone else. During second language acquisition it is important to have meaningful input and output. This activity allows the students to work on a project that will let them create original videos explaining different recipes, and they will be speaking the entire time in the target language.

I came up with the idea of making a video about preparing gazpacho, an authentic Spanish dish, because cooking is something I am passionate about. I plan on using this type of video activity to teach my students vocabulary words related to food. This activity not only exposes the students to a wealth of vocabulary but also culture, they are able to research some popular dishes of Spanish speaking countries. This video could be used for beginning or intermediate level Spanish students. I will use this activity when we are beginning our unit on food. I will show my students the video I created as a way to model what I want them to do in the future. They will have to take notes on the different food words they hear and decide if this is a recipe they would like to try. I will give the students their assignment and then I will let the students research and then choose different recipes, which are authentic to Spain and Latin America, that they want to use in their videos. They will have two weeks to research and film their videos, which will be a minimum of three minutes in length. They will then have to show their videos to the class. This activity not only facilitates the learning of vocabulary but also helps them expand their cultural knowledge of the target culture.

This project can be carried out in two different ways; one if our school has video cameras that are available to the students and the other is if we do not. Hopefully, we will be lucky enough to have the video cameras. After watching my video and getting the instructions for the project, I will give the students a short tutorial on how to use the video cameras and how to upload and edit videos. The students will be responsible for recoding, editing, and uploading their videos. If we do not have video cameras, this activity can still work. The students will still prepare their recipes but they will take photographs during each step. They will put these photos into a PowerPoint presentation and will be able to share with the class what they did in order to complete the recipe. This way they are still getting the same output and input as they would with the video cameras. To hold all the students accountable for paying attention to each video they will have to copy down the ingredients and the steps to prepare each dish. After all the videos/presentations have been seen the students can assemble a recipe book so that they can forever have all the authentic recipes they have learned from their classmates.

I will assess this project based on several criteria. To score a 100 on the project the student will have to meet these requirements:

• Student speaks in the target language and has few to no grammatical errors in video.
• Student does not leave any part of recipe out and steps are clear and easy to follow.
• The video is the appropriate length of time, is easy to see, and is edited with smooth transitions.

I would like to focus more on the fact that the students are coming up with original output more so than the technical aspects of making the video. I think it is important that the video be clear and easy to understand and I will focus on comprehension of the speaker.