Author: Israel Osorio

Well hello there! Welcome to this wonderful collection of projects, activities, thoughts, and experiences that can be found in the multitude of posts that can be found here! I will be presenting the best activities that I have learned or experienced this past semester, as they are some of the ones I find the most useful and impactful in classes.

What is wonderful about all of these posts as well is the fact that there are multitudes of people that also participated in making several projects and activities, so there are several examples of everything we have learned.

Although there were a lot of pieces of technology that can be used in classroom’s, I don’t find them all to be universal or as useful in classrooms, unless in specific cases. But, feel free to prove me wrong! You have access to all of the resources down below, so if it is not helpful for me but it is for you, then thats wonderful!

I will provide a list for all of the lessons and projects that I find most useful to me. Feel free to go through all of them, and welcome to teaching with technology!

1st. Google Forms

Google Forms has been a quite useful app and program to learn that can be utilized in classrooms. There are several different aspects of Forms that I was not aware of at the beginning such as making paths and self graded quizes. Google forms would be quite useful more as participation grades for high schoolers to test what they know so far, and then testing what they have learned afterwards. 

The Spanish forms you never knew you needed.

2nd. Google Sites

Google Sites is a program that I was not aware of before. It is quite useful especially when wanting to introduce a new topic that may be taught in classes. Students can return to the site for any information, as it works as a normal website that you as the Educator can use!

Climate Change and Spanish: Interdisciplinary Learning

3rd. Book Creator

Book Creator is quite a useful tool as it involves story telling into your teaching. Story telling is important for students to create meaning and connect works, phrases, or concepts with images and characters. It is customizable, so it really is you being able to just write a book for class that you would like. 

The Cultures of Latin America

4th. Sway

Sway was a quite beautiful app to work with. It can definitely work for personal story telling and poems. You can customize it quite a bit, and connect it more personally with yourself. 

Where I am from…

Although these are not all of the projects that I had a chance to work on throughout this whole semester, these four are the one’s I have enjoyed learning the most about. There are so many possibilities for students to be able to learn from these, and there are so many functions that educators can use. They are incredibly versatile apps, and at least knowing how to use them would improve one’s teaching.

An honorable mention of technology that I also recently learned about:

Ziplet

Image Credits

• Image by Marijana from Pixabay
• Image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay
• Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
• Image by annca from Pixabay

By Lydia Wanner and Israel Osorio

This is the first lesson in a unit on greetings and common conversational phrases for a junior high Spanish I class. Students will read the following text, which was made on Book Creator, as an introduction to the target phrases for this lesson. After reading as a class, students will be divided into groups and assigned a number of phrases to translate using the pictures from the book as clues. On a Google Slides presentation (see the link below), students will create a picture dictionary for their phrases. Students will put their translations of the Spanish as well as images for each translation on their slides. Students will present their slides to the class and explain why they chose those translations. At the end of class, the actual translations will be revealed using the same text (see the second Book Creator link).

The purpose of using Book Creator for the anchor text was the audio feature. This book has recordings of the correct pronunciations for each phrase. This way, students can hear what the Spanish sounds like. In addition to Book Creator, we decided to use Google Slides to foster collaboration. With each lesson in this unit, more slides can be added to grow the class picture dictionary! Throughout the unit, students will be working together to make a great classroom resource.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HXAiY4apqh2K77TlfuE0A1AZj2AqSJLDG9Ea_wDTA28/edit?usp=sharing

Feature Image by jairojehuel from Pixabay

April 12, 2023

Dear former me,

It seems like only yesterday, I was at UP. It was the spring term, 2023.

So much has happened since then, and it has only been 10 years since that date. After finishing the three plus one program at UP, I graduated with a bachelors in Secondary Education and Spanish, a minor in Philosophy, and got a masters in Education with an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) endorsement. I then ended up working in the David Douglas School District for four years focusing on teaching spanish to complete the TEACH grant program that I am a part of. After finishing the four years, me and my wife decided to leave the United States and have moved to Oslo, Norway, where we have been located the past 4 years. I decided to get a master’s degree in Spanish language and literature, and at this stage, i have been interested in going to get a doctorate in Education. I have not decided on what field to focus on yet, but I do know I have enjoyed teaching high school all of these years. I definitely gravitate more towards teaching older students, and I have plans to eventually be able to teach in a University. I also ended up learning two more languages, Norwegian and Japanese (I know, a fun combination), and it has been a blast to be able to talk with multiple people from various other cultures.

Well, won’t spoil anymore. See you.

Credits

Image by ha11ok from Pixabay

This Google Sites is for students to begin looking at and understanding interdisciplinary learning and studies. Most studies are divided into their own departments and schools, and the Google Sites is meant as a way to look at how Spanish and Climate change may be interwined. This lesson is meant as an introduction that students will go over in Spanish and answer a small assessment at the end of looking at this information. This will then lead them into a Spanish project of interwining Spanish into other disciplines that students will then present about to the whole class.

Click on Image below to be sent to Google Site.

Image Credit:

Image by Top 10 website

Google Forms is definitely one of those applications that I would use more often in my classroom due to the uses that it has. I practiced making a simple Spanish test and then a fun adventure of taking languages in high school, but I would really use google forms for students to practice there spanish. Altough they will be graded, it will be low points which isn’t meant to truly affect the grade that much, it will be used more as participation grades. It would have images to connect with phrases or words that we learned, and translating sentences in english. It is mainly more of a constant form which would be given every week or two weeks as another reinforcer to their spanish learning.

Credits:

Image by tjevans from Pixabay

I decided to create a book that goes over different countries and cultures in Latin America. The book is meant for students that are learning Spanish language and culture, and it is important to understand that not all cultures are the same. It is also important to understand how all of the cultures have an influence on each other, and when learning Spanish, to know the differences. It is an introductory book to these countries, and it isnt meant to learn Spanish, but learn about the communities that speak Spanish or similar languages.

Using the Book Creator was a good experience, but there were definitely a few things I didnt know how to do. Some of the shapes I would have liked to be able to change the color, but I could not find out how to do it, and some of the lettering I would have liked to change size. Either way, it worked out well and it was very direct and straight to the point with several options to choose from.

Credit:

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This is the original story that I wrote for Sway. I did also remove some of the story from Sway so it would be more concise, and the one’s I took out also would not fit well in it.

I am from the counters of my mother’s kitchen 
From water and flour pressed together 
I am from old wooden walls with the weight of age starting to show 
(Rugged, mature, 
The creaks alerting its surroundings) 
I am from the pines in the horizon 
From the soil in the ground 
Dark and rich, ready to nurture what is sowed next 
I am from the uncontrollable laughter at the dinner table 
and from the nonstop victories of chess  
The never-ending relentlessness from my siblings to try and beat me 
From Fernando Israel Osorio where my name comes from 
And Laurel Debra Osorio where my heart is from 
I’m from their constant attempts to be better than their parents ever were 
And from multiple failed and successful attempts at doing so 
From all the “I love you’s” to all the “Be Better” 
I am from freedoms of choice in belief and in action 
Attempts of church on Sunday’s 
Mixture of paths that form along away. 
I am from Silverton with ancestry from all over 
Roasted coffee and sweat bread 
From me and my dad’s constant struggle with construction of a second story 
To my mom’s struggle of returning to start a new chapter 
In the closet there is a brown box with a book full of recipes 
From times long ago, of other counters that brought families together 
I am from these recipes, 
The forming of dough kneaded constantly 
The heart of the family being measured finally 

I enjoyed using Microsoft Sway mainly because I am a lot more familiar with microsoft than with Adobe. It was straight to the point, and trying new things out helped structure it to make a conscise story. It was also nice that I could put some of my personal photos, while also being able to search for some on Sway and putting those instead.

Credit:

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Introduction

This lesson is planned for students in a high school Spanish class. The focus of this lesson is to practice vocabulary in Spanish, and have conversations about their homeland. By this point, students would have practiced sentences structures to describe where they live and have conversations with other students to answer to those sentences and questions. This activity is meant for students to get more practice in speaking Spanish with other students, while also allowing them a chance to get to know more about their homeland.

Instructions

Students will create a map of their hometown, homeland, or someone special for them, and mark tourist sights, meaningful/historical places to visit, good restaurants even if they would like to. After marking places students think people should visit, they will form groups and work as “tour guides” to their groups, as they take them around their place speaking and practicing vocabulary in Spanish. Students will also look up information about their sights, so if questions come up, they are ready to respond to them in Spanish, as most tour guides can.

Example

I am from Portland, so I marked a few places on a map for people to visit. These are more tourist locations that I think people should visit at least once. After making the map, I will then form up in a group and then guide them through Portland, telling them some of the history behind some of the locations, and why I chose them.

Credits:

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Image by Silviu on the street from Pixabay

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the capability of having both a positive and a negative influence on today’s society, specifically on the effort and genuiness of our work. I can see both pros and cons for AI, and I can see how it could be utilized in the classroom (for fun classroom activities and so on), but it is my belief that we should not allow it to become the standard of teaching. AI should be used as a tool to bring out the best in teaching, instead of it being a replacer for teaching. Utilizing ChatGPT, I inserted the prompt: “Spanish test for students in high school”. Although this is a vague concept, and with more wording could focus more on specific topis being taught at the time, I present the result of this prompt.

Instrucciones: Lea cada pregunta cuidadosamente y seleccione la respuesta correcta.

1. ¿Cómo se dice “good morning” en español? a. Buenas noches b. Buen día c. Buenas tardes
2. ¿Cuál es el plural de “libro”? a. Libros b. Libroes c. Libroos
3. ¿Cómo se dice “I am from” en español? a. Yo soy de b. Yo estoy de c. Yo vengo de
4. Complete la siguiente frase en español: “Me gusta el __________” a. perro b. gato c. agua
5. ¿Cuál es el verbo “to be” en español? a. Ser b. Estar c. Hacer
6. ¿Cómo se dice “How old are you?” en español? a. ¿Cuántos años tienes? b. ¿Cuántas edades tienes? c. ¿Cuánta edad tienes?
7. ¿Cuál es la traducción correcta de “I have a dog” en español? a. Tengo un perro b. Tengo un gato c. Tengo un agua
8. Complete la siguiente frase en español: “El niño juega con la __________” a. pelota b. gato c. libro
9. ¿Cómo se dice “What is your name?” en español? a. ¿Cuál es tu nombre? b. ¿Cómo se llama usted? c. ¿Cuál es su nombre?
10. ¿Cuál es el verbo “to eat” en español? a. Comer b. Beber c. Vivir

Respuestas:

1. b. Buen día
2. a. Libros
3. a. Yo soy de
4. a. perro
5. a. Ser
6. a. ¿Cuántos años tienes?
7. a. Tengo un perro
8. a. pelota
9. a. ¿Cuál es tu nombre?
10. a. Comer

-ChatGPT

Some Negatives of AI in Education

The result from ChatGPT seems pretty standard, and there does not seem to be anything wrong with utilizing AI as a tool to assist educators. The issue that may come from this is people that are not equip with the correct tools or knowledge to be able to teach students, and basing the standards of education based on AI. Although this is not a usual test that would be used in a high school setting, nor is it helpful for students to really learn, an issue that arises from this is the lack of genuinity from educators. It is my belief (as everything being written right now is merely a belief, and not a statement of action that educators should follow) that educators should connect with students, not merely superficially, but knowing them as a part of a community. Knowing students instead of merely knowing about them. Artificial intelligence should never take the role of the educator, and it should not be viewed as a “free getaway” from work, and coming up with activities and projects that may be meaningful to students.

Some Positives of AI in Education

Although I am quite skeptical of AI in classrooms, it would be foolish to not see the value that it may have in classrooms, and how valuable of a tool it can be to educators. Since AI should not be the replacement for the educator, it can still function as a perfect tool to connect with families and students alike.

How Is AI Used In Education — Real World Examples Of Today And A Peek Into The Future

Above is a good website that focuses on some of the examples of how AI can impact classrooms. If you have families and communities from diverse backgrounds, AI could be helpful to be able to connect with them and keep them in the loop of what is occurring at schools. It can also create opportunities for families and communities get more involved in a school setting. It creates a more accesible and inclusive setting for students and families to connect with education, and it allows more opportunities for the educator to connect more deeply with their students.

Overall Opinion

I think that Artificial Intelligence can be used as a helpful tool for people in the education system, but it must be controlled as to not overtake the role of teaching. Education has an incredibly personal level of interaction with people, and if we rely to heavily on technology to educate and connect with people, then what is the true use of an educator. We must also focus on making it culturally responsive and truly make it equitable for students. What occurs for students that do not have access to technology at home (that yes, even though it seems like a far concept in todays world, it is still very much present in schools), what about reaching students at the levels of education that they are at as well? How can we create an activity or assignment, or use AI, when it can become very bias towards one perspective, and does not allow for multiple perspectives or voices to be heard in our classrooms. These are reasons why I believe it should be a tool, and people should be taught how to use it adequately, so it does not become a cheat for educators to make their job “easier”, when it reality it becomes “lazier”.

Credit:

Image by 0fjd125gk87 from Pixabay

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay