I can't believe another week has flown by. Today was the last day of softball tryouts. I coached track and field for the past two years so it has been quite interesting changing sports. About 75% of the girls that came out for the team had never played softball before our tryouts started. Despite this, things have gone very well and the girls are catching on quick. I am looking forward to a solid season. I have also been putting the final touches on my handouts for a two day workshop I am doing at the end of February for other world language teachers. Six other teachers from my district and I developed a two day workshop that covers student motivation, realistic expectations, performance based assessments, and rubrics all related to world language. We have presented the workshop twice and now the district has asked us to do it again for more teachers. I am hoping in the future to incorporate some of the things I have learned in our MEIT program into the workshop.
This week I wanted to really challenge myself to use different search engines. It was extremely hard for me at first because Google is such a habit for me. I enjoyed using different search engines and I was able to find the information I wanted much quicker using the different types of searches we learned in class. I definitely plan on teaching my students how to use a wider variety of search engines and to search more accurately for the information they want. That's one of the things I just love about our program. Almost everything that we learn in class I can apply to my classes and students.
I especially have appreciated learning about different word processing programs. As I've said before, many of my students either don't have a computer at home or have a very old one. A lot of times they do not have Microsoft Office either. I look forward to sharing the different word processing programs that I have tried out with my students. I also think that the online word processing programs would work very well for group work.
Friday, February 13, 2009
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I'm jealous that you've already started softball tryouts and yet I'm not. I too coach softball and we here in Wisconsin don't get to start until March 16th. Relish this time when you have so many girls who haven't played before because with a lack of history also comes lower expectations. There are times when I wonder if I would give up the success that we've had at UG to be able to go back and just enjoy teaching the game versus having to meet expectations. We one State 2 years ago and lost in Sectional finals last year to the State Champion. We have so much more talent coming in this year that anything less than a State run will be viewed as a failure. Those of us that know the game, know how easy it is to lose and just how hard it is to make it to State even if you have the best team. On another note, I think it is very commendable that you go out of your way to search for ways to get your students involved even when they don't have immediate access to certain technologies. Keep up the good work and good luck on the season.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how when we break out of a habit (search engines) in this instance - how much we discover we did not know.
ReplyDeleteGood luck in softball, searches and word processing - kinda fun to explore and reconsider.