Module 5

This module bears some content with which I am, thankfully, familiar. You Tube is one of my fave passtimes. I'm always emailing links, often music, to friends and colleagues. Hope I can learn to do more with it. Makes me wonder what entertaining and educational things my heffalumps could do in the Italian class with the aid of You Tube and progs such as garage band. There is so much scope in mediums such as podcasts, vodcasts, digital storytelling, etc.

I have used Audacity and Garage Band with my language students, particularly for testing purposes, and really love them, as do the students.

I have downloaded Italian music, photographs and video files on my ipod and encourage my students to do the same in order to facilitate their absorption of the Italian language.

At the end of my last unit with Year 10 English, my students were required to create their own Digital Story based on the plot of Macbeth. That is, they were asked to write their story (pers. laptops) based loosely on Shakespeare's play, then they were to cut it down to a mere 100 words, and then add their pick of images and sound/music to compliment their story. I have yet to see the fruits of their labour as it was last days of term but I am hopeful of some interesting compositions (is this word back in vogue yet?)

This module has reminded me of what I have already gathered, namely that integrating technology into the curriculum is important because we need to remain relevant to our students. In this day and age when our students have access to information, expertise and data through the most amazing channels, we have no option but to pick up on all this technology and use it to challenge students, enabling them to synthesize, analyse and evaluate, and eventually, create. Bloom's Taxonomy will always remain fundamental to our teaching practices.