Final Exam Results and Continued work with ipods

The ease of using an ipod vs having the students record and send a movie was drastic.  For the Spanish I final exam, students answered 14 questions in Spanish and then voice recorded their answers on the ipods and I could download them onto my computer.  This saved valued class time as well as freed me from my computer to grade the voice recordings.  I simply downloaded them onto one of the 30 ipods as "songs" and listened to them in the evening at home.  It is also really neat because I save these files on my computer and I can look back and listen to the improvement from Spanish I to Spanish II (and next year to Spanish III!)

I've been working at creating a fun and meaningful "I'm finished, what do I do now," activity with Careers.  I stumbled upon an app that is a game using wikipedia.  You have to get from one term to another with the least amount of clicks possible.  We'll see, but I think this might be a good activity for students to learn random facts, work on finding key answers, improve study skills, all in place of that time in-between some finishing and some still working.

Next week were are also working on podcasts for Careers.  With the students who really shine in this activity, I'm thinking I can even download these podcasts and have next trimester's class watch them and gain ideas and learn more about various Careers.

New Uses

Last week we used the ipods to read some really informative articles in my careers class about young entrepreneurs.  The students then commented on our class blog about what they found inspiring/unique with the products produced or services provided.  It was interesting to see their point of view and allow them to read one-another's words.  I continue to find that some of my students are actually "more themselves" when hidden behind the keyboard of a computer or touch pad of an ipod.

I have also noticed that my Spanish I students have scored VASTLY higher than last years students on the numbers portion of our test.  I couldn't figure out why, well, DUH, it wasn't me, it was the help of Mindsnacks, an ipod application.  Many of my students have even added it to their personal ipods, which is really neat, and are working on learning numbers at home (without me assigning it or having to grade extra papers).

More to follow!  I am attending a conference this week and one of the workshops is using ipod touches in the Spanish classroom (pretty pumped!)