2011 CIBER Business Languages Conference, Teaching with Technology Workshop

by Ann Abbott


Orlando Kelm's workshops are legendary. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but I'm serious. And it's rightfully deserved.  I'm pretty savvy about technology, yet I learned about platforms I didn't know about, and Orlando gave very creative and inspiring examples about how to use these tools in the teaching of business languages.

You can see the information from his presentation in this particular post. Be sure to view the entire blog as well to learn more. It's a wonderful example of how to effectively use a blog as your course website, how to teach business cultures, and it contains very useful links and posts.

Specifically, I learned about polleverywhere.com and posterous.com. We did some very fun activities with polleverywhere during the session. Students can text or tweet their responses as well as via the website. It was fun to see the graphs change in real time as people sent in their responses. This could be used in class to give a quiz, to solicit opinions, to probe students' background knowledge and more. You can use the free version if no more than 30 people respond to the poll, and Orlando sometimes has students create the poll themselves, not just answer ones that he has written.  Orlando uses posterous.com to allow his students to upload their videos to his YouTube channel.

Two Google projects were mentioned--Google Goggles and the Google Art Project. I will have to look into them more on my own.

This is a very quick summary, in part because nothing I can write can do justice to Orlando's presentation style, his wonderful examples and the back and forth with the audience members. I encourage everyone to explores his blogs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vocabulary for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Image
I'm very happy that so many students responded to our community partner's need for help. Our students' language skills will help Central High School's Latino parents better communicate with the teachers during the parent-teacher conferences next week. Central's secretary will contact the students directly to schedule times with them. Here is some vocabulary help for students. Materias. School subjects are "materias" NOT "sujetos." You should remember subjects from your intro Spanish courses, but here are some reminders: historia, matemáticas, inglés, física, química, biología, educación física, etc. General vocabulary. Notas = grades; aprobar = to pass; suspender = to fail; conducta, comportamiento = behavior. Topics. Ms. Citraro offers the following advice: "The topics and vocabulary that would come up are about the subjects at school. For example: no ha entregado las tareas tiene que tomar el examen otra vez habla mucho en clase falta muc
Read more

How to Correctly File Hispanic Names

Image
I know that community-based learning students don't like it when they are asked to file during their time in the community. However, their learning goals are to improve their Spanish and knowledge of Latino cultures. Filing information on clients with Hispanic names helps them with both. And imagine the impact of mis-filing for the organizations where our students work and and their clients. That's why I was unhappy to learn that many SPAN 232 students did not do well on their exam section asking them to put some Hispanic names in alphabetical order. I can imagine that some students feel that putting names into alphabetical order isn't important. It is! It is especially important in the organizations where they work because they are dealing with clients who may not have "accommodated" to the American system of using only one last name. And it is especially important for clients whose papers are so important for their legal status, medical information and oth
Read more

Interview with Jessica Horn of ACCIÓN Chicago

Image
By Carolyn Kloecker , Span 232 student This past week I completed an assignment for my Business Communications class (SPCM 211) which was to interview someone in a field that I am interested in working for in the future. I asked her many questions about the organization, and lots of information can be found on their website www.accionchicago.org . This organization is a Community Partner with Spanish & Illinois, and has an extensive connection with the Spanish-speaking community in the Chicagoland area. Here are a few of the questions and answers from Jessica: Is ACCIÓN a fairly new organization? How did it begin? ACCIÓN Chicago started in 1994, but the parent organization, ACCIÓN was started in 1961. It is the largest micro-lending organization, and it began in Venezuela, and took root in the U.S. in 1991. How do loan officers communicate with clients? Mostly by phone, as people call in to the office to get a loan for their small business. The website is also a main form o
Read more