senoracmt

Evernote with students

After two good workshops in a week, I have some new ideas to help me get through the rest of the cold winter weeks! I’m going to share an idea that is born from a workshop on performance based assessment and one on free technology with students.

In Spanish 3 we are studying the Spanish Civil War and in Spanish 4 the Argentine Dirty War. It is hard to share ALL of the relevant cultural information with them in the short amount of time we have in class… so I channeled my inner Cool Cat Teacher and I flipped my classroom this holiday weekend.

We never take the time to study those who disappeared, died, or were exiled during the war and I think by not doing that, we are missing out on the personal connection with the families who lost loved ones…. This weekend I asked them to find one person (famous or common) and bring five facts about them to class on Monday. We’ll share the stories of hopefully many different people whose families lost them during the war.

After I had assigned this project, I worried that they might come back saying that they couldn’t find any information. Enter the workshop on free technology with students…. He showed us how we could use Evernote to share resources with them. He uses it to share ALL of his classroom documents. At this point, I am just using it to help them research! 🙂

First, I followed his (and coincidentally my Network Admin husband’s) advice and downloaded Google Chrome because of its Evernote clipping feature:
evernoteclipper

After I had chrome, I downloaded Evernote and the Google Chrome add-on. I also downloaded it to my iPhone so I could work from it too! I set up my account and made some notebooks based on what we’ve been doing recently in class:
mynotebooks

Then I started collecting resources and putting them into my Guerra notebook:
guerra stuff

After I had enough to get them started, I created a link to the notebook that I could share with them:
share notebook

I use the app Remind101 with all of my classes so it was easy for me to send out the link that I created. Now they have no excuse not to do their work!
sharelink

The best part about Remind101 is that I can send them another reminder on Monday so they have NO EXCUSE for forgetting their homework!! 🙂 I use that app a LOT! If you don’t have it, I’d recommend it!

The presenter yesterday also talked about Educreations for iPad. Have you heard of it? Oh my gosh, when I get an iPad I am going to use that A LOT!

Hope you find something useful in here!!

Published by senoracmt

I began teaching Spanish in Illinois in 1994. I have taught levels 1-4 in a small rural high school, 8th grade introductory Spanish, Biology 1, and 101 and 102 at the community college level. My Spanish classes are partnered with the community college to offer students 8 semester hours of dual credit on completion of Spanish 4. In 2011 I met Carol Gaab and Kristy Placido and have since co-authored the book "La hija del sastre" with Carol Gaab and authored the novels "La Calaca Alegre", "Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos." "Vector," "48 horas","Bananas", "Sostenible", and "Papálotl" through Fluency Matters. In 2006 I became National Board certified and I have been serving as a mentor both for candidates seeking certification in world languages other than English and a virtual mentor for candidates in all certificate areas. I completed my Masters degree in Spanish education in 2011 and did my research on the use of Understanding by Design to create meaningful cultural units for the language classroom. I am a frequent presenter on this topic, please consider me if you are interested in a workshop on backward design. In 2013 I was named the ICTFL Foreign Language teacher of the year and in 2014 I was selected as CSCTFL's teacher of the year. In November of 2014 I was lucky enough to be one of the five finalists for the ACTFL National Teacher of the Year in San Antonio, TX. What a "Cinderella" experience! You can reach me via email at carrie at somewheretoshare dot com.

One comment

  1. I love Educreations and use it a lot during storytelling! I usually have one student draw a story whille telling a story, and sometimes I will have them draw from a reading too! It works great and I can post them online with my own voice telling the story.

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