For those that are registered for the NOVASTARTALK 2013 Summer Institute, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you would like to do during the workshop. In a perfect world, where will you be with technology by the end of the session?
HI, NOVASTARTALKERS!
I am Laura Franklin, your host for NOVASTARTALK, a workshop for teachers who are interested in technology-enhanced, project-based language learning. Tell me what you want to get out of the time you spend with us this summer. If you are coming back after a previous visit, tell the others why! If you want to arrange a meeting of your Hindi, Arabic, Chinese or Farsi language partners, do it here.
Put your message in the comment box, click post comment and come back here for answers and comments from others.
Hello NovaStartalkers,
I am Nelly Taha, an Arabic teacher in Los Angeles. I am so excited about attending this program for first time.
Nowadays, technology such as computers, iPhones, iPods, and iPads is utilized by most people around the world. These small devices make the entire world smaller and interconnected in seconds. As a result, teachers cannot be isolated from the real world. Technology should be incorporated in their methodologies, approaches, and techniques.
Taking this computer class is very essential for me as a teacher. This computer class is a great way to expand my knowledge and benefit my students. I have a special interest in creating and interactive websites and iMovie.
My name is Ein Elhayah Fahmy. I am a senior teacher in Granada School in California and Arab American Culture Center. I love teaching Arabic. My goal is to help students learning Arabic in an easy and interesting way. Integrating technology is very important to engage students to the learned topic. So in the first day of the workshop, I create my own wall about the unit that I developed it for my school curriculum. I tried to differentiate my instruction to meet all students’ needs, skills, abilities, and learning styles.
I am looking forward to seeing you.
We look forward to working with all of you too!
For example, how can you/we make our classes more student-centered with the students doing more of the communicating while we are the “guides on the side”?
Best,
Laura Franklin
Hi, everyone,
I’m from University of San Francisco. I am so excited to seeing you and working with you. Technology keeps changing everyday and I hope I can catch it up.
I really appreciate this great chance to learn some technology to enhance my course. I can not tell specifically at this point what I want to get out of this workshop (because I don’t know what I don’t know. Hope this makes sense..) However, I feel that teachers still play a central role in this technology age but can save a lot of time and energy and make so much more out of our class meeting time if we have a good command of the kind of technology that is a good fit with whatever learning objectives/activities we have in mind.
In general, I hope I can learn something that will enable me to make most effective use of my class time. ( I am almost always short.) I think I am already beginning to learn something like this with this POLLEVERYwhere I just looked at on this site. For example, while I do some one-on-one question and answer individually, I can ask the rest of the class to post comments or feedbacks for their classmates to keep them focused etc. I look forward to meeting and learning from you all.
A quick self-intro. I taught English in Taiwan for about 10 years before I moved here to Illinois. I have been teaching Chinese at Lewis University for about 6 years now. Best, Lifeng
Sounds like you are talking about the potential to ” flip” some of your lessons, Lifeng, to gain more communication time in the classroom. Prof Silvina Orsatti spoke to this technique during our NOVASTARTALK webinar series earlier this month. We can make that presentation available in NOVASTARTALK for consideration by more learners. The STARTALK teachers who attended that program were very favorable to this idea.
One thing NOVASTARTALKERS should be able to experience while here is an exhibit on Endangered Languages at the Smithsonian Institute on the National Mall. I am willing to go there with participants who are interested after the daytime program. We can take the metro, 2 blocks from NOVASTARTALK.
http://www.festival.si.edu/2013/One_World_Many_Voices/map.aspx
I think this is a great opportunity. It will be awesome if we can go to the exhibit especially With your guidance!
Hi all! I am Peiling, from Taiwan originally. I have been an ESL teacher since 99′ and a Chinese teacher since 07′ in Minnesota. I started teaching online Chinese class this year via Moodle which is interesting. However, it is still limited to power point slides/ Youtube videos. Since the age of my Chinese students range from 6-12, I would like to explore/learn to integrate programs that will motive student learning and encourage productivity. I am a bit overwhelmed by all the gadgets/programs out there so hopefully at the end of the workshop, I can incorporate ‘appropriate’ ones more efficiently to promote students’ language skills.
Hi Dr. Franklin and everyone,
My name is Gita Sadeh and I have been teaching the Farsi language for more than 30 years in Iran and the United States. I am a returning student, I learned a lot last year and I hope to learn more this year too. I am look forward to see you all.
Love,
Gita
Hello everyone,
I am Parivash K. Eidizadeh. I have been teaching Farsi in Rockville Maryland for 13 years. I am a new student and am very excited to attend this program. I am hoping this program will be informative about the most useful technological tools for teaching language skills in Farsi classes. I want to gain new experiences and design my projects based on the new knowledge and information.
Hello Dr Franklin and all the NOVASTARTALKERS!
I am Ridhima Puri and I teach Hindi and English. I am a returning student and had an amazing learning experience last year. I learnt so many new technologies which proved very useful and hence I am coming this year too, to brush up my skills further and learn more from all the experienced and brilliant teachers here.
Eagerly looking forward to see all of you! 🙂
Ridhima
Hello Dr Laura Franklin and everybody else,
I am Kanika Puri and I teach Hindi. I have heard a lot of praise for this program which motivated me to apply for it this time. I am excited and really looking forward to all the cool technology that we will be learning here and then taking it back for our students.
Excited and awaiting eagerly to be a part of it to not only learn from all the experienced teachers here but also from the experiences of all of you !
Best,
Kanika
Hello Dr Franklin and all the Novastartalkers!
I am Ridhima and I teach Hindi and English. I am a returning student and had benefited greatly from all the technology that was taught to us last summer. It has been a motivation for me and has inspired me to come back again to further brush up my skills and take it all back to our language teaching classrooms. I am eagerly looking forward to our classes and learn as much as we can from the experienced and super amazing team of faculty that we have here.
Eagerly looking forward to it,
Ridhima
My name is Madhu and I teach Hindi at several area schools and this is my third year and I have learned a lot and still want to enhance my technology skills. I am using few program’s already in my coursework.
My name is Mohamed Abdel Rahman. I teach Arabic and Literature at Fordham University In New York City.
Marhaban مرحبًا
My name is Naima Mustapha, I am from Maryland, I teach Arabic language for about 11 years now I am also the Arabic department head in Al-Huda school in College Park MD.
I am looking forward to learn more about implementing technology in my classroom.
I teach beginning and intermediate Chinese in the University of Oklahoma. I hope to find ways to employ technology in my students’ language learning experience to enhance their authentic Chinese experience, which they do not have access to daily.
My padlet link: http://padlet.com/wall/2okeav1457.
Hello every one,
My name is Nady Abdal-Ghaffar. I teach Arabic at Colgate University. This is the first time for me to attend a NOVASTARTALK workshop. I am really looking forward to learning a lot from this workshop.
I am a Chinese teacher. I have taught Chinese for Middle/High school students for about 10 years. Right now I am teaching at Quantico Middle/high School. I live in Northern Virginia.
I am so happy to know everyone here.
Today I’ve learn about “padlet” never heard of it before, I am really happy to learn about it, it is a website where you can create a wall add photos, texts, video to this wall, edit and share it with others. You can write in this website in Arabic which is great, I can’t wait to learn more about it and use it with my students.
I learned a lot this morning and here they are.
I like to be in this class to learn more
I teach Arabic in ISA school
I can use what i learn today in my class to help them learn and more intresting
This activity is to have the students talking about their weekend using the past tense.
Hi, This is Emma Lin. I am a Chinese language teacher. I am so excited about learning the new applications and I am looking forward to using them with my students.
Padlet is a powerful tool for teachers to communicate with students. I just learned it this morning. I will try to use it as much as possible.
Hi, I am Yan Xie, teaching Chinese at Liberty University of Lynchburg, VA. This is my strong desire to develop my skills of using technology to make teaching and learning more effective. I look forward to learning from the program faculty and all participants. Technology, if used appropriately, can change many things in foreign language education. I think I want to learn and also want to think carefully how each technology can be used in my courses.
See you tomorrow!
Hello everyone!
I am Muna, I teach Arabic in Austin, TX and I am very excited to meet everyone tomorrow.
I love technology and have noticed that my students enjoy their language learning experience when technology is involved.
Hi, my name is Julia Zhu. I teach Chinese at a public high school in Georgia. I love using technology in my classroom when I teach with the standards. I have found my students are more engaged, and teaching and learning are more fun. During this week, with the help of the nova startalk professors and instructors, I hope to design more student-centered and task based activities that I can use in my teaching.
Hello, everybody!
I am Frank Li. I teach Chinese at North Hall Middle School and North Hall High School in Georgia. This is the second time for me to attend Nova Startalk Program. I am very excited about this opportunity. Nova Startalk served as an eyeopener to me about the new technologies available for effective language instruction. I am looking forward to the new things that I’ll in this 2nd-week session.
Hi everyone,
I teach Russian as a Foreign Language at Cloudberry Language School in Chicago. I work with both adults and children.
I’m happy to join the team of great motivated teachers here! I have already learned a lot. Thank you!
Ksenia