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Home > Features > Easy Technology Tips to Improve AP Language Teaching
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Easy Technology Tips to Improve AP Language Teaching
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by Linda Zins-Adams
Highlands High School
Fort Thomas, Kentucky
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Access to technology allows teachers to replace many materials that were once standards in a foreign language classroom. Here are some suggestions on teaching using technology, drawn from my experience as an AP German instructor.
Recording Speech Samples via Computer
Computers with any version of Microsoft Windows, a microphone, and speakers lend themselves nicely to recordings that can be saved on one computer. Preparing students for the speaking portion of the AP language exams can now occur more quickly during class time, and more frequently outside the class.
This year my students are responsible each week for recording five "Blitzfragen," which came from the AATG listserv. They have a choice of recording in the classroom after school or at home, but since all of my students have computers at home, they prefer to record there. Most record via the Voice Recorder on Windows, then save the recordings on floppy disks. Five 20-second speech samples fit on two to three floppy disks or on a CD-R or CD-RW. Students can also simply email the samples to my home email address. (Make sure your antivirus or firewall software allows attachments.) I provide students the incentive to send their samples via email by giving them until Sunday night to do so, while diskettes, CDs, and tapes are collected on Fridays.
If students do not have Voice Recording as an option on their computer, they can download PureVoice (from QualComm) or similar software to record, save, and send their speech samples as an attachment through email. In the event that a student uses such software, you need to have the same software on your workstation to open the files. And if these options are not possible, students can create speech samples with a digital recorder connected to a computer via a USB port; it also creates WAV files that can be saved on a computer. If a student prefers the old-fashioned way of recording on audiotapes, I accept them too.
Using Microsoft Word to Correct Student Essays
Microsoft Word is the default word processing program on the computer systems of most schools. Teachers can take advantage of Word's features to make a clean, informative, and simple correction of student essays, while allowing students to retain their "ownership" of a piece. Abstract correction keys, red pens, and illegible student handwriting can become a thing of the past once you start embracing typed pieces in Word.
When a student submits a "published" piece after finishing the initial writing stages, a teacher can act as a good editor by highlighting mistakes, errors, or awkward sentences. But beyond the act of highlighting, a teacher can add embedded comments or even hyperlinks to help a student achieve a publishable final piece. More importantly, this act of correcting preserves the student's ownership of the writing sample.
In order to add comments that are simply marked by highlights or comment boxes, go to the "Insert" tab, scroll down to "Comment," then click on "New Comment." In the older Office software, a student would see the highlighted parts with the teacher's initials and the number of the comment, and the comments could be printed out in order on separate pages for a student to view. If students view the documents on a PC, the highlights will remain, yet they can view the comments individually by moving the mouse cursor over the highlighted part. Within the comment, students can click on hyperlinks to Web sites or sound clips left by the teacher. With Office XP, the comments appear in boxes connected to the corrected sentence or word.
Quia Web and Online Activities
Quia Web allows less computer-savvy instructors to create online activities for their students. Teachers can easily create the following activities in the "Instructor Zone": online flash cards, memory games, word searches, challenge boards, columns, cloze texts, hangman, jumbled and ordered lists, patterns, picture perfect, pop-ups, "rags to riches" exercises, and scavenger hunts. The site allows quizzes to be administered and recorded. Finally, teachers can improve communication with their students by creating surveys, class pages, and downloadable files.
Once a teacher uses Quia Web to create a class, students can access those activities and other things with the student zone. Lastly, once you become a paid subscriber, you can have access to other subscribers. This is a nice feature, as it allows you to see if an activity that you would like to create has already been created. If this is the case, you can simply add a link to the activity on a class page, instead of reinventing the proverbial wheel.
Quia Web has been available to teachers for a number of years. When it began, it was free to instructors, but in the last couple of years Quia Web has gone to a yearly subscription fee (currently $49 per year). However, if you want to try out the activities to see what Quia Web has to offer, there is a free 30-day trial subscription.
Linda Zins-Adams is a German teacher at Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. She has worked as a presenter and reader for the College Board and does GAPP, German Club, STLP, and is the Webmaster for her school's Web site. She is a reviewer of German teaching resources for the Teachers' Resources area on AP Central.
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