At this point (about midway through the course), I am pleased at how smoothly the course is going for me. Not that I do not have challenges - I am still stymied by my technological deficiencies at home - but in general, I am "getting" the new concepts, and I see remarkable application possibilities in my content area of world languages.
To recap, to date we have learned about Inspiration software, manipulation of digital imagery, copyright issues, blogging, web design, and digital storytelling. Of these, I find web design to be the most challenging by far (and I think I am not alone!). I think this is because, in web design, you have to use both the right and left sides of your brain at the same time to satisfy the technical and aesthetic requirements - it becomes overwhelming.
I can see excellent opportunities to use most of the new technologies we have learned to add value to the foreign language classroom. Blogging has lots of possibilities. A class blog could be used to gather thoughts on and clarify challenging aspects of the curriculum, and individual blogs could be used as weekly journals to reflect on progress or practice writing skills. My favorite idea is to use a class blog to create a continuing story in French. The story could be started by the teacher, and each student could be required to go on the blog at assigned intervals (maybe once a month) and add a paragraph to the story. Photo Story 3 could be used as an evaluation tool - maybe a final project. Students would have an opportunity to demonstrate pronunciation skills as well as writing skills.
I am very much looking forward to learning about podcasting. I do not really know much about it, but I am hoping, again, to see possible applications to world language instruction, since verbal comprehension is such an important part of learning a foreign language.
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