week 3 R/D4 -- photo sharing

(R/D4):
3) How might you incorporate photo sharing into a educational activity or unit? What might be some concerns you would have about allowing students play with these services? What might be a great benefit of such services?

I could use photo sharing for a number of units: family, my likes/dislikes, places that speak French (geography, tourist, citizens), foods, types of stores/buildings, clothes, furniture, modes of transportation, sharing with an e-pal, etc. Students could create a PowerPoint presentation, a book, a dictionary, a display. I think it would be a great tool for a group project. The numerous pictures available could be overwhelming for an individual project, depending on the time frame. Again, the filtering/policing thing is an issue for me. Authentic photos are so much better than the contrived ones in a text… no matter how good/up-to-date the text. A good picture is worth a thousand words.

4) In reading Chapter 2, what similarities and what differences did you identify between the process the authors describe and the processes you have used to develop educational lesson plans? If you have not developed educational lesson plans, were there aspects of the process described in this chapter that you found particularly surprising, useful or unnecessary?

Every week my school has us complete a standardized lesson plan form. It has us include: benchmarks (analysis), materials to be used (design & development), students’ prior knowledge (analysis), new vocabulary, objectives (analysis & design), direct instruction procedures (implementation), monitoring/adjustments to lessons (evaluation), assessment & evaluation (evaluation), extensions of the lessons, and levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy covered. Every other week we are required to do, and turn in to our administrators, curriculum reflections (summative evaluation)— what worked well, what didn’t, what we think we should do differently next time. I am the only French teacher in my building. The only teamwork I get is when I ask the Spanish teacher what she did/used when she taught ‘X’. Hopefully the material is easy to change (vocabulary) so that I can use it.