My technology class: New tools, new activities

This fall semester I will be teaching my technology class for future Spanish teachers. This is one of my favorite classes because I have the chance to try new tools while teaching the class. I will ask my students to try a new tool from my curation site on technology and language learning, develop an activity, try it with their students and reflect on the effectiveness of the tool and the activity. I have decided to do the homework myself.

I have decided to start trying Storify. I got the idea from a Spanish teacher Laura Sexton -@Sraspanglish- who developed a wonderful activity for "palabras esdrújulas". I will be teaching an advanced Spanish composition course and we will cover the rules to put the accent marks in Spanish. I decided to try to develop a mini-lesson on "palabras agudas". Here is my mini-lesson using Storify.


Using the tool was quite easy and very intuitive. You can use information from different sources: Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, etc. If you want to use tweets, instagram or facebook, you have to link your Storify account to your accounts in these sites. In my story, I used tweets and youtube videos. Once you finish your story, you can share it via twitter, facebook, etc. I shared it via twitter. I also discovered that tweeter automatically generated tweets notifying the users of the tweets I used in my story that they have been mentioned in my story.

This is a tutorial that guides you through the procedure to create a story:


I still have to use my story with my students and see how they like it. I will report on that when the semester begins.