Technology Tricks Swap Shop Held on March 23

On March 23, the PACE Professional Development (PD) Peer Team held its latest Swap Shop event. Swap Shops are short, informal opportunities for language instructors from all departments to share activities and learn from one another. The most recent event, a "carousel"-style forum, included instructors from Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Five instructors from four language programs shared their "tips and tricks" related to a particular language learning technology:

• Rick Treece, French instructor, introduced his new project on micro-financing in French, which used the online microlending site Babyloan. In small groups, students select a project in Babyloan for actual funding (€50) by a donor. The group then gives a class presentation explaining the rationale behind the project they selected, the economic/commercial setting and issues of that region, and other factors related to the project.


• Liz Lake, Spanish instructor, fielded questions about Moodle, including questions about the gradebook, forums, inserting YouTube videos in assignments, and using Kaltura video. Liz also demonstrated how to take a screenshot of an activity from eText and animate it with Powerpoint.


• Fumiko Matsumoto, Japanese instructor, presented lecture videos that she created (along with how-to instructions) for her recent experiments with "flipping" her class. Her flipped class design included concept checks of the videos and general feedback she received from her students regarding the new "flipped" method.


• Sean Killackey, French instructor, demonstrated how to use Poll Everywhere to boost participation of quieter students and explore controversial culture topics or texts with ethical dilemmas. He showed how an instructor can prepare poll questions before class on the Poll Everywhere site, then insert them into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. Students respond to the poll using their tablet, laptop, or smartphone to enter text or choose an option on the website, which then updates in real-time on the instructor's PowerPoint slide. Poll display options include word-cloud, wall of text responses, and bar charts for multiple choice.


• Caroline Vang, ESL instructor, offered tips on using Google Docs to create an in-class and take-home group activity that can be accessed remotely by both students and the instructor. Through Google Docs, students were asked to create a mock advertisement based on an item or a vacation spot that they had researched online. The goal was to use a specific grammar point as they created the advertisement together.

The PD Peer Team is planning for one more Swap Shop before the end of the semester. Stay tuned for details!

The PACE Project is funded by a grant from The Language Flagship.