Ruben+R

Hola, Me llamo Ruben Rivero, I am married and I have a daughter (8 years old). I am originally from Spain, but I became a US citizen a couple of months ago. I like to travel and I go to Spain to visit my family as often as a can (or afford). I also like to run and I am preparing for the Philadelphia Half Marathon in November. To make a living, I teach 8th grade Spanish in Saucon Valley middle school. This is my 7th year teaching. I have a masters degree in instructional technology and I would like to, eventually, transition from teaching Spanish to work with teachers to use technology in the classroom.

Toolbox #1 I knew about Edmodo but I never used them with my class. I have used wikis and blogs in my class where students had to post small comments in Spanish so they cold practice their writing. I also have a Facebook account but I still don’t know how I would use it with my students. I liked the Fakebook website. I used something similar (MyFakewall) but Fakebook looks more user-friendly. Great potential for projects.

ToolBox #2

I was familiar with Google Docs (or Google Drive). I’ve used it in my class and it is an excellent tool for peer review, collaborative activities, share information and files, create document that will work across operating systems. I liked Ted.Ed a lot. They don’t have lessons for my subject area. However, since I can create a lesson from a youtube video, the possibilities are endless. I can make my own videos and upload them or use the one available and create questions to check student understanding. Then, students will have access to the lesson anywhere and anytime. I am also familiar with Diigo and Delicious. I liked Diigo because it allows you to annotate or highlight parts of a web page and share the small link with the students. Then they can access the website with your comments or highlighted areas.

ToolBox #3

In this toolbox I found some great tools to use in my class. I was familiar with some of them like Animoto and Glogster. I has my students create an interactive poster using glogster to present healthy and unhealthy foods in Spanish. The technology part was a little too much for some of my 8th graders, but most of them did good job. I spent a lot of time going over the technology part. I have never used Animoto in my class, but I have created videos using my own pictures and shared them with my family. I found a couple of new tools that can be useful and fun for the students. One that I like is ToonDoo. Students can create comic strips and the options are endless. There are so many options, that it was a little distracting for me. It might be overwhelming for some students and I can see them spending a lot of time playing around with all the possibilities. I tried to create a comic strip to see how it work, and it is very easy, the only problem that I found is that the website crashed twice when I was trying to save my work, and at the end I could not save it. I will try it again and if it works, I am planing on using it in my class. BookBuilder is another tool that I could use in the classroom for writing assignments. It is very easy to customize and user friendly.

Prezi presentation