Jeff+O

Hi! My name is Jeff. I teach Spanish at East Hills Middle School in the Bethlehem Area School District. I love to bike ride, swim, play tennis, and work outdoors around the house. Summer is my favorite time of year because I love hot weather and doing activities outdoors. Recently I went zip lining for the first time in the Virginia mountains. I love to laugh and be silly, even in the classroom. Introductory Spanish is a great subject to teach because they are so many creative things to do: culture, art, grammar, vocabulary. While I really enjoy the summer, I am always ready to go back to school in late August.

__Reflection #1__: I really liked **edmodo.** I created an account and began setting up my profile. I also formed a group for the foreign language teachers in my school and invited them to join. I also created a six-question quiz in edmodo to use with my 6th grade exploratory classes. I also began exploring fake book and plan to use it by asking my students to create a fake book profile for historical characters or literary characters.

__Reflection #2:__ I explored the Google Drive website and re-activated my Google Doc account. I also visited voki.com which allows you to set up avatars for story characters that speak a variety of foreign languages. This will be an excellent resource for students to continue the plot of a dialogue story that we begin reading in class. I also visited Answer Garden, which is a great brainstorming tool. This website would be good for daily warm-ups.

__Reflection #3:__ I first browsed the udlcenter.org website and reviewed the three principles of UDL. Each principle is broken down with multiple links to various related sources. There is a wealth of information regarding UDL guidelines. I also visited the CAST website and became familiar with its organization. Again, the UDL guidelines are broken down in a very user-friendly format. The UDL modules can be used for teacher inservices during the school year. Especially informative was the CAST UDL Curriculum Self-Check.

__Reflection #4:__ Recognition networks are the "what" of learning - how we gather facts and categorize what we see, hear, and read. Strategic networks are the "how" of learning - how we organize and express our ideas. Affective networks are the "why" of learning - how learners get engaged and stay motivated. I especially liked Wallwisher since it is a good way for students to collaborate in quick and easy manner.

__Reflection #5:__ I watched the video "Twitter in Plain English" to see if using a class twitter account might be something useful to create. I really liked the "RSS in Plain English" video. I have signed up for a news reader and have begun subscribing to various news sources and blogs so I can receive the latest updates. I'm most excited about Live Binder-I'm definitely planning on organizing my teacher resources using this site. This would also be a great site for my students to maintain a student portfolio of their digital work.

__Reflection #6:__ The two multimedia tools that I investigated are Voice-Thread and Screencast-o-matic. Voice Thread would allow my students to record their dialogue presentations and upload pictures/images to illustrate their dialogue. I would be able to assess my students' speaking ability. It would also give my students the opportunity to demonstrate their comprehension of their dialogue through pictures and art. I have been looking for a free user-friendly website that allows teachers to easily take a screen shot of any website. This will allow me to easily include more relevant data in my PowerPoint presentations and warm-ups in a technologically engaging manner.