Technology at Chapin School

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Foreign language teachers have so many possibilities open to them because their pedagogy mirrors the creativity allowed by Web 2.0. Voicethread is an obvious example; teachers can upload images for students to describe, and then students can listen to the responses of their classmates and their teacher. Voicethread can also be used for digital storytelling, so students can create their own narrated fairy tales, myths, and short stories.

Then there is Vozme, an amazing web site for Spanish teachers. Teachers or students can copy and paste or type Spanish text into the web site and then hear it read back to them. I am told by many Spanish teachers that the reader’s voice is terrific, absolutely perfect Spanish. Students can copy in segments of papers they are writing to hear them spoken aloud, or teachers can copy and paste an article from a Spanish newspaper, or a poem, or a section of a novel for students to read and listen to simultaneously. The sound files can be saved as mp3 to be downloaded into an ipod or e-mailed to others.

Yet one more interesting site is Overstream. Overstream allows students and teachers to add subtitles to youtube videos. Students can provide the foreign language text for a French or Spanish video, or they can mute the sound of a commercial, music video clip, or coming attraction of a movie to provide foreign language subtitles. Easy and very cool!