World Language Summit – Technology Enhanced Speaking and Listening Activities

I’m looking forward to presenting at the World Language Summit at North Cobb Christian School tomorrow! I will be sharing some ideas for creating speaking and listening activities for online and hybrid learning environments. Here my slides:

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Post-conference To-Dos: #SCOLT18

 

1. Go through your notes and conference resources. Do it now, while it’s fresh in your mind, or set a reminder on your phone to do it on spring or summer break when you have more time. Here is an awesome google drive folder with materials from the sessions at SCOLT – go ahead and review the ones from the sessions that you loved, and set yourself a reminder to go through the materials for interesting sessions that you couldn’t attend at a later date. 
2. Debrief with your conference buddy, department, or any teacher friend you love talking shop with. My conference buddy and I took a “divide and conquer” approach to SCOLT this year, and made sure to sit down a couple of times during the conference to share what we had learned in our sessions. We will repeat that process with the other members of our department over the next few weeks, and possibly in our professional learning days during post-planning. If you’re a department of 1, why not share with a teacher from another content area – much of what I learned (technology tips, literacy strategies, management and organization ideas) could be useful to teachers of various subjects. The process of talking it out not only benefits your partner, but also helps you sort and retain the vast amount of information you took in over the weekend.
3. Curate your fun new resources. You got a great activity or a cool authentic resource for a unit you won’t teach again until next fall – where are you going to put it so you remember to use it? Here are a few suggestions:
   • Make a thinglink or padlet for the conference with links to new resources and notes about activities and strategies you want to try (and then share it with your conference buddy, department, or other teacher friend!)
   • Download the files now and put them in your unit folders on Google Drive, OneDrive, or your laptop. If there are links you want to save, put them together in a Word or Google doc, along with a brief description of how you want to use them, and put the document in your unit folders.
   • Add authentic resources to unit or topic-specific Pinterest boards
   • Write a blog post about the new activities you want to try (if you don’t have a blog you can send it to me as a guest post!)
4. Set intentions. Now that you’ve reviewed your notes, talked it over with a buddy, and sorted your amazing new ideas, it’s time to set intentions: what changes do you want to make now? What is one resource or activity that intimidates you, but you want to give it a try? Did you get ideas for routines that need to wait until next semester to implement? Pick out 1-3 ideas and either work them into your plans for next week, or put a note in your calendar to do it at a later date. Don’t procrastinate; if you don’t do it right away it will likely not get done at all.
5. Follow up with the the many amazing educators you met at your conference. Maybe that means searching #SCOLT18 on twitter and following some new accounts. Maybe you promised to share a resource with another teacher – go ahead and send that email. Maybe you want something another teacher mentioned that isn’t already posted in their session materials – send them an email or tweet and ask nicely for it (and maybe send something their way!). Maybe you drop a note to your conference friends you never see any other time of year (hello Lee, Jaime, Celeste, Joe!) and tell them it was nice to see them again. Or maybe you just contact some of presenters and thank them again for sharing their expertise.