Faculty+Highlights


 * //Faculty Highlights//**: //**Upper School**//

Connie Deal in art and Carole Yeaman in //The Art of War// are doing some exciting podcasts with students!

Ms. Vickery's technology students have produced podcasts of the Civil Rights Memorial Center.

Ashley Belcher's [|Forensic Science class] has a wiki! The first use of the wiki will be a forum for the discussion of different forensic science books. Students may choose to read true crime stories or fictional books by best-selling authors such as Patricia Cornwell or Kathy Reichs. If you're looking for a good book, check out this site!

Ana Baker's Spanish class has produced Quicktime movies from their Keynote projects. Also, here is her account of how she is using podcasts: "As I checked the iTunes Store for the podcasts in Spanish, I was very disappointed when I found some very elementary material addressing only basic grammar rules in a program called "Learn Spanish with Coffee Break". After a more detailed search, I discovered another podcast, "Notes in Spanish", made by a Spanish couple based in Madrid. Through this podcast I discovered another made by a lady in Barcelona. To my great satisfaction, both podcasts address the intermediate and advanced students' levels of language training. Both programs offer a wide variety of current events discussions all in Spanish and very attractively created to fulfill the interests of the young learner. Furthermore, they present excellent, updated and frequently used vocabulary within the cultural context of the Spanish society.

While the students listen to the podcasts, they take notes which they use in our class discussions. In these discussions they always make comparisons with their own life style. The podcasts are a great source to develop and refine listening comprehension skills, language structures and vocabulary usage and expansion. The new approach in teaching foreign languages integrates the different skills as the students accomplishes tasks. The podcasts are great sources of information for writing activities, informal discussions, as well as formal oral presentations. Students can listen to the podcast in class, individually at home or in their iPods.

This quarter I am planning to use these podcasts in my upper level classes to respond to students' individuals needs and to provide a great opportunity to refine their language skills with authentic sample material. I think all students will enjoy that."

Alexis Wakefield is using iPods and music with her English Language Learning students. Popular music serves as a springboard in language translation.

John McWilliams has [|podcasts and a wikispace for AP History]. (Note: The wikispace is password protected so only John and his students may post to it, which is an option that teachers have when setting-up and managing a wiki space that you do not want the public to edit or view.) John has also begun using nings in his classes. (They are also private or I would provide a link to them.)

Check out Scott Richburg's wiki [|Dante's Domain].

Click [|here] to view Cam Armstrong's faculty wiki page.