Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A Short Presentation on Using Google Wave in the Foreign Language Classroom

We've been using Google Wave quite a bit in Latin class. Here's a short Jing presentation to show you the different things we've found helpful about Wave. The majority of the tricks were figured out by the kids.

 

(Watch in Full Screen Mode)

I love to hear from other teachers using Wave in class. I am finding it a great tool for collaboration in the foreign language classroom; and with the ability to run gadgets inside Waves as well as the ability to export Waves to Google Docs and track student participation, it's becoming an indispensable tool for gauging formative learning in group projects.

7 comments:

  1. I've been following your posts on using Wave in the FL classroom. I'm a Spanish teacher and just joined Google Wave. Do you think it is an appropriate tool for classes with 28-32 students in them? How would you set up Wave at the beginning of the year with 140 students?

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  2. @Kylie

    One of the cool things about Wave is the ability to link a large group together through a Wave and then allow members to branch out into smaller groups with sub-Waves of their own. I don't think you'd have any trouble with 30 kids, though there definitely is a learning curve. My own students have taught me a whole bunch about using Wave, so I'd let them explore, experiment, and suggest to you what seems to work best for the types of things you all are trying to accomplish.

    As for set-up, that's always been a tough one with anything Google -- once you are set up, you are golden, but that set-up can occasionally be daunting. To save on data-entry (at least from my fingers) I usually just have the kids form a line the first day of class to plug in the necessary info to get a Google account, start a Blogger blog, and subscribe to my RSS Calendar. Takes a little time, but worth it.

    Wave is a little bit different though, because it's still in Beta. I have one full class on Wave because that's all the invites I had; so they've been my test class. Once it goes public, the set-up will probably take the same form as the other components.

    Keep me posted on how things go!

    Shelly

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  3. As of yesterday, Wave is open to everyone! http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-available-for-everyone.html

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  4. @ecornwall

    Wow. That's fantastic. Thanks for the update.

    Shelly

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  5. This is a great example of using Google Wave in the classroom. I'm writing a story for RWW on the real time web and education, and with your permission, I'd like to include this. You can reach me at audrey@readwriteweb.com.

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  6. This is an amazing example of Google Wave in action.
    Thanks for sharing!

    Ingrid

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