Day 1 (Brandee's Reflections)

Language Teaching and Technology

My Reflections on Day 1

          Hello from Brandee!  I am currently a PhD student in Spanish and Second Language Acquisition at the University of Calgary.  Before coming to Calgary for my graduate work, I taught English at the Universidad de Concepcion in Chile for 4 years.  Through teaching Spanish in Canada and English in Chile, both times in university settings, I've seen how Internet technologies such as skype, when added to the typical coursework, can help motivate students of a language.  They get a sense of what it is like to use the language, learn more about the world by communicating with speakers in other countries, and start to see how they can participate in communities of speakers of the language.  In this course, I hope to learn more about how to incorporate other free uses of Internet technology into my class planning, always with the goal of helping my students use the language actively for communication and discovery.  I'm looking forward to the hands-on work of the course!

There are lots of opportunities to hear Spanish in Calgary.  Here's a song by The Latin Combo, a local salsa band.