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=About Me =

I am a French teacher at Malden High School. My previous experiences include teaching French language at Boston University and North Shore Community College. I like to consider myself a passionate person, hence, there is a lot I care about. My biggest passion is endurance sports. I am a marathoner and more recently, a triathlete. I like to spend my free-time doing these things. Another thing I am passionate about is the beach - specifically, the Jersey shore - not the Jersey shore you see on that horrendous show on MTV, but the real Jersey shore. I was born and raised in Ocean City, NJ and it is one of my favorite places on earth. It is peaceful, calm, and all-around wonderful. I spend about half of the summer there.

I have decided to participate in this course because I enjoy incorporating new techonology in my classroom. I am also looking to redesign the French IV Honors curriculum and this course seemed like the perfect vehicule for this project.

=2.1: The 21st Century Classroom =

Wow - amazing how things have changed. Having read the Newsweek article assigned to us this week, it becomes apparent we as a society have become on digital media. I was really struck by the number of hours spent online a week and how much that number has changed from 2000. I know that I am guilty of this myself, and while I don't know what kids were like 10 years ago, I believe are students are probably above that average hour of 19 hours a week. This is why I truly believe we need to adapt our teaching skills to 21st century habits. If they spend over 19 hours a week on the internet, let's make learning appeal to them in their own medium. Lets help make those 19 hours productive. The other three figures that really struck me were the increase in the use of google, blogging, and itunes. I think these three figures should be important to use. First of all, google, truly applies to the topic for this week, internet research. I was working on my graduate work when google became a driving force. It revolutionized the way I did my research. I not only used search engines specifically designed for student research such as ProjectMuse, but I also frequently used Google scholar. We need to teach our students to be discriminating in the material they use for class research. Second, I thinking blogging could play a big role in the classroom. I think this is a great new way for students to interact with the material they are learning, just as we are doing here in our virtual notebooks. I also think there is something our students can learn from our example. If we post blogs for them to read that they find interesting, they will use their internet time more productively. Third, itunes - speaks volumes to how easy it is for students to procure digital media. Back in the day, if you wanted an album, you had to go to the mall, or at least to Target/Walmart. Today, you turn your computer on, or in many cases, turn on your phone, go to itunes, or amazon.com, or walmart.com, and you're able to have the album or just a song even, instantly. We live in a society of instant gratification. While we are unable to change that, we can make it work in our favor, by teaching our students to use the internet wisely.