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Exhibition Hall on a Page

To coincide with the annual ISTE EdTech conference, Language Magazine is offering readers a two-dimensional glimpse of some of the sector’s latest offerings

Literacy

ReadingIQ 

Age of Learning recently launched ReadingIQ, an advanced digital library for children twelve and under with thousands of high-quality books, all curated by experts to advance literacy.


Available on computers, tablets, and smartphones, ReadingIQ gives families and teachers access to the best of children’s literature, including Caldecott and Newbery award winners, and the largest collection of National Geographic Kids digital titles available anywhere. The entire library is leveled and easily searchable by topic so that children can find titles that match their reading ability and interests. ReadingIQ also includes professionally voiced titles to support engagement and comprehension for prereaders and developing readers.


As with Age of Learning’s ABCmouse, ReadingIQ is available at no cost to teachers for classroom use, with the ability to assign books to students to read in class or at home. Teachers can set independent student reading levels using Accelerated Reader, Lexile, Guided Reading (F&P), or grade level to ensure students have access to books at the appropriate levels—perfect for differentiating instruction. With ReadingIQ, teachers can also set reading goals and track progress.


The company has integrated new reading-comprehension quizzes to further engage and motivate children. These “show what you know” quizzes are presented at the end of hundreds of books in ReadingIQ.
www.ageoflearning.com

Speak Agent

Speak Agent is an evidence-based K–8 supplemental program to help students acquire the academic language for STEM subjects. Research shows that academic language is the greatest barrier to K–12 success, especially for English learners and disadvantaged students. A study sponsored by the National Science Foundation found that Speak Agent accelerates STEM concept learning by a factor of three with only 30 minutes of use per week. Speak Agent achieves this by integrating content and language through interactive game-based activities that combine listening, speaking, reading, writing, and visual learning modes. The Speak Agent digital platform can be used to create a tailor-made supplemental program to precisely fit any K–8 curriculum. It also supports bilingual and multilingual program models.
www.speakagent.com

Renaissance


As the result of two new partnerships, Renaissance has added tens of thousands of new test items and more than 100,000 open educational resources (OERs) to its Renaissance Growth Platform.


The Renaissance Growth Platform powers the company’s award-winning assessment and reading practice solutions, including Renaissance Star Assessments and Accelerated Reader. Built with educators in mind and designed to help students shine, the Renaissance Growth Platform seamlessly connects assessment, practice, analytics, and more to give educators the information they need to create engaging learning experiences for their students.


One of the partnerships, with Discovery Education, will bring more than 20,000 test items in subjects such as math, reading, and science into Star Assessments. The leader in digital curriculum resources, engaging content, and professional learning for K–12 classrooms around the globe, Discovery Education’s services reach over 5 million educators and 51 million students in more than 90 countries.


A second partnership, with K–12 OER curator Knovation, will make more than 100,000 new resources from publishers such as PBS and the BBC available to Renaissance users. Now owned by ACT, Knovation offers a content collection of free, standards-aligned digital resources that have been evaluated and tagged for searching by a team of curriculum experts. The resources span all subject areas, grades, and types of learning resource.


Combined with the thousands of high-quality test items and instructional resources already available in the Renaissance Growth Platform, these new additions will allow for better understanding of students’ skill mastery and better support of their varied interests, learning preferences, and scaffolding requirements.
https://www.renaissance.com/

SkateKids/Ramps To Reading


SkateKids and Ramps To Reading are online digital game-based supplemental reading programs built to stimulate and develop the cognitive processes necessary for learning to read while students build critical literacy skills. Ramps To Reading (ages four to seven) takes early readers from initial preliteracy levels to basic word reading and comprehension. Engaging games help learners acquire and practice skills in a developmentally appropriate sequence. SkateKids (ages seven to twelve) cultivates early readers in an immersive environment that scaffolds reading levels as it helps learners develop critical-thinking and metacognitive skills.


Based on the research of Dr. Jack Naglieri, SkateKids and Ramps To Reading directly develop cognitive processes including:

  • Planning: The student decides how to attack a task, exerting cognitive control over processes and knowledge with intentionality.
  • Attention: Focused cognitive activity and resistance to distraction are essential in the process of learning to read.
  • Simultaneous and sequential processing: Reading, like many other tasks, requires the brain to simultaneously process a mass of information and then to take in and manipulate the sequence of information, from the letters in a word to the sentences in a paragraph.
  • In addition to being based on neuroscience, the programs deliver the best of the digital gamification that students love.

Research with the programs in schools with economically disadvantaged students (Title I) have shown significant improvement compared to a control group in as little as 17 hours of use over an academic year. Over and over, students call the program “awesome.”


BrainWare also offers:
Readable English, which accelerates the acquisition of reading skills and fluency through an innovative approach that makes English over 95% predictable phonetically. This approach is just being introduced to the U.S. from Australia. The program has been piloted in several schools in Indiana with dramatic gains shown for struggling readers, emerging readers and nonreaders.


BrainWare SAFARI, a research-based, comprehensive cognitive training tool delivered online, which focuses on developing the cognitive skills required to read fluently. The program has been particularly helpful for struggling readers and children who are dyslexic.


https://mybrainware.com/


Lexia Core5 Reading, Version 4

To access and evaluate complex texts, students must develop deeper skills, language, and knowledge. These advanced literacy skills enable students to integrate concepts they read about with what they already know, which in turn empowers them to communicate complex ideas for diverse purposes.


To address those skills, Lexia Core5 Reading has expanded content for students in the upper-elementary grades 3–5. This latest version comes complete with three new levels to extend students’ journey around the world, five brand-new activities, and over 240 new online units—each with added practice and explicit instruction when students need it. The enhancements to the product also include 120 new printable Lexia Lessons and Lexia Skill Builders that support Core5’s powerful blended model and provide targeted intervention and practice.


Additionally, the literacy program offers students more than 275 high-interest passages that encourage connection and integration of ideas within and across texts. These passages include a wide variety of genres and text types, such as informational (science and social studies), poetry, drama, biography, authentic texts, persuasive, procedural, interactive diagrams, maps, and more.


For greater student-driven learning and advanced skill development, Core5 has been updated with new activity types to support learning of structural analysis, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and grammar.
www.lexialearning.com/products/core5

Istation


Istation has accelerated the launch of its Indicators of Progress (ISIP) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) assessment program across the U.S. The program incorporates advanced speech recognition and digital recording technology to record students’ reading and measure how accurately and fluently students can read grade-level text aloud.


Oral reading fluency—the ability to read connected text quickly, accurately, and with expression—is one of several critical components required for successful reading comprehension. Istation experts conducted extensive research in the main dialect regions of the nation—the Inland North, the South, and the West—to ensure the most accurate grading and reporting for each student. ORF also incorporates safeguards for reporting when English is not a student’s first language. Thousands of elementary school students in the U.S. are already using the program during the pilot period, and even more schools can participate for the remainder of this school year—at no cost—by registering at www.istation.com/ISIPOralReadingFluency.

MakeBeliefsComix.com


At the website, students can create their own comic strips online and print and email them, which encourages writing and language acquisition. The site also features a variety of other resources to encourage writing and creativity, including hundreds of free printables, free interactive e-books, and a writing blog. MakeBeliefsComix is used by educators throughout the world to teach English and other languages and to encourage creative thought in young people.
www.makebeliefscomix.com

Growing Early Mindsets


Mindset Works has introduced a flexible early-learning framework called Growing Early MindsetsTM (GEMTM), the first-ever literacy-based growth mindset, social and emotional learning (SEL), and mindfulness teaching and learning framework for pre-K–3 classrooms and programs.


Educators using GEM in their classrooms see learners take on new challenges, learn from their mistakes, put forth effort, and enjoy learning. Beyond academics, learners practice relationship-building skills with their peers such as cooperation and communication. Learners also gain awareness of their own growth and development, thus taking ownership of their own learning and growing with confidence.


GEM is a suite of literacy-based tools and resources that includes ten children’s books, three teacher guides, and a virtual learning community where teachers can share, learn, and grow together in their GEM practice. Teachers can leverage GEM in their classrooms to promote, teach, and foster a growth mindset, SEL, mindfulness, and academic skills. For example, one book details the inner workings of the brain and shows how curiosity fosters a growth mindset.


GEM creates conditions for students to grow their enthusiasm for learning and their potential. Teachers can start using GEM today to cultivate a love of learning and promote positive academic and social and emotional outcomes.


www.mindsetworks.com/GEMWelcome

Hand2mind Daily Math Fluency


With more than 50 years of experience in education, hand2mind provides hands-on resources for math, science, STEM, and literacy. The company’s mission is to support teachers, inspire students, engage parents, and champion learning by doing.


Products such as Daily Math Fluency give educators a ready-made solution to improving students’ grasp of basic math facts through greater efficiency, better strategy, and higher confidence—in as little as ten minutes a day. Each kit comes with teacher resources including 120 number strings, 60 math talks, and demonstration manipulatives.

Many math experts explain that incorporating math talks in class is the single best way to increase number sense. Daily Math Fluency supports the initiative to develop a strong generation of critical thinkers. By using lesson tactics such as number strings, educators can open up the discussion about how a problem can be solved in different ways. Daily Math Fluency acts as a guide for educators to use effective numbers strings in the classroom.
hand2mind.com


World Languages

TrueNorth Oral Test


Emmersion Learning’s TrueNorth is the first AI-powered speaking test to come to the field in over 15 years. Fully automated and machine scored, it eliminates the potential for human scoring errors. TrueNorth is the shortest oral proficiency test available (15 minutes) and is entirely online. TrueNorth is a low-cost tool because it does not require the use (and expense) of highly trained raters to score tests. In just a short time, many major corporations in the hospitality, heavy industry, healthcare, call center/BPO, and staffing industries have begun using TrueNorth at high volumes because of its cost savings and administrative efficiency. Institutions of higher learning are adopting it for placement, progress measurement, and exit, especially as they learn that it is now offered along with the WebCAPE placement test (see below for more). TrueNorth was developed by a team of PhD-level experts who studied at Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. In addition to TrueNorth, Emmersion recently acquired WebCAPE, a language placement test used by over 600 colleges and universities for the past 20 years and originally developed at Brigham Young University.
www.truenorthtest.com

Virtual Immersion


Though Immerse’s VR platform, language learners meet with their instructors in virtual scenarios in real time. Students can practice a target language with an instructor in a virtual New York City, practice their presentation skills in a virtual Silicon Valley conference room, or hone a sales pitch in a virtual trade show. The program is fully focused on improving oral language skills through conversation-based modules and lessons, ultimately increasing confidence and proficiency.
www.immerse.online


Teacher Tools

Crio Interactive Lessons in Any Language


For language instructors, it can be challenging to find high-quality, relevant resources that speak to learners. Crio gives teachers the tools to create those resources by building their own lessons from scratch, remixing the work of others, and taking their paper-based activities digital. With Crio, a free interactive lesson builder from Curriculum Pathways, teachers can create digital lessons, assessments, tutorials, and other language-specific materials. Starting with instructional content, users can embed video, audio, and Google Drive files and add curated images and text. Text-based fields support characters in many world languages.


Learners’ knowledge and comprehension can be assessed with multiple question types, including radio buttons, true–false, and checkboxes. Short- and long-answer questions encourage student expression of mastery, including support for performance-based assessment. Answer choices support text and images. Customizable feedback allows response to student answers with personal content including text, video, images, and audio in the language of instruction. Crio lessons can be shared among educators around the globe. The Crio community offers lessons for ready-made activities created by other instructors—or lessons can be customized to learners.


Many of the features in Crio can be specifically utilized to support language instruction. Tabs can be used to chunk content or display the same content in multiple languages. Tooltips—which show text when rolled over with a cursor—can be used to translate new vocabulary words or add more context, building scaffolding for learners of different abilities. Graphic organizers can be implemented as rubrics for grading.


For English language learners or Spanish learners, the Crio community is supplemented by the entire Curriculum Pathways website. The platform provides a variety of authentic resources that support ELLs at all skill levels as they interact with lessons, tools, and apps in core academic subjects.


For Spanish learners, content is readily available, including an animated Spanish video library. Spanish resources are aligned to ACTFL standards and can therefore be used as templates to create lessons and activities in other world languages.
Crio and all Curriculum Pathways resources are provided by SAS for free to all users.
https://www.curriculumpathways.com/portal/Crio


School Management

Substitute Teachers on Demand


Students on average spend roughly a full year of their academic careers with a substitute teacher, which can ultimately have a big impact on their achievement. Unfortunately, nearly half of the districts across the country are facing a “severe or somewhat severe” shortage of substitute teachers, leading to full-time teachers missing out on PD days, administrators forced to cover classes, and, in the worst-case scenarios, multiple classes combining into one.


Swing Education is helping to alleviate this shortage with its on-demand marketplace that matches high-quality substitute teachers with schools and districts that need them. Swing Education marries two methods schools currently use to find substitutes—staffing agencies that provide substitute teachers to schools and technology companies that offer software for schools to manage their own substitutes—to provide schools and districts with a complete substitute-teaching solution. Swing Education provides qualified substitute teachers and easy-to-use software to schools, helping to relieve the burden of substitute teacher hiring and screening, as well as substitute teacher management.


Swing Education’s web app features a clear, accessible, and easy-to-use interface that accommodates users of all kinds no matter their backgrounds, age levels, and tech savviness. With the platform, administrators can reach hundreds of subs without ever picking up the phone. Even more, substitute teachers can accept requests on the go and via their mobile devices.


Swing Education also offers end-to-end substitute teacher services. In addition to providing schools with qualified subs, the company handles all billing/payment, support, training, implementation, and more for both substitute teachers and schools. The company’s growing and diverse pool of substitute teachers consists of both veteran educators and those who are entering into the education community by substitute teaching.


To date, the company has helped more than 1,500 school partners, which serve more than 1.5 million students, fill 150,000+ teacher absences.
https://swingeducation.com/

Quality, Not Quantity

Andy Kaufman urges U.S. schools to recognize and credit Costa Rican immersion schools

As colleges and universities in the U.S. look to simplify their operations and streamline the services they provide to their students, we’ve noticed a trend in U.S. schools accepting credit only from other colleges and universities abroad and not from specialized language schools.


It’s easy to understand their decision to go this route. There are hundreds of Spanish language schools throughout Latin America and Spain, and it’s not feasible for all schools in the U.S. to have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of all of them—or even just a few.


It becomes rather convenient to work exclusively with locally accredited colleges or universities, because there’s an expectation that these have complied with local guidelines, somehow improving the chance of foreign students having a high-quality educational experience.


Thankfully, some schools in the U.S. have taken the time to get to know these language programs and have determined that the quality of their academic offerings is on a par with local colleges and universities. Furthermore, those who’ve come to know these full immersion programs have seen the great value that students derive from a far more personalized experience—both inside the classroom and out.


Language immersion programs tend to work with much smaller class sizes than universities, allowing for far more participation than the larger class sizes can afford. Not only does the small class size multiply the amount of speaking time students enjoy, it affords teachers the opportunity to very closely monitor student progress, identifying areas of weakness and building on strengths.


Language schools have yet another significant edge over universities, and that is that the entire operation can be designed around the students’ learning needs. While much of the learning will take place inside the classroom walls, immersion programs have great control over the environment outside the class, allowing them to carry on the learning process even after the bell has rung for the day. Campuses can be fully utilized if the scope of the field of study is limited—an advantage that specialized language schools have learned to harness.


Evidently, not all language schools are created equal (and we can confidently say the same about universities). Choosing a language immersion school to work with will take a little extra effort—to get to know the program, how it operates, and who is
behind it.


However, I feel that colleges and universities in the U.S. would be well served by making that effort—on behalf of the thousands of U.S. students who are relying on them for a profound—and often life-changing—study abroad experience.

Andy Kaufman is director of Conversa Spanish School. He grew up on Conversa’s campus in the mountains above Santa Ana, Costa Rica. Andy studied engineering at Boston University and worked for Intel as an engineer in their microprocessor division. Later, he moved to Washington, DC, to work in management consulting for a firm called KPMG. In 2003, he obtained his MBA at the George Washington University, and he’s been back ever since. Up until 2017, Andy co-directed Conversa along with his father, Conversa’s founder, David Kaufman.

Conquering U.S. Admission Exams

Philip Bates shares how international students can effectively prepare for the SAT and ACT

I’ve had conversations with high school students from India to South Korea, and they all want to attend a university in the U.S. And for good reason: the U.S. maintains the most attractive university system in the world. Our universities attract the best professors, where they are doing the most innovative and well-funded research in the world. The facilities are top-notch, and aspiring students have a wide array of degrees to choose from. Schools have strong partnerships with the business community, so internships are easily accessible. The opportunities are endless, and the universities connect their students to those opportunities. Whether a student pursues a career in the U.S. or takes their degree back to their home country, graduating from a U.S. college is an impressive notch on any resume.


Many of the international students I talk to are aiming for a spot at an Ivy League university. For plenty of them, a qualifying SAT or ACT score is the barrier. The only way they can get past that roadblock is by scoring in the top tenth percentile. That’s not an easy task for students who aren’t familiar with academic English, have no experience with the structure of the tests themselves, don’t have access to updated prep tools, and may not even know how far in advance they should begin preparing for these tests. Here’s a look at the major barriers to SAT and ACT success for non-U.S. students, and how they can overcome them.


Setting Expectations


When you ask students from other countries “What universities do you know of?”, they immediately respond with top-tier, Ivy League schools. These schools have brand recognition and reputations that stretch back generations. Students from all over the world strive to go to these universities. In most cases, these schools are considered far superior to what they have in their backyard.


Since everyone wants to go to an Ivy League, the admission criteria for these universities are highly competitive. Families in other countries aren’t familiar with the fact that there are many high-quality universities in the U.S. that aren’t listed as top tier. Since acceptance rates at top-tier universities have reached an all-time low,1 though students can still strive to get into these schools, they also need to have at least one safe school. Having at least one guaranteed admission can help take some pressure off students and enable them to focus on doing the necessary work to qualify for a top-tier university.

Academic Language and Grammar


Once international students have a realistic sense of the scope of U.S. universities, the most obvious barrier to getting into the colleges of their choice is language. Students from other countries are inundated with—and in some cases may have learned to speak English from—informal language through media, movies, and music, but they are not being actively exposed to formal or academic language. They may be able to speak conversational English, but when it comes to the SAT and ACT, you need to understand academic English and you certainly can’t select answers just because they sound right. You have to know basic English grammar rules and be able to apply them and understand academic vocabulary, or you’re just not going to be successful.


Many of these students study academic English and seek comprehensive grammar instruction. If they know they have large gaps in their vocabulary or in application of English grammar, some start preparing years in advance. The next challenge they face is not just to learn, for example, subject-verb agreement in isolation, but to learn it through actively practicing SAT and ACT questions.

Access to Quality Prep Tools


One of the largest barriers for foreign students is that they have limited access to quality resources. Many international students aren’t looking to score a 1250 on their SAT. Although a 1250 is a very solid score that would allow for admission into many universities, international students who dream of a top-tier university are aiming for a 1500+. Ultra-high scores on the SAT and ACT are a great way to separate from the pack. It’s a long journey from baseline knowledge to scoring in the top percentile, and to get to that mastery point, they’ll need to be familiar with every type of question they could possibly see on the exam. Since admission exams are constantly evolving, there’s a high risk that students’ resources are out of date. If they’re purchasing a book because it’s cheap on Amazon—but it’s more than a couple of years old—there’s a good chance that exam content has drastically changed.
Sometimes even that isn’t possible. I remember talking to a student from Egypt who said he couldn’t even get an ACT prep book shipped to his house because of customs and other obstacles. He felt like he was on an island. The only way he could access anything was on his computer and phone.


There are practice tests out there on the internet. Many international students I speak to don’t have access to computers but do have smart phones, so for these tests to be helpful, they have to be viewable on mobile devices. Even then, a practice test won’t help students through the answers they got incorrect and provide them with the knowledge they need to effectively tackle similar questions in the future. Students often don’t have access to anyone who’ll walk them through the explanation. They need high-quality resources because they don’t have the luxury of going to their English teachers to get a thorough explanation of comma splices and other items that are tested. They need the resources to learn from their mistakes on their own, so they know how to get the answer right the next time.


Gearing up for these tests can be a multiyear process, so students need SAT and ACT preparation resources that are not only comprehensive but robust enough to support them for the long term. They can’t find one little SAT book and decide to use that for 18 months. They need to find content that not only teaches them every skill on the test but also has many questions that build on each other. They need to be able to spiral questions from low to medium to high levels so they can build up from baseline concepts to feeling comfortable with the material and the test itself.

Test-Taking Skills


The SAT and the ACT strictly align content with the U.S. Common Core State Standards. They are supported by instruction that takes place in the U.S. For instance, a third-grade teacher will give a student a reading passage and comprehension questions to go along with it. It’s the same format on the SAT and ACT, so U.S. students are exposed to the format of these admission tests from a
very early age. By contrast, an international student may be more familiar with book reports based on entire novels. An international student might find mathematical
word problems difficult to understand if they are solely accustomed to computational-type questions.


Active practice with well-modeled questions will help students break this barrier. The questions should be paired with high-quality explanations that let students know where they went wrong. The tools should be heavily based around content knowledge. The SAT and ACT aren’t IQ exams, so students who continue to practice will get better over time, because they’re learning the subject matter but also because they’re actively practicing something that mimics the exam.


When it comes to test-taking strategy, students should avoid gimmicky advice like “don’t read the passage first; to save time, go straight to the questions.” Students aren’t going to trick the test, but there are tactics students can use to have a better chance of getting the correct answer in some cases.


For instance, if a summary question is first in a section, a smart approach is to save it for the end. Answering the comprehension questions about a reading passage
first will allow students to gather nice baseline knowledge to eventually answer the summary question.


Concise language is also a big part of SAT grammar questions. Typically, the
shortest answer written in a formal way is the correct answer. Students, and especially international students, wouldn’t necessarily pick up on that. It sounds simple and silly, but it’s a helpful tip. We’ve studied enough tests that we can give students insider knowledge that will help them on test day. No matter what specific tools international students choose to prepare for the SAT or ACT, access is the largest barrier. If they don’t have access, they don’t have opportunity.

Notes

  1. https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/ivy-league-decisions-class-of-2022-penn-upenn-philadelphia-yale-university-harvard

Philip Bates is a college prep project director for UWorld (www.uworld.com). He can be reached at [email protected]. UWorld has compiled a great deal of research on these tests, and they don’t keep it to themselves. For example, a semicolon is often an answer choice on the SAT grammar section but has only been the correct answer once in the last several years.

Getting Social in the Classroom

Jennifer Parker offers suggestions to help you co-create with social media so that everyone has a voice

The average person takes less than 90 seconds to respond to a text message. Phones always in reach, students use social media for common communication. Apps are used by nearly everyone, but here’s a look at some of the most popular apps for social media. Let’s summarize the ways in which students (K–12 and beyond) can use their phones as learning devices to practice vocabulary, writing, and listening, specifically through social media platforms. The term app smash describes the use of more than one app together—for example, using a BookSnap in a Google Slide. It’s not the app—it’s how you apply the app in class.

www.voicethread.com VoiceThread is a cloud-based website and app that allows users to arrange images, videos, and links into a slideshow, which is perfect for both K–12 and higher education learning environments. Users may narrate a slideshow with their voices and share this link with others to watch. 

Viewers can make comments within the slides without having VoiceThread accounts. Comments can be either spoken by phone, or by microphone in a smartphone, or typed. All spoken and written comments appear in one thread and can be played by viewers. Use your doodle tool to add images and animation. https://voicethread.com/about/features/

www.flipgrid.com Flipgrid is a social learning platform created specifically for in-class use. For use with a Gmail or Microsoft email, use FG as a discussion board , as well as the following ten uses: 

Discussion board: Students share and comment

Book trailers or chapter reviews

Teach-backs: Have students teach back to you what they have learned

Screencastify: Google Chrome plug-in (record your screen)

Green Screen by Do Ink

Mini PechaKuchas: Ten seconds per image

March Madness Book Challenge: What is your absolute favorite book? Can you convince others to agree with you?

Digital storytelling: Students create short (one-minute) video book talks for their all-time favorite books that will convince others to vote for their choices

Face swap: Students take on new characters

Canvas LMS has a plugin for Flipgrid: https://help.flipgrid.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002727834-Canvas-LTI-Integration

Video topics: Teachers create “topics” for students to post responses to in a tiled grid display. Audio, video, and text commenting are supported. Students do not have the option to choose friends, as the group is created by the facilitator/teacher. For more tips, visit www.blog.flipgrid.com.

This is best used with Google Chrome, and may be used on a laptop. If using from a phone, download the app. Device requirements: https://help.flipgrid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004051153-Minimum-Device-Requirements 

www.snapchat.com Snapchat #BookSnaps: Video chatting using snaps. Annotate and share inserts of texts that you are reading or using in class. Incorporate into slides or your Twitter account or other social media where #hashtags are used. This is best used with the Snapchat app.

www.skype.com Skype, as a social network, fulfills many of the same functions as other social media platforms. 

Set status “mood” messages, send texts, use the group chat system, share files and photos, use profiles to make connections with other teachers and students, make video calls, send instant messages, or use Skype calls or chats. Publish lesson plans and join teacher communities.

Skype in the Classroom is a free community that connects teachers with educators and guest speakers from around the world. It is a website where teachers can find and run Skype lessons for their students: https://education.microsoft.com

www.animoto.com Students can easily create and share their own beautiful videos with Animoto. It’s a powerful digital storytelling tool for iPad and the web. The app allows students to select a theme, music, images, and videos and add captions and/or two lines of text, and within minutes a slick video is created. The finished product can be shared via social media, uploaded to YouTube, or embedded in a student’s e-portfolio. For a great introduction to Animoto, with a built-in lesson in digital citizenship, have students create an “About Me” or “Year in Review” Animoto.

www.twitter.com A big advantage to using Twitter is the ability to follow profiles and social issues. Follow users or hashtags using audio, photo, video, and text commenting, sharing, widgets, shortcuts, and translations for free translators; social network following specific profiles and groups; use keywords and phrases to generate increased engagement. If using hashtags, users can track vocabulary, grammar, issues, topics, or user profiles. It can be used as web-based or via the app.

Measure impact with Twitter analytics:

Click Hashtag Analytics and Real-Time Tracking for Twitter (real-time option is checked).

Enter the hashtag/keyword in the search bar.

Click the Track button.

A dashboard preview (analysis of 100 tweets) will be visible.  

www.facebook.com This network offers voice and video calling, audio, photo, “My Story” live videos, text commenting, sharing, widgets, shortcuts, social network following specific profiles or groups, and use of keywords and phrases to generate increased engagement. Use the microphone or camera in a phone or laptop for live group calls or video chat. Use Facebook Insights to measure Facebook analytics and use of issues or language. (Not available for private accounts—used for public pages only, for your professional groups.)

www.google.com Welcome to the universe of Google for teachers! Did you know you can create your own e-book using Google Slides? https://shakeuplearning.com/blog/how-to-create-an-ebook-with-google-slides/ Or make your own free website? https://sites.google.com/new Create an interactive table of contents and insert links to connect to other slides, hyperlinks, and e-books. Here are some tips for creating your e-book:

Re-size images and illustrations: File -> page setup -> custom

Add-ons: In the slides: Menu -> Get add-ons 

Pear Deck: Formative assessment tools

Tips for other uses, like videos, slides, and virtual tours:

Narrate over a video: Mute the original audio

Stop-motion animation: Animate your images (command D)

E-portfolio: Students can create historical performance

Icons by Noun Projects

Customize videos: Inside Google Drive -> right click Video Options -> customize start and end time 

Make your own virtual tour builder: www.tourbuilder.withgoogle.com 

Create digital storytelling using Google Docs and Windows Movie Maker, or use add-ons to customize videos already created inside your video drive. Record voice threads over your slides. Use voice and video calling, audio, photo, live videos, text-box commenting, sharing, widgets, shortcuts, Google Classroom, Google Teams, Google Docs, and file sharing; integrate G Suite with other social apps; social network following specific contacts, groups, or teams; Google Voice phone number and Google Voice Command for transcribing dictations. Example of VoiceThread over slides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgpTqgUIYs

www.flickr.com This is used for photo sharing and hosting, like Instagram. It has an active and engaged community where people share and explore each other’s photos. You also can use this uploader to create albums (Flickr calls them sets) for your pictures.

www.twinery.org Best used with Firefox or Chrome, Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear, clickable stories. Twine may be downloaded or used as an app, or teachers and students can go directly to the website to upload their own images and text. This app allows interactive storytelling, summarizing, and other rhetorical modes. Students can use their smartphones, laptops, and tablets to move from page to page to create bodies of written work.

www.slack.com For working on project management in teams, both of the next two apps are for group communication organized by your channels, by project, team, topic, or whatever works for you and your team. They can be used inside or out of the classroom for group work and team projects.

www.moodle.com This can be used in K–12, universities, and your workplace. Moodle is an open-source learning management platform that can be integrated into learning apps that many learning institutions already use, such as Zoom, Office365, G Suite, and Turnitin. 

It has a questionnaire option for students to complete anonymously to give feedback on online classes, online exams, active learning guidance and practice, and online grading, just to name a few functions. 

www.instructables.com From science experiments to merit badges, this offers instructions for more than 100,000 DIY projects. Looking for a classroom maker project? You’ll find it here. Did your students create something awesome? Encourage them to upload their instructions and share their ideas.

https://bitly.com/ Create your own surveys as an educator with your .edu email address.

www.mentimeter.com and www.pollv.com Createsurveys and polls without a .edu email address.

www.canva.com Make free presentations.

www.piktochart.com Make free infographics.

Jennifer Parker is an instructor for TEFL certification and training at the University of Southern California (USC) International Academy, with over 20 years’ experience in higher education as faculty instructor for IEP university programs. She is a versatile and innovative education and language arts faculty instructor and program organizer with extensive experience in efficiently facilitating teacher education, language education programs, English, ESL/EFL instruction, educational modules, program development, instructional design in language arts programs, and professional development. She holds a master’s in education, curriculum and instruction for ESOL and has also received TESOL certificates. She is an active member of local CATESOL chapters and an International TESOL member. 

She started as a volunteer peer site reviewer with CEA in 2019. Her goals include continuing education for her doctorate degree in higher education and educational technology, as well as continued language study. 

ESSA May Harm English Learner Graduates

A report released by the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, The Unintended Consequences for English Learners of Using the Four-Year Graduation Rate for School Accountability, provides a profile of high school ELs and examines causes of dropout, how graduation rates are calculated, and the effects of these rates on students and instructional models.

High school graduation rates have been used to evaluate school effectiveness and impose consequences on struggling schools under federal law for nearly two decades, alongside other measures of academic achievement and school quality.

The report finds that reliance on a school’s four-year graduation rate for federal performance-accountability purposes can create negative consequences for English learners (ELs), as well as the schools that serve them, since these students often require additional time to develop academic proficiency in English and complete the full range of courses required to obtain a high school diploma. While federal accountability regulations dating back to the No Child Left Behind Act have helped close opportunity gaps for ELs by requiring measurement of their educational progress, a one-size-fits-all accountability system fails to take account of the success of students who complete high school after the four-year mark and can thereby punish schools that successfully serve such students.

States are required under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to submit school accountability plans; these include each school system’s rate of getting students to graduate within a four-year period beginning at the start of ninth grade. While states can supplement their calculation of the four-year graduation rate with an extended-year rate, 16 states and the District of Columbia have chosen not to. Collectively, these states serve 60% of the nation’s estimated 5 million ELs.

Considering ELs are more likely than other students to graduate after a fifth or sixth year, their educational completion is excluded when only a four-year graduation rate is used. And because the stakes associated with the use of graduation rates for school accountability are high—including risks to educators’ reputations and employment—use of a four-year rate can generate perverse incentives for high school administrators to turn away recent immigrants when they attempt to enroll.

Media reports have documented that older immigrant and refugee teenagers have been turned away from traditional high schools in recent years and told to enroll in adult or alternative education programs. That’s despite laws in most states allowing young people without a high school diploma to enroll in free public schools until the age of 20 or 21. Beyond turning away prospective students who might drag down the four-year graduation rate, the report examines how emphasis on that rate can affect how schools design EL instructional programs.

“By privileging a narrow definition of a high school graduate—one who graduates in four years or fewer with a standard diploma—the federal accountability system may disproportionately categorize English learners as failures or, more concerningly, incentivize schools to push such students into inappropriate educational pathways or not to serve them at all, for fear of the consequences attached to being labeled as a school in need of improvement,” said MPI senior policy analyst Julie Sugarman, who wrote the report.

The report is available at www.migrationpolicy.org/research/english-learners-four-year-graduation-rate-school-accountability. 

Destinación Andalucía Video Blog Part 1

Hola & Bienvenidos!
Welcome to part one of Language Magazine’s Video Blog for Destinación Andalucía, with me, Leanna Robinson, Language Magazine’s own Assistant Editor. I’m spending a few weeks in Granada, a town in the south of Spain in an area called Andalucía, to take immersion Spanish Classes as Escuela Delengua. Far from the hustle and bustle of Madrid and Barcelona, Granada offers culture and sights like no other. Blending ancient Moorish culture with Spanish customs, along with modern Arabic language and culture, not to mention flamenco and tapas, Granada is a distinct melting pot truly like no other.

Follow along with my video blog to see how it’s going in my classes, and please, pardon my stumbling as I am a student and am still learning! So without any more ado, here is the first video blog where I talk about my classes.

Serbia Urged to Support Minority Languages

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has published a new report on the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) in Serbia, along with its recommendations. The charter applies to Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Bunjevac, Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Macedonian, Romani, Romanian, Ruthenian, Slovakian, Ukrainian, and Vlach.

The Council of Europe’s experts welcomed the progress made in the training of teachers for minority-language education, the publication of textbooks, and the broadcasting of new public radio and television programs, as well as a significant number of cultural activities in all minority languages. However, there are also causes for concern, such as relatively high thresholds for establishing minority-language classes and the discontinuation of preschool education in Romani.

The experts observed a very high level of minority language presence in public radio and television broadcasts in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. However, the privatization of public broadcasters has reduced the offer of broadcasts available in minority languages at the local level in Serbia, the report said.

Despite the possibility spelled out in the charter of using minority languages before courts, this provision is rarely implemented in practice. Minority languages are also rarely used by administrative authorities, except for the administration of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.

National minorities in Serbia are represented by national councils. These councils enjoy a certain level of autonomy and have the competence to take initiatives in the fields of culture, education, information, and official use of the language and script. 

However, their capacity to effectively promote the minority languages needs to be strengthened.

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommends that Serbia, as a matter of priority:

  • Make available adequate teaching of Romani and Ukrainian in preschool, primary, and secondary education and extend the existing teaching and study in/of German, Czech, and other languages covered only by Part II of the charter;
  • Facilitate the broadcasting of public and private radio and television programs in the minority languages in order to reach an appropriate total broadcast time for each language;
  • Strengthen the use of all regional and minority languages in the judiciary and administration;
  • Strengthen the capacity of the national councils of national minorities to effectively promote the regional and minority languages in public life;
  • Promote awareness and tolerance in Serbian society at large with respect to the minority languages and cultures as an integral part of the heritage of Serbia.

The charter entered into force in Serbia, as the successor to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, on June 1, 2006.

Last Chance to Register for San Diego Spanish Conference

101st Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish & Portuguese (AATSP), Town and Country San Diego Hotel, July 8-11

The AATSP provides an annual forum for instructors from the U.S. and abroad that includes over 250 events during 3½ days of discussions, workshops, sessions, exhibits, speeches, and awards that reflect trends, interests, and the needs of Spanish and Portuguese teachers. Highlights in this year’s conference in San Diego include the 75th anniversary of Portuguese joining the Association, and the Centennial celebration of Sigma Delta Pi—the National Collegiate Hispanic Society. The topics of this year’s conference include innovative curriculum, assessments and credentials, languages and the professions, languages and communities, languages and humane education, heritage language instruction and learning, and advocating for Spanish and Portuguese.

The deadline to register online for this conference is Friday, June 7th!  Register at: https://www.aatsp.org/page/2019Conference

Argentina Toasts to Spanish’s ‘Good Health’

Friends celebrating new years eve

At the end of March, the VIII International Congress of the Spanish Language (VIII Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española) was held in Córdoba, Argentina, during which many aspects of the Spanish language were analyzed, including its current boom and what its future may look like.  

A total of 250 speakers from 32 countries (21 of them Spanish-speaking)debated in plenary sessions, papers, and panels a wide range of topics, including unity and diversity of Spanish, the role of academies, inclusive language, linguistic mixing, pre-Columbian languages ​​of America, translation, literature, history, education, political correctness, exile, journalism, Judeo-Spanish, and economic value of the language. 

Also up for debate were digital society, artificial intelligence, science in Spanish, innovation, and entrepreneurship—all 21st-century topics that raise more questions than answers.

The president of the Academia Argentina de Letras highlighted the “enviable health” of Spanish, about which “no dangers are looming.” For José Luis Moure, respect for the varieties of Spanish has been achieved thanks to panhispanismo.

The academic director of the Cervantes Institute, Richard Bueno, explained the long journey that led to the choice of the motto “America and the future of Spanish: Culture and Education, Technology and Entrepreneurship” and took stock of the topics discussed, which were structured around five thematic axes.

The secretary general of the ASALE (Association of Academies of the Spanish Language) argued that the organization, not widely recognized, defends the polycentrism of Spanish and a panhispanismo “that leaves behind the old hegemonies and methods of domination through the language.” For Francisco Javier Pérez, the language is and must be “multinational.”

Before the closing ceremony, the last special plenary session was presented by Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute, and featured María Teresa Andruetto, the acclaimed Cordovan writer, who came out strongly against what she called the “argument for uniformity” of language. “Monolanguage invites predators,” she said. “We are cultural mestizos.”

In a soft voice, Andruetto read a long speech in which she argued for diversity and dissent, resistance to those who seek “idiomatic purism,” and opposition to the use of a neutral Latin American Spanish in film dubbing and book translations.

García Montero responded that the new Spanish grammar and other rules (spelling and so on) were the result of an agreement between the national academies and not an imposition by the Real Academia Española. He claimed that the Cervantes Institute does not impose the Spanish of Spain and that its SIELE exam is managed by the Institute and three universities, two of them American (Buenos Aires and UNAM from Mexico).

He concluded that Spanish belongs to everyone and that the time is long past when Spain (where only 9% of Spanish speakers live) decided how to speak it correctly.

Over 400 Languages May Have Originated in China

A new study by Menghan Zhang at Fudan University in Shanghai and his colleagues recently published in Nature explored the origin of Sino-Tibetan languages and determined they may have originated in China rather than India as previously believed. The Sino-Tibetan language family comprises more than 400 languages including Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. The group of languages is spoken by over 20% of the world’s population, second to only Indo-European, which includes English and Spanish. 

The authors used data on cognate terms that have been assembled over the past 30 years in a project called the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus. The team produced an evolutionary tree for the languages similar to those used in biology, from the top down. The branches at the top represented languages that continue to be spoken today, while the languages at the bottom represented Sino-Tibetan proto-languages. The researchers used genetic and linguistic data and computational biology and anthropology along with historical information about migration patterns. They found that the Sino-Tibetan language family likely originated in northern China over 6,000 years ago and spread south. The results also suggested that there was a major split between the Sinitic languages and the Tibeto-Burman languages before each of these split into further branches, which contrasts previous models that suggest the branches did not form from a major initial bifurcation.

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