Learn Tech with Ruth

Now that we've been out of school for a week and I have had a chance to get some mental rest I am considering what exactly I am excited about. I had told my school friend Sabine who is still living in Germany where we grew up that in retirement, which is in three years, I want to move to Spain. She was surprised but then confessed she wants to open a bed and breakfast in Sweden where people can still visit with her even though she has a severely disabled husband. It's not really one of those fight or flight situations. I do want to move to Spain and open some kind of rest stop on the Camino de Santiago route. It sounds crazy, I know, but that's a long term plan. Now as far as immediate things I am excited about, there are a few things. We have puppies. They are one week old, too adorable. And there is hiking; we've explored a few new ones lately in the area. I had wanted to do a cross country road trip this summer. It's too bad I am not really that excited about spe...

We have made it through an entire year with in person teaching during a pandamic. Let that sink in for a moment. We did well. Students learned a lot and we had smaller class sizes due to some students going on virtual school. In some regards this was a good year. It was peaceful. Virtually no discipline issues with any student in my classes. No, not all had the best attitude every day. But they came to school. We talked, we laughed and we learned. As a teacher with now 34 years of teaching behind me I am satisfied that I did my best. I am now slowly shedding the mask. I went to Walmart without one (yes, fully vaccinated). I felt a bit like a rebel doing it. Most people didn't wear one either. For some reason it is hard to plan things for this summer. I don't need rest. I need some excitement in my life. I want to travel somewhere but I can't decide where to go. Initially I wanted to do a cross country car trip in the SUV, but now that seems too hard. So we are doing smaller...

Today is the last day of Fall Break. It was a great one. Our weather was in the low 70s all week long and I got to go out in nature to experience some new trails plus kayaking. It was really nice to not think about school all week. Don't get me wrong. This wasn't by choice. We were literally told not to do school work this week and to get a break from it all. So I just followed orders. There was this World Language Teacher Summit going on all week and I did buy the sessions for it. I will be watching them over the next few weeks to see if I can use some of their ideas. But, not this week. Nor did I make much progress reading my book I got from our assistant principal, the Die alte Dame am See. I was just out in the woods, trying new trails, more difficult ones than I usually do. Oh and the kayaking, so much fun. They rent kayaks out here at the Fort Loudoun Historic Park. You pay, get a paddle and a life vest and you're on your own. They are kind of trusting you not to get ...

Just made a new video to keep some routines going around here. The country is going through some horrible situatons with the racial injustices and the coronavirus fears on top of all that. It's very difficult to wrap your head around all of that. I do hope that good with come from this and that the injustices will be corrected. As a world language teacher I am not new to discussions concerning social injustice. This is a conversation that comes up a lot in our classes. I am hoping and praying that we will now be in a position for lasting change to make this world a better place for all.

It's summer time. Wow. Hard to believe that we are really free for the summer. Two whole months. If only one did not have to worry what will happen in the upcoming school year. Will we will back in class with our students or will we be teaching hybrid classes? No one knows at this time. So I am keeping super busy creating little instructional videos for teachers who want to try new tech things. Check out the one on remove.bg. It's super easy to remove the background in any pictures and replace it with a new background. I love it. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel if you would like to get new videos in the future. 

We just about made it through the 2019/2020 school year. What a crazy one it was. Things just went down hill right after Christmas it seems. Who would have thought what would happen then? But we made it through, zooming, Google Meetings, online assignments almost no one did. I will prepare better for the next time this will happen. I even already made out a presentation I will share over the summer that will feature 15 practical online teaching tools for teachers. We can do this. Really.

I just realized I have not updated my blog since the beginning of the school year. Well, it's all coming along well actually. I now have German classes in the morning and French in the afternoon. This works out a whole lot better somehow. We are stressing can do statements this year. I am up to almost 30 in both French and German classes. Pretty good I may say. The students feel very confident that they actually can do all of those things which amazes me. I teach a lot more relaxed this year, having the students get out of their seats more. We do a lot of circle activities where I am a participating member in the activity, which is fun. This helps us bond nicely, too. ACT for seniors is over, meaning that the formal observation is next. Still have to work a bit on timing to get all of the hoopla for TEAM in within the time allowed. This week was Fall Break. I packed a lot of outdoor activities and exercise into the week off from school. The hike to Andrews Bald in the Smokies and t...

Last week was the first week of school for us. I finally met my new students and we have now spent two days together. I am happy to report that I am very pleased with them. It's great how new foreign language learners have a big smile on their faces and really try hard to pronounce correctly. So far we have done basic greetings, ask for your name and age as well as say goodbye. Next week we will do the numbers and the alphabet. French will get stated on the Voces Digital program. It seems very challanging but I am sure my students are up to it. We signed up on the Google Classroom, only to find out our tech person from central office reset the password over the weekend, freaking out my students who wanted to do their homework. We also created our characters on Classcraft, and French classes had their first boss battle. Unfortunately, the boss won all three times we played. "Better luck next time," it said. Hopefully, on Monday they will win. We also made a couple of simpl...

Where did the summer go? Two weeks and we are back hard at work with our students. What did I learn this summer? I would say my favorite is Soundtrap, a podcasting platform. I am difinitely going to use that with my French and German students. We are supposed to become a STEM school so I will be focusing on creating STEM type projects which should not be too hard. Creating podcasts does qualify for STEM. So what have I done in anticipation of the new school year? I have set up my new Google Classroom with lots of resources, updated the course syllabi, worked on understanding the Voces Digital French program, set up new Classcraft classes, set up new Duolingo classes, worked on a Summer teacher PD called #teachingwith2020vision, and went to the gym almost every day for a month now. Oh, I also am taking Tai Chi, which is so much fun. Unfortunately I did not get to go to a conference so my new ideas a somewhat scarce. But on the bright side I am going to LangFest19 in Montreal the last we...

It was hard. Switching from teaching nothing but Spanish for 28 years to French and German was a major challenge. Yes, German is my native language but that doesn't mean one can automatically explain the language to students. 16 ways to express "the" depending on its position in a sentence? I am amazed they were able to grasp 12 of those. Apparently the genitive case is not used much anymore so we only covered nominative, dative and accusative. Reading the classics such as Der Struwwelpeter and Max und Moritz was just too funny. Well, then there was Der Erlkönig, scary...And then there were my French classes. These were highly motivated for the most part and developed the most lovely accent. It made my heart jump from joy to hear my students speak French. We just loved The Little Prince. Acting out the scenes was so cool. I never got that with Spanish. I'm not sure why it didn't seem too important for my Spanish students to develop a good accent. If I ever teach h...

This was an exiting week for our foreign language department. We had the first 6 students to qualify for the Volunteer State Seal of Biliteracy. We are proud beyond compare at this moment. One of our students was even asked to speak at the Nashville ceremony in June. The last few days of school are difficult to get through, but this is a nice way to end this school year. The seniors are out of there after Monday, only to return for semester exams and their senior drive-through, an annual long anticipated fun event fo the underclassment and teachers to watch.

It's been a really nice Spring Break and I got to do lots of trail walking at our awesome Fort Loudoun State Park. There is nothing better to clear your head of all of the clutter and negative thoughts than going out into nature every day for a week. Monday we are heading back to school and will enter the end phase of the 2018/2019 school year. I would say it was a good year, full of challenges and new lessons to teach. On April 6, we will do a presentation on the Metaverse site at the TFLT Association Regional Workshop . I love that site. With so many components available, it really is up to the student how far he/she wants to take augmented reality. So, it's time to head back to reality on Monday. We can do this!

Happy Valentine's Day! That's this week and I will do some French and German Valentine's Day activities. I found and edited some Quizlet sets with useful expressions and then created a Studystack and a BingoBaker as well as a Gimkit game from those. I also ordered a bunch of Valentine's hearts that have a space in the middle for a Valentine's Day message to share. So that will be cute to do on Valentine's Day, the last day before a 4 day weekend for the students. Those hearts didn't cost a thing since I had a giftcard- suprised me too. We had two short weeks here, one for snow and one for sickness. It will definitely be difficult to reel the students back in for some serious work in our classes. Three four day weeks for me: Next Friday is in-service day, then President's Day, followed by a teacher training on the 27th. So that will be nice in a way, but difficult in another. Somehow we have lost the continuity that had sparked interest at the beginning o...

I really tried. I tried to post more on this blog. It is discouraging though when you realize very few or no one is even reading this. Perhaps I have too much other stuff going on, such as our YouTube channel, teaching at three different places and attempting to even have a personal life. I realized the other day at our UT alumni meeting that I have not much of a personal life so I will make a concerted effort to get out more, probably hike more in the state parks. We ordered a state park passport and do not have anything marked as done except for Fort Loudoun State Park which is down the road from here. Today is a marvelous day here in East Tennessee with 60 degree temperatures. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as beautiful. We did go out to the lake and walked three miles, just gorgeous. Everyone had a big smile on their face there. It's funny how good weather makes people feel better about life. So yesterday we were supposed to begin the Steve Kaufman 90 day challenge. Unfortunat...

Looks like we have to return to school tomorrow. It will be hard to do a two-day return this week. So in French classes I will cover some irregular -ir verbs and the difference between partir and sortir. For some reason that seems to be tough to explain. I did find a good video that has plenty of good examples. In German classes we will read about special occasions in Germany and answer comprehension questions/ discuss. Then there is just Friday left this week and we will do the Metaverse project, adding the poll feature. I am glad that they added the pre-coded features back on there because last week somehow they had disappeared and we had to follow their tutorial to do it from scratch. My students did do very well on that and every group was able to add their photo wall. I posted a Metaverse experience on their Google Classroom with a poll, asking about favorite snow day activities. So the snow event is over. Trying to get my mind back on school

Today was rough. It began with our weekly YouTube video as the Dualing Language Teachers . My co-teacher was a little bit full of doom and gloom so that video was on the serious side. French was good as usual. We acted out a Les trois petits cochons. I love my students' pronunciation of French. Their podcasts for the NPR contest is coming along well, so is the video entry for the Roane State Academic Festival. One of my students decorated my door for the SAAD competition. It's too cute the Little Prince theme. Well, then it was after lunch. For some reason my classes are worse after lunch. Why? I do not know. One of my lovely students thought he could just go to the restroom without permission and then actually left before the bell. Really? I am not sure yet what to do. I haven't witten up a single student in over three years, actually longer than that, maybe five or six. Then in my last class, they were supposed to read Das Rotkäppchen and honestly I couldn't understa...

I am so glad we are on a three-day weekend. Last week was super hectic. The Dualing Language Teachers put out another video last Thursday. It took us four or five attempts to do this but we finally got it. I forwarded it to our principal just to make sure she would know what this is about in case someone asked her about it. Fortunately she liked it. I do believe we have something that the students find interesting and motivating. I found an old video I had made in 2015 where I recorded myself reading the story of the Magic Volcano Dogs. I am wondering if it would be a good idea to record some stories for our students. This could be productive as long as they can understand us. Are we speaking comprehensibly? That would be the key. Last night we had a great dinner PLC at Donna's, a local restaurant here in Madisonville. We had a new guy show up there, a retired EMT. His points of view on education were so telling. I love to get input from community members. So what are we doing nex...

We made it through the first week of school in 2019. My students did great learning the clothing vocabulary. Today's Gimkit game was quite astounding. We have several billionaires and millionaires in my third period French class. Second perioud class made some bird feeders out of milk jugs to remind us to recycle plastics. They look somewhat ugly, but the birds won't care I'm sure. I can't wait to have them hang them on Monday. German classes are doing well also. They have calmed down since some of the ones who failed left us. It is very difficult for me to teach the classes without a textbook this year. I am guessing these are pilot classes. But it seems the administration is taking well to my new classes and is even including French and German in the new texbook adoptions. My co-teacher and I a very excited that we get to choose new books for next year. We even decided to let the students have some input on the choice we make. This will be a cold and rainy weekend. It...