Mini-Project 2

MyCMC assignment was designed as a term-long project for a Spanish high school class of approximately 10 students with 2+ years of Spanish as a base. The course would be a 4-week elective course on Mexican culture and would incorporate all four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. While class time would be dedicated to more speaking and listening, the series of CMC activities would primarily focus on enhancing students’ writing skills; all interactions will be made in Spanish. All assignments would also promote a further deepening of cultural knowledge as well as an interactive, outside-of-class language community. Besides the first week, when students are taken to the language lab to set up their blogs, most CM assignments would be conducted outside of class as homework. A final cultural presentation on a topic selected by the student will conclude and serve as a follow-up to what students have learned.
Blogs have been chosen as the means for CMC for this project because of their ability to generate a creative, personal space that is also compatible with many means of communication and interaction—postings, comments, pictures, audio files, links, etc. Students would visit the computer lab, and with the assistance of the teacher, create individual blogs using blogger.com.
As a complement to the topics and materials presented in class, students’ would be required to post four blog postings per week: two to their own blog and two to their weekly compañero/a’s blog. Of the posts to their own blogs, one would be a formal article response—that is, students would be assigned an article (by the teacher) appropriate to the weekly cultural topic (for example, this Día de Muertos article) and asked to post a response to their blogs. This “formal” posting would be graded more formally in terms of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc. The second post would be a more “free” and creative response to any topic discussed in class that week, and would be graded not in terms of grammar or spelling but in terms of engagement, thoughtfulness, and creativity. The balance created each week between free / informal expression and structured / formal expression would keep students engaged and active while deepening their cultural knowledge and enhancing their writing skills.
Each week, students’ will be paired with a different compañero/a from class. The pair will respond to each others’ blogs twice per week—once to each other’s formal posting and once to each other’s informal posting. Students will be reminded that posting and responding outside of their weekly pairs and beyond the required amount is highly encouraged and a percentage of their overall grade in the course (5-10%) will be allotted for general activity in the class’ blog community. Other homework assignments at the teacher’s discretion could also be assigned and posted to students’ blogs.
Serving as “mayor” of this virtual community, the teacher will maintain a “home blog” with links to all student pages, links to articles, questionnaires, assignments, resources, grading rubrics, etc. (similar to our TIFLE blog). This blog would probably be a “paid” one in order to allow for more features (linking to PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, etc.).
CMC, and more specifically, blogs, would enhance this interactive cultural class by allowing the interaction to continue outside of the classroom, strengthening the class community. Students would have a creative space to express themselves as well as track their progression in cultural knowledge and language skills. By having specific postings due on certain days (and the ability of the bog to track this) allows the teacher to disperse students’ assignments throughout the week and insure that they are getting ample practice outside of class. The guest speaker provides a different, real-world perspective to the classroom and his interaction will encourage students to communicate with competence and cultural sensitivity. The final project will allow students to pursue their specific cultural interests (while serving as a follow-up to what they have learned) and also get feedback from their classmates. The weekly, teacher-led topics and articles combined with student-led responses and projects provide a great balance of guidance and autonomy for the more advanced Spanish learner.