Señora Cummins' Reflections

I've chosen the OER textbook going to use as the bones of my 1411 class.  I have it in an editable format.  My next step is to present it to my dept chair.  After that I present it to the dean. Today I had an epiphany:  I can use my creativity to truly make this class fit the needs of the students I teach.  My son made a great recommendation:  teach the class 1 way for students who just need 1 semester of Spanish and teach it a different way to those who will continue on for another semester.  In a perfect world that would be something to explore, but not for now. Eventually I want our campus to offer conversational Spanish which is a 3 hr credit instead of a 4 hr credit, but I want to get this new curriculum up and going before I tackle that task. For now, I can look at the concepts that typically cause the most trouble for students in my 1411 and do what I can to help make those pinch points less tricky.  One thing I'm addressing is that the las...

 As I'm working with a new text I'm at this place wondering how much practice is needed for each concept.  How much has to be graded? I'm reminded of the concept of differentiation.  Not all concepts are equal.  Some require only memorization (vocab terms) while others require understanding how to do something and being able to apply it. This is the part of teaching I get excited about.  When I was still an adjunct a student told me she really liked that I could make something hard feel simple.  (She had taken French in high school and was brand new to Spanish).  Yes.  I can see the steps involved in mastering concepts and break them down into pieces. I'm realizing that by taking the time to truly redesign my 1411 I can take the time to view the steps in what students learn and build in practice sufficient for the complexity of each task.  It doesn't need to be a 1 size fits all kind of thing for each chapter or section.  I have the beau...

 Yesterday I previewed 2 OER textbooks for Spanish.  Both could work well for my 1411 and 1412 sections.  One I really liked--it was written for the flipped classroom model and I could see it working very well for a hybrid class.  It could also work for an online class, but the students would have to do weekly online chats.  Possible and probably an excellent idea from a pedagogical standpoint. This is all very different than what I currently have.  Currently, they pay $139 and with it they get a phenomenal curriculum with tons of bells and whistles.  The assignments are all online and 98% auto-graded by the Connect robot. If I go to the OER text that I like I will have to rethink how they practice the material.  I'm wondering how much practice is enough?  Could I make Quizlet graded? I love the thought of making the class look like this: 1-learn it.  (Read, take notes, memorize--marinate in the information--to get a really good understa...

 When I tell non-teaching friends that there is this concept of OER out there in which students can use a textbook for free the reaction is logical:  why don't you do this? Well, it's a lot of work.  My husband is not on board with OER because his concern is that when something doesn't work who is the tech support?  Currently, when something at McGraw-Hill doesn't work there is a whole team that I can contact.  They are very good at fixing what isn't working. I've begun searching for Spanish material to use and I'm overwhelmed.  There's a lot out there and how will I really know it's good until I jump completely in? This semester I'm noticing that the worst "pinch points" in my classes (especially in my online sections) are tech issues due to the complexity of using my online curriculum.  I can't help but think if I could just simplify the tech of my they have to do life would be better. It would be less stressful.  They have to do ...