Activity 14

Digital Tools for Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction I viewed 2 sessions; one presented by Susan Oxnevad on developing knowledge about vocabulary which I thought would give me insights and tools to be used in the classroom. As a second language teacher, I am always looking for ways to increase the vocabulary input for my students. In this session Susan covered the 3 tiers addressing the common core standards/ shift 6 and shared tools that help construct vocabulary knowledge. Among the easy to use tools presented there were Wallwisher, Google docs, Instagrok, flashcard stash, vocab grabber, wordle and lingro. Of all the sites mentioned, I could see using Wordle because it highlights the vocabulary words identify in tier 2 which include the more sophisticated words that are used with high frequency. Virtual Worlds for Learning and Teaching: Power Examples to Get You Thinking The second presentation was given by Scott Merrick on virtual world learning environments and included second language leaning. This was very informative and had tons of information from various programs that are currently pursuing virtual world teaching/learning. This is something that I have been researching and looking in to integrating in my profession but I had not found the way to get started as it is pretty innovative. I plan to continue to research the sites provided during this conference and contact the presenter. I am extremely excited to have found this.