Month: October 2023

Howdy Folks! How are you guys doing? It’s been a minute. Hope everything in your life is doing alright.

So today, we’re going to explore an app called Drops. I found this app in the google play store one day as I was browsing around. When I read the description, I noticed it was from the developers from Kahoot! Colour me intrigued indeed. I like Kahoot and how interactive it can be, especially in the classroom. I figure I’d give it a whirl.

I gotta be honest, it didn’t live up to my expectations. It felt like a downgraded Duolingo knockoff, where it focused primarily on vocabulary and phrases using visual aids. For me, it comes back to visual pattern recognition, which I find is great in the short term, not so much in the long term. I tend to associate the picture with the phrase, not the other way around. I’m not actually thinking about the phrase itself.

I wouldn’t necessarily count it out though. It may not work for me personally, but I can see it working really well for some individuals. If someone finds Mango (check out my previous post) a little dull but finds the flash card system effective, Drops is definitely the way to go. Another positive is that it covers a wide array of vocabulary topics (I think more than Mango) and includes modern niche topics like Diwali, Chinese Zodiac, Board game lingo, etc…

Unfortunately, the amount of content is somewhat limited without a premium subscription. The other drawback is that you can only spend a maximum of 5min/day.

At this point in time, I’m learning more from Duolingo and Mango than anything else so far.

What do you think of Drops? Have you ever tried it? Let me know your thoughts

Welcome back to another week of learning German,  where the title for this post sounds like a key phrase spies like Johnny English and Austin Powers use.

I mentioned in my first post that I wanted to find useful tools for 3 areas : Verbs, Vocabulary and Sentence structure. I successfully found a verb and sentence tool, as seen in my earlier posts. This week, I found the vocabulary tool.

Introducing Mango Languages!

One of the best things about this program/site right off the bat, is that it’s free! “But Josh, I’m combing through the website and its definitely not free!” A true and astute observation. However, I wanted to add more links to this post and that was one way to do it (sorry not sorry).

The way to access it for free is through a medium funded by the public…. the Regina Public library. Here’s the direct link.

Once you sign into your library account, BAM, its all in your fingertips. I would recommend creating an account with Mango as its a way to track your progress and also be able to login the app via your mobile device. You can choose to do German or another language.

Mango splits German into 5 units, with a varying amount of chapters, each with its own subject and vocabulary that its related to. Depending on where you’re at with the language or if you’re interested in a specific subject, you’re able to bounce around from subject to subject without any major barriers. You can jump from learning vocabulary related to numbers to shopping to airports and customs.

Another nice thing about this program is that it shows you both the singular and plural versions of the same word all in one. The lessons take you through the vocabulary step by step and asks you to recall earlier words and/or translations. All of this is through the age-old strategy for learning exams — flashcards.

This is the tool I wished was implemented in Duolingo. Instead of having to scramble through a Duolingo lesson or two to find a specific word you want to remember, you could interact with a bank of words the game has shown you. If this was implemented, it would allow people to have easy access to jump right back into lessons and succeed, instead of choosing to give up.

That’s it for this week! Hope you’re enjoying it so far and let me know if there is anything I can do to go further! And for fun, comment your favorite spy movie and/or favorite fruit!

Greetings!

It’s been another week and I have taken up the task of video editing! (Heads up, the video is way better than the last 2 posts).

I was always a bit apprehensive with video editing because I thought it was a time eater and too complicated to deal with. After looking at it for a couple of hours, it’s a lot simpler than I expected it. I’m no means an expert, but I can navigate it well enough to continue with these edits in the future (given enough time).

I used Microsoft ClipChamp for my video editing program.

When you open the program to create a new video, one of the first things to pop up is the option to import media, which is as simple as click-drag-drop. Once the video clip is in, you can add it to the template and edit it right away. You can splice sections you’re not happy with (like a long pause or rambling on too much) and add transitions afterwards (if applicable). You can add all kinds of other media (texts, images, gifs, music…) and move them wherever you want, both on the screen and the timeline. There is even an option for automatic closed captioning, which does a decent job of translating the audio. I thought about adding it to my video and editing the closed captioning, but the length of the video was pretty long already and I didn’t want to waste time (maybe next time). There is an option to pay premium to access more features and options, but the free version is good enough for me right now.

If you plan to use this tool in the future, I’d recommend creating short clips first and then edit them in ClipChamp, as opposed to making one long video. It saves a good chunk of time in the editing bay.

I can see myself using this tool as a future educator. I would primarily utilize it to create review videos for the class, in case they were struggling on a particular subject or if they happened to miss a class. It would allow me to assemble the material together in a concise and clear way, without droning on and repeating myself. On the SAMR model, this would likely be regarded as Augmentation.

For Substitution, a teacher could use it to create a funny video that has no educational purpose.

If students were assigned a project and wanted to utilize video to convey the material, ClipChamp would be useful to bring all the ideas together in a fun, creative way.   This tool could be an introduction to those unfamiliar with editing technology (Modification),

Finally, for redefinition, I could see a project based around news media outlets/game shows, in which a class-led dramatic scene is filmed and students have to find creative ways to edit the clips to convey certain emotional or knowledge based ideas. The projects could then be uploaded to Youtube for future grades or the public.

Without any further adieu, here’s this week’s progress!