Author: nenson1z

My name is Zach Nenson. I was born here in Regina, Saskatchewan. I have lived here my hole life with majority of my family here who I am very close with. I attended W.F. Ready Elementary School and Balfour Collegiate High School. After high school I went on to University of Regina on a wrestling scholarship studying Kinesiology. I ended up dropping out after a year and decided to enter the work force. I started working as an electrician and obtained a journeyman ticket from Sask Polytechnic in Moose Jaw. After working as an electrician for about five years I realized it was something that I did not want to do for the rest of my life. It didn't give me the fulfilment I was looking for in a life long career. I currently am working as an educational assistant for Regina Public Schools. I have been doing this for about five years now. This is the main reason why I decided to get into Education. I found a real passion helping kids in the classroom. The satisfaction I get while seeing the progress these kids make throughout the year not only as a student but as an individual is something I will never get sick of seeing. Growing up with a mom who is an educator I've seen what a fun but challenging career like this can look like. In my spare time I enjoy spending it with family and friends. I have played all kinds of sports my whole life so any type of exercise I enjoy. The two sports I currently still play is soccer and golf. When I have time I really enjoy traveling as well. Right after high school I went to Thailand for three months where I didn't leave the beach. A few years later I went backpacking through South America for about six months. The memories and friends I met along the way are memories that I will never forget. I loved learning different types of cultures and customs that other countries had to offer. It has taught me many different life lessons as well as to be open minded while meeting people with different life styles than mine.

ChatGPT: My Personal Spanish Tutor

Hola mis amigos! ¿Cómo están?

(Hello my friends! How are you)

We are currently on week 6 of my journey of learning Spanish. I can honestly say that I am learning more than I ever thought I would. I am starting to become comfortable with saying full sentences, knowing common phrases, and being able to respond to questions. With the variety of exploring different online resources, I am benefitting from all the strengths each application has. This week I am focusing on using Artificial Intelligence to help me learn more Spanish.

ChatGPT Animation

With all the different AI’s out there, I decided to explore ChatGPT. Prior to exploring ChatGPT as a language learning tool I decided I would watch a short YouTube video explaining how to use the resource properly. I found this short video being extremely beneficial in how to navigate ChatGPT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mS1dqyUu0c

I found my progression of learning Spanish was expedited using ChatGPT. I started off by telling the AI that I was trying to learn Spanish and I wanted to work on real-life conversations. I also instructed the AI to correct any grammatical errors I had before responding to the conversation. This allowed me to be more comfortable while talking about any subject I chose.

The only thing I didn’t overly like was that I was not verbally communicating. While I was still speaking to myself as I was typing out something, it wasn’t the same as truly speaking. I also was reading the responses rather than listening to them. I find one of my biggest struggles while speaking to a native Spanish speaker is understanding what they are saying especially when they begin to speak quickly. This is something that ChatGPT did not assist with in any way. In addition to this, there was also no real structure to my learning.

Spanish phrases on ChatGPT

Overall, I really liked using the online resource as a tool to learn more Spanish. It gave me the opportunity to learn about anything I wanted to. This was beneficial because it allowed me to focus on conversations that fits my personality and something I will use in the future.

Has anyone used Artificial Intelligence to learn a new language. Comment down below!

See you all next week.

Zach

Navigating the Digital Jungle

Hi everyone.

I graduated high school in 2010. While internet and social media were present, it was nowhere near as big as it is now. However, I do recall talking about cyber safety in our schools. Much like sex, drugs, and alcohol, the teachers would often use the “fear” tactic while teaching the topic. We learned what NOT to do on the internet but never what TO do. While these videos did teach us what could happen in a worst-case scenario, I don’t believe this was not the most effective way to teach.

Picture of a "digital jungle".

Moving into my internship, I am planning to approach this topic using a different strategy. Looking at the 9 elements of digital citizenship, I plan on starting with digital communication. To navigate the big world of the internet, I believe that proper communication encourages students to treat others with respect even when one might disagree with someone else’s viewpoint or opinion. I believe this is not only a strong skill to have in the digital world, but also in real life. Teaching about proper communication, I do believe will have a positive affects on digital etiquette, digital rights and responsibilities, and digital health and wellness as well.

Digital compass

Another aspect of the 9 elements of digital citizenship I want to focus on is digital literacy. With so much false information out there, it is important for educators to explain what can and cannot be trusted. This is a skill that everyone needs to understand as we become more and more dependent as time goes on. With people posting false information for clout or views, many young people are falling victim in what they are saying. This can potentially lead to major problems. We must become proactive on the fact rather than reactive.

What do you all thing is the most important element of the 9 elements of digital citizenship? Let me know in the comments!

Zach

What Can’t YouTube Do?

Welcome back from break everyone!

This week in my quest to learn Spanish, I turned to YouTube as an online resource. YouTube has everything, right?

After doing some research on Google, I stubbled upon a YouTube page called, Butterfly Spanish. On this page, the lady named Ana has many different videos starting from a beginner level all the way to an advanced level. In addition, she also has specific videos such as vocabulary, conjugating verbs, adjectives, everyday sentences and phrases, comprehension and much more. Honestly, this has been my favourite online resource thus far. Let’s get into the pros and cons.

Pros:

First and foremost, I must talk about the accessibility of using YouTube. As many of you probably know, YouTube is an extremely user-friendly resource. On top of that, you can use it on any computer, tablet, or smartphone. Unless you annoyed over a 15 second add, you are not even required to pay for a subscription like many other online tools I have reviewed.

The second thing I want to talk about is the variety of content. This has been by far the most beneficial resource I used while learning Spanish. I can look up specific topics I want to learn. More specifically, I wanted to learn more real-life conversational phrases. This was perfect for that. It helped me expand my vocabulary and helped me with forming complete sentences.

YouTube is also great for the flexibility it gave me while watching videos. I was easily able to pause and rewind the video as well as add subtitles and slow down the video. This gave me time to improve pronunciation with ease. After a few hours of watching a variety of videos, I can happily say that this avenue has had the most progress throughout my learning journey.

Learn Spanish in 35 minutes: The 100+ everyday Spanish sentences you need to know! (youtube.com)

The link above is one of Ana’s videos from her channel “Butterfly Spanish “.

Cons:

Now time for the negatives. While I had a good idea of what I was wanting to learn, there was a lack of structured curriculum. With this sense of structure missing, it makes it challenging for learners to progress systematically from beginner to advanced levels. This would make the user have to plan and organize the route they are wanting to take in advance.

Overall, I would recommend YouTube to anyone who wants to learn a new language. The wide variety of videos combined with the accessibility is unmatched to YouTube’s competitors. I’m excited to continue to learn more of the Spanish language through YouTube!

Progress of Learning Spanish, With a Sprinkle of Canva.

Learning about The SAMR for Technology Integration has really made me ponder on the idea on how I can enhance my teaching practices through technology. I decided to focus on the resources Canva to capture my progress through this semester. More specifically, I decided to create a timeline to show my progress in my quest in learning Spanish.

While this may seem elementary to some, I have never used Canva to create anything. I thought this would be a good way to visually show you all my progress of what I have been learning. After watching a few short YouTube videos, I learned the basics of using Canva. To my surprise, this was much easier than what I was thinking. This was such a user-friendly application for people of all skill levels and has many premade templates to choose from.

Canva within the classroom is a great way to introduce the SAMR Technology Integration. The options for this application are endless. While I decided to create a timeline, students can show their learning in a variety of ways. Students can create videos, brochures, pictures, posters, infographics, and much more. For students who prefer to not write essay to portray their learnings, Canva can redefine how students express what they have learned.

For all the people who struggle using technology, try it out and tell me what you think!

Take a look my the timeline I created using Canva.

Zach

Exploring FluentU

I want to begin this blog by saying, learning a new language is extremely hard and frustrating at times. But I am trying my best to stick with it! I have recently semi given up on Duolingo. As mentioned in previous posts, outside of some vocabulary, I’m not learning a whole lot. I have also fully given up on Babbel, as my free trial ran out and was too cheap to pay for a subscription.

Logo for FluentU

This week I experimented with the app called FluentU. I am going to begin with the aspects a liked about FluentU. The first thing that stood out to me was their interactive approach to the learning of language. They use authentic Spanish videos, from movie clips to music videos and everything in between. It gets the learning away from the traditional “textbook” style of learning as the past two were mostly based around. This approach gave me a realistic picture of how people speak in everyday context. I found this helped me learn how words and phrases are used in real-life scenarios. These short video clips were also tailored to what videos I liked or disliked making FluentU more personalized to me. This was an underrated aspect that I did not think I was going to appreciate as much as I did. In addition to this personalized approach, FluentU also provides interactive quizzes and exercises to help with my understanding of vocabulary and grammar while keeping me engaged.

Now time to look at the negative FluentU has to offer. First and foremost, another paid subscription is needed! While it does offer a free 14-day trial, access to its full library of content requires a subscription. Not only is a paid subscription needed, but it is also a bit pricier than its competitors, Duolingo and Babbel. Outside of the price, one of the biggest things I noticed is that there is no real structure or progression path that the app follows. This almost makes me feel like I need to be using a different app to assist with this one which kind of defeats the purpose. Last thing, I find that the FluentU still has a few bugs to workout when it comes to technical glitches. In some cases, when rewinding certain video clips, the app would glitch, forcing me to shutdown the app and reopen it.

money

Overall, I found while using FluentU I learned more of real-life phrases and how to speak in proper slang while talking informally. However, once again I did not learn much sentence structure or grammar. Out of the three apps I have used so far, this would probably be my last choice.

Does anyone have anymore suggestions other than Duolingo, Babbel, or FluentU? If so, let me know!

Zach

Technology in the Classroom?

As we move forward in the rapidly changing world of technology, as educators, we must ask ourselves; should we utilize the new tool of technology with our students? Or is technology dumbing down our students?

Computer lab from the late 90's — What my computer lab looked like as a grade 8 student.

Going through elementary in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, in some form I heard these famous words from every teacher I had, “You need to know your multiplication facts! You’re not going to walk around with a calculator in your pocket all day now are you!?”

Oh, the irony that statement holds today. It’s just that, we have a whole computer with access to anything we could ever think of that fits into our pockets. So, what is the perfect balance with or without technology?

In my opinion, I do believe as educators we need to keep up with technology. Both teachers and students should know how to use technology efficiently. While some may view this as lazy, I believe if taught correctly, this can be very effective. For example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic within the education system these days, both in grade school and university. Some look at it as a form of plagiarism while some look at it as another online resource or search engine such as Google. If students learn how to properly utilize this resource in a way to assist in efficiency that stills holds the individual’s own thoughts and voice, then we should be teaching students how to prompt AI correctly to portray their own thoughts, voice, and beliefs.

Picture of Artificial Intelligence.

On the contrary, teaching students the foundations of subject areas are still essential. Students need to still be taught how to critically think for themselves while challenging what they have learned. This is where it gets tricky. With the use of technologies such as AI, this can very easily eliminate that critical thinking aspect that we strive for. So, if a teacher decides to use the tools in their classroom, we need to ensure we are not losing our voices while doing so.

What do you guys think, is using AI a form of cheating? Should we decrease the amount of technology that is being used in the classroom? Interested in hearing what you think!

See you next week!

Zach

Hola Mis Amigos (Hello My Friends)

This week in my journey to learning Spanish, I have continued to use the app Duolingo. As stated last week, this app is great for learning vocabulary, however in my opinion is not great for sentence structure or for one day being able to speak fluently. The application teaches non-practical phrases. For example, I now know how to say, “Where is the library” and “The cat drinks milk.” As you can see, these aren’t everyday phrases that a beginner of the language would say on a regular basis.

In addition to using Duolingo, I also incorporated the app Babbel into my repertoire. When it comes to practical conversations and phrases, Babbel is the opposite of Duolingo. The app emphasizes real-life situations, aiming to get learners speaking the language quickly. Phrases such as, “Where do you work?’ and “How old are you?” As you can see, phrases that you could potentially ask someone while meeting someone for the first time.

Babbel vs. Duolingo

The other thing that Babbel does that Duolingo does not is focus on verb conjugation and explaining grammar rules to improve sentence structure. This is exactly what I have been looking for in an app to improve my learning. I strongly feel that if I would continue to use this app on a regular basis, it would greatly improve my fluency in the language.

Now time to talk about the negatives of Babbel. I’m glad that I have some knowledge in the language prior to using it. The app does not overly prepare the user with basic vocabulary that Duolingo does. While the phrases are practical in everyday scenarios, the app is very fast paced, and a true beginner could get lost very easily. Lastly, to be a user of Babbel, you need to pay for a subscription. The prices vary for how long you pay for the subscription anywhere from $12 a month to $20 a month. I was able to sign up for a free trial period while experimenting with the app. As good as I found the app to be, being a fugal university student, I think I will be trying other apps out in the weeks to come.

Has anyone paid for a Babbel subscription? If so, was it worth it? Let me know and comment below.

The link below comes from the T.V. show called, “Community”. The main characters rap a short song in Spanish talking about libraries and moustaches, reminding me the odd words that Duolingo teaches their users. Enjoy!

Spanish Rap | Community (youtube.com)

Hasta luego (see you later)

Zach Nenson

Is Screen Time Good or Bad?

As a society, we are becoming more and more depend on technology. It could be from being on our laptops all day for work or from laying in bed until 2am scrolling on TikTok (which I assume is the problem for many). While technology can be a tool for many things, I believe that we are abusing our screen time in a negative way.

Personally, I am on my phone and laptop a little more than I would like to admit. I have a bad habit of just that, laying in bed until the late hours of night looking at meaningless content on social media. I mostly use Instagram and Snapchat. 99% of the time when I use these social media outlets, they are for leisure reasons and social interaction. The odd time I will be looking up informational video retaining on something I am trying to approve on.

TikTok

In regard to tools to assist with my academics and teaching, I tend to use technology quite a bit. This helps with organization, unit planning, resources for students and much more. I use many Google applications such as Google Drive, Google Classroom, and Google Docs. Theses are all resources that are user friendly for me and the students I teach. I have also recently started using different AI platforms to assist me in lesson and unit planning. When prompted correctly, I feel like this new technology can help teachers become more of an efficient teacher, freeing up more time to focus on individual students.

Overall, I feel like I could improve my screen time usage. I have no problem using technology to become more productive throughout the workday, however I could improve on my leisure time while using it. I don’t need to be staying up late just to be looking at Instagram reels. One way I could improve on this is by placing my phone in a different room than where I sleep. This would decrease the temptation when I am having troubles falling asleep.

Do you have any other suggestions? Let me know!

Until next time.

Zach Nenson

From Hola to Hablo

Welcome everyone!

Join me on my adventure as I dive into the world of learning Spanish.

Back in 2016, I spent roughly 5 months travelling through South America. Within that time, I traveled to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. I can honestly say this was the best time of my life. I was captivated by the beautiful culture in these Latin countries. This stemmed from how smooth and romantic the native language is, which is why I chose to learn Spanish through our semester in EDTC 300.

A photo of Machu Picchu taken by me in Peru.

As I did travel to Spanish speaking countries for 5 months, I did not learn as much Spanish as you would think, or that I was hoping for. As a solo traveler, I would often stay at popular hostels to meet other tourists from all around the world. As this was a great way to meet people, the default language we would always speak was English, hindering my learning of the native language. I would say I do know more than the average Joe but not as much as I would like to know. My vocabulary is decent, especially when it comes to a restaurant setting, as I needed to learn this quickly to be able to order food when I went out on my own. I also have a pretty strong understanding on how to conjugate verbs but could definitely improve on that area as well. Where I lack is forming fluent sentences. When I attempted to speak Spanish, most locals had an idea of what I was trying to say because I could piece together a few words, however I was unable to make them flow smoothly into a sentence. I also found that the pronunciation on many worlds could use some work.

A picture of me looking onto the city of Quito, Ecuador after hiking a volcano.

Throughout the last couple of years, I have used the app called Duolingo. As I have used this in the past, I don’t think I have ever been overly consistent while using it. Once again, I found this app was great for the vocabulary aspect but not great from sentence structure. Maybe as I get further into the app, this would change. I have also taken one Spanish class here at the University of Regina. Outside of that, I haven’t really explored any other resources to assist me in learning the language. Throughout this semester, I am hoping to not only become a more consistent user on Duolingo but am also eager to find other online resources that can assist in my learning. As of now, I am unsure in what resources I am going to explore but will keep you all posted in the up coming weeks! If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

Until next week, bye.