Vamos a Darles Algo Duscutir: Art Competition Spurs Online Discussion for Spanish Students

In the article written by Allison Deluca and Besty Hoffman titled Vamos a Darles Algo Duscutir: Art Competition Spurs Online Discussion for Spanish Students they recall a way they brought technology into their Spanish III class for educational purposes. What they did at first did not work out too well as they found with just having students create post there was no depth and they would just post at the last minute without getting anything out of it. They soon realized that it they made it a competition on a subject they would get more in-depth responses from their students. Students had to write fact about the topic at hand which was a certain painting done by a Spanish painter. Students could challenge other students post by means of grammar and facts. They found that the post were much more articulate and sentence structure was improving. They could see the students being motivated by the competition. They said you could use free online discussion areas or you could use systems such as WebCT. I think this has been one of the best ways to to get a class to participate in an online discussion and actually get depth out of it. 

Food for Thought Questions

1. Would you recommend this for earlier classes such as Spanish I or II?

Yes I would but would not expect the discussion to be about in-depth things such as art. You could use things such as hobbies and thing about them or family and have the students challenge other grammar.

2. What if the school ratio for having online access at home was less than this schools being 96%?

I would try to talk to someone in one of our labs or library to see if my class could get an allotted amount of time sometime after school or during lunch so that even if students have rides after school to get they could still participate in the activity.