Tool: Google Sites - For teaching about the subjunctive with adjective clauses, I had my students create want adds for a varitey of things: automobiles, furniture, cell phones, video games, etc. I set up a template Google Site and added all the categories that I could think of that would appear in the want ads or on Craig's List. The site was called "Señora's Site", named after the famous "Craig's List" of which most students are pretty familiar with. In today's day and age a large number of people utilize sites like Ebay or Craig's List to look for or sell items. Wanting students to practice a real life skill/task and due to the fact we were studying subjunctive with adjective clauses, I had my students write an add for an item or service that they were looking/searching for.
Results/Reflection: The activity worked pretty well, but there are some changes I will make for the future. The main problem that we encountered was that unlike Google Docs only one student can be typing on a specific Google Sites web page at one time. Everyone can be on the same Google Site and on different pages, but 2 people on the same page and one person's work will get deleted. So for next time, I will need to make sure that I have a seperate page within the Google site for each student in the class. On a bright note, this school year our district is pilotoing Google apps and all of my students already had accounts set up before we started, which was a real time saver and made it much more user friendly for the students. If your school does not have Google Apps, you can always create a free account for the class and have everyone log in with the same username and password. You can't track everyone's work, but it saves a lot of time and has worked well for me in the past.
Creating a 21st Century Learning Environment - Reflections on Tools, Resources, and Strategies
