for teachers who would like to build a digital portfolio - LinguaFolio is a good online app to do this - and here is set of free, online modules to teach you how to do it.
Little is known about the population of educators who teach online, especially with relationship to preparation from their teacher education programs. This article discusses the results of a national survey of K-12 online teachers from across the nation to ascertain how prepared they felt they were with regard to three key areas: technology, pedagogy, and content, including combinations of these domains, as described by the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Overall, K-12 online teachers indicated that they felt the most prepared in the areas of pedagogy, content, and pedagogical content. They felt least prepared in the areas of technology, including technological pedagogical knowledge, technological content knowledge, and technological pedagogical content knowledge. Implications for the field of teacher education are discussed, including the need to more fully integrate technology within the coursework and field experiences of teacher candidates, and the need to create courses, or specific modules within existing courses, to address topics of importance to virtual teaching.
search for existing activities or create your own using over 12 templates. All can then be linked or embedded on a webpage. Instructions in multiple languages
Research has shown that CMC:
can help increase students' motivation to learn the foreign language,
lower their anxiety,
increase their fluency in the target language,
lead to improved intercultural competence and democratize classroom communication.
I agree with this author's idea. In my teaching experience using CMC to teach language, I can notice my students' progress i the target language. They express their motivation and even introvert students are more open to share their ideas.
Keep in mind that students who study languages with different orthographies may encounter specific difficulties during CMC sessions. Be prepared with creative solutions, such as suggesting computers and keyboards that accommodate the characters your students need.
The author says that CMC helps in all of these areas, but doesn't provide any information about his sources. I think this shows the value of including links to other websites in blog posts about education!
A "text" isn't limited to something written down. A text can be a film, an artifact, anything in a language and culture that conveys meaning.
Created texts have long dominated the materials used in language classrooms. But increasingly, educators are coming to understand the need to bring more authentic texts into the learning environment.
"Authentic" appears to mean: naturally produced by authentic source for communication in a native setting. What concerns me is that the call for "authentic" dates back to perhaps 20 years ago? We are still claiming it is important, yet we scaffold authentic text often to the point that they loose their intrinsic challenge.