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“I actually cried with joy at reading this post and finding out that Google and the Google+ team actually care about all of their user base. Thank you very much for just thinking about us.”

Hangouts on Air (also known as HOAs) allows the entire world to watch your Hangout via a live broadcast to your Google+ stream using the power of YouTube. Hangouts on Air are recorded and saved to your YouTube channel automatically.

By Natascha Chtena November 22, 2015 5 Comments   .blog-spacer { display: none; } @media (max-width: 420px) { .blog-spacer { display: block; height:1px; clear:both; } }   googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("dfp-ad-story_level_pages"); }); Natascha Chtena is a PhD student in Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. You can follow her on Twitter @nataschachtena.       One of the challenges I face teaching a daily language class is finding novel and creative ways to maintain student interest throughout my lessons. One of my favorite teaching “tricks” is using music to motivate learning, improve concentration, create a sense of community and help my students absorb material.   Music is a wonderful tool to integrate into your teaching repertoire, especially if you are a foreign language teacher. It has a

The key is to not be too ambitious (unless of course you are teaching a language AND culture class) and to set realistic goals: one song one major point! I usually keep it to seven minutes max, which includes a song, a very short “lecture” and some time for student questions at the end.

The idea is simple: I want to host a public Hangout (so anyone can join) and people may come in and practice with me any one of the three languages I speak (Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and yes English too!).  I’m not counting Japanese yet because I still can’t really produce Japanese effectively.

Indeed, Twitter is where many educators have come together to formulate their professional learning networks (PLNs). But Twitter is still daunting to many people, and while Google Plus remains closed to the general public at th

The potentials for dropping in html objects such as quizzes that enable interaction can make static data much more dynamic. The ability to drop in multimedia and particularly video can lend more significance and impact to the information in the graphic.

So many opinions were out there on social media. I decided to focus this unit even more on this popular music event.

So many opinions were out there on social media. I decided to focus this unit even more on this popular music event.

Lots of comprehensible input there! They learned about new genres. Some said they added music that we learned about in class to their playlists. Love that!

One “choice” assignment I regularly offer students is letting them engage in a texting conversation in Spanish and send me the screenshots. This assignment seems more like fun than like work. Plus, students are able to use the language in an authentic, realistic way.

Connect students with another class and set up a virtual pen pal program. (Bonus points if you can arrange this with a class in a country in which the target language is spoken.)

If you’re using new technology, give it a trial run. It’s hard to imagine anything less engaging for students than sitting around waiting while you try to load that video over a poor internet connection or figure out all the glitches with that awesome online game.Do your trial and error ahead of time, before you’re demonstrating media to the class.

And one of the best ways to access them is with an innovative tool called FluentU.