Another academic interest of mine, besides film in the Spanish classroom, is education technology. I am constantly trying out a new tool or piloting a new app, and encouraging my students to do the same. One of my more recent projects has been student blogging, and last semester I incorporated two different blogging projects into one of my advanced Spanish classes.
This course's focus was Latin American history and culture, from pre-Colombian indigenous cultures to present day and, with so much information to include in just one semester, how to include both breadth and depth in the course was indeed a challenge. My solution was blogging. Each student was involved in two blogging projects: one individual project focused on one specific country in Latin America and a group project focused on a particular cultural project. Students had a number of cultural topics to choose from, including sports, gastronomy, holidays, literature, cinema, etc. Based on both my observations and student evaluations, the blogs were overall a great tool to allow students to dive deeply into two particular topics (their specific country and their cultural aspect) while the rest of the coursework focused on broader themes.
I am talking about this project here in my film blog because the group of 3 students who hosted the cultural blog on Latin American Cinema produced a great resource that deserves to be shared with other students and with educators. These three students (one senior, one junior, and one sophomore) presented their blog at our university's research day, and have given their permission for me to share their blog with my readers. Here it is.
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