Month: December 2020

EdTech Inquiry Draft

Topic: Using Quizlet in a Core French or French Immersion Classroom

Group Members: Evan & Pamela

 

Quizlet: https://quizlet.com 

Company Instagram Handle: https://www.instagram.com/quizlet/ 

 

Our Inquiry Question is: 

 

How can Quizlet be used as a platform for creating resources for studying French and other languages? Quizlet has the potential to be a highly accessible resource, both in terms of content simplicity, technical simplicity and affordability (free). 

https://unsplash.com/photos/qAriosuB-lY 

 

How did Quizlet come about? 

 

The story of Quizlet begins with Andrew Sutherland, a 15-year-old high school student studying for a French exam in Albany, California. He had a whopping 111 new vocabulary words to learn. To accomplish this, he decided to create a software program. Quizlet was born. Flash forward two years and Andrew launched his creation on the world wide web, making him a young entrepreneur. The site went public on January 17th, 2007. 

 

Put this YouTube video in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilSPvgo0K38 

 

What is Quizlet?

 

At its core, Quizlet is a memorization tool. Users create flashcards with a specific term on one side and a definition on the other. The website based application also allows you to insert images into your flashcards. Additionally, it should be noted that there are numerous “modes” that you can choose from to do your studying. These modes are: “Flashcards”, “Gravity”, “Write”, “Speller”, “Match” and “Live”. Quizlet’s Live mode in particular has interesting applications that could be explored in a foreign language classroom.

 

Quizlet can be used on a computer, a tablet or on a phone. It is also free to play and create quizzes on Quizlet. You can also choose to upgrade to Quizlet teacher. This allows you to create multiple choice questions, format your text, remove all ads and track your students’ progress. Click here to learn more about Quizlet Teacher. They are having a sale right now for 40% off, making it only $3/month. 

 

Here is a How-To Video on Quizlet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo6ITr9yt4Y 

 

Quizlet has the following advantages:

1. It has built in, multilingual vocabulary for instant translation and autocomplete. As we wrote flashcards for French vocabulary, options for French words would pop up. This has the potential to save a lot of time, especially for someone who is designing study resources for French but is not 100% fluent.
2. The combination of several styles of resource and easy entry of content makes it highly customizable. Creating resources for a wide range of subjects and audiences will therefore be a fairly efficient process.
3. Using the Quizlet Live game, you can incorporate cooperative work and team-building into your French class. This can be a fun way to allow students to learn from each other’s knowledge and also build camaraderie between class members.
4. Quizlet’s simple, user-friendly format provides a quick and easy way for students to prepare for tests. 

 

Quizlet has the following disadvantages/concerns:

1. The ads can be distracting. However, this is an essentially unavoidable feature of most free to use online resources, and most students probably have enough experience with such ads that they will have learned to ignore them.
2. Students may learn misinformation. There is not really a built-in content control mechanism, so any mistakes made by people creating resources could be passed on to learners.
3. Students may use Quizlet to cheat. Any Quizlet-based assessment may be vulnerable to students accessing the answers and cheating on tests.

 

To avoid the pitfalls of disadvantage 2, A teacher could partner with another teacher to proofread teacher-made study aids, and offer to approve resources made by students to improve their accuracy as well. To avoid the drawbacks of disadvantage 3, teachers can use Quizlet exclusively for teaching and formative assessment purposes, leaving the summative assessment and final marks to other, less vulnerable options.

 

Video on How to Use Quizlet Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt8BoEoZDKQ 

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We made 4 sets of Quizlet cards. These are targeted towards grade 9 Core French.

 

Food Words: English to French: https://quizlet.com/ca/551350671/foods-in-french-flash-cards/

 

Conjugation of “Regarder”: https://quizlet.com/551365386/flashcards

 

Occupations: https://quizlet.com/_94f2lj?x=1jqt&i=3923ov 

 

Fill-in-the-Blank Sentences: https://quizlet.com/_94o9rg?x=1qqt&i=3923ov (some of these may be a bit more advanced for grade 9 students)

 

Works Cited

 

Stauffer, B. (2019, July 23) The Pros and Cons of Using Quizlet. Applied Educational Systems https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/quizlet-pros-cons

 

Wolff, G. (2016, November/December). Quizlet Live: The Game Now Taking the World By Storm. The Language Teacher, 40(6), 25-27. Retrieved from https://jalt-publications.org/sites/default/files/pdf/the_language_teacher/40.6tlt.pdf#page=27 

 

Wright, B.A. (2016). Transforming Language Learning with Quizlet. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), Transformation in language education. Tokyo: JALT.

 

Time to finally tackle playing a complete song! The song in question is “Juanita”, a Spanish song that is the second exercise in my piano learning book. It has a catchy tune, and I have gotten quite good at playing the two parts separately, as you can see:

 

So, I should just be able to put them together, right? Well, not so fast. At first, I couldn’t seem to get it at all. However, I then realized that I should stop trying to combine the left and right hand parts at full tempo right away. After countless runs through it, I still could only manage to butcher it in very uneven slow-motion:

It appears that I have a lot more practice ahead of me to master the skill of playing different things with my two hands at the same time. That’s OK, though, as being able to stumble through at slow motion makes the whole thing seem not impossible. Continuing with my piano practice may be one of the things I do during a month-long winter break in which my social and other leisure activity options could be severely limited by COVID lockdown.

Overall, from this project I learned that putting learning and blogging about it off and doing binge catch-up was probably less effective and definitely more stressful than diligently staying on or ahead of schedule from day one. I am going to chalk that up to returning to full-time school for the first time in years during a pandemic and having to adjust to online instruction. I am no in a position to enter next semester feeling focused, motivated and decidedly not overwhelmed!