Social Networking Spanish Style

The web- based community that I participated in this semester was Teachers.Net a Spanish Teachers Chatboard. On a number of occasions I sought the advice of others in the units that I was planning. In particular other teachers helped me to understand more fully the differences between the words “por” and “para” both of which technically mean “for” and on the differences in the schedules between Latin America, Spain, and the United States. I took the ideas that they offered and adapted them to fit the needs of my class.

In addition, I responded to posts when I felt like I had strong contributions to make. I advised a teacher about how to create Spanish Sub Plans for non-Spanish speaking subsitutes (I knew of a good book) and this in turn started an email correspondence between us.

However, more helpful to me than participating in the chatboard was reading the posts of the other teachers. I made it a point to visit the site at least once a week and I spent hours pouring over posts and looking at the recommendations of others in my profession. There are constant debates about grammar and vocabulary rules that I had frequently wondered about but had no one to talk to about them. Also, other teachers provided me with other links to look at and the reflexive power point I am using in my Teacher Work Sample came from this site. I also have joined Yahoo Groups for Spanish Teachers based on a recommendation from this site and used an awesome and highly esteemed video from YouTube on the day before Valentines Day to have my students practice listening to Spanish vocabulary they know.

This assignment is over now but I plan on continuing to use this and other sites I found through Teacher.Net’s forum in years to come.