This is me, panning for gold.

In my summer externship, I am researching resources that are online that can be tagged as quality Spanish resources for Home Base’s World Language resources. Although click, copy and paste are not exciting activities for physical or mental challenges, the search for the resources is a benefit to me as a Spanish teacher and as a world languages curriculum coordinator. How often do you have the luxury to spend hours on end digging for great online resources?

I specifically am searching for resources that are intermediate low and above in terms of linguistic sophistication. The resources I find are expected to support the proficiency goals for world language teachers.

It is trite and an understatement to say that the internet is vast and rich in resources. For some of us going online to look for a teaching reference is a journey into the cyber void. We going looking for X and come home with alphabet soup. Sometimes X has been found. Other times X was forgotten as soon as we hit upon a great discovery. Given the obligation to search for valuable tools that are specific to Intermediate Spanish language learners forces me to focus and avoid the other enticing things out there for Chinese, French, German and novice level Spanish learners. Focus is good.

In essence, because I am not a classroom teacher,  don’t have a classroom curriculum but I do support teachers of Spanish 3 and above in my district. I know their curriculum and finding resources that can help them supports ‘my classroom’ of teachers. Entering resources in Home Base will hopefully benefit many teachers of Spanish 3 and above in North Carolina.

Sometimes hours go by mining for gold on the internet without finding but a few pebbles of gold. Then! Eureka! GOLD! I find four, six, ten resources to tag with ‘metadata’ so that they can be searched for, implemented, later rated by NC teachers, etc. What is good for Home Base is good for me and the teachers I support. Sometimes I tweet about the discovery (@PollyGlotPress). Other times, I enter a link into my next district digital newsletter for world language teachers (www.polyglotpress.blogspot.com).

So, as the educational listservs (eSchoolNews, ASCD, etc.) email regularly about teachers using technology to engage students and classes gradually becoming more and more ‘blended’, I am finding tangible intermediate level Spanish resources that will benefit that shift. And, the frosting on that cake is that this time being tied to a chair to click, copy and paste helps me dig deeper into national and international resources. Great discoveries have been made just from being able to mine deeper and for longer than ever before.

How about you? Finding any gold in them hills?