International Days with a Tech Twist

I prolonged the idea of a new blog long enough. It's high time I start fresh new blog posts on teaching with technology.
And as this week was international week in my school I'm sharing some ideas on activities for international day with a tech twist. And though I'm starting something fresh and new like freelancing and blogging and trying to make a living of that, I'm still not ready to leave my comfort zone. And my comfort zone is one app the only app OneNote. 
Why would I merge a note taking app with an international day activities, is not even a dilemma. It's the how I do that what's important.

Calligraphy lesson 

I stumbled upon this idea as I was researching on activities for international day and I was sure I pocketed it but I later found out that I haven't and I apologize for not being able to link it to the original author. 

Anyway, the idea is to have your students teach each other some if not all the letters their alphabet. 

The draw tab of the OneNote app allows students to use multiple pens and pencils and scribble down some of the most challenging ones of their alphabet. 

Challenging for writing as well pronouncing. As they are producing handwritten letters students can use the audio recorder to record the sounds of each letter. And remember the lasso to convert your handwritten notes into text. Here is how ink to text works for OneNote. And I'm eager to see more languages since I teach over 40 nationalities. 

Tongue Twisters 

Teaching each other tongue twisters on our native language was the most fun I've had in class for a long long time. And it took a lot of effort and repetition to do so. Using OneNote app students were able to take audio notes of the tongue twisters so they could play and pause and learn as many tongue twister as they could. And on top of that we have a great selection of audio notes that would stay with us wherever we go and no matter how much we grow. 

Mini Language Lesson

And this is the point where teachers would get the why question raised. Why would you have a mini language lesson using a note taking app?

Well, so many reasons. First the ability to add not only text but also audio and video. Why not make it a video lesson with handwritten notes. 

And second most important reason the immersive reader. 

Students can write down simple dialogues in their native language and their partner would just use the immersive reader to have the text read aloud to him/her. 

 Do I need to mention the picture dictionary or you are already convinced?

Multilingual Story Telling 

There is an interesting site called Folding Story which reminds me of my childhood a lot. Our teacher had us create these kinds of stories on a piece of paper. We would write a sentence or two, fold it, pass it on and someone else would finish the story. Folding Story works the same way. The idea for the multilingual stories comes from both experiences. We used OneNote app, started a story and everyone thought of a way to continue but the text was on their native language. Since we use OneNote Class notebook the Collaboration space is as if it was just imagined for these kind of activities. The notebooks sync instantly and everyone works on their own device yet on the same page in the same notebook. 

Recipes 

And finally we talked about food and recipes and similarities and differences in our national cuisine.

 

And one of the easiest way of sharing a recipe is clipping it with the OneNote clipper.

Read you later.