Aufbruch

Aufbruch is the German word for departure. As I am packing for an early morning flight to Berlin with my 2 year old to surprise my dad for his 75th birthday, I am also looking at Bolt 101 as a departure point to new ideas and impulses to keep rethinking how to teach better and evolve in my thinking about technologies in Spanish instruction. 

There are a lot of content pieces available that claim to teach Spanish in "just a few minutes" a day (Rosetta Stone, I am looking at you). Colleagues are "learning German" using duolingo and other online tools, and yet, they seldom get past the vocab list-like memorization and recitation of grammar rules. But language is more than that. So much more than that. Language is a tool for communication between human beings, involving sounds and rules and words, yes: but also involving culture and history and art and wit and humor and gestures and touch and emotions. 

As I prepare for departure both in the very real sense of putting things into my suitcase and checking items necessary for travel off the list, I am looking forward to getting help packing my suitcase for the journey of including technologies to make my students' language journey a worthwhile one.