I have been reflecting on this activity all week. Other the teletransporter from Stark Trek (so I can beam my students to a specific Spanish-speaking area), I could not imagine the perfect teaching technology because it already exists in the cyberuniverse. For example, I thought about a tool to help my students interact with native speakers, and guess what, there is not one but multiple apps already for that. Today, one of my students just shared this one https://www.hellotalk.com/ in class. HelloTalk connects people who want to converse with speakers of other languages.

I thought about other potential tools for speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and the result was the same. There are already great tools to teach these skills. Some of them have been created by language teachers, like https://extemporeapp.com/. The challenge for me is not finding the perfect teaching technology, but access. While some wonderful tools are free (minus the ads), most of them involve a paid subscription. I understand that the companies need revenue to exist, but I do not feel that my students should pay the price tag. So here is my dilemma: how can I use these tools in my teaching without making my students pay for them?