Last day reflection

In our last lesson we learned about VIRTUAL PLATFORMS.
First of all we were introduced to SurveyMonkey, a web place where you can create surveys, share them and analize the results. Surveys in education are a very useful tools, even more if you are in the second or the third cycle because pupils of that age manage the computer and the internet resources better.
How patient are you? --> My personal survey

Then we visited Edmodo, a page where you can manage different lessons and classroom groups using a computer. You can create a site shared with one group of students, send them homework, announcements, tests, surveys, etc. It's like conducting a lesson in a classroom, but using your computer. The option that I liked the most is the chance of uploading some bibliography/materials to each group, and the chance of communicating with the families through Edmodo.

Final entry

This final entry will compilate my opinions and suggestions for the subject: New Technologies applied in Primary Education, which I have been taught at the UPNA during the seventh semester of the degree.
First of all, I would like to say that this subject has been really interesting and formative for me as a Primary Education teacher because now I am able to use some digital tools and devices that I wasn't before, such as: interactive whiteboards, applications like Edmodo or Podomatic, spreadsheets... From now on I will have a wide range of internet and educational resources to experiment with and to improve my teaching skills for becoming a digital and updated teacher.
This subject has been enriched by the presence of the practicum period, in which we have had the oportunity to put the things we have learnt in the university into practice. We have seen the effects of the usage of some devices in real life, with students, and also, we have discovered new usages of them actively.
The problem of receiving the lessons before and after the internship is that we have felt a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of homework we had to accomplish by the time we came back at the university, because we (my group) had to have many appointments to fulfill the activities that had to be done by the end of the internship and that minimized the time we had to finish the rest of the subjects' tasks.
My suggestion is that this subject should be taught before we do our internship period as we have the chance to put into practice everything we have learnt and reflect deeply about it. The contents are well-chosen but some of them have become a bit repetitive, as using blogs, due to the fact that we had already used them previously. Nonetheless, I strongly support the presence of two important contents taught in this matter: subtitles edition (Amara, Dotsub...) and podcasts (Podomatic). They were a breath of fresh air to me since I had never heard about them and I liked them so much.

Initial and final PLE

This is my first PLE with the apps and web pages that I used at the beginning of the course: 

And this is the PLE that represents my current internet activity:

Reflection about using rubrics in education

One day we were talking about using rubrics in education. Personally, I think a rubric is a very useful tool for children and teachers for grading their work: they are interesting for teachers because rubrics help them evaluate their own work and the students' learning process, but they are essential for children (even more if rubrics are presented AT THE BEGINNING OF THE LESSON) because pupils can see what they need to do to get the highest mark. 
The concept of rubric is new to me, I have never used a rubric as a student neither in Primary Education nor in Secondary Education, but I have been presented a rubric twice or three times here in the university and in the way rubrics have to be presented, before I started working, so that I could see how I were going to be evaluated. 
I believe that rubrics fit very well with projects or activities based on constructivism but not so well with traditional activities, that's why the usage of rubrics in education is limited to the methodology that is present in the school we are working. 
All in all, I think this is a good tool for self-assessment, group assessment (teachers and students) and for grading (for teachers), and I would be delighted if I have the opportunity to use them in my future career. 

Podcast

 Families and jobs

This link drives you to my lesson 1 podcast about families and jobs. It is an exercise of listening and repeat for children from 7 to 8 years old, but it could also be presented during all the English formation.

 

Students will have to create a short story about the characters presented in the previous podcast doing different jobs. Then they will have to record themselves and upload their podcasts in podomatic.

Reflection journal 6

9/12/2014

This week we have been assigned to complete a story in wikispaces. There have been given two sentences: the introduction and the conclusion and, our group, have had to complete it activating our imagination and demonstrating our writing capacities. I like the activity a lot because it is not a simple writing activity in which you have to introduce the studied vocabulary, it is a collaborative story (all members of the group have to participate in the composition).


Personally, I think that wikis are an useful collaborative tool for schools because evaluating with wikis is very simple. Teachers may see how many people have participated in the composition and in what way (if their writing abilities are high or low).

I have just used wikis as a student twice: the first time in Bachillerato and the second one at the university. In Bachillerato, we used the classroom wiki for the subject of “Lengua Castellana y Literatura”, concretely for analyzing text typologies and for writing critical comments (that two activities were essential for passing the subject and also for “Selectividad”). At the university, we have been assigned various activities to be done with wikis in the subject of New Technologies.

11/12/2014

We have designed some tasks that have to be done with the classroom wiki:

1. Students have to write a story about the Middle Ages in small groups, and then upload it to the wiki.

2.       In pairs, each student writes a riddle and their partners must guess the answer. Later, each pair has to upload the riddles to the wiki, without the answers, so that the rest of their classmates can try to solve them at home if they want to.

3.    The teacher uploads a comic cartoon with empty bubbles, which students have to complete individually by embedding speech. In the end, they upload their productions to the wiki.

Reflection journal 7

16/12/2014

Today we have been talking about the usage of dropbox with collaborative purposes. We have learnt how to upload a folder in the classroom shared one. We have had problems for accessing the Dropbox webpage at the university because of the web collapse.  We have found that it is impossible to introduced a shared document inside a shared folder unless you have permissions to do that. 

Next, we have been introduced to a webpage created for uploading podcasts, which is called Podomatic. We have visited the different spaces available and, we have found that this is a very important tool for people that is willing to teach something or to be connected with someone showing their tastes or creations. It is also really important for "digital teachers", who can produce materials, upload them in the net and share them with their students that then will be able to practice English wherever they are and acquire digital competences at the same time. 

18/12/2014

We have created our first podcast using Audacity and uploading it into Podomatic, a place where people can drag their productions and publish them with many purposes: education, entertainment, business... Ours are aimed at teaching English as a foreign language in Primary Education or at using English as a vehicle in CLIL classrooms. 

Once we have done the exercise of podcasting, we have been introduced to the usage of excel spreadsheets for grading. I like using Excel for that kind of things because as soon as you understand how to operate with formulas, calculating the grades in Excel is really simple. It saves a lot of time and the only tool you may use to work with Excel spreadsheets is a computer with the programme installed. Although, there are similar tools on the web such as: google spreadsheets, OpenOffice Calc... 

All the students have completed the spreadsheet with the information detailed in the New Technologies Course Notes and this is the result: