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: 

TASKS (GA1)

My group were told to create four tasks filled with activities that include at least four different ICTs, one rubric and one excel grid. 

These are the resulting tasks:

1) CREATIVE WRITING TASK

ACT.1 : Students will create a story. With this purpose, they will think about the main characteristics of their story: main characters, setting, time, and the general idea for each one of the parts that a story should have. With this purpose, they will fulfill a table using Microsoft Word.

Characters (who are the most important people that appear in the story?)
Setting (where does your story take place?)
Time (when does your story happen?)
Beginning (presentation of the characters, setting and time, as well as of a problem)
Middle part (how the problem evolves)
Ending (how the problem is solved)

ACT.2: The students will go to StoryJumper in order to write their final story.

 Once they’ve finished, they will copy the code given for sharing the story in a site and they will post them in the blog of the class, so that the teacher can embed them there later.

ACT.3: 1)      The pupils will have to rethink their stories as a comic. They will enter Pixton and try the free trial to create it.

ACT. 4: The children will create a poem about whatever they want. The poem will have at least four paragraphs of four verses each, with a consonant rhyme. In order to facilitate them the task, they will use the website “Rhymebrain” (http://rhymebrain.com/en) to find words that rhyme with others. They will write the poem in a Word document. Later, each student will read out loud his/her poem and they will vote for the best, which will be uploaded to the blog.

Once upon a time, there was a farmer.

He had lots of pigs but he wasn’t rich.

But the King planned a feast for that summer,

and he robbed his pigs to have enough meat.

Then the poor farmer, who was called Justin

became angry and went to the castle.

He found out of there two friends, who told him

“They won’t let you in, you’re a vassal”

But he entered and talked to the king.

as angry as he was, nobody could

stop him, and thus the king ordered to bring

Justin’s fat pigs, that with him since then stood.

2) MATH TASK

ACT.1: 1.      In groups of four people, measure the classroom and the objects, and complete the table below in an excel sheet.

ACT. 2: Create a graph with http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/graphing/classic/. Compare the areas of the various objects when using different measuring tools.

ACT. 3: 2.      Create a plan for the classroom using Floorplanner. Include all the objects in their correct places in it. http://es.floorplanner.com/demo#assets

ACT. 4: Create with Geogebra a new carpet for the floor made with:

1.    2 metres wide squares

2.    2 metres wide regular triangles

            ¿How many of them do we need to cover all the carpet?

Solve the problem and compare your result with the picture you made. 

3) GEOGRAPHY TASK

ACT. 1: Students have to go to this webpage game: http://online.seterra.net/en/ex/86

They have to click on the correct autonomous communities. 

ACT. 2: Students have to surf this webpage: http://www.elabueloeduca.com/aprender_e/geografia/autonomias/autonomias.html#cabecera

They will find some theory about the autonomous communities and their provinces in Spain and then, they will have to play the four games in the left column.

ACT.3: Students will have to open Google Earth and look for the geographic coordinates of the following capitals:

• Pamplona
• Logroño
• San Sebastián
• Bilbao
• Zaragoza
• Vitoria
• Cartagena
• Mérida
• Santiago

ACT. 4: Students will choose the capital they like the most and they will select some pictures about it in Google Images. Next, they will have to create a collage in this webpage: http://www.kizoa.es/. They have to create an account previously.

Then, they will upload their collages to the classroom blog.

4) SCIENCES TASK

ACT. 1: Students have to click on the HotPotatoes reading activity, where they have to read the fable and answer the questions.

ACT. 2: Fill-in-the-gap's activity about the fable read before.

ACT.3: Create a mindmap through Bubbl about lions. Students have to search for information in the Internet about them, select the relevant information and reproduce it into the map.

ACT.4: Students upload the informaiton about lions into their blogs using Blogger. 

Activities will be evaluated with a rubric

Califications will be processed using Microsoft Excel

Reflection journal 5

02/12/2014

Today we have retaken the New Technologies lessons since we finished our internship stays. We have been remembering the objectives of the subject, the activities we needed to have done at the end of the practicum and the activities we have to finish at the end of the course.

We also have been introduced to the wikis, a collaborative technology available in the Internet. I have designed one in Wikispaces: YouShallNotPassAgain. I have posted a page (with no relevant information, just for practicing uploading pages into the wiki) and everybody has sent an invitation to the teacher's wiki in order to be editors of his.

04/12/2014

This morning one group has presented the topic of "Usage of Whiteboards or Smartboards in Primary Education", which has been really interesting. I've been using a smartboard during my internship period and I can assure that they are very innovative, easy to use (when you get used to working with them, of course) and they are incredibly motivating for kids because they receive a double-perspective input: written content and visual content (which I think it means double reinforcement that increases reception). 

Next we have presented our tasks made using whiteboard. Our was about the topic of plants: photosynthesis and nourrishment. 

The first activity of the task was a webquiz that activates prior knowledge. 

The second activity was a visit to the webpage:
http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/science_up_close/213/deploy/interface.html
Where students have to underline (using the whiteboard stylus) the important or key words and, then, they have to write them down in a piece of paper.

In the third and last activity, students have to fill a mindmap in with the words that they have already written down. This mindmap has been done in Popplet.

Report of ICT used in the school I did the intership

I did the intership in the Public School Cardenal Ilundain, from Pamplona. That school was very interested in new technologies and they were implemented in every task or activity. The most usual devices that teachers used were: the interactive whiteboard, youtube videos and songs, powerpoint slices and word processors (excel, word...). My tutor didn't use the traditional blackboard for any activity (unless the whiteboard doesn't work) because it was more useful for activity corrections, explanations and, of course, because it was more visual and easy to use. There, she played youtube videos or songs that were suitable for complementing the grammar structures or the vocabulary she wanted to work with. Slide presentations helped her to make the content more visual for the students. 

Outside classroom, the tutor used a webpage shared with the rest of the teachers (Wikispaces) of the same grade, where they uploaded the week programmations in order to make clear what they were going to see in the following days and to record the activities they did for the following years. She searched on the Internet some materials to present to the classroom (EslEnglish, English Council webpage, Mes-English...) such as: worksheets, certificates, games, listening/reading activities... She also used Gmail, Google Docs and the wiki to be in contact with the school's staff and the students' families.

She used Google Docs and word processors for organizational purposes. Google Docs (Google Drive) is a good tool for saving school's data (assessment, tasks that she wanted to do, assignments, circulars...) the week by week programming, and a calendar with special events. That programme includes its own word processors, it has an automatic data saving and it also liberates teachers for bringing to class all of these folders full of papers and that mountain of sheets and notebooks in the office. Teachers are accessible to that information just in one click. 

Sometimes, my tutor got stuck when she couldn't find one video that worked with a specific content she wanted to introduce to the students because it wasn't subtitled or the lyrics didn't appear. That problem could be deleted, for example, by the usage of video and music editors like moviemaker, a programme where you can subtitle a video you have downloaded. Personally, I would recommend her to use online subtitlers as amara, opensubtitles, dotsub, etc. Dotsub is a programme where you can upload a video and edit the subtitles professionally, it helps you to take control of the time of the captations to have a perfect subtitling result. 

According to the Reading about the use of ICT in Spain, since Escuela 2.0 was implemented in schools, some of them have the privilege of couting with one interactive whiteboard and wireless connection in each classroom. It says that ICT are present in the 65% of the curriculum, which means that more than the half of the tasks that have to be done in class should be aimed at acquiring the digital competence. I didn't see that accomplished during my internship period: activities were paper or activity-based, the teacher was the only one who used the smartboard and none of the activities were designed to be done using a computer. Students can reach (in a very limited way) the digital competence by going to the computers room once a week. 

Reflection journal 4

29/10/2014

This morning we have presented further mindmap tools for teachers. They are a lot and most of them are available on the Internet and free, which means that there's no excuse for teachers to use them as much as they can. We have selected "Mindmup" and "LucidChart" that, unfortunately, aren't free. 

Mindmup is a free mind mapping tool that can be used online, with Google Drive, and offline on your desktop. It works like most mind mapping tools in that you can create a central idea and add child and sibling nodes all over a blank canvas (each nodes can contain text and links). You can save it to Google Drive, save it to your desktop, or publish it online. If you publish it online, you can grab an embed code for it to post it in a blog post or webpage. 

Lucidchart offers a simple drag and drop interface for creating flow charts, organizational charts, mind maps, and other types of diagrams. To create with Lucidchart just select elements from the menus and drag them to the canvas. You can re-size any element and type text within elements on your chart. Arrows and connecting lines can be re-sized, repositioned, and labeled to bring clarity to your diagrams.

2/11/2014

Today we have been talking about interactive whiteboards, the new approach to futuristic teaching. An interactive whiteboard is a software created to be implemented in classrooms because it has a tactile screen (which is motivating, eye-catching and simple) and multiple option to develop teaching-learning activities. They are easy to use although when you get familiar to them first. All you need to carry on working with this tool is to have the specific projector, the screen, the software intalled and the stylus depending on the whiteboard (some of them can be used without stylus). 

Thanks to interactive whiteboards, a wide world of activities and tasks is opened to us, we can work in a more visual way: handwriting, fill-in the gaps, drawings or matching activities. It makes students more motivated and interested and more complete and enjoyable activities. 

Reflection journal 3

22/09/14

                This morning we have learned how to use Hot Potatoes, a software designed for teachers to create activities and/or quizzes. It is really interesting because it has five modalities or types of exercises: matching, quizzes, crosswords, filling the gaps and ordering sentences. To check out how it works we have developed two different exercises with one (at least) image inside them and we have sent it through MiAulario.

                Personally, I think it’s a very useful tool for teachers to create our own activities to revise content and/or to assess our students’ knowledge, at the same time they enjoy practising English. It is also really beneficial for kids because they receive an instant feedback. I’m sure I will take advantage of this programme in the future.

24/09/2014

In this practical session, we have learned a lot of useful tools. The first thing we have done is to download a video from YouTube and to cut it using different programmes such as: MovieMaker and PowerPoint. The aim of cutting the video was to transcribe the monologue and to add some subtitles to upload it to DotSub. We were able to modify it by adding some effects or translations with Animoto.

I think this is really important for us to know because we will need to download videos to present to our children. We will also need to have them subtitled if we want that our students understand and follow them. 

Reflection journal 2

DIGITAL COMPETENCE- WRITING TOOLS

15/09/14

                This morning we have presented our study about how competent we are at digital competence, concretely in the field of content creation. It is great to present things like that in front of your classmates because it helps you to take control of your nerves and expose adequately.

                Then, we have been explained about Thesaurus.com, a web page of English synonyms, WordReference.com, which is an online dictionary, and how to use Microsoft Word to correct writings, make some comments inside them and how to change some words by using the option “synonyms” in order not to be so tedious by repeating the same words in every paragraph. I am sure I’ll take this “tips” into account for my next works and also I’ll show this web pages to my future students because I believe they’re useful not only for writing compositions, but also for learning new vocabulary. 

18/09/14

                In this practical lesson we have had an exposition of one group that didn’t expose their topic the last day. It has been about the Reading 1 text and then, we have answered some questions about it. This first reading was really interesting because it is about how and how much time Thai people use new technologies for practising English in class and outside class.

                After that, we have visited some webpages in order to analyse them and justify why we would use them in class at the same time we learn how to insert comments on Microsoft word texts, which is totally useful for us (teachers) to correct students' future writings. 

Reflection journal 1

Personal Learning Environment

08/09/14

Today, we have learnt about the use of PLE (Personal Learning Environment), an interesting way to organise our lives. There are some platforms and websites that are available and are designed to make 21 century lifestyle easier such Symbaloo, which is a website in which you can select and classify the most useful web pages or social media according to your interests. I hadn’t used it before, and I have realised that it is pretty easy to use and eye-catching too because of its interactive appearance which is really useful and attractive to use in classrooms. Furthermore, these kinds of pages are great because they (more or less) represent your interests and you may notice how much new technologies involve our lives. I definitely will use Symbaloo in a near future as teacher. 

*This is my PLE made with Symbaloo