Chocotalk

Today I would like to talk about a special live meeting we had last 7th April, a chocotalk about "How CLIL can contribute to having happier bilingual learners?".

It has been one of the most interesting and exciting parts of ICT's subject as everyone participated at the same time in their groups.
In every group, the members had different roles:

• A speaker
• A disseminator
• A content curator

The speaker was the one who had to have a live talk with the rest of the speakers about the different proposals and ideas about CLIL.
The disseminator was in charge of spreading out the world what was being said on the live chocotalk.
The content curator had to gather all the information about the chocotalk.

The chocotalk itself was very interesting as different topics were mentioned and discussed:

• The CLIL e-projects we were planning.
• ICT tools and challenges in the classroom.
• Emotional benefits of CLIL.
• Advantages and disadvantages of CLIL and bilingualism.

In my group I was one of the disseminators and all of us used Twitter to spread what was happening, using the hashtags #chococharlas and #ictclil_urjc. Being a disseminator was quite funny but stressful too as I could not miss any point of the chocotalk and I had to be checking Twitter, answering any doubt and speading what has happening.

Another member of my group, who was in charge of gathering all the information, recapped al the information through a very interesting tool called Storify which allows users to gather and create a timeline story about different things that happen on different social networks.

Have a look at summary that one member of my group did (the content curator). If you have missed the chocotalk you will catch up easily with everything:


Even though is was an online chocotalk you can watch it now:



I hope you enjoy our sweet chocotalk and learn a little bit about our ideas :)

See you!

Collaborative slideshow to support learners!

Hello everybody again!

Today I would like to present you the final task of the group challenge. In this final task we have done a collaborative slideshow to support learners so as to create the final artifact that I talked about on previous posts (an online poster) of the topic THE BODY and THE SENSES.

We did the collaborative slideshow with Genial.ly explaining how to use Canva, In my view, it is very important to guide students on how to use different tools as sometimes they struggle and the level of motivation in learners can decrease easily. I believe that everyone looks for blogs or videos in which they explain how to use any tool when you do not know how to create a task or you are struggling on the internet. That is why it is important to support students with the basic and important steps on how to use the tool they will have to work with in different challenges.

As I wrote before on previous entries, Genial.ly allows you to link many other sources such as YouTube or Soundcould as well as including your own images, which is great. There are also many templates you can use which are attractive and useful depending on the topic you are going to work with.

There are many templates you can use which are attractive and useful depending on the topic you are going to work with.

You can check out our collaborative slideshow here.

An exciting point of this task is that is going to be part of a educational collaborative project called AportTics and we feel excited as we received an award from them!

All in all, I believe that having done all these tasks, students will not have any problem when doing their final artifact as all the challenges created are supportive.

Thanks to these group challenges I have learned how to support in different ways learners, making their path easier without doing the work for them, which is crucial.

I hope you have enjoyed and learned from this!

Planning and recording a video!

Hi again!

The second part of the group challenge was to record a video, but first we planned it through a comic with StoryBoard That.

We decided to do it with StoryBoard That as it allowed us to choose the setting (indoors, outdoors), the characters could also be modified, and we personally believe that it is easy to work with

StoryBoard can be a very interesting tool for children to work with as I said before is not difficult at all to use and students will develop their writing skills as well as ICT’s. It would be also wise to make students write their own comics about any topic. With it, students can work any content and develop their creative and imaginative skills. For all these reasons I highly recommend this tool in Primary education lessons.

 
Made with Storyboard That

The next step, after planning the video, we had to to record it.
Recording the video was an easy challenge as we all collaborated and it was not difficult to begin with it as we planned it before with StoryBoard That, hence, we knew what we wanted to do.

The aim of the video is to explain how to create the final artifact, the online poster about the body and the senses with Canva.

The instructions were the following:
 - Make groups of 3 people in order to work cooperatively.
 - Each group will have to search for information on the Internet about the body and senses. They will also have to select and collect this information in order to create the poster.
- They will have to create a Canva account (one per group).
- Using the information they’ve found on the Internet, they will make a poster including visual support as images or videos.
- Finally, each group will share their creation on the social network (twitter, pinterest, facebook, the school blog…)

 We recorded the video with a smartphone and we saved the video in our pc. We used Windows Movie Maker to edit and add different slides and add some music. Windows Movie Maker is a tool which has to be downloaded from the internet and can be used without internet connection, which can be a great advantage. With it, users can create their own videos or edit them. Music can also be added and it is not difficult to use.

Working with my classmates has been an incredible experience as we had fun at the same time we learnt from each other. I would also like to thank them as it has been very easy to work together.

This is the video we recorded, I hope you like it!

 


Before finishing, I would like to tell you that the StoryBoard and the video we recorded is going to take part of a nationwide educational collaborative project: The ESL Times and we feel very proud of it as it is a real proposal that any teacher can do inside the class. We also received an award:

See you soon

Hello everybody! All good things come to an end, don't they? Today I am going to show you my last challenge in ICT. As you all know this master course is coming to its end and I personally feel very thankful because I have learned loads of things during this term. I could have never imagen the different tools I have known thanks to our teacher María Jesús. Even though I am a preschool teacher, I have found useful to work with all the tools we have met with and in spite of not using it as tasks for my students, I will surely use them to support my teaching-learning process. In my last ICT challenge I have taken a look back to all the tasks we have done and I have created a video in which I explain a little bit of each module and specify a key idea a take from each part. I have made a presentation with a tool you already now as I have introduce it twice on previous posts: Genial.ly and then I have recorded the screen of my PC while I was speaking with Screencast-O-Matic. After having recorded the video I uploaded it to Youtube: Screencast-O-Matic is a very simple programme that has to be downloaded from its website and offers recordings of 15 minutes (free). I feel very happy to announce you that my PLE and PLN has dramatically increased since the first day of class. Now I feel I have a bank of online resources that will help me as a teacher. Let's take the look back to these path full of learning!! I hope you enjoy the video, SEE YOU SOON.

Assessing

Good afternoon everybody!

Here I am again to write about our new ICT challenge. In this task we were asked to create a rubric to evaluate e-projects. A rubric principal’s objective is to assess someone’s work in detail, giving feedback and specifying the criteria you are going to use to evaluate the e-project.

 As teachers, evaluating student’s challenges is one of the most important and difficult tasks and in my view, having a consistent rubric makes the job easier. In order to create my rubric I chose QuickRubric which is a tool with which you can create as many online rubrics as you wish.

The first thing I had to do was to create an account. Once I created the account I clicked on the orange tab “CREATE A RUBRIC”.

 The blank rubric looks like the following picture and users can modify the criteria and the points for each. The tool allows you to add columns and rows or delete these by clicking on the red crosses.

Once the user have chosen the punctuation and criteria, is time to fill in the rubric according to the way in which you are going to evaluate your students
.

The final step is to save the rubric.
If you want, you can print it out or save in your computer, however, QuickRubric saves it online for you too.

In my rubric I decided to have into account the following criteria:

•  Content 
• Use of language
• Multimedia tools
• Accessibility
• Attractiveness
• Attributing
• Effort
• Dissemination

Have a look at mu rubric here

In CLIL evaluating is very important and self-assessment and peer assessment are crucial. Through these two types of assessment students develop their cognitive skills as it involves HOTS.

Therefore, I would like to invite you to try this with your students, I mean, let them do their own rubric to evaluate their own work and their peer’s work.

Let's make students develop their cognitive skills and their ICT's skills!

Augment World Book Day

Hello again! As you know, the 23rd of April we all celebrated the World Book Day and we faced a new challenged. We were asked to work with Aurasma.

Aurasma is an augmented reality platmorf where you can scan triggered images and see what is in it (videos, 3d images, animations, etc). Users can download Aurasma App on their smartphone and create their own Auras and search others. I recognize that for me it has been difficult to understand Aurasma’s concept but finally I dealt with it and in my view, it’s one of the more impressive apps I worked with. The challenge consisted on linking a triggered image with a video about the type of readers we are. The triggered image is the following, which you can scan in Aurasma (celialancharro) and discover what type of reader I am. I linked the image with a video in which I explained my favourite book and more interesting things, you just have to scan the image and watch the video that appears on your phone’s screen.

Once I did my Aura, I shared it with my peers at A wall of Books on Pinterest and there, I could see all of their Auras. It has been a very interesting activity which I think learners will surely enjoy. If you wish, you may have a look at A Wall of Books and discover my classmates reading interest. I recommend you to chek out Aurasma and download it, it is a very interesting app with which you will discover loads of things!

InfoEduGraphic

Hello everybody!

We are now ask to work in groups! Isn't it exciting? It is a great opportunity to share ideas and knowledge.

The activity I am going to explain through this entrie is just a part of the group challenge. Our group topic is THE BODY and THE SENSES. 

As we want the students to creat a final artifact we are going to make different tasks that are going to be a support for sutents in order do successfully the final artifact:  an online poster about the body and the senses with Canva.

It is expected from them a poster similar to the following:

The first supportive task is an InfoEduGraphic using the tool “Pikochart”.

The objective of this InfoEduGraphic is to introduce the topic and the task to our students in a visual way and indicate briefly the different steps they will have to take to do their final artifact.

Through this visual support we believe that students will feel more motivated as it is eye catching and it will clarify their ideas and concepts.

In our view, infographics are very useful inside the classroom as we consider it a great tool as it helps students to understand and follow instructions in an easier and clearer way.

Regarding Pikochart, I would like to point out that it is a very easy tool to work with as well as attractive and engaging. It is free and online, and users may choose between many features: background, colors, templates, icons, or you may also work with your own images.

You can see the InfoEduGraphic we made here . It looks like this:

InfoEdugraphis a very useful for both, students and teachers, as it is a way in which students have clear steps and can learn by their own. It is useful for different subjects and topics so, let's try it!

CLIL lesson plan with PowToon

Hello everybody!

I would like to share with you the prototype video clip about a CLIL lesson plan that I have done with PowToon.

PowToon is a free website with which you can create presentations and video clips in a very attractive way. It is very easy to work with it, you do not need have high digital skills to create engaging , creative and original presentations.

With PowToon users can modify the effects, the background and can choose between many cartoons and features. Users may also add music and movements.

It is the first time that I tried this web tool and definetely I will use it again.

I have used this tool to create a video clip about a CLIL lesson plan on the five senses for first graders (children between 6 and 7 years old). This CLIL lesson plan includes three activities or challenges for students to do and as an example I have created one for each:

An online poster: it has to be clear and visual, children must create a poster of the senses and its corresponding organs.

An avatar: students must create an online avatar putting voice to with a question or a riddle of the five senses or its organs.

An online story: in pairs students should create a story about the senses.

Please have a look at my CLIL lesson plan about the five senses I hope you like it!! I look forward to hearing from you!

Please feel free to give some feedback.

Online tool to create original presentations: Genial.ly

Hello everybody!

First of all, I would like to share with you how amazed  I am with my learning progress and the digital skills I am acquiring. I think I am in the right track :) I hope you are learning from me too.
However, I still have a lot to do.

Today I would like to talk a little bit about an online tool that I have tried to create a presentation.

I have done my eproject evaluation with Genial.ly, which is an online and free tool in which you can create presentations.

It is the first time I work with genial.ly and I believe it is a great web to create work presentations. In my view it is easier to work with it than with other tools such as Powerpoint or Prezi. However, I have struggled a little bit but I am not sure if it was my connexion's fault, I couldn't delete some features when I wanted.

Genial.ly allows you to link many other sources such as YouTube or Soundcould as well as including your own images. There are many templates you can use which are attractive and useful depending on the topic you are going to work with.

I decided to evaluate ACROSS THE MUSIC's blog because it catched my attention since the first look. I am interested on music and in my opinion, its importance is sometimes forgotten. I also decided to evaluate it because I haven't seen any negative points on it and I wanted to highlight the positive features of it.

Have a look at the evaluation I have made!

I recommend you to use Genial.ly for future presentations, give it a try!

Becoming a content curator

Looking for educational resources on the internet is fantastic but, do you gather this information?

I have never gathered the information I found interesting on the internet (blogs, articles, etc...) but now I am learning how to save these webs you want to keep close to check them in any moment. Do you want to now how?

I have created an account on Pinterest! This was another task we had to do in ICT's subject.

On Pinterest you can organize the different webs that catch your attention. It is just like a corckboard in which you can pin the online resources that are from your interest.

It is very useful as I, personally, have always lost the different things I found on the internet....

You may create different boards depending on the topic and gather the information related to that topic on that specific board.

As an example you can visit my board on interesting webs for CLIL

You may also feel interested on visiting my pinterest profile where you will find other boards of my interest.

I encourage you to join Pinterest and start to organize and save your favourite webs.

Pinterest can also be a very useful tool for students when making some projects, as they will have in just one place all the information they have found. They will be able to add a description and organize it as they want.

As teachers it is also very interesting as you can check different boards and share pins with other collegues. Pinterest allows users to create collaborative boards too, which definetely will make tasks easier.

Come on, give it a try! I am completely sure that you will make your life easier :)

Bank of common knowledge

Is there something better than sharing with your peers what you find interesting on the internet?

We have created an open collaborative board on Pinterest so as to pin whatever we think it might be useful for our classes. In my view, it should be compulsory at schools to create a bank of common knowledge  in order to share between the teachers the different tools, webs or info that may be interesting for everyone.

The task of this week was to pin on the collaborative board interesting resources and useful for CLIL.

I would like to share with you the link to the Pinterest board in which we are sharing attractive and useful resources for children or tips for teachers:

Bank of common knowledge with Pinterest

I have added on the collaborative board the following webs which I believe that may be useful for CLIL:

- Do you like broccoli ice cream?

This song from Super Simple Songs on Youtube is not only useful to acquire food vocabulary but also to learn how to make questions and answers.



 - Interesting and attractive activities


On this web you can find online games, activities and lessons for children. You can also find some game templates or you may if you wish create your own game! There are lots of communicative and interactive activities.
I recommend you to take a look at it!

- Helpful website to practice and acquire English

Website with which students can learn while they enjoy. They will acquire vocabulary, grammar structures at the same time they develop their listening and reading skills through an interactive way.

- Science online games and activities

A nice website in which you can find loads of online free science games and songs for primary students! Perfect for CLIL as they are required to use their cognitive skills and will practice and acquire grammar an vocabulary!

- Transportation song

Nice song to introduce different means of transport.



- Brush your teeth song

Lovely song about brushing your teeth, perfect for 1st graders! Great visual aids with which they will learn vocabulary.


As I mentioned before, Pinterest is very useful to share between colleagues different interesting topics. For example, last week I had to look for ideas to decorate my classroom at school and I searched on Pinterest and found loads of ideas that other teachers shared.

The license I have chosen for my blog

Hi!

Did you know about the importance of the licenses in a web?

Honestly I was not concious about it and I thought it was not important at all, however, internet is just like real life...

I have chosen a license for my blog in which I allow readers to copy, share and redistribute my posts, images and ideas for any purpose (even commercially). Readers may also adapt my work as long as they recognize the original author.

I believe that we must share with other collegues what we create so we all can benefit from other's ideas. However, if someone does not allows it, everybody should respect it and do not share it or use it with out permission.

When teaching students how to surf on the internet and write their own academic writings, it should also be taught the importance of being respectful with others projects, studies and ideas from the very beginning so as to avoid plagiarism and attribute someone’s work.

Some situations can be stablished to make students understand that copying without naming the original author and the source of information means stealing an idea that belongs to someone else and it is considered a crime.

In order to motivate them, apart from evaluating the content or language structure of the student’s writings, it should also be assessed the way in which they make reference to sources and authors.

Students have to be aware of the importance of respecting others work and when they can or cannot make use of it.

Do you have any other ideas to make students conciuous about linceses? Come on, leave me some comments!

Learning by twittering

Good afternoon again!

In this week we have been asked to create a Twitter account to share will the entire world different challenges, tasks and interesting information about the field of education, specially bilingual education.

Twitter is a free network in which you can share with other users information in just 140 characters of text. Users may follow people of their interest and keep in touch with the entire world! I will do so with some CLIL information or interesting topics related to education.

If you want to keep up with my updates, I invite you to follow me on my twitter account: @celialancharro

Moreover, my classmates, my teacher and I will be using the hashtag #ictclil_urjc so do not think it twice and search it!

So as to inagurate my Twitter account I have published a tweet about CLIL:

With CLIL students learn content through a foreign language and acquire the language through content. Reciprocal&effective #ictclil_urjc

— Celia Lancharro (@CeliaLancharro) February 19, 2016

Come on, follow me and do not miss any tweet :)

@celialancharro 

Creating mind maps!

Hi everybody :)

Here I am to share with you the second challenge we have done in ICT's. Honestly, I feel very happy to be learning tools that are new for me! I am sure that at the end of the course I will have a long list of online resources with which I will be able to work with at class. Isn't it practical?

Well, the second challenge consisted on visualizing our PLE and PLN and organising it in an online diagram.
For it, I have used Easel.ly.

Easel.ly is a free website, its purpose is simple yet extremely useful, it allows us create and share an eye catching mind map or a graphic. 

Before creating my final map, I tried different tools such as Popplet or Coggle but I decided to create my mapping e-project with Easel.ly because I found it easier to work with it.

So as to create your own project with Easel.ly, you can choose between different backgrounds, styles, charts, shapes, banners or you may use your own images. It gives you the opportunity to begin with one of their models or if you want to be more creative you can try to do your own, starting with a blank background.

I have done mine using different shapes and using some images which I had to upload. I used this Easel.ly to organize my PLE and PLE for CLIL.

It wasn’t until I started to study the master course on bilingual education when I started to learn about CLIL. The vast majority of things I have learnt and I am still learning are a consequence of the master course I’m taking, social networks, online platforms, and Google.

Through this mapping e-project I wanted to organise my learning on CLIL and reflect on where did I learnt about it.

I divided my map it into two types of learning: PLE (Personal Learning Environment) and PLN (Personal Learning Network):

PLE:

To organise and share information: Dropbox and Google Drive.

To search some information: Scholar Google, Google, Moodle (Aula Virtual urjc), Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

To obtain information: Master course and Moodle

To create: Voki.

                                                                     

PLN: Twitter and Moodle.

How can we use this tool in the classroom? It would be wise to introduce this tool to young learners in order to plan their own writings, to record results of an experiment or to present a project.

This is my final result:

I am sure that these mapping will be much bigger at the end of the course.

I recommend you to give it a try!

Self introduction with Voki

Hello everybody! As you already know I am a pre primary teacher studying a master course on bilingual education and through this blog I am going to share with you the different challenges I will do through ICT's subject.

The first task we have been asked to do is a self introduction, explaining 3 things you should know about me, 2 of my favourite activities in the world and 1 dream occupation if I weren't a teacher.

I decided to do this 3 2 1 Introduction with Voki as it catched my attention since the first look.

Voki is a free website with which you can create an avatar and give voice to it. You may choose between different characters and you may if you wish change different features such as: hair, eyes and skin color, or the size of the head, nose or lips. You are also allowed to put on some complements (sunglasses, ribbons, etc) or choose between different clothes.

Users can also modify the background setting and choose between many options (indoors, outdoors, night time, day time, etc).

It can be used for many purposes: giving a lesson in an exciting way, explaining a certain topic or presenting yourself.

You may also take advantage of it using it's classroom service, in which you can follow student's progress, set deadlines and verify their submission. If you wish you may also share the different projects with the rest of the class, parents or even on the school's web site.

I have chosen a human female avatar and I have changed everything I could to make her look like a teacher.

So as to put voice to it, you can type the text and they will read it for you or you may also record yourself and put your own voice. In my view, this the most exciting part, as you can ultimately see how the avatar speaks (moving her lips) with your voice.

I highly recommend you take a look to it and try it yourself! If you do, I am sure you will be happy with the results.

As you can see is a very easy web to use and the final artifact can be impressive for the students! You may also choose an animal or even an alien, wouldn't be funny?

I would like to share with you an idea that has come to mind. It could be novel and effective at keeping children quiet in class. You could create an avatar with a voice asking students to keep quiet and whenever they are messing about play it. 

If you think of any other ways of working with it, please share them!

Here you have my final result!

I hope you like it, I certainly did.

See you in the next post!