Edmodo

Last week, as Edmodo was not working properly, I decided to follow them in "Twitter" so as to keep up to date with what was happening to the platform. That is when I come to know  a site that was "re-twitted".

http://cybraryman.com/edmodo.html

Here you will be able to access to different entries that will guide you and will give you different ideas on the use of Edmodo.
In this site -http://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit/82344- created by Tricia Rodríguez and Steve Ryan you will find lot of ideas on the use of Edmodo, suggestions and guidelines on the use of it. You should have a look at it!

PowToon : Web 2.0

When asked to thing about the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom I could not but try a new application myself. It would be great to be able to include some of these in our classroom, hoping that we have the resources...

This time, I tried POWTOON... it was quite difficult for me. This is just the first time. I promise I will improve!

Have a look at it in the following link:

PowToon : Web 2.0

ICT in our teaching

Technology is not only good for classroom work. It must be regarded as a tool for our personal development.

It is true that the amount of technology is overwhelming, so if it is difficult for you to "go to information", make information "come to you".

You can do this in many ways. You can suscribe to a web page, so you will be e-mailed new posts, you can make an account on google reader, or in the case of a blog, you can add the gadget that allows you to have other blogs at hand. Each time a blog is uploaded, it will appear first in your list.

Among the blogs, I was particular interested in one that gives you ideas as regards how to work with "silent videos" in the EFL classroom. They are so beautiful! If I knew about it before my teaching practice..!!

You can visit the blog HERE  

The author of the blog suggests -among others- the following video 

As a task, he suggests that you should ask your students to write the names of all the type of films they see, to compare them, and then, to add the ones that are missing.... interesting idea, isn't it?

Pecha Kucha

As we are suppoused to design a Pecha Kucha presentation for the end of our course studies, I wanted to have a clearer idea of what exactly Pecha Kucha presentations are.

I found many web pages, but I decided to search in those which I considered the most reliable ones.

This is a very interesting site. Here you can find information as regards what Pecha Kucha is, where you can attend Pecha Kucha Nights, and also, you can watch some presentations.

It is interesting to note that this type of prentation was first meant to help designers and arquitects keep to the point. 

In the website above, there are a number of interesting questions. I will "copy and paste" two of these questions and its answers, which are consider are the most important ones, but I strongly suggest you visite the web page

01. What is PechaKucha 20x20?

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images.

02. Who invented the format?

The presentation format was devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture. The first PechaKucha Night was held in Tokyo in their gallery/lounge/bar/club/creative kitchen, SuperDeluxe, in February, 2003. Klein Dytham architecture still organize and support the global PechaKucha Night network and organize PechaKucha Night Tokyo.

04. What are PechaKucha Nights?

PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps -- just about anything, really -- in the PechaKucha 20x20 format.

This other website contains all the information related to Pecha Kucha Night held in Buenos Aires. Most of the presenters are arquietects, but anyone can prepare her own   "Pecha Kucha". 

In this kind of events, after the presentations are made, people have time to talk to each other, to listen to music and to have drink. It is a good idea to take into account when the time of our presentations arrive, isn't it?

What is really surprising to me, is the fact that this kind of presentations were meant for very informal contexts, but  now they are being used in more    formal ones, as a way of setting a standard that helps being clearer and to the point

Materials design

I would like to share the narrative text I wrote for "Trayecto de Práctica IV". In this text, I reflect upon the advantages and disadvantages of designing my own material in my teaching practice. It is in Spanish, but I consider it will be "useful" for some of you...

La construcción de materiales de enseñanza propios

El hecho de haber elegido focalizar mi narrativa en este tópico, tiene que ver con que la construcción de materiales atravesó mi práctica, del principio al final.

Es interesante este ejercicio de escritura, porque “precisa” que hagamos un alto, y en este alto, me encuentro volviendo a un artículo analizado en la cátedra “Diseño de Materiales”.

Jocelyn Howard y Jae Major, las autoras del artículo titulado “Guidelines for Designing Effective Language Teaching Materials”, analizan una serie de ventajas y desventajas que la creación de nuestros propios materiales nos supone. También, las autoras proponen criterios guías para diseñar materiales de calidad. Es por esto que he decidido apoyar mis reflexiones en este artículo.

Quisiera contar que el diseño del material propio fue indispensable para llevar el proyecto adelante, ya que el libro de texto no ofrecía herramientas habilitadoras para la concreción del mismo. Me valí solamente de un audio y unas imágenes, pero cambié las actividades de comprensión. Fue un gran desafío y el tiempo invertido en el diseño fue mucho. Cada vez que diseñaba los materiales para la clase lo hacía pensando en que los mismos debían ayudarme a romper el paredón del “no” que se levantaba al principio de cada clase y que yo debía “derribar” para poder comenzar a trabajar. En otras palabras, busqué que mi material sea motivador.

Howard y Major señalan que las principales ventajas de la creación propia de materiales residen en el hecho de que estos materiales están contextualizados en la realidad de los alumnos, responden a las necesidades particulares de cada alumno, tienen un “toque” personal que los hace más atractivos y suelen diseñarse para trabajar con temáticas actuales o “de último momento”. A la luz de esta reflexión, puedo decir que los materiales que diseñé, claramente estaban al servicio del proyecto y fuertemente contextualizados en cuestiones relativas a nuestra ciudad de Santa Fe. Mi propósito fue, implícitamente, dejar el mensaje de que podemos hablar en inglés de nuestra realidad y que por ese motivo los contenidos no dejan de ser menos importantes, y también el mensaje que me propuse transmitir fue que en la clase de inglés podemos aprender otras cosas más allá del inglés. ¿Si fue altamente motivante? Responder afirmativamente sería faltar a la verdad. Es cierto también, que no puedo “materializarme” y “meterme” en los pensamientos de los alumnos, las conclusiones las hago basándome en los resultados, en la participación que de hecho no fue masiva. Sin embargo, en algunas ocasiones pude detectar comentarios que mostraban asombro o interés por el material con el que estaban trabajando.

Las autoras del artículo sostienen varias desventajas relativas al diseño de materiales, entre ellas, el hecho de que el material puede ser problemático para el alumno en cuanto a que no tiene una organización, formato o continuidad como la que plantean los libros de textos. La calidad es otro tema que puede plantear desventajas, porque según estas autoras, el hecho de que estén hechos por la docente, hace que el material pueda llegar a ser menos confiable en cuanto a la validez de los contenidos, o la durabilidad del formato. El tiempo que lleva el armado de estas herramientas de trabajo es otra desventaja señalada por las autoras. Revisando mi experiencia digo ¡sí! a la primera desventaja planteada por las autoras, ya que de golpe me encontré con que los alumnos no podían organizarse en la cantidad de copias que tenían. Los materiales estaban sueltos y en más de una vez, perdidos. Al principio di por asumidas muchas cuestiones, como por ejemplo, que por ser alumnos de 4^to año eran organizados y se podían ubicar y manejar sus carpetas como recursos. Pero esto no fue así, tuve  que guiarlos, repasar qué material trabajamos en cada día, pedirles que guarden las copias, cuestiones que nunca me imaginé se darían en un 4^to año, pero que evidentemente fueron necesarias trabajar. No acuerdo con la cuestión de que estos materiales, al no estar publicados ni respaldados por una casa editorial, sean menos confiables. Sí considero que es de suma necesidad que como docentes reconozcamos que debemos ser responsables y compartir nuestras dudas con colegas. En mi caso, estuve acompañada y asesorada en el proceso, cuestión que me hizo pensar en la importancia de una segunda mirada. Diseñar tus propios materiales no es nada rápido lleva mucho tiempo, pero aun así considero que es una experiencia interesante y enriquecedora,  por la cual no podemos dejar de pasar.

Realmente disfruté hacer mis propios materiales. Al principio, me costaba darles un buen formato, hacerlos visualmente atractivos fue todo un desafío, pero con trabajo, logré estar conforme con los resultados. En el proceso tuve que revisar los contenidos, es decir que fue una buena manera de prepararme, de “estudiar” para la clase.

Por momentos, me costaba organizarlos, darles un “hilo conductor”, pero estas dificultadas logré sortearlas volviendo al  proyecto final. Poder “ver” la meta, me ayudó a planificar el trayecto.

Considero que lo positivo de esta experiencia fue sentir que diseñar los materiales hizo más profesional mi tarea. Sentí que fui auténtica y dueña de mi enseñanza, no una mera mediadora. Reconozco que el tiempo es una gran limitación, pero sería interesante tomarse este trabajo, una vez a la semana o por una unidad al año. Es un entrenamiento para la creatividad y para la investigación, porque nos hace detenernos y plantearnos una y otra vez por nuestros objetivos, las necesidades de los alumnos y cuál es el mejor camino para impulsar buenos resultados.

Bibliografía

Howard, J. J., Major. (2005). Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials. Seoul, South Korea. http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL9/pdf/Howard.pdf

My experience with technology in the classroom.

Technology provides us with lots of tools to make use of in the classroom.

Our Power Point presentations are a clear example that we could be highly creative and get the best out of technology.

Taking into account this need for the inclusion of technology in the classroom, we were asked to include some technological resource in our teaching practices.

In my particular case, I created a site in Facebook for students to upload and to edit their writing assignments.  I also created a Blog in which I uploaded the texts we dealt with in the lessons and the final drafts of students’ productions.

I was highly expectant as regards the use of Facebook, but to be honest, it disappointed me. In the last lesson one of the students told me “Profe, la verdad, yo estoy todo el día en Facebook, pero con la página, me re colgué”

I thought that it could be a great idea to include this tool, considering that it is something that students have “at hand”. Unluckily, few of them adhered to the proposal, and the ones who did, didn’t complete the tasks correctly.

I know my partners had different experiences –more luckily ones- but I still consider that this experience has not been in vain.

Perhaps, student’s refusal is related to the innovation. Sometimes, we don’t want to take up new ways, just because we don’t know them, or we haven’t tried them before.

We could say that Marc Prensky’s view is quite an extreme one, but I think he is right when he asserts: “Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach” So much so, that our students have developed a particular way of “dealing” with school life, and when our proposals do not concur with their beliefs of what school should be, they reject our proposal.

It might seem that this “entry” has nothing to do with the subject, but I cannot avoid reflecting upon this. It will demand lot of effort on the part of all the teachers, to change school practices and to help students to develop a new system to “decode” school ways.

Facebook Site: https://www.facebook.com/InglesEnElCuartoC

Blog: http://cuartocbustos.blogspot.com.ar/

More on Power Point Presentations

I had never imagined how many things you can do with Power Point Presentations!

I didn't know there is the possibility of getting the chance to look for so many different and eye-catching templates and animated gifts.

Last lesson was highly motivating, and I think we were given useful tools to start planning our lesson making use of this Software.

For the first lesson of my teaching practices, I designed a Power Point Presentation to introduce the vocabulary of the unit "The Cinema". Now, I know how this presentation could have been improved. It is also really important to take into consideration how you will use it... Will you have the presentation projected? or will they work with it in their computers? I made that mistake, I designed a presentation to be projected but I made them work with it in their computers.

The templates were too plain and the games were not as attractive as the ones we -Agustín and I- designed for our second practical work. I was also highly surprised by the games my partners found on the net designed for power point presentations. Maybe, if I  had known about them for my teaching practices, I would have use them or try to improve this very first PP Presentation, which was like the "window" of my teaching practice.

The impact could have been greater if the Power Point Presentation would have been much more attractive, I guess.

Power Point presentations

I have high expactations regarding this new unit on "Power Point" presentations. I consider it could be very useful for  us, because it is a technological tool that doesn't need an internet connection.

I do think, that we need to be highly creative in the classroon when using this tool, if not we will be wasting our energies and no real profit will result from the use of this tool.

So, I'm ready to work hard on this!!

Web 2.0 tools

I've been looking for information on Web 2.o tools and I found two interesting sites that provide you with a list of different applications and a short description. Really interesting.

Here's a definition from http://web2012.discoveryeducation.com/web20tools.cfm

"Web 2.0 is about revolutionary new ways of creating, collaborating, editing and sharing user-generated content online. It's also about ease of use. There's no need to download, and teachers and students can master many of these tools in minutes. Technology has never been easier or more accessible to all."


Have a look at these:


Discovery Education


Web applications

Hope you find it useful. Have a look and try!

Reflecting upon....

This week I have realised the importance of sharing with others information or suggestions about technology.


The amount of web pages and applications useful for teaching and learning is overwhelming, so  if we do not have someone else's guidance we may feel at a lost.


Yesterday, some of us attended a workshop. Deborah, the lady who was in charge of it, gave us a presentation on how to use "delicious.com" She showed us different web pages, reliable ones, full of very interesting stuff. If I had not attented that workshop, I wonder if I ever would have been able to "get to" those sites....


So, if you know something interesting PLEASE share. I promise I will do so and I'll start right know.
You may want to have a look at:

https://www.delicious.com


Deborah's web site
https://www.deborahhealey.com


Reading and writing resources:
https://sites.google.com/site/readingandwritingresources/

It is interesting to become aware with technology, this could help

These guys show us a many different USB devices for  laptops.

Some of they are really useful, but others are not. Nevertheless, it is an interesting video, plus the presenters are very dynamic and they get thier message across very clearly.

Aprendiendo algo nuevo... espero que esto de la tecnología no me desborde!