Interactive Posters!

Look this beautiful poster I've made with Glogster!

Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters. It is very easy to use! Users can insert text, images, photos, audio, videos, special effects and other elements to generate multimedia interaction.

This tool is great to use it in the classroom. Students can make their own poster to present a final work, for example; instead of doing it in a piece of paper, they can just create one in Glogster, which also gives them the possibility to make it neat and clear. Once the poster is made, they can send it to the teacher, upload it on a group on Facebook, or embedd it in a blog, so as to share it with their classmates.

I haven't used it with my students yet, but I will give it a try very soon!

The final exam is coming!

This Friday, I'm sitting for ECO II final exam. Last night I was lyning on my bed and I started to think about it; I was thinking about what we did and read last year and, all of a sudden, these words came to my mind.

So, I made this Wordle to show you everything I consider most important about this subject and the final exam.

I wrote nervous, because it's a final exam, and everytime I have to sit for an exam, I can't cope with my nerves. I try to relax myself but there is no way to do so.

Memory has to do with the Pecha Kucha and the moment when I'll have to say the texts of the slides. Anyway, I've been studying and memorizing it a lot, so I think I'll be able to do it well.

Reflection is also very important for this subject, and for my teaching practices, indeed. All throughout last year, and this one, I had to reflect a lot about the materials and tools I used, and about how webpages and Internet gave me a hand in creating those materials. Everything I reflected on is written in this blog, which is my journal - I can record on it everything that happened during my teaching practice, and I could also up-load the materials my students and I made.

I cannot forget to mention Prensky's concepts: Digital Native and Digital Immigrants. These two concepts are really meaningful to me, since I discovered that when I started ECO I was a Digital Immigrant. It was very difficult for me to work in the computer, and to use Internet and different tools. However, I think I have improved a lot and that I will go on improving by practising more.

You CAN be a film director.

As I wrote last week, in this entry, I’m going to write about a wonderful programme that helped me a lot during my teaching practices at the Secondary School! Do you remember that I wrote about them? The topic of the unit I taught was CINEMA, so I had to use movies, and the students had to MAKE one; tehir task was to create a silent film. And here comes my helper: Windows Movie Maker. This is a programme you can download – it ’s very easy and safe to do it – and once you have installed it in your computer, it allows you to edit some videos that you have downloaded from YouTube, for example; or create them by using photos, images, and homemade videos.
It’s very simple to use it, and is not that time-consuming, you just select the images or videos, add them in the project that is created by the programme, if you want, you can put it some music or songs, and you can also add tittles and credits; once you’ve done this, you just save it as a project of Movie Maker or you save it for the computer, and that’s it! YOU’VE CREATED A VIDEO!!
My students used it to create their movies, and they did it just in one lesson!!
IThe making of a silent movie allowed the students to tell a story which was thought, planned, created, and written by them. Besides, they didn't fell threatened about having to speak in another language, in this case English, which was quite difficult to them - they were beginners, and they speak almost nothing in English. They had to narrate each scene using the Simple Past Tense - the Grammar content I had to teach them.
By doing this task, the students had to write, analyse, and re-write the story in order to make a coherent description of their movies. This gave them the possibility to reflect about the language, and particularly about the past tense.
In addition, being able to create a movie and to be part of it, provided the students a great sense of self-confidence. They were really proud of their works. They also had a great time doing it. So, think about using Movie Maker as a powerful tool for motivating your students.
Although it is a bit demanding for a teacher to fulfil this task with his/her students, it becomes easy if you have a good plan to carry out. Besides, it is really rewarding, the final work is great!

Here you can see one of their movies. (You might find this video a bit shocking, but it was the group decision to make an action film about drug-dealers. However, this topic gave us the possibility to reflect on drug-dealing and about drug-consumption).

Hope you like it!

Facebook in the classroom!

Today we are going to deal with this social networking service. You must be asking yourself why a teacher would dare to think of using this in the classroom. Well, it’s not such a crazy idea! As I said in some previous posts, this year I’ve been doing the teaching practice and this last semester I’ve been teaching at a Secondary School.
Everything went well, except when I asked them to do their homework, they never did it. I didn’t know what to do to remind them to do it. I was desperate. I told my teacher about my problem and she told me that the previous student teacher used Facebook to keep in touch with the students and to remind them of their homework. GREAT IDEA!
I asked my friend to add me as an administrator of the group she had with the class. She did so, and then I started to make changes on the group. They had worked with another unit in the book so the group had a different topic. What I made was to change the group profile photo, and I left the first message telling them that I’ll be posting there some things, such as news, reminders, jokes, pictures, etc.!
Facebook changed their behaviour a lot, I mean, they started to do their homework, as they didn’t have another option - I could see if they saw my posts, which is a great advantage of the groups in Facebook, different from moodle, or Edmodo where you cannot check if your students see the messages you left them. Besides that, I could upload the videos we had worked on in previous lessons, so they could have them on their netbooks.
Since the unit we dealt with was cinema, short videos taken from movies were really helpful – and Movie Maker, too!!! (I’ll talk about it in a following post). Another advantage is that Facebook is more familiar to them than Edmodo for example, and helps you, the teacher, to make a stronger bond with your students – I noticed they really liked using it!
You can also ask them to upload their works there, this wasn’t my case, but it’s another thing you can do with it. Besides, you give an important and valuable use to their netbooks, which they only see as a tool or gadget to play with, search on the Internet, and nothing else.
So, don’t be afraid of using Facebook, it can help you a lot!!!!

Web pages that facilitate our job!

As I have mentioned in previous posts, this year I’ve been doing my Teaching Practice, and by doing them I came across with many web-pages that helped me a lot.
One of them was Tools for Educators; there you can find free Word Search Makers, Free Bingo Board Maker, among others. This page is useful for teachers who don’t have enough time to do it manually or using a word processor. For example, if you want to do a word search, you just have to write the words you want to be on it, decide the way you want them written – across, down – the letter type, you can also add images and hints. Once you decide this you just click on ‘get crossword’, and in few seconds you have you crossword done and ready to be printed. It’s magic!
Another is Instant Crossword Puzzle Maker. This one is much easier to work with, you just have to write the words, give it a tittle, and click on ‘create puzzle’, and voilà, you have it done, too!
These pages helped me a lot and I saved much time in doing the activities for my students.
Here is a crossword I used with my students from Beleno.

Photoshop!

Ok, I know this is not one of the tools or programmes we've been dealing with last year in ECO II, but this programme really helped me this year in my Teaching Practice
As I wrote in the previous post, my project was about creating comics with monsters as their characters. So, in order to teach the students what a comic is, I needed to show them some real comics. But there was a problem: it was very difficult to find on Internet some comics written in simple language so that they can understand them, and they also weren't appropriate for their age.
I had to taught them the Verb To Be, feelings, colours, and descriptive adjectives. After searching, and searching on the net, I gave up and decided to do it myself.
The problem now was HOW to make a comic. So, I asked for help to a really good friend, Santiago, and he came up with the idea of using Photoshop; I had heard about it, but I didn't have the slightest idea of how to use it. However, I could count on my friend's help, who was really good at it.

When we started working I discovered all that you can do with this programme: You can cut images without their background, and paste those images on a new one; you can change the characters' faces, for example we had a happy monster, and by erasing its smile and drawing it a new sad face, it was done!

Although it's really time-consuming, it's worthy.

Here is one of the comics we made. My students really liked it!!

I'm back!

Hi! I want to tell you that this year I'm doing my Teaching Practice. This term I'm doing it in a Primary School, its name is Pte. Beleno and I have a 7th Grade. There're 30 students!!!! 

Our practices are based on the Task-based Approach, and we have to plan a Didactic Unit based on the contents we are given by the English Teacher. In my case, I have to do a revision of the verb TO BE, and I have to teach the colours, feelings and adjectives.

My idea is to work with COMICS, so as to put all these contents on it. The comics are about Monsters, I mean, the monsters are the characters of the comic. In order to do this, I had to design some comics, and by designing I'm saying that I had to write the scripts and to MAKE the comic! So, I had to design some material.

In the next entry I will talk about Material Design and I will upload some images of it!

See you soon!