Wednesday 2 May 2018

This is the end...

The Doors said, "This is the end, beautiful friend, the end". And that is right, this is the end of our ICT journey.

As a new technologies lover, I started this subject very motivated. In addition, it was closely related to the TFM I have chosen. 

We started our journey in a easy way. Creating our own avatar and our learning journal. I still remember how I recorded every single sound effect in the presentation video. It was amazing.

Then, we learned how to use images under creative commons licenses and how to use them in a classroom. Something very interesting, because we are used to using any Internet image as if it was ours. 

The next task was how to use content curation tools. Luckily, I was already a Pinterest user. So it was not a complicated task. 

Another task that I liked the most was the design of a slideshare support. We also had to record an explanatory video. As you may know, I love everything related to audiovisual editing. It was a pleasure to combine the explanatory video with the slideshare. 

One of the tasks that surprised me more was the use of comics in the classroom. I would never have thought to use comics in one of my classes. I found it a very interesting resource that I'm sure I will use in the future. 

I had more problems in the use of mindmaps. Creately has not stopped giving me headaches. Trial versions... 

However, the use of infographics seemed very interesting to me. How to summarize a topic in basic aspects to give synthesized information to our students. 

My other great love, the sound. When I knew we had to record a podcast my eyes lighted up. I produced a theme for the radio programme and I tried my best to make the quality excellent. 

In my opinion, the most complicated project was the preparation of the flipped classroom. It is not easy to work in a team and even more with such a large project in our hands. However, I think we distributed the tasks well and we worked hard. I had never worked with chroma and it was something I had always wanted to learn. 

Another of the most interesting tasks I found was participating in the #twima8 project and sharing our experiences with the rest of our mates. 

As a summary, although I have sometimes felt frustrated with my work, I think I have learned many resources that I did not know and I have perfected those I already knew. As I said before, I am a new technologies lover and I have bet on it from the beginning of my days as a teacher and, of course, I will continue applying it. For this reason, I wake up every single day thinking in this sentence. 

Never stop learning




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WEBINAR - APRENDIZAJE EN LÍNEA Y COMPETENCIA DIGITAL EDUCATIVA

Hey there,

Today I would like to talk about a webinar that I was lucky to attend few days ago. The speaker was María Jesús García (@mjgsm), our ICT teacher at the university. The topic was "Aprendizaje en línea y competencia digital educativa".


First, María Jesús gave us a link where we could sign up in the conference. Next, the Institut de Formació Contínua - IL3 sent me an email confirming my inscription.




I did not have to do anything until the April, 24th, the webinar day. The Institut de Formació Contínua - IL3 sent me another email explaining how to enter in the webinar. I had to download a programme and add a extension in Google Chrome. Easy peasy.

Once inside, the conference took about an hour where María Jesús talked about the following aspects:

First, she explained what INTEF is. INTEF is a great website with a great variety of digital courses for teachers in order to improve their digital competence. There are courses for all kind of needs. Some of them are short for those people who do not have enough time. Others are very complete. And there are a lot of different topics that you can work. As I mentioned before, all of them are online and, the most important thing, free.

The different types that María Jesús mentioned were:


  • Edupills: it is an app to improve your digital competence with short tasks of 3-7 minutes.
  • NOOCINTEF: they are experiences that take more time than a edupill but not more than 3 hours. This activities are only opened during 10 days.
  • MOOCINTEF: here you need to spend more time than NOONINTEF. These tasks take among 3 or 5 weeks.
  • SPOOCINTEF: here the learner is free learn when he has time. They are opened and you can complete the different tasks step by step without preassure.
This courses are not going to certificate training hours but you are going to get an insignia of your digital knowledge.

Finally, María Jesús explained a project that has been developing with her team for a lot of time. The Teaching Digital Competence Portfolio. There, you can your digital competence evidences and you will have a level from the Common Framework of Digital Copetence. The name of the levels are the same of Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, from A1 (lowest level) to C2 (higher level).

From my point of view, María Jesús and the rest of their partners, are doing and excellent work developing this kind of platforms and courses. ICT is not the future, it is the present. And all of us, as teacher, need to know how to apply them in our class. I do not hesitate to use these courses in the future to improve my own digital competence. Because learning is a precess and teachers can not be conformist. We have to learn during our whole life.

Hope you like it! ;)







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Sharing my experience - #twima8


Hey there,

Today I am going to talk about Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a social network for teachers and students where they can share videos that can be helpful to others. The teacher can upload interesting videos to his students or he can use it as a tool for his students to upload videos of a specific project.

In my case, I have participated in a project called #twima8 - We all have a story!. Twima means The World Is My Audience and 8 is the number of the edition. On it, everyone can share their experiences or  anecdotes in education.

Here is my own video, I hope you find it fun.


This tool is very easy to use.

First, you will find a plus sign in the upper left part of the site to add a new video.



Afterwards, you will only have to record your video. You will have 5 minutes of duration.



Next, you will take a picture and decorate it as you like. You can add stickers or drawing on it.



Finally, you enter your personal data and it would be ready.


As a personal reflection, this experience has been very meaningful for me. Teachers usally do not have time enough to share our teaching experiences. Something that is essential for me because it helps us to improve and learn from our partners. Participating in the project # twima8 I have learned many things from my classmates and I hope they have learned with me too. If you have the opportunity to share experiences with other teachers, either in this, in another tool or on a day-to-day do not hesitate to take advantage of it.

Here you have some other experiences that I really enjoyed.

Hope you like it!;)




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TeacherTubers (Part 2)

Hey there,

Do you remember that project we were carrying out? In it, we had to prepare a flipped classroom for our students about the Children's rights. Here I leave the blog post where I explain all the details. 

Well, once our storyboard was done, it was time to record the video. The most fun part. For this, we needed a chroma. A chroma is a green or blue background that is used in the audiovisual to replace the background with the image that we want. To do this, we were to the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y Formación del Profesorado, INTEF, where the Future Classroom Lab is and there is chroma in the classroom. It was possible thanks to the invitation of our teacher María Jesús García (@mjgsm). 

There, the recording time was limited, but we adapted the best we could to record the video. I, as a recorder, used a gimbal to stabilize the video and a condenser microphone to improve the sound quality. Beatriz (@beapf12) was in charge of editing the video where our partners Alba (@laprofe_alba), Ramón (@ramonestruch) and Pedro (@peter_teachs) acted perfectly. It was a great experience for all of us!

Here you have the result.






This video has been recorded for students of 5th grade of Primary Education. We are work with it in the subject "Values". Our students should find out about the rest of Children's rights after watching the video.

Objectives
  • To know Children's rights. 
  • To know we all have the same basic rights, but not everyone enjoys them equally. 
  • To respect opinions and evaluations of the rest of the classmates.
  • To work cooperatively. 
  • To use ICTs.
Flip teaching offers teacher more personalized guidance and interaction with students, instead of lecturing. Videos are very visual for our students and they feel more motivated. Furthermore, they are learning in an inductive way, what helps them learning.

As a personal reflection, this task has helped me in many different ways. Sometimes, teamwork is difficult but I think that my peers and me have worked perfectly and solved all the problems that we found in front of us. It has been a pleasure work with them. Furthermore, I love audiovisual, but I had never done a project like this one where we had to mix video, audio, production and edition. It has been a great opportunity (and a challenge) to improve and develop my audiovisual skills. Finally, once that I have discovered the usefulness of flipped classroom, I think that I am going to apply it on my classroom. As I told you before, children feel strongly motivated and they learn a lot.

Here you have some photos taken the recording day.








Hope you like it! ;)
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Thursday 26 April 2018

TeacherTubers

Hey there,

Here we are again with a very special project. In this case, we are going to prepare a flipped classroom for our students. It is a difficult work. So, first, we have to share out the tasks among all the members of the team and decide a name, TeacherTubers.

  • Pedro Luis Álvaro - Community manager.
  • Ramón Estruch - Assistant Producer.
  • Alba Pérez - Drafter.
  • Beatriz Pedrazuela - Editor.
  • Jaime Rayo - Recorder.

Once the tasks are distributed, we have to choose a topic. In our case, Children's rights. From there we started to create a storyboard about how we will record the video that we will show to our students. 

We decided to perform two of those rights. The right to education and the right to health. Our students must find out about the rest of their rights. Finally, we wrote the dialogues which will be represented in the recording. Here I leave some pictures of the day of work made by our community manager Pedro (@peter_teachs).

Hope you like it! ;)




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Wednesday 11 April 2018

Breaking news project

Hey there,

Here I am again with another resource that you can use in your CLIL class, podcasts. It is a powerful resource in order to achieve oral and written skills. In this case, I will show you a project that I have developed for my classroom, but first... 

How can I create our own podcast?

Easy. In my case, the programme that I have used to record is GarageBand, by Apple Inc. It is really easy to use. You only need a microphone and start recording. There are also a lot of virtual instruments to produce music for the programme. I have recorded a free copyright theme for our programme with this tool.


After that, you need a place to storage your own podcast. The platform that I have used is Soundcloud. As a musician, I have been using this resources for a lot of years. I was the place where I saved all my music before launching it to the digital platfors such as Spotify or iTunes. Here you have a playlist that I created where I showed my first songs to the rest of the world.


Now, I would like to show you our project. It is a radio programme where my students will inform their partners about the things that all of us are going to do in the school. You have all the information in the following drive document.


Finally, here you have a Welcome audio that I recorded to my students at the beginning of the course and the project's Soundcloud account.



I love sound and I love music. So, I enjoy working on these platforms. I can spend hours and hours producing, editing and experimenting with different sounds. Nowadays, these tools are very easy to use although you do not know anything about sound.

Hope you like it! ;)
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Thursday 22 March 2018

How to create a infographic

Hey there,

Here I have a new resource. Infographics. They help you in order to visualise or summarise a topic. In my case, I show the main problems of the ozone hole and how to prevent them. The tool that I have used is the known Genial.ly. The same as we used to create the slideshow. This tool keep on surprising me. It has thousands of applications.

Once you have your Genial.ly account, click on "Create Genially". There are four different sections. In the section "to explain" you will find inphographics. Now, you can use one of the several examples that Genially gives us or start from zero. In my case, I used one example and I changed the information, pictures and effects.

The ozone hole is a confusing topic for my students. It is something that they cannot see and difficult to imagine. In that way, I decided to create a visual infographic to explain it. They can interact with lots of things.

First, I show the most polluting countries of the world. There is a map where they can click and watch it bigger.

Secondly, there is a picture where NASA showed the thawing arctic. If you click on it, you will go to a youtube video recorded by NASA where you can see the whole process.

Finally, I give my students some advises about how to prevent it and in class, we will discuss other posible solutions.

Hope you like it! ;)



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