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




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! ;)







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!;)




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! ;)