Wednesday, 2 May 2018

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! ;)

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! ;)




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! ;)

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! ;)



Designing a mind map for an education project

Hey there,

Here we are again. In my school, we are now involved in an project where our students have to find out about the animal kingdom. We have created a mindmap in order to help us planning our objectives in this project. This mindmap shows the different aspects that we want to carry out in our project.

Students have to investigate about the different groups of the animal kingdom and create a poster explaining one. The will work in groups of three. Afterwards, they have to explain their group to the rest of their partners.

Mind mapping is an exciting educational tool because it promotes learning by helping students capture and organize information, make connections between and among concepts, identify concepts that are missing, and learn by making sense of information, both information they already possess and new information.
The tool that I have used is Creately. In this page, you can design a lot of different charts and diagrams. You only need to select what you eant to create.



In my case, I chose "Mind map". Then, you can use a stencil or design your own Mind map.



I decided not to use a stencil and design mine. On a grid, you can add different types of topics and pictures and conect them with lines and arrows. You can change the type of letter, colours, the type of arrow... everything!!


Here is mine.



Besides I had some problems creating it, it is really easy to use. It has a very intuitive and simple interface. The problem that I found is that it crashes when you upload a lot of photographs. Unless in the free version. However, I insistenly recomend you this tool. I have used mind maps since many years ago and I can ensure you that it is really helpful for students and even for teachers. Students start to schematise in order to study. They see the bullet points of a topic and they clarify their ideas. For teacher is very useful because it permits organises better their work or make students' study easier. In my case, I use mind maps for both situations. To facilitate my students' learning and organise myself better.

Hope you like it! ;)


Using comics in a CLIL lesson

Hey there,

How many times did you see the use of a comic as a resource in a lesson? Probably few. That is the reason why here I bring a new resource to use in a CLIL lessons.

I found a problem in my classroom. My students did not feel confortable with the topic "Moon landing". So, I thought that the best way to make them feel better was if Neil Armstrong himself tells the story.

The question is... how do create a comic? Easy. The answer is Pixton. In this website you can change every single expression and position of every single character of the comic. A tool where you can spend hours and hours improving your work. In my case, I also recorded dialogues.

There is only one thing that I do not like of this resource. It is not free. However, you have 15 days of trial.

Do not hesitate and try to create your own comic. Here is mine.

Hope you like  it! ;)


Tuesday, 6 March 2018

Design a support slideshow

Hey there,

It is time to step outside my confort zone and test myself bringing here what it has been a new resource for me. Today we are going to learn how to design a support slideshow and use it in our CLIL lesson.

The tool that I have used is Genial.ly. This powerful resource has really surprised me. You can fiddle with it thousands of hours and still discover new applications.

Once you are registered, you have a bunch of different presentation you can use for your slideshows.


In  my case, I have used "Presentation" where you have again endless possibilities to choose in order to create your own slideshow.


Topic chosen, you will find a menu with a lot of editable contents for your slideshow. 


  • Interactivity: write lables, use pop-up windows or include links in your slide.
  • Text: Use different fonts, sizes and colours in your slides.
  • Resources: shapes, lines, gifs, pictures and a more things are available for you here.
  • Background: Choose a background for your slideshow.
  • Animation: Here you can animate every single part of your presentation.
  • Embed: Embed here your social media.
  • Pictures: Add some pictures to your presentation.
I am sure that I will spend a lot of hours discovering new uses for this resource. I hope you do the same. Meanwhile, you have here a brief example. 

Hope you like it! ;)