Today I say hello to you all but also a goodbye...
I want to do a 3x1 review, that is, adding 3 things you have absolutely loved about the Master's Degree Module and 1 thing which should be improved, in your opinion. So that, I have created a poster with Canva.
Knowledge of new tools and ideas: I really like that I have enjoyed a lot using a lot of new apps, learning how to use them and discovering new ways of doing tasks.
Partner search: this activity seemed me very interesting because I was visiting and reading a lot of blogs with lots of brilliant ideas.
Turn activities into super learning missions: I liked doing this challenge because I could see my ideas came true.
Time: I think the time of challenges is well distributed but we have a lot of work during this quarter so, from my point of view, this subject should be on the first quarter because this is a subject to enjoy and to learn deeply and these things take time.
As I said in my last post, this is a goodbye of the master's posts but I want to be connected in order to keep learning all the time!
And before my goodbye I want to say thanks for the help of my mates and my teacher, I have no doubts if I would not have their help I wouldn't achieve all of these posts!
I have created two memes with Memegenerator that define myself at the beginning of the subject:
Hello!!!
Here I am again to tell you all about my first online conference! I really want to tell you everything about this experience so I hope not to forget any detail!
First of all I am going to say that the conference was called Moodle MOOC 10; if you want a great explanation about it just click on the name, or if you search for an extended explanation you can click here.
As you can see here in my blog or as you already know, all along these months I have been creating this learning diary in order to create an open educational digital project and to improve different skills to be a prepared teacher. So, the aim of this conference I am talking about was to present this open educational digital project in a live online class.
What did we need?
To prepare our slide to support our presentation on Google Drive.
To be connected on WizIQ.
Hearphones with microphone.
How did we prepare the Online Conference?
One week before the official date of the Online Conference (4th May) our teacher give us the chance of practising our presentation so we had to do our slides , as a support for our speech, in a presentation from Google Drive designed by our teacher. If you want to take a look of these slides you can visit our teacher blog. Here I leave you my slide. It was so simple because I did not want to write a lot of things in order to make it more visual.
That day (27th April) I was not ready to tell all about my project but this practice gave me more confidence and knowledge of how to do my presentation on 4th May, so I think it was useful and helpful.
How did we do the Online Conference?
First of all we had to connect on WizIQ in order to enter to the classroom, once connected, there was our teacher Mª Jesús García and Nellie Deutsch. Our teacher Mª Jesús García was presenting my mates and me in order to explain our project. The order for the presentations was the same of our slides, so we knew our turn and also our teacher called us (like in a real class but online). Our presentations had to last around 5 minutes and we had to tell all about our open educational digital project. I am very happy to say that all our presentations were recorded and you can see them on this video posted in YouTube! (I'm in 2:05:00)
Here I leave you also the speech I did for the conference. I made it with Microsoft Word and later I uploaded it in issuu.
How was my experience?
I have to say that at the beginning I was a little frightened because I was thinking all the time if my computer does not work? If the wifi does not run well that day? And so on, but it is truth that all of them are little problems because nowadays we have more than one device and it is extrange if the wifi does not work, so I tried to think about this.
The practice day I only checked my hearphones, my webcam and my microphone because I was not ready to talk about my open educational project. All of them was good so from that day I was more confident to do my online presentation. Also that day I prepared the slide you have seen above to support my presentation.
The practice day was on 27th April and the Online Conference was on 4th May, so I had a week to prepare what I wanted to talk about. I was taking a look and reading again and again my posts in order to do a good summary, I did not want to forget anything to say!
And the big day arrived and I was ready to do my presentation, I was calm during the first presentations but when my turn was arriving I was more and more nervous (I'm always nervous on presentations) and finally was my turn (I was almost the last one on presenting) I started to talk and to explain my open educational project and when I finished my teacher remember me an anecdote during my first days on ICT class. This fact and the comments of my mates helped me to feel more confident and secure of myself, so I thank all of them a lot!
And this is my experience of my first live online conference, I hope it can help you to make an idea of what this is.
CONCLUSION
The first thing I have to say is: what a great idea! With this conference (even it seems I'm lying), I have realized how great are ICT. I mean, we were presenting (apart from my teacher and mates) to people on Canada and I was at home. This fact makes me to think about a lot of ideas to bring to a class because it is not complicated, is useful and this can have a lot of benefits to our students.
It is also a very responsible way of using a chat and a webcam, I think is the first time in my life I use them with an educational aim. Of course I use chats to talk with friends and family, but never to do something like this.
I am very happy with the opportunity our teacher has given us. It has been a very interesting conference, there were more than 20 people talking about their projects so we had the opportunity of taking ideas and feeling inspired by our own mates. So, at the same time we are learning doing our own open educational project, we are doing things that all class should have: collaboration, communication, cooperation and so on! How could we teach us something to our pupils if we don't have tried it first?
REFLECTION
This is almost my last post of my learning diary so I want to write a reflection about what I think about these months, what I have learnt in this subject and more ideas I have in my head.
I started the subject with a lot of fear, I did not know anything, I only used facebook and instagram and still I don't know how to use them in a proper way so you can imagine what my feelings were when the teacher said: you have to create a blog! And not only that (only doing it was difficult for me) but to put different buttons on the left such as a license or the twitter button (this was such an experience for me and my patient teacher). Little by little and through doing challenges I was discovering a new world for me. The first day I started the subject doing the twitter and the blog I said myself "I am going to hate this subject" but, for my surprise, it has been just the opposite! I have enjoyed creating images, doing comics, posters and so on. I have known a lot of new apps and I have to say my favourites: Canva and also WeVideo (even I downloaded Canva on my iPad because I am really in love with it).
And appart from myself and related to education I have to say that this subject has discovered a new world of ideas to carry out in a class. All the apps we have used, our own open educational projects or other projects I have been reading... with all of them we can make great session for our pupils, and not only related with contents, but also with other skills such as communication, collaboration or autonomy. And I say that because I have lived it by myself. This subjects has taught me that, as my teacher says me when I created the twitter button on my blog, is when you fail when you learn the most (I've recorded this sentence and I have been remembering it a lot during the challenges). And I think this is one of the most important things a child, and every person, should know. Maybe it can seem impossible and I though this before starting the subject, but ICT can learn you things like that. I cannot forget other thing ICT can teach us and this is autonomy, because you, as a teacher, can give instructions or doing demonstrations but at the end, is the pupil who is behind the computer screen so is the pupil who has to develop skills in order to achieve a task.
Nowadays I can say that apart from Facebook and Instagram I use Twitter (it is great for the latest news and more serious than Instagram), where I follow a lot of accounts about education with lots of interesting information. I have discovered thanks my teacher blogs with lots of resources where we can find great ideas to carry out in a class. I discovered apps that children can use too; to sum up, I discovered a fantastic world where I can do great things and I really want to have the opportunity in a future to teach all of these things to my pupils.
Lastly, I want to say you that I was a girl who thought that the smart board with the contents proyected on the screen was the most technological thing that we could use in a class but now I realized that with this kind of instruments we can do much more than proyect the lesson, we can do almost infinite things. So, I've been thinking about it and this is not my last entry on the blog, this is only my last master's entry, because I want to stay connected, I want to learn more because I discovered that I like this world!
I hope this post inspire you and at least make you think about the great opportunities ICT can bring to our life, and what is more important, to our children!
Hi there again! I am here to do a new challenge: create my own assessment rubric.
Have you seen my older posts? Almost all of them are about creating a digital project including search for partners and missions, you can take a look if you want! So the last step to create a complete digital educational project is by creating an asessment rubric.
After taking in account the four elements of a rubric, I was taking a look to some pages our instructor gave us to make an idea in my mind about what I wanted to do. Some of these pages are Rubrics for all, consejos para evaluar el aprendizaje basado en proyectos (in Spanish),Criteria for effective assessment in project-based learning (specially interesting the point: Select 21st Century Skills to teach an assess) and Rubric for rubrics (this page is specially useful because you can see if your rubric has all the aspects to be a good rubric). In this point, I was able to make the rubric I'm going to present it to you.
Reflection:
Before starting the post I thought it was goint to be easy doing it but when I started reading the webs I visited I realized that although the rubric seems "only" a chart it has behind it a lot of connected characteristics: the rubric has to be clear, concise and useful because it is going to be the way to assess your students; the criteria has to be clear and of course derived from your project, each level has to be distinguish and it has to be well explained in order to know what skills must be achieved by the student. This is only a summary of the of the rubric's background.
I have tried to accomplish all this characteristics and with the help of the information on the poster I posted above (made with Canva) I was ready to do the rubric.
In order to do my post more visual I have added the poster I have said before and another image made with Canva also.
The rubric was made with Microsoft Word and later I have updated it to Issuu a fantastic page that allows us to upload our documents made on our computer to the net. I had used this app on another post I did.
As I said in other posts, some pages, apps or technologies in general can be difficult to use at the beginning but it is true also that the more you use it, the more you know and the more you enjoy because you are going discovering a lot of new things that you did not know you were capable of doing. I feel happy if I stop a moment and think about my post or even when I created the blog, I was completly lost, I was not able to do anything, and in a few months I am using a lot of new apps, I am writing on a blog and I am learning a lot! So, from now, I encourage all teachers to investigate and to learn how to use this fantastic tools! I hope you like my post! See you!
Hey there! This is the next post about the mission. I have already post the Mission 1and here you have Mission 2. So I am going to explain and show you the activity. Hope you like it!
Typical foods around the world!
The teacher is going to divide the class into groups of three people. The groups are reduced because it is an activity that needs a lot of coordination so it is advisable not to do bigger groups. The students have to create a comic telling a short story which leads us to know a typical food of that place.
The tool that they need to create the comic is Pixton. Each student can design two or more scenes, depending on the length of the story (that's why I recommend doing the activity in small groups) or they can do it all together, it's up to them!
Here you have an example of the comic:
Apart from the story they have to write the recipe of the food they are talking about. I have made it with Canva in order to do the example more visual but they have to do it with paper and pencil and draw a picture of the food.
At the end they have to present their recipes by groups. Here you have the recipe of chop suey:
At the end of two activities the teacher has to create a debate with questions such as: do you think this is a healthy food? Why/why not? And so on.
Why this activity?
This activity was not included in the original prototype your open educational digital project. The original activity I explained there was also a digital comic and from that time I was in mind to use Pixton, but my idea it was far from the activity I have created. In a first moment it was the teacher who had to create a comic using this tool and tell them the story. So, teacher speaking/pupils listening. When I started to think about the activity I realised this was not a good idea because I wanted the children to colaborate. So I created this activity you have just seen: more collaborative and funnier than the older one.
Goals:
- To foster respect to all cultures.
- To improve cognitive skills such as reasoning, formulating open questions to justify their answers.
- To improve social skills: talk in public, give their own ideas, work with their peers...
- To use new apps to learn new content.
How does this activity allign with the collaborative project I am contributing to?
The activity can be alligned with the collaborative project The ESL Times because this activity has similar goals as that project:
- Writing with the four languaje skills
- Using ICT when teaching/learning
- Promoting collaborative work, team work and autonomous work.
- Valuing the socio cultural side of the English language
Self-reflection:
I have created this activity to fuse in the classroom ICT, collaboration and content learning.
In order to do the Mission, I have used Pixton for the first time. I took a look of it some time ago because our instructor recommended us the page. I have had problems publishing the comic from the page because it does not allow me and I cannot change the privacy settings. I have tried all things but I cannot do it, so at least I have post images of the comic I've created. I am still investigating and even I write an email, if I do changes to this post I will tell you! According to the comic, at the beginning it seemed me difficult but later is like a videogame, because you can choose the expression of the face, the shape of the body, where the characters are, the background and so on. I realized that it was a funny page for children so I created an activity to use it.
Later, I have done the recipe searching on internet (if you want to take a look of the detailed recipe you can click here, is in Spanish) and I have done the instructions with an image that I have created with Canva in order to do it more visual. I remember that the first time I used it, it was like a new world for me, I did not know how to do anything and now, I am not an expert but I am improving a lot and I like it so much!
I am realizing everyday more and more that doing the challenges our instructor gives us that ICT can make us a more autonomous people. I say that becaus doing this kind of activities you have to investigate, you have to read how to use the apps that you are trying for the first time, you have to fail many times... But at the end you will have the final product, your final product. And the next challenge you will have to investigate some new apps but there will be one or two that you already know a little about them and you can mix both, the new one with the other you know. And practising you realize that you can do amazing things, do they (ICT) take time? of course, a lot, at least in my case (for example I have spent hours trying to change the privacy on Pixton), but it is worth because when you have after hours what you have in mind you are not another thing but happy. So this makes me think that this is the same with children, it is even better, because we have the opportunity of teaching them how to be autonomus since early ages; we have the opportunity to improve their social skills (which I consider the most important in the children development) through the mix of collaboration and ICT, . So, let's try it!
Hello again! And today I am going to talk about a new challenge I have done. As you can see above I have another post with the same title because I am going to talk about and to explain two activities of the prototype I created so I have done two posts, one for each activity.
The stages of life: my beloved people
This is an individual activity. This would be the first activity of the project, so it would be as an introduction to he topic. The students have to create a poster where they have to put photos or make pictures or avatars of their most beloved people and say the stage of life they are in. The comic must be digital so I am going to give them some tools and they can choose what fits best with their necesities. I have done an example and I have used Piktochart and to make the avatars I have used Peanutizeme.
Here I leave you the example:
When they have their poster done they have to present it to their mates.
Why this activity?
This activity was included in the prototype your open educational digital project as you can see. I have modified the activity a little, because in the original one I explained that each student has to describe the person and also the stage, but when I was doing the activity it was so repetitive so I only wrote the stage of life and I though that when children were presenting their work the teacher can ask them some questions about the topic in order to detect problems and to check understanding.
Goals:
- To use ICT to learn new content.
- To foster individual work.
- To improve the autonomy.
- To improve social skills such as talking with a public.
How does this activity allign with the collaborative project I am contributing to?
The activity can be alligned with the collaborative project The ESL Times because this activity has similar goals as that project:
- Writing with the four languaje skills
- Using ICT when teaching/learning
- Promoting collaborative work, team work and autonomous work.
- Valuing the socio cultural side of the English language
Self-reflection:
I have really enjoyed doing this activity because it is a way of seeing how your work has results. I say this because I noticed myself more secure with the computer, with new apps and so on. For example when I was thinking how to do the poster this time I was not nervous because, more or less, I know how to use Piktochart and also I know that the more work I do with this apps the more I know and the more I enjoy. I am realizing the amount of things that can be done and the great opportunity is this for the educational community, because using ICT in the classroom is funny and also is good to develop skills.
The new apps I've used this time are those ones to make avatars. I had no idea about webs about it so I visit the Playpen (this is like an instruction digital book our instructor gave us where you have lots of tools to make the challenges I am posting) in order to search something to do the activity. I took a look of some pages, some of them very funny, such as Pocoyize, Web tools for kids or Peanutizeme. My favourite is the last one as you can imagine if you have seen the poster that I've posted above. Peanutizeme is a very fun web where you can create your avatar insipired on Snoopy film. It seemed me amazing and also so easy to handle with it because it has big letters, bright colours, well distributed... So, many things that make a web attractive and useful.
I am very happy to see myself managing all of these tools (with lots of problems) but better each day. Little by little I am more motivated to continue using them!
Hello! Here I am again with a new post! And today I come with something new but engaged with older posts as always.
I have been challenged to do a partner search. But, what is this? As my instructor told us, a partner search is looking for partners and share my Open Educational Digital Project and find collaborative running projects where mine may fit in.
But, how have I done it?
Our instructor gave us some pages where we can join, so I was reading carefully each one. In some of them it was clear that my Open Educational Digital Project was not going to fit in. Instead, there were others that I think fit better, but at the end I decided that the best for me was The ESL times. I have chosen it because it seems me a very interesting blog with a lot of different ideas and topics; but there were specially the main goals the ones which made me decide for this blog:
Writing with the four language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing.
Encouraging reading in English.
Usign ICT when teaching/learning ESL.
Promoting collaborative work, team work, autonomous work.
Valuing the socicultural side of the English language.
My project has the same goals that's why I hardly believe that it fits with this blog.
In order to talk with the collaborators of the blog to accept me as a new partner, I have made a video explaining the reasons I think my project is interesting to participate in, this is, an elevator pitch.
But, what is an elevator pitch?
To a better explanation I have used Piktochart to create an infographic, that is, a representation of information in a graphic format designed to make the data easily understandable at a glance (definition by Piktochart). Here I leave you to take a look of it, hope you understand the process well.
And now I know how to make an elevator pitch here I leave you it, which is made with WeVideo, hope you like it!
If you want to take a look of the draft I have done to organize and to have in mind what to say in the elevator pitch, feel free to do it! I has not been so easy because of the time, but finally I made it!
Conclusion:
Doing my partner search I have visited some interesting blogs such as The TWIMA project, Proyecto Colaborativo infoEDUgrafias or The Other Kids EDU. I have visited other great blogs but I name these three because of their great projects and because I think they can be useful for you in a future in order to have new ideas. At finally, I decided the blog The ESL Times because of their lots of ideas and their great goals. I really liked this blog so I hope they accept me as a partner!
As you can imagine reading my other posts, I am really in love with Canva since I started to know how to use it, so I have made an image to do this post more visual.
Also I have made for the first time an elevator pitch, I have explained it in the case anyone don't know what it is (as it was my case) and I did an infographic with Piktochart. If you want to know more about the elevator pitch and how to do it in a more detailed way you can read these pages that our instructor gave us and they are very clear: Crafting an elevator pitch, The 30 Seconds Elevator Speech and How to perfect your elevator pitch. I recommend you to take a look because they are explained in a very easy and very clear way.
According to the infographic, I decided to do it with Piktochart because I always use Canva but it was time of trying new apps in order to see what they can offer, so I did an infographic (another new word I have learned, so I have explained it in this post).
When I was ready with all of this information I started to do the video. I have used WeVideo to do it. It has been difficult for me but because I did not have experience but I think if in the future I continue using this app I am sure that I will be able to make great things. If you want to try it, it is available on the app store for free!
Hope you've enjoyed this post because it has seemed me very interesting and I have learnt a lot of new things!
Hello again!
I am back with this new post and I hope you find it interesting! So, I am going to tell you.
Do you remember my last post about my open educational digital project? I needed it not only for learning about different tools and to know how to create it, but because this time I have a new challenge: to design an online visual metaphor of how I was going to turn my open educational digital project into a collaborative one.
I have been reading information that our instructor provided us, and thank to this information I have been ready to do this post (if you want to take a look to these pages I leave below the links).
First of all, I want to explain a little about the cooperative and collaborative work because I want to clarify this terms because it is important to distinguish them and also to a better understanding of the challenge.
Collaborative learning: a group of students work together to investigate or create a project.
Cooperative learning: the students are distributed in small groups to make a structured activity.
These types of learning have a lot of benefits such as learn how to work with different people, because through this type of learning the student has to work with all types of people so they learn to respect and to solve problems together: another benefit is that cooperative and collaborative learning helps to the development of social skills because the students are interacting all the time. Another benefit is that the students have a significant learning because they have opportunities to participate. all of these benefits are onle a few among all.
And, coming to the point, what is a collaborative project on the web?
A collaborative project is an open project to teachers and students or every person interested on taking part of the project, which is created and shared through social networks in order to give our personal opinion or ideas to form a final product.
As we see, the goal in all of types of learning that I have read is an effectiv communication. To know how to transmit your own ideas in a clearly way, to understand other people, to debate about different issues, or solve problems are the result of an effective communication. And the best place to learn it is the school, so the teachers have a very important task: to collaborate among us creating and sharing our own point of view, ideas and so on in order to give our pupils a good final product.
After clarificating the ideas about what collaborative work is, I am going to name some ideas (that our instructor give us and they seem me very interesting to make an idea of what we can do with our projects) about how to turn an educational project into a collaborative one:
Collaboration within the classroom through cooperative learning.
Collaboration out of the cassroom connecting with the real world.
Collaboration back to the classroom involving external agents.
With all of these ideas I started to create my visual metaphor. To do it I used Canva. I also took a look of other applications to make images such us Smore or Piktochart but I decided to do it with Canva. Here I leave you my definitive visual metaphor.
If you remember my project, it was about the healthy lifestyle, this was the main aim to achieve.
In each lesson, I have created a different activity in order create the final project at the end of all challenges. All the activities are going to help the pupils to do this final activity, because they work first of all in an individual way in order to know how to give good feedback to their pairs, later by pairs and at the end by groups, and of course the final activity in groups.
This final activity is about creating a classroom magazine.
The students have to creat a magazine about healthy life with all of that they have learned all along the different activities. Each group of students will be in charge of one topic included in the magazine. There are five different topics:
Food section
Sport section
Advisements section
Properties of the food section
Sickness section
If you want to know something more about each topic you can take a look to this entry.
The students have to work by groups but their decisions not only affect to their group but also the whole class because the final product is responsibility of all. They have to collaborate, give good feedbacks to other people or groups, they have to solve problems and so on. They have to apply what they have learned all along the project both, contents and skills.
Reflection:
I was very lost at the beginning because I knew nothing about what a visual metaphor or a collaborative project was, so these days I have been reading the pages our instructor gave us to make a good idea of what I had to do. There have been some pages that have seemed me especially interesting: La comunicación docente-alumno, Concept to classroom and La magia de los proyectos colaborativos en la red; I have read other documents but these three have helped me a lot to do this post. When I had a good idea of what I had to do I was looking another very interesting page on Blogger and this is Stop and learn English I recommend you all to take a look of this blog because there you can find lots of resources.
When I was ready to start I was looking the recommended online tools our instructor gave us and finally I decided to do it with Canva as I said before, because is the application that I like the most.
While I was doing the visual metaphor I changed the title of my project, because the one I put when I made the previous challenge was so serious from my point of view, so I thought another title in order to do it more attractive. I hope you like it more than the other one!
Sincerely, doing this challenge I have had some problems, because, as I said before I had no idea, I had lots of problems because I did not know a lot about creating a poster with Canva... But is when you fail when you learn the most; and this has been my case: I had problems to create my visual metaphor but finally here I am trying to achieve the goal of this challenge.
Hope you like it! I will write very soon with another task!
