Powerful interactive whiteboards

Hi everybody! We are Amaranta and Marta and today we start this adventure in the Cister Pearls Blog! Have you ever heard about the power of Interactive Whiteboards? In this post we will share with you the things that we have learnt about this amazing tool and its effective features during the last ICT session. 

It's widely known that old blackboards are exponentially getting obsolete so new motivating ways of teaching are showing up. Over the last few years, schools are realizing about the added value contributed by Interactive Whiteboards to learn, teach and collaborate at classroom. However, it's true that some teachers still find difficulties when it comes to use it for some reasons such as the lack of confidence and training, the belief that it's time consuming or because it implies getting away from their comfort zone. 

That's why keeping up-to-date and continuous training it's essential for educators to be competent at the current technological needs. This resource offers several advantages over traditional blackboards such as the ability to attend all different learning styles (visual, auditive, kinesthetic...) or the chance to design activities taking into account Bloom's Taxonomy (HOTS and LOTS).

Before presenting our activity, we think it's interesting to explain briefly some actions that Interactive Whiteboards can offer you. Some examples would be: adding, copying, pasting, editing text, images, gifs, graphics, shapes, videos; using templates about different kind of activities classified in different topics, creating new ones, searching on the Internet. In short, different kind of dynamic activities that involve children, promote participation and cooperative work. 

Activity: Let's know our body! 

Having said all that, we are going to present our activity about the parts of the body, aimed to review the content vocabulary: eyes, ears, mouth, nose, head, hair, arms, legs, shoulders, knees, toes, lips, fingers... This task is divided into two parts: the first one consists on identifying the parts of the body, matching the written words with the image (whole body of someone). The second part is more difficult because students are only provided with the image of the body and they will have to write it down the words. 

Description and organization of the activity

The class will be divided into three groups of four students small group). 

First part 

Students will see on the screen the body of a girl and some words written next to her. Each group will be in charge of matching six words. They will take turns to associate text-image. Teacher will ask them to participate in a sensible order to avoid classroom management issues. If any student doesn't know the answer, his/her group will help him/her. This will take about 15 minutes.

Second part

The groups will be the same. The picture of the body will be a boy. Students will have to write it down using the interactive markers the word that matches with the image. Each group will write four words. Because of this activity requires a higher level, students will have to cooperate and reach an agreement before the final answer (they need to be aware of the spelling). If the answer is right, they will get one point for their team. The team who get more points, will be the winner! This will take about 20 minutes. 

There are no specific roles because all the members are responsible for the same task. Everybody will participate (rotating each turn).


Picture of the activity:

Added value contributed by ICT

• Visual support
• Cooperative task
• Provides feedback: Well done, try again!
• Motivating

Session 2

Hi everyone!!

How are you? We are Míriam Porras and Àngels Tugores. We are going talk about the session 2 with Yolanda Scott-Tennent Basallote in relation to PDCA, SAMR Model, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and the creation of one animal’s activity using different resources like Padlet and Popplet.

First of all, she introduced herself and the subject, because it was our first session with her. Yolanda detailed the contents, the program, the competences and how we will be assessed. Then, she introduced us an iterative and cyclic four-step management method with the aim to improve the processes and the product. It is called PDCA (plan + do + check + act) and Dr. W. Edwards Deming made it based on the idea to establish real objectives to implement the new processes, then compare the obtained results against the expected results and analyze the differences to start the process all over again.

Secondly, we learnt the different classification categories for ICT resources/activities. The first one is called the SAMR model (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition) that allows us to assess and to evaluate the technology we use in our class and how the tech act is.

The second one is the Bloom’s Taxonomy applied to the Digital World. However, in this session, we only learnt the 1- Remembering and 2-Understanding Bloom's Taxonomy and what kind of activities or resources we can use to increase the visibility of these competencies in our class during the daily life in school.

Then, following the list she presented us in the introduction, we reflected about: “When is ICT appropriate? The role of the teacher is very important because we have evolved from a figure of the instructor to a teacher to guide on the side like a facilitator. We need to take into account the flipped classroom and key factors like POTS because, we strongly believe that ICT is new nowadays and there are a lot of things we can do with it, but it’s necessary, essential and priority that we plan the activities taking into account the purpose (objective), the target audience (age or skills), selection (search and adapt some material already exist or create new ones). And with all these tips… Do you remember what does POTS means?

YES!!! You are right! POTS it’s an essential concept we need to take into account when we are using ICT in class.

• P: Possibility (timing, resources)
• O: Objective – Purpose (skills, attitudes)
• T: Target audience (level, knowledge)
• S: Select (search, create, adapt).

Finally, Yolanda explained few topics based on ideas and possibilities that we could use in our classrooms. For instance, how to using topics like animals and food, we could use a Mindomo, a Padlet or make a flashcard to review the vocabulary or to know the new vocabulary.

At the end, we had to create an activity. To do that, we made 4 groups and each one had to choose one possibility that they wanted to use if we work with animals.

The possibilities were:

1. Brainstorming (Míriam, Anna and Àngels)
2. Flashcards (Tania, Pepelu and Laia)
3. Maps and graphs (Ferran, Marta and Amaranta)
4. Visual dictionaries and word art/clouds (Elena and Laura)

The slogan for next session was to have prepared our presentation, the programs we chose and the activities we made. The main aim was to know more about these programs and to be able to assess whether these programs/apps are useful or not to implement them in our classes.

Míriam Porras and Àngels Tugores

Session 5 (14/04/2016)

written by Anna Solé Tusal and Ferran Rodríguez i Díaz

Today's session is about iPads and its different applications in Infant and Primary schools. Some of us are having our first contact with iPads, so there are a lot of new things we need to explore. The classmates who know how iPad's work will be helping the rest. Therefore, we are learning in a cooperative way. 

first contact

Now we are discussing about the pros, cons and purposes of the use of iPads in class. Some pros are that iPads are fun, interactive and nice; this device can develop and improve the ICT competence of our students. The cons we see are the lack of iPads in the school; the inappropriate use some students would do of the devices and of course one of the biggest cons are the battery issues. 

We also talked about the "What for?"; they are useful for designing interactive and motivating activities; iPads provide a wide variety of high quality visuals and are also good for a recreational use. 

We are discovering some apps we never heard before. They are apps designed to help teachers manage the class. One is called "ClassDojo", it is an easy app that will let us administrate the positive-negative points every student deserves (this can be considered behaviorist, but the app is good and motivates them a great deal). The other one is called "Classcraft"; the purpose is similar to the last app but from a different point of view. We are also talking about Book Creator, BitsBoards, Puppet Show, Tiny Tap.

Finally Miriam and me have created activities using the different apps we discovered in class. An example is BitsBoard, which is is a simple True/False game about the different spaces of our university.
This game can be listed in the Understanding and Applying steps of Bloom's Taxonomy, because it will have the students thinking and relating all the vocabulary they know. In the activity, they not only are tested in the vocabulary itself... they will have to pay attention on the spelling as well; some of the words are tricky and have been misspelled.

The target age for this activity in particular would be 9-11 years old. They not only are able to identify the different vocabulary worked in class, in addition they are able and ready to check the spelling as well.

Once again, ICT takes advantage on old/classic activities. We all know how to create vocabulary-check activities on paper... but now we are able to do them with ICT tools as the iPad. With this, you are bringing innovation and technology to the classroom. The students will enjoy more the activity and will improve their tech skills.

Here you have a couple screenshots of it:

We really encourage you to try these kind of apps; they are really useful and engaging for children!! We believe it is very important to instill in children the desire to learn in a different way, why not through ICT support?

Ferran Rodríguez and Anna Solé

Session 3 (10/03/2016)

By Laia López Mullor

In session 3 we have been learning about smart boards. First, we reflected about the use of technologies in class. We contemplated whether they can be used by the students, the teacher or both while also considering the pros and cons that they come along with. Secondly, we learnt some practical things about smart boards in groups from questionnaires. Following a list of instructions, we learnt in a practical way how to use the smart board one by one in groups of four. We started with easier taste to the most difficult ones.
Then, Maribel told us about "ExperTics", a very interesting role that student's play at her school. The main idea is for teachers to ask for some volunteers, from students in different grades, in order to teach them some tips about how to solve common problems that can came up in the classroom. For example, when the internet doesn't work or when the smart board has problems. After taking this masterclass, the students should become experts in technology and be able to help the teacher as well as the rest of the pupils.
Finally, we learned in a practical way, following a list of instructions, how to use the smart board one by one and from the easier tasks to the most difficult ones.

(Expertics video)

During this session we have been learing a lot of things. Here you have the sum up of this session and the files we have been looking at:






This is the end of my entry, if you have any doubts let me know and I do my best in order to help you.