The White Board

On march 10th we did a whole ICT session about Digital Boards. The Digital Board is a kind of blackboard that works with electricity... so it's digital. It let us bring to the classroom a wider variety of activities and resources for theaching/learning.
The new possibilities that the Digital Board brings to the class are almost infinite, and you can use it for any subject or purpose; this tool is ready to bear anything!

As you can do with blackboards, you can write and draw in it as well as create interactive games, play music, surf the internet and save your notes from one class to the next one.
It really is a very powerful tool that is slowly coming into our classrooms. It is true that a lot of schools have this device, but it is also true that not all schools take a real advantage of this wonderful tool. Some teachers uses it as just a projector but others had found in this tool the perfect device to make lessons more motivating and easy to understand for pupils. 

In order to practice and try this new technology out, I have designed a very simple game to be done with a digital board. Taking into account the Blooms Taxonomy, this activity will fit into the Understanding step; this activity has been designed to check pupil's understanding and memory about a topic (The Space).

The target age for this activity/game is 7-8 years old and it would be played in Science Time (CLIL). Whit this activity you will be:

• Checking understanding about the Space topic
• Developing their thinking and relation skills
• Testing their memory capacity
• Practicing English and Science while having fun and using the Digital Board

This activity isn't something new. We all have done relation activity sheets (as students and as teachers) and we all know how they look like. However, redesigning this old (but great) activities into something more visual and new is something that needs to be done; as soon as possible and in the most innovative way possible. The Digital Board allows us to do this redesign process using all the tools that this device offers us. 

This classic activity, just "adding the ICT thing in it" turns to be a perfect TPR activity. It makes students stand up, come to the front and use their whole body to complete and relate all the aspects shown in screen. Once again, technology made of a simple activity something a little bit different and more motivating for everyone. 

But... how do you assess it? This activity was made with the purpose of having fun and review content, so you don't really need to assess it. But if you want to you will see it is really easy to do. If the students completes each screen with good rhythm and with not manny errors, that would mean that the pupil know. 

I struggled to upload or embed the activity in this entry... but you will find the file with the activity clicking here!

Ferran Rodríguez i Díaz

THINGLINK

Hey!! We are Ferran Rodriguez, Àngels Tugores and Anna Solé. We would like to introduce you the following programme:

Thingslink!

Would you like to make your images come alive with videos, notes or even music from youtube? If yes, have a look at the following steps:

It is an interactive media platform that empowers publishers, educators, brands, and bloggers to create more engaging content by adding features to images.

ThingLink works on all modern web browsers as well as iPad, iPhone and Android. Moreover, it is free!

This app and web tool could be useful to introduce a new topic, such us, Australia. We have created an example just for you!

However, students can also create their own alive images by adding videos, notes, music and then present it to the rest of the students. They can choose a topic and to make the presentation more alive at the beginning they can use this app just to present the topic they will focus on.

It is very similar to PowerPoint, though the idea of this app is to be faster just presenting the information on one slide. In addition, it is very easy to use and so it would gave children a feeling of security and self-confidence.

We will apply this activity for 4th grade students.

Activity related to the Thinglink we have created:

After showing the presentation through Thinklink we will organize and assembly to comment the videos and also to talk about the things they would like to discover. For example, food, clothes, animals, landscapes, people, etc.

Classroom management

To create the groups we will prepare different papers in which there will be written : food, clothes, animals (the topics they will have previously chosen). The students will have to find the pupils with the same paper to create groups. We will give them a kind of scaffolding:

Do you have food/animals...?
I have food/animals, and you?

We will give them time to research information on the internet about their topics. So, one session could be devoted to plan the presentation and the second session, they will have to create a Thinklink and present it to the rest of the classmates. Doing this activity the students can find they role. Therefore, learning styles and multiple intelligences and also related.

If the students create one, they will be practising the four skills.

Writing: They will have to write the presentation or their own slide.

Reading: Students read all the instructions and the steps they need to follow.

Listening: The students will listen to their classmates and to the video or music.

Speaking: The students have to talk with their partners and then they will have to present their presentation.

The students have the opportunity to find the learning style that best suits them. As an example, the students that are more linguistic can write notes, whereas the one that are more visual can be in charge of searching pictures, etc.

Regarding bloom’s taxonomy, we would say that if they create one they would be working on High Order Thinking Skills.

Level VI: Creating (create new products). The activity gives the students the opportunity to create their own presentation.

Assessment 

In order to assess the presentation we have thought to do peer-assessment. Each groups will have the chance to assess their classmates. Always in a constructive way.
The aspects that they will have to take into account are the following:

1. Creativity (e.g. The Thinglink is attractive.)
2. Use of English (e.g. The students talk in English most of the time.)
3. Body Language (e.g. They look at the audience, interact with them.)
4. Content (e.g. They have added enough information to understand the topic.)

Just try it and decide if it worth!

Ferran Rodríguez

Àngels Tugores

Anna Solé

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